Anybody remember Clackers? A ring had two cords hanging from it. At the end of each cord was a hard sphere of brightly colored resin, or some sort of hard, clear plastic. You held onto the ring, and by moving your hand up and down clacked the two balls together. If you got enough force, or kinetic energy built up they would rap together at the bottom and be knocked up into the air to clack above your hand as well.
Of course, they could also rap into your face, or have pieces split off and cause cuts and scratches. So they got banned. This only made them more desirable, and we’d find the blind spots of playgrounds to practice. Someone would keep a lookout.
If a teacher heard the “clack clack” noise and came to investigate, there would be a suitable cover activity by the time they got there.
[QUOTE=Hal Briston]
We had a much more direct name for it: Kill The Guy With The Ball (could be shortened to Kill The Guy). Oh, except you had to hold on to the ball for at least 10 seconds before tossing it to someone else.
[/QUOTE]
That’s what we had, too, although I don’t recall there being any 10-second requirement. I think we were all psycho enough that we actually wanted to keep the ball.
I remember Clackers. They’ve been completely redesigned for the modern age; they now look like this, take little to no skill to use, and carry absolutely no risk of bonking yourself in the head.
has fond memories of potentially dangerous childhood activities, including joyfully lighting things on fire in the backyard
[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
One thing that gives me hope though, no matter how safe you try to make playground equipment and childplay, the kids will ALWAYS find a way to make it dangerous again. Always.
[/QUOTE]
Yep. Rides aren’t just about fun, they’re about thrills. Doing the same thing again and again is boring, so naturally they’re going to search for any way to boost the excitement.
My parents were just here for a visit last week, and I showed my Mom (a 40-year veteran of elementary school teaching) around the neighborhood. We went past a new playground where they had a slide that used plastic roller bearings instead of a metal sheet. Mom commented about how much safer this was since it allowed the slide to be really long without needing to be 20 feet high. The moment she said that, a four-year-old came flying down the slide standing up, surfing along the rollers.
[QUOTE=Kimstu]
Absecon, NJ? I’ll be dogged, I grew up next door to that place, but my recess days were 5–10 years before yours.
[/QUOTE]
Small world. I lived in Absecon 76-85, when we moved out by the Shore Mall. Split high school between Pleasantville and Egg Harbor Township. You?
[QUOTE=sublight]
I don’t recall there being any 10-second requirement. I think we were all psycho enough that we actually wanted to keep the ball.
[/QUOTE]
I remember a couple guys throwing the ball away before getting tackled … IIRC correctly the preferred corrective to this cowardice was to go ahead and kill him anyway.
[QUOTE=Knorf]
<snip>When I was a kid, we had a game called “Smear the Queer.” Unfortunate name, but really it had nothing to do with sexual orientation, which we didn’t understand anyway. Basically, you tried to get the ball, any ball would do. Once you had it, everyone else (say, 5-15 kids) would use all available force to try to get it from you. <snip>
[/QUOTE]
We had something similar. I was a strong kid - I’d curl around the ball, a couple of the bigger kids would try to get it from me and failing, would pick the ball up. Somehow, I managed to stay curled around it, and they were able to hold me up. It was impressive enough that the game then morphed into who can ‘last the longest?’ Then there was bicycling down a 45 degree slope, walking on all manner of exposed pipes, climbing on top of monkey bars that felt 12 feet off the ground and hanging upside down from them.
Sometimes I think that for many kids, it’s just more fun when there’s a chance you’ll get hurt.
On the bright side, my son {4 and a half} is currently sporting the world’s biggest shiner, which he got at kindy from doing a faceplant on a wooden sandpit frame while running at top speed . One heart-stopping phone call {“Your son’s had an accident and hurt his head”}, a quick trip to A&E to make sure he wasn’t concussed, and some chocolate ice cream later, and he was fine; the doctor just laughed and said boys were supposed to injure themselves, and we swapped a couple of scar and broken arm stories. Now the young un’s mightily proud of his black eye, which has made him the hero of his class, and is sad to see it fading, but fascinated by the lurid colours bruises can turn.
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
These are the same people that promote bicycle helmets. I’m against it. All of it.
