Speaking of toy guns, one of the original transformers turned into a realistic-enough scaled-down Walther P38. Suffice to say the character changes into something different now, with the last-gasp attempt at selling a toy of him that turned into a gun looking like something from Nerf. Nowadays selling a toy that homages the original design without an orange plug is illegal. (In the US, anyway.)
Me either. I wasn’t really a free-range kid, but I did ride to places including to summer school a mile away, along a main road or two. No biggie.
We used to “hooky bob” in the winter. We’d hunker down between parked cars and wait for someone to come along, driving slowly in the snow, then jump out as it was passing and grab onto the rear bumper, skiing along behind the car. It was a bit suicidal, but fun. I did have one friend who got the crap knocked out of him by a pissed off driver, which is another thing you wouldn’t likely see today. If you bitched to your parents about it, you’d likely get the crap knocked out of you again for being so stupid.
My friends and I used to climb out under the railroad trestle and hanging on for dear life when trains passed overhead. I’m sure kids do stupid things today, also, but probably not quite that stupid.
megatron… the leader of the bad guys …i remember the first time i seen the orange thing on toy guns …it was when the used video game store i worked at bought one of the last designs of the original NES … all the light guns guns were painted orange at the sights and end of the barrells
When I was in first grade, we moved in the spring. It was only a few miles away but in a different school district. My parents didn’t want me to change schools at that point. So my mother would put me on a city bus and the bus driver was tasked with telling me when to get off. Fortunately, our house and the school were on the same route. I don’t remember how I got home but I don’t think it was the bus since my memories are only of getting on it in the morning.
In third grade, my teacher tied a girl to a chair with a jump rope for disrupting class.
I don’t remember eating raw hamburger, and I thought raw eggs on their own would be to yucky-textured to try – but eggs were considered to be sterile inside, and raw eggs were a common ingredient in foods that didn’t undergo further cooking – eggnog, for instance. This one is probably less a change in attitude than an actual change in the situation – salmonella inside unbroken eggs, because it was inside the oviducts of the chickens that produced them, was quite rare until, I think, some point in the 1980’s, when it became common in large chicken-raising operations due to the crowded conditions; as these operations sold infected chicks to everybody else, raw eggs became hazardous to eat.
Per this article from 2015, only about one egg in twenty thousand is contaminated with salmonella. I suspect this may be a case of people thinking a hazard is more prevalent than it used to be because they hear about it more nowadays, but actually it was present (but rare) all along and people in the past were just blissfully ignorant about it.
Around age 12 my mother would take me to a local amusement park and set me loose while she studied her grad school course materials. The restaurant where she would camp out was the best airconditioned option available and they didn’t mind her nursing a coffee, with free refills, all afternoon during their slow hours. And I had free reign of the park until time to meet back up with her, usually at 6:00.
My younger brother and I walked home from grade school for lunch (both parents were at work) and I would usually boil us a couple of hot dogs or heat up a can of soup or make sandwiches, and then we’d walk back to school. I don’t remember carrying keys so the doors were probably left unlocked all day. This would have been around 1969-73.
We also used to walk about a mile to the nearest city pool with a bunch of other neighborhood kids, swim for hours and walk back home, not a single adult with us (although I did have to call my mother at work and let her know we were going).
We’d also be sent outside to play and we knew to come home when the streetlights came on.
My closest friend is one of the reasons you can’t find lawn darts anymore; he very nearly lost his left eye to a Jart. Luck and some clever surgery are the only reason he has even limited sight from that eye.
Stand on the seat and look out the car window. Or the box of the pickup.
Hunting by myself with a shotgun, about 15. And ice fishing.
Stayed home alone evenings at 7 while big sis was baby-sitting elsewhere. Home alone daytime at 5-6. One night there was a lightning storm, I screamed and bawled n terror
Finding places to swim our parents didn’t know about.
Rode bus with to another town without telling parents, about 14.
Overall, I’d say my parents were (slightly) more protective than average for the times’
In a rage, my 4th grade teacher (a woman) slammed a desktop down onto another student’s hand and broke his finger. Nothing ever happened to her that I know of.
At an 8th grade dance, our biology teacher threw a serious lip lock on a female student. Nothing ever happened to him, either.
It was common for gym teachers to use a paddle on students. It wasn’t considered to be abuse. Most of them were sadistic fuckers.
Opryland in Nashville, TN. It’s long since closed apparently.
On a low attendance day I could get on one of the roller coasters and just ride it through multiple runs until I got tired of it. And we typically went on weekdays so there were a lot of days like that.
Other childhood adventure… I would go with a friend into the woods and swing on vines out over this sinkhole. Would be considered outrageously reckless today and a sure sign of child neglect for any parent who didn’t prevent their child from doing something like that. Sure was fun.
I don’t think I was much older than 10 when my parents turned me loose in Disneyland and just said to meet them at the Main Street magic shop at such and such a time. This was the early Seventies.
Most of first grade and all of second grade I remember I’d walk to school in NYC’s Washington Heights by crossing the length of J Hood Wright Park, then down into the subway station and up the other side to avoid crossing the street and into P173. Coming home my parents were occasionally held up working, so I’d be at loose ends roaming the halls of my apartment building and occasionally wandering out into the neighborhood (which I wasn’t supposed to do) for an hour or two. By third grade in San Francisco I’d graduated to a full-on latchkey kid and roamed Golden Gate Park at all hours by myself or with friends, including into the night. Seems odd looking back on it now.
I’ll be completely honest here. I came very, very close to taking out an eye or cracking my skull with those things roundabout 5/6th grade. That’s one the powers-that-be were completely correct in banning.
My junior high principal, “Terrible Ivan”, used to break up hallways fights with a hockey stick which he used to forcibly lever kids apart( as opposed to walloping them with it). It was considered impressive rather than transgressive.
I spent summers at my Grandmother’s place, up north, outside of the city where I lived. I had a buddy up there, and the two of us spent summers fishing, swimming, and so on.
The summer I was 13, my buddy’s older brother (who owned an auto shop) basically gave us a 1968 Austin Mini Cooper, and taught us to drive it. We were up in the country, nowhere near a city, and he warned us to stick to the back roads. We did, but we were allowed to cross the highway to get to the convenience store in town, where we could buy candy.
That’s how I learned to drive a stick transmission. In retrospect, it was quite irresponsible on buddy’s brother’s part–the car was so beat-up when we got it that it would never pass a government safety inspection. In fact, a door fell off one time when we took a turn (thankfully, we were wearing seat belts). After that, we just drove it without the door (but with the seat belts).
To this day, I have no idea if the car was insured, though it must have been, because Buddy’s brother did have a valid registration. Buddy and I sure as hell didn’t have driver’s licenses. I doubt parents would be thrilled by their 13-year-olds being “gifted” a car today, or being allowed to drive it, but all our parents said was, “Drive safely, and stick to the back roads.”
Interestingly, the next summer, we arrived up north to find that Buddy’s brother had sold our car. What did he get for it? The grand sum of … $25, from the junkyard. Oh well. Back to fishing and swimming, and walking to the store for candy.
Sometime in the late 80s I picked up the girl I was babysitting and her friend. I put them both in the front seat of the car and buckled them in with the lap belt. No air bags (1968 VW), but I think 2 kids in one seat belt is frowned upon now.
And I really liked getting an raw egg in my Orange Julius. I was diagnosed as hypoglycemic by my pediatrician and was told to make sure I get enough protein.