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The Last Rebels: 25 Things We Did As Kids That Would Get Someone Arrested Today
Submitted by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,
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.
Here’s the problem with all of this babying: it creates a society of weenies.
There won’t be more more rebels because this generation has been frightened into submission and apathy through a deliberately orchestrated culture of fear. No one will have faced adventure and lived to greatly embroider the story
Kids are brainwashed – yes, brainwashed – into believing that the mere thought of a gun means you’re a psychotic killer waiting for a place to rampage.
They are terrified to do anything when they aren’t wrapped up with helmets, knee pads, wrist guards, and other protective gear.
Parents can’t let them go out and be independent or they’re charged with neglect and the children are taken away.
Woe betide any teen who uses a tool like a pocket knife, or heck, even a table knife to cut meat.
Lighting their own fire? Good grief, those parents must either not care of their child is disfigured by 3rd-degree burns over 90% of his body or they’re purposely nurturing a little arsonist.
Heaven forbid that a child describe another child as “black” or, for that matter, refer to others as girls or boys. No actual descriptors can be used for the fear of “offending” that person, and “offending” someone is incredibly high on the hierarchy of Things Never To Do.
“Free range parenting” is all but illegal
All of this babying creates incompetent, fearful adults.
Our children have been enveloped in this softly padded culture of fear, and it’s creating a society of people who are fearful, out of shape, overly cautious, and painfully politically correct. They are incredibly incompetent when they go out on their own because they’ve never actually done anything on their own.
When my oldest daughter came home after her first semester away at college, she told me how grateful she was to be an independent person. She described the scene in the dorm. “I had to show a bunch of them how to do laundry and they didn’t even know how to make a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese,” she said. Apparently they were in awe of her ability to cook actual food that did not originate in a pouch or box, her skills at changing a tire, her knack for making coffee using a French press instead of a coffee maker, and her ease at operating a washing machine and clothes dryer. She says that even though she thought I was being mean at the time I began making her do things for herself, she’s now glad that she possesses those skills. Hers was also the room that had everything needed to solve everyday problems: basic tools, first aid supplies, OTC medicine, and home remedies.
I was truly surprised when my daughter told me about the lack of life skills her friends have. I always thought maybe I was secretly lazy and that was the basis on my insistence that my girls be able to fend for themselves, but it honestly prepares them for life far better than if I was a hands-on mom that did absolutely everything for them. They need to realize that clothing does not get worn and then neatly reappear on a hanger in the closet, ready to be worn again. They need to understand that meals do not magically appear on the table, created by singing appliances a la Beauty and the Beast.
If the country is populated by a bunch of people who can’t even cook a box of macaroni and cheese when their stoves function at optimum efficiency, how on earth will they sustain themselves when they have to not only acquire their food, but must use off-grid methods to prepare it? How can someone who requires an instruction manual to operate a digital thermostat hope to keep warm when their home environment it controlled by wood they have collected and fires they have lit with it? How can someone who is afraid of getting dirty plant a garden and shovel manure?
Did you do any of these things and live to tell the tale?
While I did make my children wear bicycle helmets and never took them on the highway in the back of a pick-up, many of the things on this list were not just allowed, they were encouraged. Before someone pipes up with outrage (because they’re *cough* offended) I’m not suggesting that you throw caution to the wind and let your kids attempt to hang-glide off the roof with a sheet attached to a kite frame. (I’ve got a scar proving that makeshift hang-gliding is, in fact, a terrible idea). Common sense evolves, and I obviously don’t recommend that you purposely put your children in unsafe situations with a high risk of injury.
But, let them be kids. Let them explore and take reasonable risks. Let them learn to live life without fear.
Raise your hand if you survived a childhood in the 60s, 70s, and 80s that included one or more of the following, frowned-upon activities (raise both hands if you bear a scar proving your daredevil participation in these dare-devilish events):
- Riding in the back of an open pick-up truck with a bunch of other kids
- 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
- Eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the school cafeteria
- Riding your bike without a helmet
- Riding your bike with a buddy on the handlebars, and neither of you wearing helmets
- Drinking water from the hose in the yard
- Swimming in creeks, rivers, ponds, and lakes (or what they now call *cough* “wild swimming“)
- Climbing trees (One park cut the lower branches from a tree on the playground in case some stalwart child dared to climb them)
- Having snowball fights (and accidentally hitting someone you shouldn’t)
- Sledding without enough protective equipment to play a game in the NFL
- Carrying a pocket knife to school (or having a fishing tackle box with sharp things on school property)
- Camping
- Throwing rocks at snakes in the river
- Playing politically incorrect games like Cowboys and Indians
- Playing Cops and Robbers with *gasp* toy guns
- Pretending to shoot each other with sticks we imagined were guns
- 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
- Saying the words “gun” or “bang” or “pow pow” (there actually a freakin’ CODE about “playing with invisible guns”)
- Working for your pocket money well before your teen years
- Taking that money to the store and buying as much penny candy as you could afford, then eating it in one sitting
- Eating pop rocks candy and drinking soda, just to prove we were exempt from that urban legend that said our stomachs would explode
- 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
- Writing lines for being a jerk at school, either on the board or on paper
- 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)
- Walking to school alone
Come on, be honest. Tell us what crazy stuff you did as a child.
