Posted on 06/17/2015 4:35:26 AM PDT by HomerBohn
With all of the ridiculous new regulations, coddling, and societal mores that seem to be the norm these days, it’s a miracle those of us over 30 survived our childhoods.
Here’s the problem with all of this babying: it creates a society of weenies.
There won’t be more more rebels because this generation has been frightened into submission and apathy through a deliberately orchestrated culture of fear. No one will have faced adventure and lived to greatly embroider the story.
Kids are brainwashed – yes, brainwashed – into believing that the mere thought of a gun means you’re a psychotic killer waiting for a place to rampage.
They are terrified to do anything when they aren’t wrapped up with helmets, knee pads, wrist guards, and other protective gear.
Parents can’t let them go out and be independent or they’re charged with neglect and the children are taken away.
Woe betide any teen who uses a tool like a pocket knife, or heck, even a table knife to cut meat.
Lighting their own fire? Good grief, those parents must either not care of their child is disfigured by 3rd-degree burns over 90% of his body or they’re purposely nurturing a little arsonist.
Heaven forbid that a child describe another child as “black” or, for that matter, refer to others as girls or boys. No actual descriptors can be used for the fear of “offending” that person, and “offending” someone is incredibly high on the hierarchy of Things Never To Do.
“Free range parenting” is all but illegal and childhood is a completely different experience these days.
All of this babying creates incompetent, fearful adults.
Our children have been enveloped in this softly padded culture of fear, and it’s creating a society of people who are fearful, out of shape, overly cautious, and painfully politically correct. They are incredibly incompetent when they go out on their own because they’ve never actually done anything on their own.
When my oldest daughter came home after her first semester away at college, she told me how grateful she was to be an independent person. She described the scene in the dorm. “I had to show a bunch of them how to do laundry and they didn’t even know how to make a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese,” she said. Apparently they were in awe of her ability to cook actual food that did not originate in a pouch or box, her skills at changing a tire, her knack for making coffee using a French press instead of a coffee maker, and her ease at operating a washing machine and clothes dryer. She says that even though she thought I was being mean at the time I began making her do things for herself, she’s now glad that she possesses those skills. Hers was also the room that had everything needed to solve everyday problems: basic tools, first aid supplies, OTC medicine, and home remedies.
I was truly surprised when my daughter told me about the lack of life skills her friends have. I always thought maybe I was secretly lazy and that was the basis on my insistence that my girls be able to fend for themselves, but it honestly prepares them for life far better than if I was a hands-on mom that did absolutely everything for them. They need to realize that clothing does not get worn and then neatly reappear on a hanger in the closet, ready to be worn again. They need to understand that meals do not magically appear on the table, created by singing appliances a la Beauty and the Beast.
If the country is populated by a bunch of people who can’t even cook a box of macaroni and cheese when their stoves function at optimum efficiency, how on earth will they sustain themselves when they have to not only acquire their food, but must use off-grid methods to prepare it? How can someone who requires an instruction manual to operate a digital thermostat hope to keep warm when their home environment it controlled by wood they have collected and fires they have lit with it? How can someone who is afraid of getting dirty plant a garden and shovel manure?
Did you do any of these things and live to tell the tale?
While I did make my children wear bicycle helmets and never took them on the highway in the back of a pick-up, many of the things on this list were not just allowed, they were encouraged. Before someone pipes up with outrage (because they’re *cough* offended) I’m not suggesting that you throw caution to the wind and let your kids attempt to hang-glide off the roof with a sheet attached to a kite frame. (I’ve got a scar proving that makeshift hang-gliding is, in fact, a terrible idea). Common sense evolves, and I obviously don’t recommend that you purposely put your children in unsafe situations with a high risk of injury.
But, let them be kids. Let them explore and take reasonable risks. Let them learn to live life without fear.
