Danger? How did you survive childhood?
 

What sort of dangerous things did you do when you were a kid. Things that would make you go nuts now, if your kids did them?

We used to break open thermometers to get the mercury out. We rolled it around in our hands, on the tabel and such. We took nickels and rubbed it on them to make them bright and shiny. :eek: :eek:

I lived in the south. We had a truck that had a DDT sprayer machine on it that created a fog of DDT to combat mosquitoes (skeeters). We thought it was wonderful and ran around playing in that fog. The Fog Machine Is Coming!!! Yipee? :eek:

Of course there were the bicycles that we rode a gazillion miles an hour with....da da...no helmets?? I don't know how we made it through that!

The taller the tree to climb, the better. Sometimes you would go so high it would scare the heck out of you but you never let on to that!

What about you? What absolutely, stupidly, dangerous things did you do.


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I got this on facebook....


According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s probably shouldn't have survived, because our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint which was regularly chewed and licked.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles or latches on doors or cabinets, and it was fine to play with pans. When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip-flops and fluorescent 'spokey dokeys' on our wheels.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags and riding in the front passenger seat - or the boot - was a treat. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle, and it tasted the same.

We ate chips, bread and butter pudding, and drank fizzy juice with sugar in it, but were never overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one drink with four friends - from one bottle or can - and no one actually died from it.

We would spend several hours building go-carts out of scraps, then go top speed down the hill, only to find out we'd forgotten the brakes. After running into a patch of stinging nettles 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 before dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded.

We didn't have Playstations or Xboxes - no video games at all. No 99 channels on TV, no videotape films, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no DVDs, no internet chatrooms.

We had friends - we went outside and found them. We played French skipping and rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt! We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones, but there were no law suits.

We played Knock Down Ginger and were actually afraid of the owners catching us. We walked to friends' homes. We also, believe it or not, walked to school; we didn't rely on Mummy or Daddy to drive us to school, as it was just round the corner.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls. We rode bikes in packs of seven and wore our coats by only the hood. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of they actually sided with the law.

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem-solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have seen 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! Pass this on to others who had the luck to grow as real kids, before lawyers and the government regulated our lives for "our own good".

For those of you who aren't old enough, we thought you might like to read about us.


And something else to put a smile on your face...
The majority of students in universities today were born in 1986. The Uptown Girl they know is by Westlife not Billy Joel. They have never heard of Rick Astley, Bananarama, Neneh Cherry or Belinda Carlisle.

For them, there has always been only one Germany and one Vietnam. AIDS has existed since they were born. CDs have existed since they were born. Michael Jackson has always been white. To them, John Travolta has always been round in shape and they can't imagine how this fat guy could ever have been a god of dance.

They believe that Charlie's Angels and Mission Impossible are films from the past ten years. They can never imagine life before computers. They'll never have pretended to be the A-Team, the Dukes of Hazzard or the Famous Five. They can't believe a black and white television ever existed. And they will never understand how we could leave the house without a mobile phone.



Now let's check if we're getting old...
1) You understand what was written above and you smile.
2) You need to sleep more, usually until the afternoon, after a night out.
3) Your friends are getting married/already married.
4) You are always surprised to see small children playing comfortably with computers.
5) When you see children with mobile phones, you shake your head.
6) Having read this, you're thinking of forwarding it to a number of other friends because you know they'll like it too...

When I was a kid I didn't really do much of anything except sit in my room and read and write stories and poetry.

My MOM and uncle, however, well....just let me tell you this story!

My grandparents were military (AF) and my grandfather was stationed in Bermuda. Not far from the house they lived in was a slaughter house and in it was a cement chute that went down and stuck out over a cliff and a good size drop to the ocean (I can't remember how many feet but I want to say 50+). Naturally, in the ocean right there sharks and baracuda hung out because of all the free food being flung down the chute.

Well, on weekends, when the slaughter house was closed, my mom, uncle, and some of the local kids would sit on pieces of cardboard and slide down this chute and play chicken by seeing who could get the closest to the end before they jumped off the side!

When my GaGa (that's what we call my grandma) found out, well, lets just say my mom and uncle were probably wishing they'd just gone off the end of the chute and into the water with the sharks and baracuda! LOL

Oh Lord! I remember the DDT Sprayer!!!!!:eek: The guy that drove it liked my Dad and he would go off the road and drive all around our house too!

I used to play on the roof of our two story house when my folks were gone and my friends and I used to love exploring abandoned houses.

The most dangerous though is when Dad tied our sled to the back of the car and drove us around (on the sled) country roads after a winter storm!
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Oh, Piptickle, I loved your post. I've read that before but loved seeing it again. That is exactly how I grew up and loved every minute of it. I wish we could go back to that time sometimes.