Teach your children to be independent this summer.
We didn’t get trophies just for showing up. We were forced, yes, forced – to do actual work and no one called protective services. And we gained something from all of this.
Our independence.
Do you really think that children who are terrified by someone pointing his finger and saying “bang” are going to lead the revolution against tyranny? No, they will cower in their tiny apartments, hoping that if they behave well enough, they’ll continue to be fed.
Do you think our ancestors who fought in the revolutionary war were afraid to climb a tree or get dirty?
Those of us who grew up this way (and who raise our children to be fearless) are the resistance against a coddled, helmeted, non-offending society that aims for a dependant populace. In a country that was built on rugged self-reliance, we are now the minority.
Nurture the rebellion this summer. Boot them outside
Teach your kids what freedom feels like.
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Smokin was easy!
Those cattle chute rope lines in the bank had posts that doubled as ashtrays.
The teachers all smelled like tobacco, too. They had a lounge where they could light up.
The seats in the theaters had ashtrays in the arms.
Smoking was nothing, nobody cared. If you were beside a stranger on the plane or bus, you'd ask, "mind if I smoke?"
and unless they were on oxygen, they never did.
WRONG!
that was not fun or education alone. We were being prepared to defend those values if there's ever the need.
In case you're an idiot or fuckin blind, THAT DAY has COME! Fight, damn it!
Not with your fists and guns, adapt to a new ground. Fight with your position, skillset, inteligence, every single attribute that makes you special or gives you leverage. And while doing it, you don't need re-assurance because YOU ARE NOT ALONE! There are many of us mobilized and doing the best we can already. I think this site and contributors are living proof.
Your ancestors are watching from above. We fail, they fail!
They got the money, they got the media?? We have our balls as big as our values!
Good luck to us, to our children, to our planet.
and keep lovinn!
Rocket fights with Estes Rockets. We scorched the hell out of John Sharpes house. It was expensive but nothing spells fun like lighting off a volley of Estes Nike rockets at someone.
Many school busses back in the 1970's had superchargers on them. I remember helping a neighbor who was an avid drag racer "liberate" a complete engine with supercharger from one of the local busses to be used for parts to rebuild his Mustang he used to race at Englishtown.
gettin' totally shit faced and buying 20 boxes of Mr Bubble, driving my 73 toyota Corolla to the fountain on the corner of Commerce Drive and State ST Extension and dumping the Mr Bubble into the fountain. It made a fucking WALL of bubbles about 15 ft high and hundreds of feet down the road. The fire dept eventually came and tried to wash the bubbles away with.....you guessed it..... high pressure water. Yaaa...that'll work. Not. It made is sooooooooo much worse. It took the city employees nearly 4 hours to turn the water off. It made the front page of the Bridgeport Post the next day.
In high school everyone who had a pick up truck had a gun rack on the back window. My rack had a lever action 30-30 and a shot gun.
Oh, yea, no one shot anyone at high school.
Man that intersection ain't what it used to be!
Yup, also Wrist Rocket fights with BB's and pebbles at about age 10. Don't try this at home kids - we're very lucky that nobody was seriously injured. Still, somehow, I remember it fondly.
I wrote a song about this very subject, it's titled " I want my America again " and I will share part of verse 1. The song is copyrighted under my legal name:
Way back when I was a kid, awful things we said and did,
Settled matters by the fist, not Big Sisters no fly list,
Clinton stained Lewinsky ' dress, nation's now in such a mess,
I want my America again!
Dad had us starting to drive tractors at age 7, harrowing with a little Ford 8N. By age 8, I was driving the baler and discing with the Oliver 88. He never trusted me to plow until I was 13 though. He was worried the furrows would be crooked for the neighbours to see. He'd go to jail today for that.
