Posted on 11/03/2020 3:14:07 PM PST by WhattheDickens?
Safety mandates taking the fun out of childhood
Also, we used to put our little brothers in the clothes dryer and give them a ride!
The more you used them, the better they rolled.
We were always at the beach. Don’t know how many times I almost drowned( my excuse for brain damage) when the parents”taking a walk” down the beach....and we’d be out on boards, surf mats, laughing in the shore break.
How about a big piece or cardboard and a hill?
Taking the little Rad Wagon down the street with no brakes?
Kick Ball in Catholic school was a full contact sport.
Even the swing set was a challenge getting really high, cape and jump.
My childhood was the greatest.
I used to walk on an old oil drum. Good for the balance, and don’t step on the rusted out areas and gash your foot.
The whole prisoner’s dilemma of the seesaw, you lose when the other kid jumps off and you slam into the ground, but your score sort of goes up the longer you keep going.
Scraping the powder out of caps to make a big bang.
When my father was twelve, he had a dog, a bicycle, and a rifle, and he counted himself as having everything a boy could need.
How true. :)
Ha, we used to play Army with all sorts of weapons for kids. Occasional chipped tooth or a pellet to the foot, pop gun full of mud to the face, tree forts( not to code). What the heck happened? ( Rural California)
No intellegent elites permit their children to have computers in their lives unitl about age 16
Oh man, the memories. At recess when I wasn’t conquering everyone at volleyball, I was whirling on the monkey bars. And I’m a female when we had to wear dresses to school. The monkey bars were great: put your coat on the bar, fling your leg over it, hook your arms beneath your knees and whirl away.
Did you take advantage of learning to ride your bike with no hands like we did?
Everyone grab your dad’s safety goggles, mount up and have a big mobile “cavalry war” shooting each other with bb guns from our bikes riding all over the neighborhood.
And if a window got shot, oh well, that’s what summer mowing jobs were for.
I remember all our parents’ attitude was “if you didn’t want to get hurt, you shouldn’t have played”.
Did you take advantage of learning to ride your bike with no hands like we did?
Everyone grab your dad’s safety goggles, mount up and have a big mobile “cavalry war” shooting each other with bb guns from our bikes riding all over the neighborhood.
And if a window got shot, oh well, that’s what summer mowing jobs were for.
I remember all our parents’ attitude was “if you didn’t want to get hurt, you shouldn’t have played”.
I had a bicycle wreck and a concussion. If I had a helmet, Iwould not have been nocked out and concussed
Later, I feell out of a tree playing football and broke my elbow.
we did to. All our lunch sandwiches were wrapped in waxed paper.
After lunch we waxed up the slide and could we fly.
We used to ride our Schwinn’s off the Roof into the Swimming Pool, then we built a ramp and Jumped over a Car on our street, we were about 11-12
Oh yeah but not the BB guns on the bikes. We’d raid each others forts, no hands on bikes. All the games you could play with a piece of chalk and a stick.
Life was an adventure and parents could care less about skinned knees and bloody noses unless there was a bad break or a sprain.
It’s hard to put things in perspective now because life for children is so much more different. We would ride horses, cows, goats and we were happy with very little.
I honestly wouldn’t trade those days.
Looking back do you have a smile on your face?
Here’s two you probably won’t get.
Two of us kids in our group had fathers who were doctors, and one had a grandfather who was a doctor.
One Dad used to bring home the empty heavy lead jars with lids that held the radioisotopes for x-rays. Those were fun to play with in a lot of ways. For example, the lids had holes for hooks, you could tie a string through, then try to swing the lead weight around as hard as you could and let it fly to see how far it would go.
Then there was the blood pressure machine, the kind where they would put the cuff around your arm and would have a little pump they would squeeze manually to compress your arm. Back then they used mercury in a tube to measure blood pressure. Since the mercury would leak out slowly, with the machine you would also have another big bottle filled with mercury that you would use to refill the machine. When you’re a little kid, liquid mercury blobs are lots of fun to play with.
Stick ball: cut broom handle..pink spalding baseball sized handball...a wall..strike zone on wall...
Stoop ball:throw spalding handball against stairs...it rebounds backwards...then you run around bases..opponent gets you out if he tags you or catches ball before it touches anything else....
Red rover...
Tops...try and hit top in middle of circle...
Skelsies...
Snowball fights..some clowns would put a rock in the middle of the snowball
Snowforts...with pitched snowball battles
Unripe hard peach fights....
Handmade slingshots, paper clip guns, pea shooters, tag
Hide n seek..
Sliding pons, jungle gyms..
Swinging as high as possible on a swing and jumping while swinging forward to see how far you could jump..
Playing chicken with cars as a pedestrian(you vs. car)
Tackle football without helmets or pads...
Real boxing with gloves
FUN. The way you learn your limitations.
Looking back do you have a smile on your face?
*******
Oh yeah.
My cousins from one of my aunts, four boys, spent the late 60’s and early 70’s playing various (heroes)-and-(villains) in the woods behind their house with BB guns.
You're welcome!
Regards,
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