Surviving our dangerous childhoods

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

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.

42

We moved when I was in the last year of elementary school from a city to a small town, and I remember being amazed and delighted by all the ancient, horribly dangerous playground equipment. My old school had some hopscotch and 4-square lines painted in the parking lot, and that was it, so my first “real” recess was like Christmas. I remember staring slack-jawed at all the possibilities. This was in the mid 90s, so they were in the process of replacing it with plastic and wood chips, and did a few years later, but I just squeaked in. That playground was massive and glorious. Asphalt and hard packed dirt, of course. All the equipment was metal and wood and built to last through a tornado.

We had swings with exposed chains that you could get a finger caught in and pinch a blister if you were lucky, or break it if you weren’t. We had teeter totters that went up, I swear, over the oldest kids’ heads–probably a good 5 feet, and were rickety. We had two gigantic metal slides with tiny, vertical, metal ladders and sharp bottoms that would scrape your calves. And the constant favorites, which had kids swarming all over them, were two metal merry go rounds, about…6 or 8 feet? in diameter, with handles every 1 - 2 feet. We’d crowd on, little kids in the middle, and the big kids would run around the dirt rut until it was going really really fast and then hop on. One was a smooth ride, and one wobbled back and forth on its axis until you got going at a really good clip. Both were mere feet from the asphalt, of course, so you did not want to fall off. And had rust, and holes you could easily have caught a shoelace on and torn your foot off or something. I don’t even want to think about the amount of momentum that thing had going. It was all kinds of fun, but even at 10, I could see that it wasn’t the safest environment. There’s gotta be a good balance between fun equipment and safety.

And then, near my grandparents’ house, a neighbor had a big barn that he used for hanging tobacco, and let my grandpa keep his horse in, so my cousins and friends played over there all the time, climbing the walls and mounds of hay. And this barn was HUGE. All kinds of rooms and loose boards for secret entrances, easily climbed rafters…and it was right next to a creek that had this great concrete pipe that it ran through under the road to a little clearing. Oh, it was awesome. We really are lucky we didn’t break anything.

And we sledded down various hills on poorly made plastic sleds and inner tubes–one year we were particularly enterprising and snitched some old cushions and covered them in garbage bags. (It worked pretty well for a couple rides, but then tore and we went tumbling.) It wasn’t so much sledding as rolling down a hill in the snow.

And of course biking on a rocky road and down hills without helmets.

While I have great memories of my childhood, I’ve got to say, I understand the worry, and I don’t think that making sure there aren’t sharp rusty edges in playgrounds is a bad idea. And not wearing helmets is/was dumb. When I was in middle school, a kid I knew was riding an ATV with his dad, without a helmet, and went headfirst over the handlebars straight onto asphalt. Died the next day. We did a lot of dumb, dangerous stuff, but I’m not going to look back with sadness and horror at the idea that we might have gotten hurt. I don’t think “it was fun and I’m fine,” is a good excuse for ignoring real danger, but I’ve just got to make a judgment call about things that really are dangerous, whenever I have kids, and accept a few scrapes or sprains.

43

Heh, I always had a vial of mercury, rolled some around in my hands often. Remember, you could put a drop on a quarter and it made it amazingly shiny? I can’t help but laugh when a drop of mercury is found at a school today and they shut down the entire place and test everybody. Cheech.

I lived both in the cities and it the countryside, and encountered almost all the hazards listed, all of which were great fun. Cities did not have all that much traffic, but playing stickball in the middle of the street must have been, now that i think about it, slightly dangerous. As was roller skating down the streets and having to jump over the street car tracks at intersections.

Country living brought some wonderful adventures, At 12 i bought a used single shot .22 rifle and by 14 a single barrel 12 gauge shotgun, but never killed anybody or shot off my foot (as my mother predicted). Yeah, when younger, had BB gun fights too, loads of fun, and still have both my eyes.

By high school, my hobby was chemistry. No chemistry set, a fully equipped lab in my basement. Back then you could buy almost any chemical or reagent from a mail order catalog. I particularly liked explosives and made several, including fulminate of mercury, very touchy stuff (used in blasting caps). Also made nitroglycerin, very easy to do, but did chicken out and poured it into a brook instead of detonating it.

Among other chemicals I had several ounces of pure sodium. It had to be kept under kerosene, as when contacting water, it exploded. One time I dropped a big chunk off a bridge into a creek. A very satisfying explosion which set fire to the brush on both banks.

White phosphorus was also fun, but that had to be kept under water or it ignited spontaneously.

Reflecting, it is indeed a wonder I lived to adulthood. Never a dull moment.

44

In addition to chemistry sets, playing with mercury, riding in the back of pick-up trucks, biking everywhere without helmets (who ever heard of a bike helmet back then?), and no seatbelts, I hiked everywhere in the woods every day after school. One of the dogs saved me from a charging bull, I fell over a little clifflet in creek gorge and banged myself up fairly well, but no real hurt. Bruises and a little blood were no big deal. I did farm chores – too many dangers to recount on big farm – and learned how to shoot a shotgun when I was ten. All farm rifles and shotguns were in open gunracks in all the country people’s houses then – not a single kid misused any of them. I was mowing a field-sized lawn on a riding mower when I was 10 – my brother was driving one of the bigger trucks, making deliveries, when he was 16.