That depressed me! LOL - I officially had a really lame childhood. :p

PS - the Dukes of Hazzard thing - SOOOOO not true. I am embarrassed to admit it (cause it's really weird NOW) but my spawn brother and one of his spastic friends are obsessed with DoH. :rolleyes: His friend dresses like Rosco (?) and they both went to "Dukefest" in Atlanta earlier this month.

I think it's really, really, REALLY weird. lol. But if it was normal to "play" DoH a while back....well then fine haha.

Psh...I never did anything exciting. :p I think all the lawsuits started when I was growing up. :rolleyes: The dumbest thing I ever did was that a group of us would always try to climb this old, dead pine tree on the corner, and we'd see who could get the furthest up before something happened. then when they cut off most of the branches (so when people fell they wouldn't get sued :rolleyes: ) we'd see who could make it the furthest with no branches to hold on to hehe.

oh and of course going on the swing sets when school was closed (cause we couldn't swing above a certain point during school) and seeing who could jump off at the highest point and land on their feet.

I hitch hiked everywhere when I was in my teens. That's how I met my husband 38 years ago.
We never used sunscreen yet were out all day in the summer.
My sister ate cookies out of our neighbors garbage becasue he worked for Salerno cookines and threw out new boxes. I didn't eat them!
My dad would take us (4) and our friends piled in his station wagon, no seat belts, hanging out of windows and he would take us to the forest prserve and there was this dam and we would walk all over it and it was slippery and I am sure pretty dangerous.
When my Dad smoked he would send us to the corner store to get hos cigarettes.
We not only survived but I had the best childhood, no money but tons of fun.

Its a wonder I'm still alive...

From the age of about 6 + we were allowed to ride bikes w/ no helmets by ourselves all over my friends neighborhood (couldn't on my street b/c it was high traffic area by the college) and the worst thing that ever happened was a scrapped knee. We would play in the pond/pool by ourselves. We made mudpies and sometimes tasted them. We became "bloodsisters".

At my nephews house (they are 3 & 6 yrs OLDER than me), we rode motorized dirt bikes without helmets. Romped all over the lake and woods that contained gators, snakes, whoknows whatelse). Rode Fourwheelers and go carts all over the place.. once again.. no helmets. We jumped off things that were too high. We did flips on the trampoline. TONs of other dangerous things.

I was soooo tan when I was younger. I didn't spend any summer days indoors if I could help it.

I don't know how I survived either. I lived on my bike, no helmet either. I was always outside unsupervisored at a young age. I would pet any animal that walked in my yard. I would stand up on the seat beside my grandfather in his truck. I would ride in the back of the truck on the highway a lot. I was always outside, I never used sunscreen. I would ride my bike 5 miles to town on a bike trail. My granfather never knew or I would have gotten in big trouble.

But my kids HAVE to be in a seatbelt, HAVE to wear sunscreen. They don't wear bike helmets, we live in the country and they don't ride much. They are not allowed to ride in a back of a truck. They do not walk anywhere. I even drive my 16 year old 3 houses up to his friend's house.

I don't know how dogs survived either. I fed my chihuahua chocolate, sweet tarts, tomatoes, raw potatoes, you name it. She ate anything I did. And my grandparents never took her to the vet.

I have learned a lot about pet care as I aged. I grew up on a farm and my grandparents had the farmer mentality.

The bug man! Yeah!!! Only OUR mission was to ride right behind the truck and be in the fog so deep that noone could see you!!

We walked everywhere.....even at night!

Suntans.....you could get a better one with of all things BABY OIL!

There were so many things i did when i was a kid that i would not have dreamed of letting my kids do. And now, the grandkids....oh boy!:D

Oh, wow. Let's see...no sunscreen...no seatbelts...played in the woods w/o supervision, rode my bike w/o a helmet and there was a place by the railroad tracks and reservoir (on a little bridge) where we would cross over the LIVE third rail, carrying our bikes! :eek: I also dove into our above-ground swimming pool a zillion times BUT, one time, I held my arms differently and dove in and hit my HEAD on the BOTTOM!!! I thought my head split in half! Of course, since there was no blood and seemingly, nothing was broken, I didn't go to the doctor!! :eek: I am paying BIG TIME now for that accident. It caused spinal damage and I have advanced degenerative disk disease! (But I didn't die!!) Ahhh, good times...

We lived on a great big hill, and my sisters used to send me top to bottom in my stroller, just flying along, counting on the sister at the bottom to catch the stroller!

