What’s wrong with eating peanut butter & jelly sandwiches?
Cops would just wave at us.
did it all but 5 & 21. Oh, and MUCH, MUCH more!
In 1982 when I was a lad of twelve, we were living in New Zealand. During the week leading up to Guy Fawkes (when it is observed with fireworks), I bought with my pocket money a Bridal Veil “flower pot” (kind of a miniature Roman Candle). It gave out a bright white shower of sparks, and me and a friend set it off under the bridge on which the main drag of the town I lived in was on (it crossed a river).
All was safe and OK, but to think that me and this friend set off a firework in this location and no eyebrows were raised whatsoever. I certainly can not imagine this being able to take place now.
“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.”
Over 30? Probably more like 40 and over. Americans born 30 years ago were just the right age for the Clinton era’s liberalism to have gotten to their parents, teachers, low-life pop culture, lawyers, etc...40 years ago and they were coming up during the Reagan era just before the bullsh*t started creeping in.
Like the author, I also survived my teenage attempt to fly a home-made hang-glider.
Meanwhile, Russian and Chinese kids are raised rugged and the Moslems are creeping in everywhere.
Prognosis for America...?
These days, if a boy was to act like boys did in the 1950s, he’d be pumped full of Ritalin.
Bkmrk.
I did everything on the list except the snow related ones (grew up in the desert - two inches of snow every three years and gone by noon). I doubt that even in a more relaxed cultural setting I’d want my granddaughter ride in the back of a pickup on the highway or not use a seatbelt. Not everything is an overreaction. Should there be criminal sanctions? I’m of two minds there.
I used to make my own gunpowder and pu ‘warheads’ on model rockets.
And that is among the safer things I did as a kid.
I’m trying to raise my son to take chances, with reasonable success (he likes motorcycles, guns & fireworks, and knows how to use a pocket knife& properly start a fire) - but the nanny-staters are working hard to undo my work.
A lot if things were tougher in ‘the old days’, but I think my parents had it easier than I do trying to rear a [reasonably] well adjusted, independent child who thinks for himself.
Did all 25.
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
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
I done everyone of those things, and would do them again if I had the chance.
Playing “war” was taken to an art form. Strategies, techniques, maneuvers, etc. We used toy guns, spears, and dirt clod grenades. And yes, people got hurt quite often. And we loved it!
He left out launching cherry bombs with a Wham-O slingshot.
Making experimental Molotov cocktails back when kids could buy gasoline.
The only no-no was enclosing bits of gravel in the snowballs.
I would hunt rabbits with my .22 in vacant lots close by our neighborhood when I was about 11.
One day a police officer came out and shot me.
(Just kidding) Actually, he gave me a lesson in always insuring that I had a proper safe shooting backstop and pointed out a more safe area to shoot rabbits.
All 25 plus playing in quicksand.