What no 'head buried in cell phone with no protective equipment' on list?
There was not as many lawyers then as there are now. And there are many people looking for any reason to blame someone else for their fuck ups. Sad
Anyone ever played with cobras as a kid? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lz-Eg3n3pY
That is the freakiest thing I've ever seen!
sankol, great share, thanks.
I had to read the comments. It looks like a pretty good idea once the snakes are safe to play with.
Smear the Queer. Always fun.
Forgot to add, selling paper cups of lemonade on the sidewalk in front of your house.
Putting pennies on the high-speed train tracks. then trying to find their cool-looking flattened remnants after the train-car shot by.
Playing touch football in the street with the curbs as the out-of-bounds lines, and the telephone poles as the end zones. Ya stopped the game and hooted at cars interrupting your game.
In 5th Grade, picking up your route of the Evening Bulletin every afternoon, folding it so you could throw it from your bike to the walk-doorstep. Then getting home before dinner.
Your parents had no idea you were playing speedball (box strike zone on the wall of the school, a tennis ball, and some shitty 26in bat. One man teams.) with the spic kids who hung by the Elementary School in the summer. Played basketball with the coons' kids on the courts at Ardmore Ave. It wasn't until Jr High that you found out spics and coons were some kind of "problem". They had only loved to play the same games you did in magnificently Endless days of swell 100* Summers.
When the power went out in school, you just kept going while the adults ran around trying to fix it. The only service which was interrupted was the clocks. Nothing else ran on it because there was plenty of daylight and you seldom used the overhead lights. Air-conditioning was non-existent. Somehow we didn't die of dehydration or go blind from eye strain. Then, again, I only remember the power going out once for a hour in 6 years of Elementary School.
Walking 3/4 of a mile to Elementary School everyday was no big deal. There were legions of crossing guards for blocks and blocks from the school. Instead of whining and bitching about somebody else keeping their kids safe, adults got off their less padded asses (in those days) and volunteered each for a few hours a week. 5th and 6th Graders could become members of the Crossing Guards, to help out.
GO OUTSIDE?????? GO OUTSIDE???? The sun and heat and cold are things which will kill you. The sun in particular will wipe you the fuck out. You'd have to carry a half gallon of SPF 500 with you, and lather up every half hour so you will be safe. Why did melanoma double and triple after we stopped being an agrarian society? Certainly family farming should have wrought a medieval type plague of skin cancer upon America.
Bless the baby Jesus, and particularly fluorescent lighting with air-conditioning. Fucking country of out of shape and sick moles.
We had the BB gun fights. In the woods next to out school, great fun. The cops soon put a stop to that. after a few meetings.
I remember being on the back of my dad's old Yamaha motorbike hanging on for dear life, no older than 6 year's of age I think, haha.
Back then we were proud to be Americans.
We had limitations in those days. They were called mothers.
"Stop that Johnny, you'll poke your eye out."
Funny thing is I never saw anyone with a poked out eye. :)
Meet my uncle, now deceased. He regretted his permanent loss of the left eye his whole life because he didn't listen and fell on a stick.
Risk off. Or thinking so. Few realize that doing nothing is also a risk. Taking chances, beyond the virtually riskless one of buying a lottery ticket, is stifled in the schools. I am amazed at both 3 yr olds, and puppies who are made of rubber bands, tubing and jello who take enormous risks without realizing it and coming away unharmed. Once the child enters the school system the assault and battery on their CREATIVITY begins and only increases as they move thru life.
There is the intrepid rock climber attempting to go from ground to hundreds of feet in the air relying solely on his/her ability to cling to an inch of rock. This is insane risk and to be avoided by relatively normal human beans. And then there is the drone in class, forced to learn his catechism from the nuns who brook no questions about the faith, forced to snuff out his lack of understanding, in favor of faith. (talk about risk that is invisible!).
We are a very flawed 7 billion people, subject to systems we had no say in creating and those systems, especially the education (indoctrination) one that churns out the drones that the 10% need to maintain the establishment.
And too few of the revolutionaries.
Comte, thanks for your post on Lincoln and the first civil war on another thread..it will be mis understood by many, we were never designed (by the founders) to be an empire.
Faith vs. science.
Faith did not invent the wheel, electric light bulb, book, radio, or television, automobile, penicillin, central heat or air conditioning, or any of the other things the preachers of "faith" use while they're saying "scientists are evil". Scientists did.
29. Beebee and pellet gun battles and climbing to the tops of trees while someone else chops them down.
Im guilty as charged plus 100 more too. My brother probably out did many here...