[/QUOTE]
I’m sorry, but this just has to be the most idiotic statement I’ve heard in quite some time.
Really, you might as well claim that you’re pro debilitating or fatal head injury. Perhaps you could come down as pro-cancer and pro-dead babies in the next five minutes.
"Cycling Every year, more than 500,000 people visit emergency rooms in the United States with bicycle-related injuries. Of those, more than 64,000 were head injuries in 2005. There are about 600 deaths a year, with two-thirds being attributed to TBI. It is estimated that up to 85 percent of head injuries can be prevented through proper usage of SNELL, ANSI or ASTM-approved helmets. It is essential that the helmet fit properly so that it doesn’t fall off during a fall.
The following facts/statistics are from Safe Kids USA:
* Head injury is the leading cause of wheeled sports-related death and the most important determinant of permanent disability after a crash.
* Without proper protection, a fall of as little as two feet can result in a skull fracture or other TBI.
* About 52 percent of children ages 5-14 do not use a bicycle helmet, while 41 percent do, and 7 percent had one but were not wearing it.
* Children whose helmets fit poorly are twice as likely to sustain a head injury in a bicycle crash as children whose helmets fit properly.
* A helmet that is worn too far back on the head is 52 percent less effective. "
Honestly, being opposed to bicycle helmets, especially for children incapable of making decisions about their health which could affect them for the rest of their lives (or simply end their lives) is fucking indefensible.
[QUOTE=Sublight]
Yep. Rides aren’t just about fun, they’re about thrills. Doing the same thing again and again is boring, so naturally they’re going to search for any way to boost the excitement.
My parents were just here for a visit last week, and I showed my Mom (a 40-year veteran of elementary school teaching) around the neighborhood. We went past a new playground where they had a slide that used plastic roller bearings instead of a metal sheet. Mom commented about how much safer this was since it allowed the slide to be really long without needing to be 20 feet high. The moment she said that, a four-year-old came flying down the slide standing up, surfing along the rollers.
She shrugged, and we continued our walk.
[/QUOTE]
The only downside I can see to the rollers is getting one’s skin pinched in between-OUCH! Or getting something caught in them-like a shoelace.
MY complaints about the old metal slides weren’t safety so much as comfort. In the summer time, if they weren’t in the shade, you couldn’t use them-OUCH! They got so hot. And some of the old ones that weren’t kept up and had those jagged edges, or else they wouldn’t be slippery enough, and you’d sort of jerk down.
Hey, I just remembered something my cousins and I always did on slides: we called it playing “train”, or “choo choo”. You’d go down the slide straddling, with your legs hanging off the side. Then, instead of getting off at the bottom, you’d stay there, and then the next person would come down the same way, until we were all backed up. Frequently, the first person would get pushed off.
Or the time at a family picnic when we attached a hose to the water pump, fitted it at the time of the slide, and created a water slide. Which quickly became a mud-slide, and devolved into a mud-throwing fight between me and one of my cousins.
Helmets are only unnecessary for those whose heads are considerably harder than asphalt.
[/QUOTE]
Concrete actually. When riding on the street, you are normally far to side, so right next to the curb. If your front wheel so much as bushes that curb, you are going down, and your head started the fall directly above the curb and traveling paralell to it.
Even a full face motorcycle helmet will do little to help if you’re head hits a solid object square-on at more that, say, 20-30 mph. That is not thier design goal though. The idea is that you hit the pavement with a glacing blow, and the square-on component is only maybe 10 mph, based on how far your head fell. That square-on component of velocity is typically HIGHER for a bicycle than a street motorcycle, as the seat must be high enough to allow full leg extension and some pedal clearance; thus the head falls from a greater height. The only reason bicycle helmets are flimsier than motorcycle lids is so that they are bearable to wear given the exertion of pedaling…they are no protection at all if folks won’t wear them.
[small hijack]This morning I got stuck behind a schoolbus that stoped at every other house in a rather dense neighborhood. Not only but I saw children waiting with their mothers on the other side of the street! Can children no longer cross a street under adult supervision and with no oncoming traffic? [/small hijack]