Raise your hand if you survived a childhood in the 60s, 70s, and 80s that included one or more of the following, frowned-upon activities (raise both hands if you bear a scar proving your daredevil participation in these dare-devilish events):
1.Riding in the back of an open pick-up truck with a bunch of other kids
2.Leaving the house after breakfast and not returning until the streetlights came on, at which point, you raced home, ASAP so you didn’t get in trouble
3.Eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the school cafeteria
4.Riding your bike without a helmet
5.Riding your bike with a buddy on the handlebars, and neither of you wearing helmets
6.Drinking water from the hose in the yard
7.Swimming in creeks, rivers, ponds, and lakes (or what they now call *cough* “wild swimming“)
8.Climbing trees (One park cut the lower branches from a tree on the playground in case some stalwart child dared to climb them)
9.Having snowball fights (and accidentally hitting someone you shouldn’t)
10.Sledding without enough protective equipment to play a game in the NFL
11.Carrying a pocket knife to school (or having a fishing tackle box with sharp things on school property)
12.Camping
13.Throwing rocks at snakes in the river
14.Playing politically incorrect games like Cowboys and Indians
15.Playing Cops and Robbers with *gasp* toy guns 16.Pretending to shoot each other with sticks we imagined were guns
17.Shooting an actual gun or a bow (with *gasp* sharp arrows) at a can on a log, accompanied by our parents who gave us pointers to improve our aim. Heck, there was even a marksmanship club at my high school
18.Saying the words “gun” or “bang” or “pow pow” (there actually a freakin’CODE about “playing with invisible guns”)
19.Working for your pocket money well before your teen years
20.Taking that money to the store and buying as much penny candy as you could afford, then eating it in one sitting
21.Eating pop rocks candy and drinking soda, just to prove we were exempt from that urban legend that said our stomachs would explode e 22.Getting so dirty that your mom washed you off with the hose in the yard before letting you come into the house to have a shower
23.Writing lines for being a jerk at school, either on the board or on paper
24.Playing “dangerous” games like dodgeball, kickball, tag, whiffle ball, and red rover (The Health Department of New York issued a warning about the “significant risk of injury” from these games ) 25.Walking to school alone
Come on, be honest. Tell us what crazy stuff you did as a child.
Teach your children to be independent this summer.
We didn’t get trophies just for showing up. We were forced, yes, forced – to do actual work and no one called protective services. And we gained something from all of this.
Our independence.
Do you really think that children who are terrified by someone pointing his finger and saying “bang” are going to lead the revolution against tyranny? No, they will cower in their tiny apartments, hoping that if they behave well enough, they’ll continue to be fed.
Do you think our ancestors who fought in the revolutionary war were afraid to climb a tree or get dirty?
Those of us who grew up this way (and who raise our children to be fearless) are the resistance against a coddled, helmeted, non-offending society that aims for a dependant populace. In a country that was built on rugged self-reliance, we are now the minority.
Nurture the rebellion this summer. Boot them outside. Get your kids away from their TVs, laptops, and video games. Get sweaty and dirty. Do things that makes the wind blow through your hair. Go off in search of the best climbing tree you can find. Shoot guns. Learn to use a bow and arrow. Play outside all day long and catch fireflies after dark. Do things that the coddled world considers too dangerous and watch your children blossom.
Teach your kids what freedom feels like.
How about getting on a bus and going to the movies on Saturday? Or getting dropped off at the mall?
Sitting in your dad’s lap and driving the car.
Having rock wars - two teams of kids on different sides of the creek, with a raft in the middle going down the creek. Guys with rocks on the raft, guys hiding in the little structure in the center of the raft. People throwing rocks at the raft as it floated by. Everyone took a break so that they could get the raft back up the creek. People argued about who was going to get to be on the raft first.
Sleeping outside in the backyard under the stars in the summer.
Playing ‘smear the queer’ on the playground. Guy with the ball gets to run around with it while everyone tries to tackle him on the pavement. Once tackled, you give up the ball.
As an altar boy, there was always snacking on the unconsecrated hosts, or taking a pull from a bottle of muscatel used to fill the cruet before Mass.
Bringing the neighbor kids over to haul railroad ties and bricks in the backyard, then paying them #5 and taking them to the local corner store to load up on candy, and thinking we kids got the great end of that deal.
Our parents smoked in the house. Fed us liver.
We erected massive bicycle jumps on the cul-d-sac and jumped kids who laid under the ramp. Nobody had a helmet on. Ever. I can’t remember the last time I saw I kid with a BMX bike jumping in the street, even off of driveway ramps that are built into the sidewalk.
