Posted on 08/04/2026 7:49:37 AM PDT by BusterDog
Whenever I think back to my childhood, everything seems fairly joyful and innocent. And then, one day, my mother told me that I once got locked in a bathroom with a bucket full of water as a kid. That was scary, but thankfully, nothing happened.
(Excerpt) Read more at buzzfeed.com ...
Once when I was a kid I got a Big Bang cannon for Christmas.
I loved it, and would sit on the back porch for hours firing it. Once the “Bangsite” fuel ran out, there was no more to be had. Now I understand why.
I discovered that if you didn’t clear out the fumes after firing, you got a nice puff of flame when you fired it again and very little noise.
I also, in collaboration with my brother, made rockets by filling tin cans with matcheads as fuel. They always blew up before going to far.
There was a vacant lot near the railroad tracks were I grew up. One of my friends had a real bow and arrow he took from home. We used to shoot arrows as high as we could, and then try to catch them with pieces of cardboard. The closer to your body the catch was the more points you received.
There was a vacant lot near the railroad tracks were I grew up. One of my friends had a real bow and arrow he took from home. We used to shoot arrows as high as we could, and then try to catch them with pieces of cardboard. The closer to your body the catch was the more points you received.
I asked my dad for $5 to go get a guinea pig. He said take $10 go find a nice Irish girl.
Regards,
I know it’s just an advertising illustration ... but I recall standing a little farther from the impact area.
This sentence makes me want to click the link.
NOT
As far as the possible perverted stuff goes... I didn’t experience anything like that, but there was a completely different attitude about kids when I was a youngster.
Most families we knew had between 4 and 6 kids with many that had quite a few more than that. No one wanted to see a kid get seriously injured or killed, but there was not much of the overprotective nonsense that goes on today.
Both of my parents worked as did many of my friends... so many of us ran around all day with little to no supervision. I grew up on acreage just outside the city limits with a wide variety of farm animals like horses, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, geese, chickens, and of course dogs and cats. And we were perfectly capable of riding our bicycles all over the area. But we had access to all sorts of motorized vehicles as well that we could play with on the property like mini-bikes, go-carts, motorcycles, tractors, trucks, and old cars. If we could get it to run, it was fair game.
My brother and I constructed huge kites out of dimensional lumber and visqueen (sheet plastic) or tarps that we hoped to get ourselves air born in be towing them behind the tractor. Eventually we bought proper hang gliders, but before then we jumped out of higher and higher trees or off higher and higher roofs. We constructed amazing rope swings on trees that went out over steep hills so that we were far off the ground at the apex of the arc. One time one of the old ropes broke when my little brother was a long way out from the hill and when he finally hit the ground and rolled to the bottom. He was essentially unhurt but had a few bumps and bruises. By the next day we had a better rope tied even further up the tree.
Of course, broken bones, sprains and visible bruises were not uncommon for me and my brother. My teachers in grade school took me aside on multiple occasions because they suspected I was being abused by my parents. But most of my black eyes came from falling off of horses who took off in a full gallop toward the barn while I was riding them bare back.
When I was 13, I purchased my first used 10-speed bicycle out of the Little Nickle Want Ads. It was a Friday and when I got it home, I told my dad I was going to ride it to Mt. Rainier the next day which was over 50 miles away. I think that he was skeptical, but he just told me to have fun. I left early the next morning with a copy of a section of a Metsker’s map that I made at the library. I brought some food and water but not enough. I go lost, on the way up, but would not give up and made it to the Carbon River Campground where I finished off my food.
On the way back I got attacked by a couple of junk yard dogs who were guarding a rural junk yard, but I was not seriously injured. I spent my last dime on food instead of trying to call my parents. I didn’t get back until around midnight. No one was waiting up or worried about me. The next day my dad asked me how my ride went. I told him I made it and that everything went fine except that it took me longer than I expected. I knew if I whined and complained that further adventures could be restricted in the future.
A few years later I became junior district road champion for the state of Washington largely because my parents let me ride whenever and wherever I wanted to. While I was a teen I rode over 10,000 miles a year, of course many of my rides were with friends that I made, but most were solo and this caused me to become very competitive at a high level.
This would be more difficult to achieve these days. Where my wife and I now live more than half the people don’t speak English at home. These people did not grow up in cultures where driving was a priority, and consequently they are terrible drivers, so the roads are just not as safe these days for cyclists.
I got a little sidetracked, but the near misses mentioned in the article are mostly hypothetical and were obviously from a later time period than I grew up in. There have always been some bad people around, and it is worse now than it was previously. But kids are in general over-protected in our society these days. It is not that the way that I was brought up was ideal, but it is no wonder that we have so many younger people who are absolute ninnies these days.
???
Multiple children lost an eye to those. The korporate designers, manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers didn't care to even think of the risks. The lawyers came long after the maiming fiasco hit the stores.
We used to take red roll caps (like for a cap gun) and hit the roll with a hammer so they’d all blast at once. That was loud.
Then we got the idea to take a whole box of caps, 5 rolls IIRC, and hit it with the hammer turned sideways so all 5 at once would explode.
Yeah, that was painfully loud, we didn’t do that again.
Back long ago, we lived at the top of a hill, and the street was great for sledding after a snowstorm. The town closed the street to minimize traffic, something they would never do today because of lawyers and Karens. There could easily be 100 or more kids there on a Saturday afternoon. It was best at night, under the streetlights. My mom always had hot chocolate ready for us!
Even better, there was a secret narrow trail back in the woods that only a few local kids knew about. We would take our sleds there and have a blast, the biggest problem was a creek at the bottom. You needed to make a sharp turn or you ended up in the icy water.
I “licked the beaters” after Mom made a cake and didn’t die, in spite of raw eggs being in it. 😁😉
Ha! Loved those Irwin Mainway sketches, and no, they weren’t.
Pretty tame compared to my experiences.
I had forgotten that, but yeah, it was a real treat!
P.S. My dad had a hard and fast rule. Always stop to pick up a soldier or a kid hitchhiking on the side of the road.
I miss the 50's and 60's.
My brother and I made rockets from rolled up and glued note cards, fueled with potassium nitrate and powdered sugar. Those puppies made it to the next neighborhood a mile away.
The black powder versions had mixed reviews.
Catch as catch can.
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