OUT WITH "THE GIRLS" ALREADY

I have to share this with you - another classic involving my, now, 10-year old daughter.
Yesterday, she, and her neighborhood friend, asked if they could go out and ride bikes around the neighborhood. Sounded pretty harmless to us (and to the neighbor's parents) so we all said okay. The neighborhood child's mom gave her little girl a cell phone so they could "check in" with us, periodically.
First call came in and they were in another part of the neighborhood - about a half mile away - and acquired two more of their "girlfriend" companions on bicycle. Second call and they were over one of the companion's houses. Third call - over at another companion's house. Now here comes the 4th call - the one from our daughter - and I quote - "Just wanted to let you know we are at the Mexican restaurant at the end of the neighborhood having lunch". WHAT?????.....Do you have money? Yes.....Are there any adults with you? "NO". Now the restaurant is about, maybe a half mile away. We, then, come to find out that our neighbor child called her house and told her Dad that she was out "with the girls having a few drinks" at the Mexican restaurant. ("Drinks" being a Shirley Temple, Iced Tea, Sprite and water). Then, maybe about 10 minutes after that, our daughter and the neighborhood child show up at our house as if nothing special had happened. My daughter told me that it was just the 4 girls and the employees at the Mexican restaurant thought nothing of it. My daughter always has some money with her, just in case. Turns out - the big order was cheese dip, chips and a couple of cheese quesadillas. I did ask her if she left a tip and the answer was "What's that?". That was a whole other conversation about that.
We all had a good laugh about the little "adventure" and, of course, told the kids to check with us BEFORE they do something like that again (chuckling under our breath the whole time). Fun story.
The moral of this is that this was business as usual when I was ten years old. Gone from 8am to dinner time, with my friends on my bike. No fear of anything from mom or dad or me, for that matter. Yesterday, after it was all over, we wished those days were here again but realized they never will be. Sadly that is probably the last adventure of that kind for my daughter and her friend until they grow up.