Unsupervised use of firecrackers and fireworks. Unsupervised use of Estes Rockets. Unsupervised use of wrist rockets and BB guns.
Kids raised in the 1980s?
I gave “The Dangerous Book for Boys” to a buddy when his lads were 8 & 9.
They LOVED the book and the activities therein.
By the way, kids didn't sling dead cats in the 40s and 50s, if you came across a dead and threw it, that was pretty something that you came across that day, it wasn't a child hood activity.
We used to build rafts and wait for the creek to rise and float a few miles. Ever gig? Got my first gun at eight years old and started hunting soon after. Walked to school dodging coal trucks and crossed the creek on rocks after the swinging bridge washed out. Put rocks in our snowballs if we were throwing at someone we didn’t like. When I was 12 blew a tree down with half a stick of dynamite, got in a little trouble for that one. Worked for my dad in our mines and hauled house coal for extra pocket money. I did it all and then some. Hell raising was our past time. Then I discovered girls and women.
All the while breathing 100 degree dust...precious memories.
Kids today would have seizures requiring hospitalization just watching this on a video.
We had an IH Super H with a couple of home made wagons...what was your rig?
Well, I never came home so dirty that Mom had to hose me off, while I was still a child.
Had to have the wife hose me off one time after getting the truck stuck while deer hunting.
Not really sure if that counts in the “child” or “adult” category, though......
I’ll add to the list...
Bottle rocket wars with my friends (no eye protection!!!)...
Making Evil Knievel style jump ramps for my mini-bike...
Back yard shooting as a minor (unsupervised, but then my Dad taught me how to shoot at age 7 and hunt at age 10)...
I ALWAYS carried a knife (it was a tool)...
Not only mowed the grass with both push mower (age 7) and rider (age 9), but bush hogged about 5 acres several times a year on a Massey-Ferguson starting at age 12...
I lost count how many of those I went through. Quite a few gliders too.
The good old days!
What kind of list is complete without fireworks?
Travesty.
Drag racing.
In the 50s and early 60’s, nearly every schoolkid’s dad was a WW2, or sometimes Korean War veteran. So kids brought all kinds of dads’ war souvenirs into school for “show & tell,” including captured edged weapons. I even remember a Japanese sword. I went in with a piece of German AA shrapnel that smashed through my father’s B-17, and his father’s WW1 French 37mm tank shell with propellant and explosive removed long before. Today any of the above would get a kid a lot more than arrested.
Or going with your older brother to see Flash Gordon serials at the movie theater early on a Saturday.......all for a nickel!
Lived on a Marine Base as a kid, 29 Palms, CA. We got ahold of a parachute and tied it to the tongue of a wagon. Wind came up and we took off down some dirt road in back of base housing.
We couldn’t see anything in front of us except the parachute and man were we flying fast ... until we crashed. Ouch! Rocks and cactus. Once was enough, we never tried that again; but what a ride.
The one I fell from, though, was a friend's whom I was helping to get in his hay.
Our family didn't have a baler--we converted a horse-drawn hayrake to be used by the Ford, and raked the hay into rows, then forked it all up into the haywagon, and used a hayfork in the barn to pull it up into the loft.
We were pretty much a 19th-century family farm operating in the 1970's. :)
Building a go-cart out of scrap wood, steered by a rope (those of you who have built these know how it is done) with your friends, and going down a hilly street at what seemed to be a multiple of the speed of light, dodging traffic and crashing into a dirt pile at the end of the ride.
Then, doing it AGAIN.
When it was YOUR turn.
I drove my riding lawnmower down the street to my lawnmowing job...one day.. I drove my lawnmower during my paper route. I drove it down a state highway...try that today...(or a kid with a paper route.)
Rust holes in the floor...I had that when my dad bought an AMC Ambassador wagon when the IAM (the union at Pratt) went on strike. He bought this wagon from the state, because he didn’t want to use his Vette to go through the gate. The floor was rusted in places. The IAM unions loved to scratch car of management when they are on strike.
Now.. those bought me back to childhood...one day, my friend made a hot air balloon with a trash bag...(with no warning label that says may cause suffocation if put on head.), wax, gasoline and fire. It hit the roof of my friend’s house, but then it landed 5 miles away...we followed it on our bikes.
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