About 25 years ago we lived in a tiny remote town in Maine. The only excitement was summer time when the daughters of doctors and such would come to their cottages for month long vacations. There was only 1 small pool hall in town and that was where we would all meet after dark and a day swimming and jumping off a fairly large bridge. My brother was quite the ladies man and would get an adult to aquire alcohol to party with the girls. We had 2 deputies in town and they had their sites set on busting "joey".
The pool hall was about 100 yeads away from one of the deputies homes and one evening they decided the time was right to catch joey drinking with some girls. The deputies were not very careful hiding in the bushes outside of the pool hall and was spotted by the perp. Joey and his friend went back inside and came up with a plan. Since trhe 4th of july was a week away they had a shitload of fireworks, they went back outside to his buddies car to get a big paper bag of them.
The deputies were still hiding in the bushes and saw joey and his friend proceed up the dirt road toward one of the deputies homes. They stayed in the bushes waiting for the girls to show up then make their move...
The deputies lost sight of joey and friend near the deputies house and what ensued next was hilarious. In this small town no one ever locks their house or car doors. While the deputies were trying to get a visual of the perp, all of a sudden a 4th of july show erupted INSIDE THE DEPUTIES HOUSE.
The deputies bolted from the bushes and the perps took off running laughing like a bastard. The deputies caught his buddies but joey was faster. (never run laughing). His buddy never fingered joey and being a minor was never charged. The home was not damaged (except for a little cleanup) and they never went after joey again.
Best thread ever. Thanks, all. ("I'm still here, you bastards!") Steve McQueen, Papillon.
At a young age we were at a picnic at a local county park. Dad was playing softball with his friends. I might have been 7 years old. After the game ended, Dad and I sat on the trunk of a car for the ride back to the picnic shelter. I slid off shortly after the car started moving. Lucky that Mom was not around to see.
At age 13 Dad drove me across town to buy a 16-gauge Ithaca for $60 that I had earned cutting grass- yes, with a power mowerr and no supervision.
For a senior prank I wanted to get my VW bug inside the school building. Lacking a measuring tape I drove the car up to the school doors early in the AM. Yup, if I took out the metal divider between the doors I could get it in. As I'm removing the divider the physics teacher shows up and confiscates my tools. Village cop sees me on the sidewalk with the VW and tells me to "get that off the sidewalk". No harm, no foul. With a friend's help we eventually manage to get a bale of cardboard into the school, up to the top of a flight of stairs, and cut the wire that keeps the compacted pile together... the cardboard expands and floods the stairway. Firecrackers, 22s, shotguns - ah, those were the days.
Mom blowing her whistle to come home.
Shooting a hornet nest with a 12 gauge gun
Fishing with H-100 explosive tackle
Using a WD40 can as a blow torch.
Golf club bottle rocket wars
Launching smoke bombs via sling shot into new house building contractor sites.
The list goes on. We survived, thank goodness it was out of my system in my adolescence years.
We were malicious kids. When my father caught me, my ass was beaten. And grounded. Today's kids aren't disciplined.
yup, all but number 11. And then some things not on the list too :-). Damn that was just being a kid. My dad would smack me if I brought a knife to school
It was boring living in the sticks. We had to make up things to keep our minds clicking. My life changed at 13 years old. The year was 1977. My father forced me to learn about building a Heathkit computer (H-10).
All that boredom was erased. True story. I didn't buy into the boring computer at first. Grew to enjoy. Thanks to my dad.
:p
Most boys I knew had a pocket knife in school, including myself, and it was no big deal; it's not like any of us were going to stab another human being (the worst that happened, even in high school, were a few fist-fights). Today, there are women at my company who complain to HR if they see a man use his pocket knife to open a package or a letter. Incidentally, switchblades are legal in Texas now, as long as they're not double-edged daggers. I carry a Buck 110 converted to "full auto".
I barely got through page two of the comments and I'm laughing my ass off reading the comments. This has to be one of the best comment threads on ZH in a long time....great stuff - my mind is reeling with memories of crazy stuff we used to do and didn't think twice about doing it and still laugh about it to this day (my children laugh at the stories too - you can tell they only wonder what it would have been like to grow up in that America).
Back to Page 3
I'm glad to see many posting from Ohio. I grew up in the NE. Too bad the state has turned into a liberal cesspool. Great childhood memories. Thanks for great ZH posts.
