Damn, where do I start? I guess with no infant seats in cars. I remember bringing my baby sister home from the hospital with Mom holding her in her arms. We two older kids bounced around in the back of the car poking the baby and playing with the doors and windows.
As a child spending summers on my extended family’s ranch, I was not allowed to use a saddle for horseback riding as it was feared I’d get thrown, catch my foot in the stirrup and be dragged for miles through cow poop. So I rode bareback exclusively. Helmets? Hell no. Just make sure you land with your noggin in a cow patty and you’re fine. Oh, and after horseback riding, we’d go exploring the equipment sheds with all my cousins. This was my first exposure to welding. :eek:
Also, I was a climber. I routinely hung out on the roof of the house (and fell off a couple of times), and just generally climbed everything I could. I got in trouble for climbing to the roof of the school up the street, and used to climb the swing sets just to see if I could make it.
I have plenty of scars, but miraculously I never seriously hurt myself.
Riding the subways alone after dark. Walking home alone after dark when I didn’t have subway fare. Playing in the piles of tires outside the tire store down the block. Playing on the roof of out four-story building, which had no walls around it.
Ha! We used to go around swiping tire weights from car wheels around the neighborhood, and would then melt them down in Jim Taylor’s mom’s good frying pan. They were then used as discus, thrown from the roof of the house to see how far they’d penetrate the lawn.
Jumping off the second floors of houses (just roll when you hit the grass!)
Firing arrows into the sky and trying to dodge them as they came down (Found out to never use a compound bow for this, you can’t see where the arrow goes)
Jumping off bridges into rivers (make sure you don’t jump where there are cars at the bottom!)
BB gun fights in the woods (Can anyone say severe retinal damage?)
I’m sure there is much more that I can’t recall at the moment. I’m pretty suprised that I never wound up with any serious injuries.
building stuff in the woods (tables, treehouses) before age 10 using hammers and nails
running around and swimming in creeks - my brother even fell in when ice broke once while he was sledding, and we just made fun of him instead of freaking out with worry
riding my bike pretty much wherever I wanted, just not crossing major roads until junior high
running a sprinkler below a big trampoline and sliding into pools, lucky if you made it without banging a limp on the metal edge or getting stuck in the springs
We all wanted to be Evil Knievel. We would build ramps out of scrap plywood and whatever else was lying around, and we would start atop a hill at the back of the high school. We must have been going 25 miles an hour as we hit the ramp and launched ourselves a good 10 feet in the air and traveled 30 or 40 feet before crashing down. Usually all ended well: occasionally not so well.
Also, we had a swimming “pond” near the railroad tracks that we swam in in the summer. It was so muddy you couldn’t see 2 inches below the surface. It was filled with frogs and snakes and other critters, and since it was part of the property of the rail road it also had debris in it. I once slashed my foot open on a rusty barrel partially submerged in the pond and had to ride my bike home with a cut that required 4 stitches to close. For some reason my parents anned us from swimming in the “pond” after that.
We played near the railroad tracks and used to place coins on the tracks to retrieve after the train went by. Sometimes we perched on the cement pillars of the underpass mere feet from passenger trains screaming by at full speed. We all knew if you got too close though, the suction could pull you under the wheels. So, in that regard we were “careful.”
We used to jump off the footings of the Bluewater Bridge into the St. Clair river and manage to make it to shore before getting swept downstream in the current.
We used to play in the woods miles from home and come home only when we were hungry or thirsty. I once carried a dead muskrat home and hid it in the bushes at our house. I was going to teach myself taxidermy. By the time my dad found it there wasn’t a lot of maggot-free flesh left.
We used to “bumper jump,” which consisted of waiting at corners for cars to slow down and then grabbing the back bumper and seeing how long you could hold on as the car accelerated down the street.
We used to sleep out in the tent in the back yard, and get up at 2:00 A.M. and roam the streets and schoolyards while the city slept.
And of course no seat belts, no car seats, no helmets for anything.
