Posted on 03/04/2016 10:06:31 AM PST by PROCON
If you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s, then you know how relaxed everything used to be. Our parents never forced us to wear seatbelts, we pretty much at whatever we wanted, and were given way more responsibiity than we should have been given. It's a little sad kids today won't get to experience half the things we did, but looking back, there's a good reason why they won't.
Were these 12 things we did as kids kind of dangerous? Yeah, maybe some of it was.
(Excerpt) Read more at metv.com ...
I remember public parks that had retired steam locomotives, surplus WWII tanks and artillery in them for us kids to play on.
Have a scar on my knee from when I fell out of a treehouse while attempting to electrify it with an extension cord from the garage. A kid ran into the cord, clothes lining himself and yanking me out of the tree. We just dusted off and tried again, which is why I got a scar instead of stitches. The lights and radio in the tree were really cool!
Skid Hopping. Holding on to A Rusty Chrome bumper being pulled down an Ice or Snow covered Street.
The Good old Day’s
I miss the 70's
We would be back only to grab some dinner and then played hide and seek around the whole block (these were rural blocks that were 1/2 mile by 1/4 mile square) all night, cutting through the neighbors yards and hiding in their bushes. No one ever called the cops for prowlers either.
There were seven of us. The only way we could all travel together was if at least two of us sat in the cargo area. None of the cars my parents owned when I was a kid even HAD seat belts.
And we had those lawn darts in the image in the article too. Took them with us every weekend when we went camping.
The following fall, I broke my wrist in a brutal game of dodge ball and, true to his word, Dad set it himself. The principal even called him a few weeks later because, according to her, I was threatening to hit certain kids (who deserved it) over the head with the cast.
Dad had a talk with me, asked me to tone it down and, to his surprise, found that everything had healed early. So the cast came off and I was back to throwing harder than ever for my baseball team.
We still chuckled about that almost until the day Dad died.
In the early 70’s I made my own flame thrower with a spray bottle filled with gasoline and a zippo. It is only by the grace of God that i was not seriously injured.
Oh yeah...We used about 4 cans though...Called it a potato gun...
Lord, did we not have fun or what????
Many kids were given 22 rifles for Christmas but very few school shootings.
Stitches and broken bones were just part of life when I was a kid...today they are parental trauma inducing disasters!
1) Playing with dangerous toys
2) No seatbelts
3) No helmets
4) Running after DDT trucks
5) Unsafe playgrounds
6) Latchkey kids
7) Leaving 12-year-olds in charge
8) Diets
9) Sitting in the front seat
10) Secondhand smoke
11) Explosive cars
12) Summer
13) Real fireworks
14) Drinking the parents liquor
15) Smoking
16) Chewing lead toothpaste tubes
17) Playing in the coal bin
18) Drinking unpasteurized milk
19) Eating raw vegetables in the garden
20) Playing in the poison ivy/oak
21) Hiding in hay bale forts
22) Digging underground forts
23) Owning and shooting real guns
24) Riding bikes to school miles away
25) Walking home in the dark through the woods
Dare I mention Vietnam?
PGR88, I grew up in the South and had a very similar experience except it was plastic army men instead of cans and bottles. (And now I am going to get packed off to Diversity Re-Education Camp for saying “army men.)
I won a turkey when I was ten years old. My dad was so proud. Not my first turkey shoot, though, not by a long shot. You can imagine the shocked, even horrified expressions these days when I even say “turkey shoot.” You know you are living in the modern age, though, when you explain what a turkey shoot is, and the horrified expressions don’t fade away!
Yep. You could get your friends to sign your cast. That was pretty cool.
That was (counting fingers and toes ....) 35 years ago now.
26) Ordering chemicals through the mail to make bombs.
There is no reason the USA couldn't do the same thing today if we adopted some of the same values and intolerance of crime which the Japanese have, and which we still had back in the days when your grandpa was a pup.
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