My Dad drove a truck on the highway when he was 13. When he was a child, he was riding in the back of grandpa’s Model A. (I think it was a Model A). Grandpa took a corner a little too fast, the door came open, and Dad flew out of the car and landed on the side of the road. Grandpa didn’t even notice til he was some miles down the road. When he did notice, he went back and picked Dad up. Dad was fine. He is now in his 80’s, and none the worse for all the dangers he went through.

Yeah, I agree with whoever said it before; children are seriously overprotected these days. It is very bad for the kids and very bad for our society as a whole. Our society is safer than ever, but is full of the most fearful people ever.

When your life is ruled by obsession with safety, you are already dead. You just don’t know it yet.

45

Most of you guys have already covered most of what I could list, but here are a few others:

  • Playing with my cap gun. Man, I loved my cap gun! Made of real metal, fashioned like a revolver, with a cool white plastic grip. Fired little red paper rolls of caps. Excellent. My sister got one too, but she didn’t like hers so I got hers as well. Many a raid was led with that cap gun.

  • Building small “campfires” on the flagstones on our patio with sticks and twigs from our woods. I’d cook witch’s potions and stuff. That only lasted until my dad figured out where the big black burn marks were coming from.

  • Jumping out of trees and off of the big Belgian block wall out back. I made a Flying Nun costume that summer and was determined to make it work. It didn’t, but I tried a bunch of variations (added a beach umbrella, for example) until I finally gave up.

46

My parents got divorced when I was 14. I had been driving regularly supervised since I was 13 and everyone thought that I was quite good at it. The minimum age for a full drivers license in Louisiana at the time (motto: we group them up faster than other states) was 15. My mother had a long commute and wasn’t around much and we lived in a very rural area. I was the only one that could help with routine chores and taking my brother’s places almost every day so I was a full-blown driver at 14 but I was a little relieved when I got my full license on my 15th birthday. This was in 1988.

Through odd circumstances, my best friend was independently wealthy because of the death of his father and his mother was the school secretary. He had two large trucks and one car by age 13 and drove himself and his younger brother to school everyday and me too if I needed it.

47

My husband and I were talking about this stuff the other day. We both had fond memories of those big ass pedal cars that were made of metal. All the bolts and gears were completely bare so if your foot slipped off the pedal, you were going to bleed.

Speaking of cars, when my sister was 10, she talked my mom into teaching her to drive. I was 5 and they put me in the backseat untethered, ( if a car had seatbelts, most people tucked them out the way or cut them out). So, Sis is cruising arround the farm road behind our house and my mom tells her to slow down before we reach the hill. She hits the break, and for the first 2 seconds I’m having the time of my life sailing over the seat. Then my mom punches me in the stomach with her arm, trying to keep me from going through the windshield. It slows me down a bit, but my head hit the unpadded dashboard. Everybody in Kindergarten thought my blackeyes were really cool.

48

I remember sitting on my mom’s lap in the front seat of the car, no seatbelt. I also remember hitting the windshield on at least one occasion when my dad had to slam on the brakes. I can remember that clearly, strangely though I don’t remember a lot of other details from my childhood. Odd that.

49

An IMHO thread reminded me of another thing -
Guns were never locked up. Dad put the handguns on the top shelf with the ammo, grandparents (on both sides) did about the same… sometimes.

50

We all had pen knives and we would cut open everything to see what was inside.
We’d swim in the Friant-Kern canal.
We’d ride our bikes out to the county dump and shoot at rats with bb guns.
Riding our bikes back from wherever, we’d get chased by dogs. What leash law?
We’d ride those bike at least two kids to a bike, either sitting on the handle bars or one kid would steer and one would pedal. Helmet? Who had one?
Summers, we’d be out on the lake in somebody’s boat. Lifejacket? Why?
My dad kept the shotgun loaded and leaning against the inside closet wall of his bedroom. His pistol was in his dresser drawer; what good’s a gun that’s not loaded?

51

We had the little Micronauts and Battlestar Galactica and Shogun Warriors and other toys that shot little missiles that could of course be swallowed by a kid who could DIE :eek:

I actually had the first BSG Viper toy that shot its missile, and we thought it unbelievably lame when my friend got his Viper… where the missile just sort of popped out a centimeter before being stopped.

Anyway, a few years back they re-issued some of the Micronauts we’d played with as kids. The warnings on the boxes? cautioned that they were suitable only for 18 years or older. Sheesh.

52

List of dangerous childhood things:

Lawn darts.
Long summer days playing outside, until the streetlights came on, unsupervised.
Metal playground equipment at school. One school I went to had an old fire truck on the playground for us to climb in, on and around.
Bus “surfing”, standing in the aisle of the bus “surfing” as the bus went around corners.
Metal rollerskates. We were poor, so I was using the ones that were my mom’s in the 50’s.
Experimenting with mixing random household chemicals. I found out that putting beach on a photograph produced some sort of gas
Building forts with salvaged materials.
Swinging really high and then jumping off.
Playing “frogger” with a busy swingset.
Riding bicycles sans helmets, knee and elbow pads and then jumping them on rickety homemade ramps.
Sledding on snow saucers down a hill with trees at the bottom.
Riding around in the back of the station wagon.
Laying in the package tray of the car (my husband did this as a child)
Drinking out of the hose.
Tasting dirt. It was a precursor for me becoming a geologist and graduating to licking rocks.

53

My buddy had a water gun that looked like a frickin Uzi. And not just the general shape of an Uzi made of bright red plastic either. I think the makers of the “toy” ordered the molds from Israel. Removable mag, folding stock, the work. Black, of course, and no orange paint either. That would have been stupid.

I think they did stop making them because the cops shot a few kids.