Posted on 11/03/2020 3:14:07 PM PST by WhattheDickens?
https://www.si.com/more-sports/2020/06/12/coronavirus-summer-back-to-the-backyard
ff
I had a cousin who shot himself under his chin with his BB gun. He had to pop the BB out like popping a pimple. Lots of laughs from us, not much sympathy.
He survived and we ALL learned a lesson!
Lawn munching. OK.
Lawn darts. Verboten.
Monkey bars over concrete. Tether balls hurt.
We had no seat belts in most of our cars, loved smashing into the back of the front seat when my Dad stopped suddenly. No, not being sarcastic, the seats were well padded.
I went to a kinda rural middle school. Only about 10 miles outside the city but still had a bit of the country feel to it. This is in California.
Every boy had a pocket knife in his pocket, in school or out.
Teachers taught us how to play “mumbly peg” where two opponents stand opposite each other about double arms length. We took turns throwing the knife into the ground outside our opponet’s foot and if it stuck, the opponent had to move his foot to the knife, spreading his stance. First guy to fall down had to dig a wooden peg out of the ground wit his teeth.
We also played chicken, where it was the same with knives and throwing at feet, but this time it was between the feet of our opponent and the first guy to chicken out or hit his opponent in the foot lost.
And anyone that got hurt? Teachers were all “oh well, sucks to be you. Go see the nurse but make it to class on time.”
No one ever pulled a knife on anyone else. We were a rowdy, belligerent and combative bunch of boys but I doubt anyone ever even considered pulling out his knife to hurt someone.
Had a mini-bike. Lots of crashes.
Blowing up rotting tree stumps and ant hills with M-80’s not allowed anymore?
Using the thawing Thanksgiving turkey for blow gun target practice still allowed?
1. Nothing for years
2. Sad, low to the ground, plastic unfun stuff
3. Slightly less sad massive plastic-rubber structures. They go up much higher, but its all boxed in to prevent falls.
At least with the latest stuff the kids can have fun playing hide-and-seek and chasing each other around, but there is nothing like an "I dare you" challenge you can do with these latest monstrosities.
To each their own. I guess we were just easily amused, then, or maybe just poor and creative: we used to use one in each hand and double-dutch the things as fast as we could, among a ton of other tricks. It pretty much became our version of mumblety-peg (OP, there’s another one for you): my cousin used to win all the time because she was able to get two pair going on one hand (we all figured it was a girl-thing; none of us boys could do it).
Yup... I shot myself in the finger, and cut out the BB myself using our sharpest kitchen knife and a slew of hydrogen peroxide, in lieu of telling Mom what happened. :)
We used to play mumbelty peg with our pocket knives. In our version, rather than throwing the knife at our own feet, we would throw them at our cousins’ feet and try not to miss.
Another fun game was shooting our BB guns at each other.
We used waxed paper to make our slide slippery. We would really fly after a couple of us went down with waxed paper under our butts!! LOL!!
Car seats - all varieties.
Seat belts.
Helmets for everything including bikes.
There was a great future-looking article some 20 years ago about this kind of nonsense. It was a grandpa taking his younger grandson to a museum of daily life. They had to wear different things to go in and were given things in the museum to keep them “safe”.
The grandpa would tell about the displays and how we didn’t have these safety things, etc, that’s why they’re not in this diorama, etc.
The only thing I think they missed was making them wear masks to fight viruses.
But they were wearing not just helmets but also shin and knee guards and elbow guards, etc. This was as walking visitors.
ROFL!
Of course!
I used to climb trees and see how high I could jump from.
I have had both knees replaced.
He has swimmies. DQ.
But REAL diving boards of full length and cantilever action.
We still have that on mom’s pool.
I LOVE that c.1900 pix at top!
Wow, great ladders/catwalks!
We would take out a slat from the center, then roll the spool to the top of the horse pasture. Quietly so the horse didn't hear us.
(Inside the horse pasture was a really mean miniature horse that would bite!)
Then one of us would crawl inside the open slat and the others would push start the spool. As soon as you crashed into the fence at the bottom of the hill, and were still conscious, you had to look for the biting horse
If you emerged from the spool and the horse saw you, you had either scale the really tall barbwire fence or climb one of the trees nearby.
Climbing the tree would invite your friends laughing at you until the the biting horse left in a couple hours of so.....
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