Do kids still ride double on bikes today? On the handle bars?
Well i’m 25 and my parents were very protective (I’m adopted and an only child) so while with them I was limited in my death defying activities. However I soon realised that my Aunt and Uncle were much more fun…
so from the age of 8 to 16 I spent every school holiday with them on a caravan site in the country where amongst other things;
Learnt to drive a Subaru pick-up with no floor. I was 12 at the time (That Subaru was a good old war horse, sometimes the only car to start in the area on a winters day)
Got a job for £3 an hour doing odd jobs with my much larger friends who could almost do a mans work. The owner didn’t want me left out.
Created many Go-Karts, once using the wheels of an antique pram.
Used said Go-karts on a cliff-like winding road with many blind turns.
Climbed on an Asbestos roof.
Hung from the front of a moving dumper truck.
Got lost in the woods.
Chased a suspected caravan theif using our battered Volvo. The Subaru had finally passed by then.
Nothing amazing or unbelievable about it. The kids who got killed in car accidents or what have you, aren’t around to post about it on message boards today.
There was a really cool rope swing over a ravine near my grandparents’ house when I was a kid. Oh, those halcyon days of summer when kids would go over there and swing back and forth with no adult supervision.
Until the day this kid Marvin lost his grip while swinging across, and fell off and broke his neck. It was the first person I’d ever personally known who died. (I wasn’t present at the time of the accident.)
I guess I just don’t have a lot of nostalgia about dangerous but fun stuff I did as a kid. I mean, yeah, we all rode in the covered bed of my stepdad’s pickup truck one year on a trip to Niagara Falls, but it wasn’t fun or awesome or cool, it was uncomfortable and lame and I’m really glad he didn’t rear-end anyone or get rear-ended while we were all riding back there unrestrained.
Wow. I look at the things people mention here and think, “Man, those were great times!” Building a ramp of plywood and bricks so you could jump your Schwinn Stingray (with the banana seat) over a garbage can. Make a fort out of lumber you scavenged from a construction site. Playing in fields, creeks or woods without adults nagging you. Staying out with your friends in the summer until the streetlights came on.
I miss the carefree feeling of those days. Not just the lack of responsibility that childhood had, but also the lack of fear the world seemed to have. I don’t mean fearlessness, although that was a big part of it (ask anybody who tried to reach the highest branch or jump the furthest from a swing). I mean the feeling that the world was not dangerous to us. Sure, we knew not to take candy from strangers (except at Halloween).We knew that someone was probably going to wind up with cuts, scrapes, bruises and maybe the occasional broken bone from our stunts but it was worth it. Besides, it gave you bragging rights and made you a legend in school.
The park near my house has a small playground. The climbing dome is only 4 feet high and is plastered with warning labels. The swing set has plastic covered chains attached to flexible plastic seats. The seats and the legs of the set have warning labels. The slide is covered with more labels. When they were putting in the park, the construction crew excavated down 2 feet, put in a thick rubber mat and then filled everything in with shredded rubber, probably from tires.
I’m not saying I want my kids to get hurt or that I want them to be daredevils and risk life and limb. I just want them to be able to push their limits and know that, as long as they aren’t reckless and irresponsible and don’t put anyone else in jeopardy, they will be OK. They may get a little banged, bruised and bloodied but it teaches them their limits and helps them grow.
I’ve told this story before, I think…I have a picture my mom took of us 4 kids sitting by a pool in Florida. My sister was a baby…maybe 6 months old. We had driven from Chicago to Florida in a regular sedan, with me and my 2 brothers in the backseat (no seatbelts, I’m sure), and I figure my mom probably held my sister in the front seat, all the way there. Going down the interstate at God knows what speed. :eek:
Most of these things mentioned here were part of my life, but the one I have always wondered about:
On hot summer evenings, playing and jumping through the pesticide mist being pumped out of big mosquito abatement trucks lumbering slowly down our street.
Oh, as a teenager, hitch-hiking everywhere without a regard for who might pick us up.