Seat belts and such weren't an issue either, so we used to stack all 7 kids in the car: one in the front between mom and dad, and the 3 largest holding the 3 smallest on their laps in the back seat.

I'm the youngest and don't remember this, but one brother told me the 'rents used to go Christmas shopping and leave all 7 kids in the car alone. After dark.

Every cut got mercurochrome on it (yep, mercury on an open wound). And there was lots of swimming in the rivers, when the steel companies here used to dump all their waste in the rivers. I'm surprised we don't look like the Simpsons!

we rode our bikes everywhere. No helmets, of course. We rode to the park, to the tennis courts, to the ice cream shop, to friends' houses, to the river, you name it.

We used to jump off bridges into the river. We had treehouses, and we would rig up ropes and swing from tree to tree.

In the summertime, my mother used to throw us out of the house in the a.m. We were required to come home at lunch, and then we were required to stay indoors until 2 pm (it was in very hot, humid, Louisiana, so we didn't mind). We had to read or nap during those 2 hours. Then we went out to find our friends again, and we would play until dinnertime. We knew when to come home because my father could whistle VERY LOUDLY. That was the signal.

When I was little we had a small creek that ran behind the house.and all thru the woods in my neighborhood...I used to put my Dads hipboots on and play in there everyday.....all thru the woods...catching all kinds of creatures....
My brother put me on a sled and said he would get behind me...and didn't ..just pushed me and at the bottom of the hill was that creek...I misses it by a hair...
Used to ride our bikes to school. No helmets...I stood in the car next to the driver...Never seat belts, sunblock, or shoes....:)

I thought of another thing we (still) do. :) There is an old broken tressel over Mill Pond in my old town and we cross it all the time - it's a short cut. The thing is old and decreped and they were going to close it off, but the kids of the town convinced them to keep it open. Woohoo!

This is it (it doesn't look that messed up, but it's the beams between and under the tracks that are gonna give out at any time haha) http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/att...l-pond-004.jpg and here's another picture from the middle of it: http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/att...l-pond-005.jpg

We also always walked around with no adults, but it was a really small town, so....

I can remember playing in the sandbox all day long - just good ol dirt, full of every bacteria going I'm sure. Making mud pies with insects in them and trying to get my little brother to eat it :p Climbing trees, riding my bike around the block by myself and without a helmet before I even got rid of my training wheels.

I am so glad I posted this thread. It has been a delight to me to read all the things you all have said.

I hope to see a lot more postings. :)

We were pretty resilient, weren't we?

I remember walking the railroad tracks to get many places. We knew the train schedules, the comings and goings of them. One day we got quite the surprise when we were in the middle of a very long trestle and no time to go back, nor forward. We climbed down the beams and held on for dear life as the train roared and rumbled over us. I was so scared that day I refused to cross any trestle for a long time afterwards.

We also used to put pennies and nickles on the rails and go search for the flattened thing after the train passed.

What a life!

LOL

We used to climb up on the town water tower :eek:

We would drive as fast as possible and go over "thrill hill" - basically a one lane road with a steep hill that was peaked on top so when you went fast over it in a car, you "lost" your stomach. If we had ever met anyone coming up the other side - well that would have been the end of us all.

I rode bikes everyday and motorcycles too - no helmet

Of course, no seatbelts

I swam in the farm pond and the stock tank

I ran around the farm with all the animals, farm equipment, etc. completely unsupervised

I left the house in the morning and came home in the evening.

hmm all i can say is i was really adventurous, my friends at school and i would swing really high on the school swings, we would pump each other which is basically where one girl sits on the swing normally and the other stands on it and and makes it go really high. We would do swing competitions, flip off of them, some have fallen off them while they were in the air but i never fell luckily lol i was pretty much a monkey, always climbing on my walls, learning gymnastics and flips on my own, jumping off high cliffs in Puerto Rico into shallow rivers full of rocks. i dunno we were pretty adventurous lol

I wanna know what you guys did all day! Did you just leave your house and do whatever came into your heads? Or did you plan stuff? Or...what?

What was it like? :)

I don't remember ever having a "plan" for a summer day. We would just take off and go where ever we felt like. We used to get my older brother to drive us to a farm that had a swimming pool (actually a gravel filled hole). It was a dairy farm and we would buy our milk from them straight from the cow. No pasteurization for us. It was half cream and delicious!
It took me FOREVER to get used to store-bought milk when we moved away!

We didn't even have seatbelts....had never heard of them. I rode bikes barefoot without a helmet. I walked by myself to a little grocery store with a nickle for candy. I also played with the mercury in thermometers. Went barefoot everyplace....even to the stores. Ate stuff out of my grandma's garden without washing it.:eek: When I got older I used to take the car out on country roads and drag race. We swam in strip pits. We went into vacant houses at night to scare each other. We played tag with our cars in hayfields. And 60 years later I am still here.

