Audrey drew up a list of things that every child should be able to do by age sixteen and stuck it on the wall. It read, in part:

• Clean a fish and dress a chicken
• Write a business letter
• Splice or put a fixture on an electric cord
• Operate a sewing machine and mend your own clothes
• Handle a boat safely and competently
• Save someone fron drowning using available equipment
• Read at a tenth grade level
• Listen to an adult talk with interest and empathy
• Dance with any age

The list changed with the times, adding computers and contraception, and nobody really kept score, but everybody got the idea.

The Long Ride: The surf legend Jock Suthrerland's unlikely life, by William Finnegan. The New Yorker, June 10, 2024. Audrey is Jock Sutherland's mother. She raised her children — all “water babies” — on the coast of Oahu, Hawai'i in the 1950s and 60s.