OK, this isn’t life-threatening dangerous, but it now strikes me as being pretty stupid.
My group of neighborhood friends used to play tackle football virtually every day. We played on the grass of a local school, which happened to be the perfect size for our games.
Here’s the stupid part: One of the sidelines was a brick ledge with about a 2-3 foot drop (it varied). In other words, if you were shoved (or tackled) off the ledge while running with the ball, you were out of bounds.
And nobody thought this was the least bit unwise.
mmm
There was a very large tree in a wooded area behind a park I used to go to when I was 11 or 12. Friends and I would build ladder steps (2X4’s nailed to the tree) up the branches using old wood and nails, and then build small “seats” to sit in. One seat was 55 feet off the ground. :eek:
There was a creek near our neighborhood that the storm drains emptied into. Where the drain pipes emptied into the creek, they were big enough around for a kid to stand up in. So we’d go exploring in the storm drains, often far enough that the pipes got small enough that you had to crawl on your hands and knees. Never gave a thought to what would happen if it started raining, or what sort of critters we might encounter.
This. Fell out of one once, sprained my ankle pretty good.
Skateboarding, no helmet, excessive speed. Thumped my head pretty good a couple of times.
Degreased bicycle parts in whatever toxic solvents I could find in my dad’s collection of chemicals, no gloves involved. Paint thinner, lacquer thinner, gasoline, whatever. If my hands sprout an array of tumors in the next few decades I’ll have a pretty good idea why.
In later years, when I was in training for confined space entry in the military and in industrial settings, it occurred to me that perhaps the greatest risk wasn’t rats or sudden rains, but pockets of poisonous gas.
I’m happy we didn’t go much further than where the pipes got too short to walk comfortably and we never did get around to making a little raft to use to explore the storm sewers.
We used to build ramps out of logs and planks and jump our bikes off them. On the street. Without helmets. And when it got competitive we took a page out of the professionals’ book and started jumping things that mattered: other kids. So instead of “Evel Knievel jumps 15 cars” it was “Bill jumps 6 kids.” Curiously, nobody ever got landed on and I don’t recall anyone ever being reluctant about being the last kid in the line. Guess we just weren’t into testing the limits of our abilities.
Bike jumps. Sled jumps. On the sledding hill, we’d build a jump high enough where (with effort) we’d land just short of the creek. Then we’d race to see who could get across the creek. And hope the creek was frozen enough to hold our weight. One neighborhood kid forgot to close his mouth, when he landed bit off a small chunk of his tongue.
Yard Jarts. You’d have thought after I dented my grandfathers new car, they would have taken them away from me. But no. After I managed to Jart myself through the foot, they did, though.
Oh yeah, I forgot about the makeshift bike ramps. Evel Knievel was a very big deal when we were kids. We never tried jumping over other kids though.
Another one I thought of… bottle rockets. When the fireworks stands went up around the 4th of July, we’d load up on bottle rockets. At night a bunch of us would go to the big field behind the school, armed with bottle rockets and lengths of metal tubing (hand-held) from which to shoot them. Then we’d split up into teams and have bottle rocket fights.
Probably this. I got very lucky in falling a couple of times without injury, but the very first fall knocked me out and I probably had a serious concussion. Sitting out on a large tree limb I was holding onto a small branch coming out of that when it suddenly snapped. Not that far off the ground but witnesses said I landed on my head. That might explain some things about me.
Grabbing onto the back (sissy bar) of another kid’s bike while wearing roller skates.
Riding bikes barefooted - have the scars on the backs of my heel to prove where the pedal would bite into my Achilles tendon.
Riding bikes while wearing bell bottoms. We all leaned the hard way to carry a rubber band to cinch up your swag on the chain side. At worst you got snatched off the seat into the road with your foot hung up in the chain, at best your favorite bell bottoms got mangled along the hem.
Also, water skiing and swimming in the river amongst gators, snapping turtles and water moccasins and never got a scratch or even an ear infection.
Climbing up on the water tower.
I am sure I could think of a bunch more, but this is just right off the top of my head.
My friend and I would get in my red metal wagon together and start at the top of sidewalk on a VERY steep hill, put our feet inside and fly down the hill. The wagon handle was also metal and the person that was in front would hold that to “steer”. We’d go careening down the hill barely missing trees until we came to the cross street. I think we’d just drag our feet to stop. We were never injured although we did fall out a few times.
We also would play all day long at a creek that was about 1/2 mile from my house in the woods. It was a large creek with huge outcroppings of rocks and waterfalls. All summer we’d go there and jump from one slippery rock to another, we’d slide down flat rocks into pools of water, see how far up the creek we could walk (we wanted to find the beginning so badly, but never did). No one really knew where we were. We’d just head out in the morning. The only rule was we had to be home by suppertime! Now when I look back I think, what would have happened if we fell off a rock and banged our heads or some weirdo found us, or a million other things that could have gone wrong? Our moms had no idea where we were.
Those were the days when kids just went out and played all day. No adult supervision, no rules, just adventure. Our moms would say, “go out and play”. Like I said, “be home for supper” was the main rule. After supper, we’d go back outside and were told: “be home by dark”.
Friend and I jumped on a slow moving train. It began to go faster and we were pretty much stuck. Ended up in a town 70 miles south of home. His father was not happy when he came to pick us up. We also use to climb under the tracks on a bridge and wait for the train to go over. We once tied a half inch rope to trees on each side of the tracks and waited for a train. The engineer saw the rope about 50 feet from it and hit the brakes but the train was still moving pretty quick when it hit the rope. The smaller of the 2 trees, a 'Douglas fir about 10 inches thick, broke at the roots and took out a swath of vegetation about 10 feet wide till it got caught in a bigger tree. The rope then broke with a resounding twang. Half an hour later there was a bunch of Union Pacific folks looking over the area. We were standing next to the tree that broke.
When I was 7 we moved into a brand-new neighborhood. It was so new ours was one of the first dozen or so completed houses, and the great majority of the other 300-400 houses in the neighborhood were in various states of completion, from almost finished to just a big hole in the ground. My brother and I, along with whatever other kids we could find around, loved to go crawl around in the uncompleted homes. It was super unsafe, but it was amazing fun.
Unpowered four wheel go-carts down a steep hill on a neighborhood street. Steered by a piece of rope, stopped by sneakers on pavement. We did have lookouts for cars at the bottom of the hill.
Basically this. We used to find higher and higher heights to jump off of. I had a firm belief that the only thing preventing me from jumping from something incredibly high was fear. I threw myself off of a lot of high stuff by basically convincing myself the danger was in my head.
That is EPIC! From time to time I think about stuff we did as kids that was probably felonious from an adult’s perspective, but was only motivated by fun/curiosity with absolutely no regard for consequences. Launching rocks into traffic while lying back in a wheat field. “Reckless” suggests the consideration and rejection of consequences. This stuff wasn’t reckless, the whole concept of ‘what happens next’ was just not part of the equation. As an adult it’s hard to understand such short-sightedness even though it was going on in my own brain.
My elementary school installed a “mountain” for us to play on. They dumped a large truck load of fill dirt into a high pile and then poured concrete over the top. They didn’t bother to smooth out the concrete so it was very rocky/nubbly and rough. They also installed a fake cannon at the top which inspired our imaginations so we loved it. I never saw anyone fall down that mountain but if anybody had, they’d have road rash to last a lifetime! They apparently hadn’t thought of installing soft playground textures at that point in time.