I just heard recently that there was a recall on Easy Bake Ovens. I couldn’t believe they were still being sold.
And speaking of toys that get really hot, I wish I hadn’t gotten rid of my Thingmaker - Goop is being made again!
I also remember the teacher allowing a few of us to briefly hold some mercury one day during our science lesson. Near the end of the last school year here, a school in the next county over was evacuated and shut down because some kid had brought a tube of mercury to school. No one could go back in until it was determined that not a molecule of it was left anywhere in the school. While I can question the wisdom of letting kids handle mercury in class, the whole shutdown thing seemed like major overkill to me.
I’ve noticed a lot of ads aimed at parents these days seem to either play on fear or guilt over some aspect of their childrens’ safety. Common sense seems to be completely beside the point anymore. Sometimes I think we’re raising a nation of pansies.
So did we. A handy bump in a local park was our jump ramp, and we’d take off. Usually with no problems, but there were some great spills we all took. Bikes were nothing special; BMX bikes hadn’t been invented yet, and we used what we had.
For those in cold climates, how about ice slides? Get a good steep hill in a local park, and just keep going down it, over and over again until it becomes ice. For added thrills, build a jump at the bottom. Try to be one of the kids who can go down standing up. (We all had special plastic-soled boots for maximum speed.)
Another one for the cold climate folks: bumper hitching. You needed your ice slide boots for this too. On a snowy day, before the plows have cleared the street, you wait for a car to stop at the stop sign, and you run up behind it. Crouch down, hold on to the bumper, and get a ride when the car starts up again. This may be similar to the “bumper jumping” that Leaffan referred to, but he didn’t mention doing it in the snow.
I flew off a merry-go-round doing that once. Landed on gravel twenty feet away and split my chin wide open. I’ve never been able to ride one since without getting nauseous.
At nursery school (we didn’t have your fancy preschools back in The Day), we had a pair of huge wooden seesaws. We used to be extremely cruel to each other on those. You played on it with someone for a while, then when the other person (preferably male) was at the highest point, you hopped off and ran away. I leave you to imagine what happened to the other guy.
No seat belts. I don’t think I used a seatbelt until I was driving myself.
Grabbing Granddad’s .22, hoping on a horse, and disappearing for most of the day. My grandmother, the tenderhearted soul that she was, would often make such remarks as “The pansy came back early today” or “Couldn’t that old horse haul your lard any more?” if I wasn’t gone for more than 4 hours.
Slicing open golf balls with Xacto knives (barely survived that, direct pressure helped)
Unsupervised projects in Dad’s workshop with the radial arm saw.
-Running wild throughout the neighborhood with my mom not caring if I wasn’t in sight as long as I was home before it was completely dark
-Climbing into the drainage ditch pipes to collect snails
-Riding bikes without helmets was a big one - taking my bike to the gas station or even gasp the library two miles away was, too
-Going on rafting trips at camp and jumping off bridges and short cliffs into the river just because we could
-Skateboarding on a really rickety, home-made skateboard down the neighbor’s extremely steep driveway (it took my mom almost two hours to finish plucking out all the gravel bits that got embedded into my skin when I fell)
-Getting into my first fistfight in fifth grade at the drainage ditch because some boy wanted to kiss me and I wouldn’t let him
The list just goes on and on, but I never, ever felt unsafe (okay, I did a little when I got my first black eye from that boy) and I was usually having the time of my life.
I fractured my skull at age 4 by falling off the swings at the playground. Turns out it’s not a good idea to put your hands on the seat itself and lean back, although it did increase my velocity, as expected; it’s just that the vertical overtook the horizontal, so to speak.
Aside from mulch, though, the climate of caution seems ridiculous and the fear unhealthy.
Don’t completely lose heart, however. I spend a fair amount of time at playgrounds. The daredevils continue to find new was of pushing the envelope. You know all those tube slides that you can’t possibly fall off or out of? The big kids shimmy up the outsides of 'em.