What a fun thread!! When I was a teen, we used to drive to local rivers and lakes and run out to the middle of bridges and jump the bridges or cliffs to the water below. The rush was getting out half way across the bridge before the cops showed up and of course the jump itself. In fact, at 20, my last jump ever, I jumped a bridge and hit a shallow patch you couldnt see. I had to be rescued by a fire boat then transported by ambulance and was in a wheelchair for two months. Now I hear news stories all the time of local teens being killed there from jumping thaqt bridge because you cannot see the land and rocks below. It looks deep and in the middle of the river you would think its deep! I think of my nephew now entering his teens and just cringe at the thought of him doing crazy things!!!

We played in that mosquito truck spray....probably straight DDT.

Your day started like this...you got up...your mother said...it's pretty. go outside and play. You were allowed to come back for lunch...but she probably really preferred that you didn't. You just had to go in when the street lights came on. If someone had kidnapped you back then...they would've had a 10-12 hour head start before your parents ever worried...and that worry started out as MAD....cause you were late

Then you did whatever....played kick the can, hide and go seek, rover red rover....or made up games, we built forts, dug tunnels, swam in the cathole, played in a farmer's field of corn (he probably loved that), rode bikes, rode skateboards, rode rollar skates...rode anything with wheels and some without. There wasn't anything to do INSIDE....cept your mother watching as the world turns....:rolleyes: The fun was OUTSIDE.

One time C had a cookout for her birthday....we taught the kids...hide and go seek. They had NEVER played this game before...and talked about how fun it was for years.

I am only 26 but I did some daring things when I was a kid. I used to climb to the very top of trees to hide from my parents when in trouble. I would climb so high that the top of the tree would start tipping to one side. We used to hook a sled to the back of our fourwheeler and get pulled around our yard around trees and all. I have swam with sharks and barracudas in the ocean in Belize and absolutely love bungee jumping. My older brother and I used to get on top of our bunk beds and jump off to the floor below. And on the same fourwheeler in the summer we would see how high we could jump it without helmets on. I learned how to ride a 2 wheel bike without training wheels and without a helmet and never wore seatbelts growing up. But for the sake of people that don't wear one, the seatbelt saved my and my sisters' lives and I always wear one now and so do all 3 of my kids.

OMG...this is so funny. Yes, we played with the mercury from thermometers. I can say that we're not brain damaged, but all three of us kids are still alive. I was a deprived child and never had a bike but my brother did. One day he let me borrow it but told me if I got a flat tire he would kill me. Guess what, I got a flat. HaHa brother, that's what you get for having a bike and I didn't. Not fair as is life sometimes. We also roamed all over my Grandparents ranch with no supervision. We'd go into the bull pens, put my little sister on the back of baby calves and she's fall off into a ditch of water or on a cow pile, play in the fields being irrigated in 12 inches of mud (e-coli???), ride across the top of the barn on the hay rakes then drop down to the loose hay. The list goes on. In grade school we'd walk three blocks down to the mall and spend the afternoon there. I think the mall was one of the first in the nation and it's still there but is now covered. Our parents would drop us off at the movie theater and for 25 cents we got to see a double feature plus cartoons. We thought that was so cool of mom and dad but now I realize they were just getting rid of us.:D

I guess since the statute of limitations has run on some of this stuff it's ok to tell....

Naw, I won't tell you the bad bad stuff....

At 10 climbed a huuuuuggge water tower out in the country and was too scared to come down, had to wait until someone missed me.

Well when I was 13 we pushed the neighbor's Cadillac out of the driveway and half way down the street so they couldn't hear us crank it...and drove around all night...

Water skied behind boats going as fast as 60 miles per hour...just trying to sling one another up in the marsh....


Drinking and driving in boats and in cars... Every car was a party.

I won't tell you anymore...all that was before 16.

I'm an angel now, that God let me live through those terrible teen years.

Oh I thought it best not to share the incriminating years. ;)

I love these stories! Keep them coming...I was an only child, so I didn't have partners in crime, and I'm 26, so I didn't get to experience the "good ol' days" that everyone writes about...I had a bike helmet and didn't drive until I'd been through drivers' ed when I was 15. Boo.

I did eat all kinds of fruits and veggies straight out of the garden without washing them, and I walked barefoot anywhere I could-usually only within 5 blocks of my house. I dyed my hair pink with red Kool-Aid, then ran off to a friend's house so she wouldn't find out....When I did come home it was raining, so I came in and it had run down my face and I scared my mom so bad she thought I was bleeding.