Posted on 04/22/2015 11:57:14 AM PDT by Duke C.
In the winter, I’d skittch to school on the bumper of a Chevy (or any car)... and I survived. Some days there were more kids hooked on the rear bumper of the school bus than there were IN the school bus. Of course the girls would be pressed against the back window/door cheering us on, or maybe wagering which of us would nose dive first... The driver just plugged along. If you fell off cuz he hit a dry spot or pot hole, you got up, spit out the snow and ran after the bus like a piglet looking for a nipple in the crowd.
It was great!
When my kids were in grade school, I was telling them this story. It came about as a topic of discussion as I made mention that the new cars had so much plastic, I don’t think you could skitch on them without the bumpers falling off.
Remarkably, they had no idea what skitching was. Well..... A few days later, at about 8pm, I got em all in the Bronco (with a real bumper), drove down to the end of my street, and showed em how to “hook” under the bumper. Up and down the block we went, until a few other kids saw us, then we had 3 more on the back.
I warned em, that if they fell off, I wasn’t stopping. I didn’t either, and they fell off, and tarnished and bruised, but laughing all the way, they chased after the Bronco (doing maybe 5 miles an hour) to “hook” on.
My kids still relate that story at Holiday time and we all get a wide grin (except for mom of course).
My PE teacher told of a time when there was a big bully in his class. One day in PE the teacher brought in two pairs of boxing gloves and put one pair on the bully and one pair on the guy most likely to give him a good fight. The bully was eager to beat up on someone. After he went a round with the guy the bully started to pull off the gloves when the teacher told him to keep them on, he was going to fight everyone in the class. After going going through about half the class, the bully was getting his butt kicked. By the time he got to the end, the littlest guys in the class were beating the crap out of him. The teacher looked at him and said, “If I ever hear of you bullying anyone ever again, you are going to get another boxing lesson”. That ended the bully’s reign of terror. That was in the late 1960s. Today, the teacher would be fired and possibly prosecuted.
Yeah reminds me of running track on those old cinder tracks. A tumble usually resulted in you getting a treatment of “cinder suds” applied with a toothbrush by the coach. Talk about pain, buddy!
“...on the same cutting board”
Actually, there is a reason. Wood is filled with potent antibacterial agents that last for many years. So unless you didn’t clean off the board after cutting up raw chicken, you should be okay.
You probably got E. coli, Listeria, and Salmonella several times, but the adults just thought it was a touch of the flu.
In the winter time we used to go down to the local body shop and see if they had any old car hoods or trunk decks they were going to throw away. We’d get one and pull it behind a pickup like a sled. A trunk deck from a Buick deuce and a quarter would haul 4 guys. Had to watch out for those little bridge abutments buried in the side ditch though.
My teenage daughter was in a diving competition. Ended up being too close to the board during a high difficulty dive and knocked her two front teeth out. The pool manager retrieved the teeth from the bottom of the pool, her brother went the two blocks to our house got his motorcycle, returned to the pool and took my daughter and the teeth to the local ER. Someone finally called me at the office and told me about it so I could go home and check on her. The teeth were wired in place and she was fine, all things considered. If that were to happen today, I’d probably be hauled off to jail and my teenagers in CPS custody but that was in the 1970’s.
Survivorship bias.
I’ve my own long list of “I/we did _____ and survived! What’s wrong with y’all today ya wimps?”, but am quite sure that not everyone who rode on flatbeds, clambered about on high cliffs, swam in rather...lively...bodies of water, consumed toxins & diseases, etc survived. Not many people standing around going “I did all that, and look how I did! I’m dead!”
That said, I’m trying hard to find the balance between the two eras: protect the kids, but let ‘em push limits.
Mercurochrome is for sissies. We had hydrogen peroxide.
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You are all wrong. It was straight alcohol on the farm.
We had a Pinto. We also rode in the back window of the family sedan on long trips.
Rock fights at building sites
Mentholate stings a lot more than mercurochrome!
MER thiolate. Jeez
My PE teacher got tired of 2 guys who were always threatening to fight each other. Took us all to the wrestling room and put us in a circle, “I’m tired of you bit@hing like a couple of old ladies, we’re going to settle it right now.” After they stood around telling the other guy to swing first the coach yelled, “you 2 pu$$ies start fighting or I’m going to kick both your a$$es.”
It wasn’t much of a fight, but it ended their tough guy acts. Today Coach Bishop would be fired on the spot and locked up for good.
I was unloading 5" shells (USN) and accidentally slammed a case against my small finger (think hammer meet anvil). Making chicken noises, I went to the corpsman as it was bleeding pretty good and I could see a small globule of fat sticking out.
He took one look, grabbed a rubber squeeze ball of merthiolate and flooded the wound with it. The pain was electric - I doubled over and made sounds like Igor, the Hunchback (hunah, hunah, hunah). Never had anything feel like that since. He bandaged it up, told me to quit acting like a girl, and sent me back to the work party. A week or so later, the skin on the finger peeled off like a glove.
Seventy years later it still aches when it is going to rain.
that sounds like fun too!
can you imagine the lawsuits and national news it would make now if 4 kids were seen sledding behind a pickup on the trunk of a 225?
America has changed, and not for the better
sometimes I’ll get on youtube or whatever and watch stupid videos, the good ones are always from eastern europe, russia, poland or whatever, and I think to myself and say “yeah, we did that”, but we are too nanny now.
hell, a parent would probably go to jail if their kids played cowboys and indians in the yard
Is a bassball a guitar hero accessory???
/s
“Mentholate stings a lot more than mercurochrome!”
Yeah, but flirting with mercury poisoning is still more macho!
“But, we did wait an hour before swimming after lunch...”
Yeah, and ironically, the one “safety” feature of our childhood is a myth! Go figure.
Sounds like one of my PE teachers in the early sixties. Some clown who had mouthed off to any other teacher or bullied other kids got introduced to the game of flinch.
Mr.S had played semi-pro baseball and boxed.
Mr.S caught the miscreant in the hall and it was game on. Kid always got the first turn...never to regain it. Mr.S continued smacking one hand, both hands, teasing to cause a flinch, bam. It ended when the kids hands shook uncontrolablly.
No one ever risked having to play a second time.
“Oh yeah ... And where was the antibiotics and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting?”
We used to use mud or the spring onion you find in the grass, which I still eat when I find them. Can’t tell you how many bees I stepped on barefoot or how many hornets nests we purposly disrupted with rocks, bb’s, firecrakers, water and such.
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