Posted on 08/09/2017 4:50:01 PM PDT by vannrox
I lived on my bike.
Jumped up and down all day.
What this kid did wrong is let his feet come off the pedals.
Thanks for posting this great list.
I did all of these things because my parents raised me under the benign neglect love/rule. So did my wife’s parents, and our uncles and aunts with their kids.
We did the same with our kids.
At a recent birthday celebration for one of our adult kids (in their 50’s or close now), this came up.
A discussion of Helicopter parents came up re how a church camp (not our church) was basically ruined for everyone due to some Helicopter parents at the church camp.
A daughter in law asked if our adult children thought that we were Helicopter parents.
They answered no! That, we gladly took them to the church and dropped them off for their church camps and other camps.
They added that we were never helicopter parents. However, they knew that if they really needed us, we would be there.
The parents on both sides of our families, raised their kids with benign neglect/love. Now, our siblings and cousins are in their 70’s and survived being children, teenagers and adults. That benign neglect/love is being passed on to our and their children and grandkids.
Maybe where he lives.
I have lost two right side mirrors on my pickups due to mailboxes or trash dumpsters positioned too close to the road.
Both times I was well on the road. I was getting off work both times after a long shift but I was never off the road.
This is an old rural community with some narrow roads and many mailboxes positioned too close to the road.
Then there are the people who set their dumpster right next to the road. Just a pet peeve after paying $300 for a replaced mirror.
Our BB gun battles took a turn for the worse when crosman came out with the Pumpmaster 760. You can actually get some penetration with one of those. But someone was a big pussy and told his mom and after that we had to go back to just throwing rocks at each other.
Not a good idea to do it on the street!
Yep. We did all those.
Dad worked for the “Phone Company”, and would bring home big cable spools. We would take a slat out of the center section and roll the spool up a big hill in the horse pasture. one of us would get inside the center and then we pushed them to roll downhill to crash into fence at the bottom.
One problem. There was a really mean horse in the pasture that bites! So after you crashed into the fence, you had to peek out and make sure the biting horse wasn’t close. If she was, maybe you could run to one of the near by trees and climb up beyond her reach. If not, your laughing friends at the top of the hill might distract her. Usually not though.
It was also fun to put the little brothers in the clothes dryer and give them a ride.
It had a “no heat” selection, so we normally chose that mode. Mom yelled at us.
We also would open shotgun shells and empty the lead out, then close the crimp. Put those shells into shotguns and shoot the wad at each other. That really hurt.
“To be old and wise one must survive being young and stupid.”
Amen!
When my kids were little, they would call it "Glasses off".
I'd get home from work, kiss my wife and then head into the living room, take my glasses off and lay down on the carpeted floor.
I think Dr. Seuss called it "Hop on Pop". Good times.
In my case it was "Hop on Pop's Balls."
Grew up in a small town in the ‘50’s. Lots of guys in the neighborhood. We used to launch firecracker propelled rockets into our neighbors’ yards. We would throw firecrackers at each other’s feet. We played “army” with BB guns . . . the rule was you had to aim below the waist. We would dump every chemical could find in our dads’ garages into a bucket and then dump it onto ant hills. We all survived.
Definitely - it's fireworks raised to another level. My parents' house backed up to a utility easement that had high-voltage power lines running down the middle, straight as an arrow for miles. We'd angle the rocket launcher guide rod over and go for horizontal distance. Great fun back then (now, the SWAT Team would probably roll out).
The kids nowadays couldn’t do what we did back in our day! They wouldn’t know how...
Someone asked what happened. I think we all know what happened. The ‘brave new world’ of the Nazi-nanny state. Federal take over of local communities — The Department of Education as just one example.
They pushed out the family and now parents rights are near non-existent. Not to mention the time a working parent actually gets to be with their children.
Mandatory pre-preschool starting earlier and earlier all the time. Last I heard they wanted to start them off at 2 and 3 now. I wonder if soon they will take them at birth to cut down on ‘home influences’. A parent and freedom are things they want to erase. If a parent can be ‘anyone’ then the birth parent is of no special standing.
What we experienced growing up, what gave us common sense and liberty loving spirits, is exactly what they hope to rob our children of.
See? Every guy has one of those stories.
Back in the mid-sixties, I wanted a skateboard, but...that wasn’t gonna happen. So I took my sister’s metal roller skate, separated it, hammered both sides flat then screwed one at the front and one at the rear of a piece of a board.
We were using a downhill section of sidewalk and putting cans and stones in the sidewalk to use as an obstacle to skate around. The problem is, the skateboard was so primitive with limited capability, and the sections of the sidewalk were not even, so when those metal wheels hit the seam between two sections and the one you approach was higher...the skateboard would just stop.
I fell, and fell, and fell, ripping flesh off of my elbows, until the last time I wiped out and hit the pavement with such force and so painfully that I think I screamed at the top of my lungs for about 30 seconds out of pure frustration and pain.
“Model rockets. Oh hell yeah...”
Estes rockets and Cox airplanes.
I still have a couple Estes I built with my son.
L
I fell, and fell, and fell, ..etc etc
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Best part of story.
SOMETIMES persistence pays off.
BUT small wheel, big crack makes for interruption when going from point A to B.
Just how many stops did it take before you figured it out or did an adult show up? (And probably save your life)
I did most of these.
Model rockets were a favorite, but we lived near the woods and I”d always lose them in the trees if I used a parachute.
Lost a lot of kites in the trees too.
I eventually learned to leave the parachute off and just not be underneath them when they came back down.
I still have some rockets. Been too long since I shot a few off...
DANG!!
Fireworks, Yes all summer.
Pennies on train tracks. Yes. Twice a week. Where did they end up? Didn’t you wonder? We did. It was a summer project in “hood”.(LOL)
Slingshot a must! You never shot a slingshot???? Why? Or a B-B gun??
Dangerous biking. YEAAAHH! Flying into the air never knowing you were gonna land on your tires or on your face. That was such a hoot!!!!!!!!!!!
All these was the best part of being a kid. This and living in trees. We lived in the woods. Heaven.
Sledding...
I lived on a street with a pretty steep hill. On snow days, the town closed the street (except to residents), didn’t plow, and it was open for kids and their sleds. On a snowy Saturday afternoon, there could easily be 50-100 kids out there.
We would form sled trains and go flying down the hill whipping back and forth, the best place to be was at the end of the train, if you could hold on. We groomed the hill with large kid-filled cartons for better speed.
The best part, for the lucky ones who lived right there, was to go out after dinner for a couple of hours when the hill was pretty much deserted.
If a car appeared, kids would yell out “CAR!” and the hill would instantly clear.
And if it got too crowded, there was always a trail back in the woods for the few who knew about it.
I don’t remember anyone getting seriously hurt.
That could never happen today. Too many people would complain, too many lawyers would get involved.
23 for 23. We crawled through the storm drains a lot.
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