[mhking]

I guess when we stood up and jumped out of swings, we all ended up maimed...

[SAMWolf]

They don't make them like this anymore. :-(

Ok, I confess I used to ride my bike without a helmet. I had more bruises, gashes, bumps, cuts and scrapes from my bike than all the weed bomb, rock and mud clod wars put together. (That even counts the "Lets the 4 of us slide down the stairs in this cardboard box stunt we pulled in 2nd grade.)

[Irish Eyes]

Thanks for starting this great thread. I had almost forgotten how much fun we all had "in the good old days".

I remember now about the Jungle Gyms, Monkeybars and the Maypole just to name a few. Great memories.

[jonathonandjennifer]

My concern in this regard has been for some time now that the goal of our society, for whatever reason, is to protect children from experiencing any pain resulting from their own actions. Carried to the extremes we are now approching, the first pain some coddled young people may feel is when the auto they have recently been allowed to drive slams into a wall.

[Blood of Tyrants]

YOU had swings? We would just throw each other out of a barn to see who bounced highest. (Contrary to popular belief, the fat kids don't bounce higher. The just tend to splat like a piece of clay.)

[longtermmemmory]

There is no father to say get up and be tough.

We are now virtually tough in video games.


No more old trains to play on in the playground.

[CARDINALRULES]

We had the large metal swingsets at school, we would jump off and land in the soft sand but after a kid broke his ankle the school put an end to that...so we made up a game we called Frogger, where we had to dodge the kids on the 12 swings in the shortest time. It was always better to be on the swing than running and dodging.

At home we had a fairly large swingset...2 swings, rings, bar, monkey bars and metal slide.
I remember the ONE time I jumped from a swing onto the bar swing ... hurt my shoulder, but I caught the bar and did a flip off of it.
My oldest sister broke her arm when she fell from the top.

My sisters and I also spent a lot of time on the roof and jumping off onto an old mattress.

[TheSpottedOwl]

Hey weegee, thanks for the ping!

This has got to be the most depressing thread I've read lately. Not only do I remember flying off the merry go round and maybe breaking my nose, but I used to spin that thing with about 12 kids (including my 2 oldest kids who were pretty small)most of whom spoke something other than English. I'd whip that thing hard, and the kids would just scream with joy. Guess I was setting myself up for a lawsuit.

This is why we have a problem with fat kids. If there is something to do, some crank of a neighbor will call the cops on you. In some jurisdictions, it's illegal to even be a kid. I lived in the High Desert until a few years ago, and my son and his friends would spend the day at the Mojave River. I remember he came home and told me about the beavers came back and were building dams. Because of all the confusing laws regarding helmets and whatnot, hardly anyone rides anything in the people's paradise of Torrance. We're a paved over suburb of Los Angeles. When I was in grade school, my best friend, her little brother, and I would put on rain boots and crawl through the city storm drains. This sanitized version of the 4th of July has really gotten my mind to thinking about all the fun we used to have.....

[jimbo123]

From an email I received...


People over 40 should be dead.

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's probably shouldn't have survived.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.)

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors!

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. No cell phones. Unthinkable!

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.

We had friends! We went outside and found them.

We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.

We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.

Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors! Tests were not adjusted for any reason. Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law. Imagine that!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever.

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all. And you're one of them!

Congratulations.

Please pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good...

[Liberal Classic]

When I was a kid, I broke my nose playing on a slide. I didn't fall off it, but I was running around fast to get up the ladder. I was running so fast when I grabbed the rail I whipped around and my nose smacked the other handrail, and both nostrils opened like faucets. Ow. That wasn't the last time I broke my nose, either.

How did we ever survive riding bicycles without syrofoam helmets and playing on jungle gyms that could easily break an arm? We've lost something essential. Risk and opportunity.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

When I were kid i fall off monky bars to asfalt on my head but I ok now.

[TomHarkinIsNotFromIowa]

I got a 5 yr. old with a broken arm. Broke it on the monkey bars. 1st day of summer vacation. It sucks. But it's better than the high score on a video game.

People learn by making mistakes. It is life. If we take away all of the things that can cause a mistake. How are our children supposed to learn?

[Remole]

My view on this is that modern playgrounds are a lot more interesting than the old ones; but what really gets my goat is that I take my kids to playgrounds all over my area, and there are often NO One there. Where are all the kids during the day, in the summer?

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

I have an exciting idea: we could have 'invisible friends' at the playgrounds. Just spray paint names of invisible friends on the asphault. I hope insurance companies wouldn't consider them to be too dangerous.