P S:
I broke my leg in second grade when we were playing some kind of crazy game on an icy playground at school, knocking each other off our feet to see who would be the last one standing (I was on the bottom of the pile in that round ; ). Mom stopped by the school, janitor put me in the back of the stationwagon and off to the hospital; life went on.
THIRD GRADE: My friends & I stole concrete blocks and plywood from a home construction site and dragged them into the woods and built a fort. We stole copies of National Geographic from home that had pictures of women with their tits exposed and learned to smoke mom's Raleigh's out there. We shared words you could use to swear and what we knew about sex. Other kids from the neighborhood destroyed our fort so we spent our summers building and rebuilding things. No TV, no video games. Just sunburns, bug bites, and war stories that would have horrified our parents.
These rules aren't in place because they give a fuck about our 'children's safety'. These rules are in place to make money. Every law and regulation in the last 30 years have been brought about as a desperate attempt to raise tax dollars or make billionaires out of toy companies or safety companies. Imagine owning a company that sold bike helmets, and voila, a new law stating EVERY kid in the country needs one, as well as every pussy that rides a bike. Wouldn't you be happy? Times 'x' percentage sales tax. BOOM. Awesome economy for a couple months longer.
Follow the fucking money. Every time, follow the fucking money. If you won't spend it, they'll fucking FORCE you to.
And how the hell else would you totalitarianize an entire nation, that was once willing to fight back? Turn them into brainwashed pussies, let women vote, and 'give a fuck about everyone's safety', because who could argue that.
For the record, my 3 year old has not had a helmet bought for her, and I take her on her bike often. She also is better than 5 yr old kids in her gymnastics class, because I built her monkey bars, and a little 3' high balance beam out of 2 x 4's, sanded and stained of course, and she has learned how to fall off it onto the grass or carpet, and she's happy when she tells me how good she fell off it. I'm sure some would be appalled that I let her walk across it, without some sort of fucking safety harness.
Fuck our government, and fuck their regulations.
best memories were of playing tackle football in the local schoolyard...show up after breakfast around 9 or 10. play for hours...and play hard. tackle! with no pads, no nothing. just fun. if you didnt want to get destroyed, you had to run faster or learn to duck or drop
we also boxed in a friends yard. 20 or 30 of us would use his dads old boxing gloves and we would do one minute rounds. shared mouthpieces because no one had their own
"Before someone pipes up with outrage (because they’re *cough* offended)"
You are preaching to the choir...what I mean is that most people, if not all, reading ZH have long ago decoupled from the status-quo. So, no one will get offended.
Granny Warren the fake-Cherokee lawyer is world famous for her cooking masterpiece "Pow Wow Chow". Does that count?
We did most of the stuff on the list.
Some of the other things that stick in my mind:
- climbing up in the local cherry orchard trees and gorging ourselves until sick
- drinking Old English Malt liquor (or Schlitz), and then spinning donuts in my friends car on the local elementary school baseball field (we were high school freshmen, and he was REALLY cool because he had a car, and he ended up hitting a log and got stuck)
- we used to slither through one of the drainage culverts (storm drains) which ran about 100 yard "just because"
- riding dirtbikes and mini bikes through the local orchard and other private properties (because we lived in the city). Cops did not care.
- shooting BB guns in city limits (cuz we lived there). We were caught by the police and taken home in the cruiser to the parents. Got a good tongue lashing out of that
- "My friend" used to do what we called "the shit trick." He would find a pile of fresh dog shit (bigger and juicier was better) and put it in a brown paper bag. The bag was put on someone's porch that we did not like, and then we
lit the bag on fire. ring the doorbell, and the victim would come out, find a burning bag, stomp it out with his foot, and get shit all over. A bunch of us would be watching from nearby bushes, and we would be rolling in muted laughter as the scene unfolded.... priceless
I have many more stories, but NSA has enough already.
Good list! Our shit trick involved throwing a kite string with a nut on the end over the telephone line, and hoisting the shit bag up, then rolling out the string until we were between two houses.. When a car stopped at the stop sign, let go of the string and BOOM! A shitty hood, and they didn't know where to look or what to do.
I was 14 years old and engineered a flame thrower that could shoot flaming gasoline for about 30 feet. That was the pinnacle of my years of playing with my favorite toy leaded gasoline and matches.
It was actually intrinsically safe too. My friends and I still talk about how much fun it was.
.....and then there's the crazy kids games they sold back in the 1970's that would be illegal today.
Lawn Jarts. Excellent way to ventilate someone’s head. The game becomes infinitely more reckless when inebriated adults join in to show the kids how it's done.
https://ixquick-proxy.com/do/show_picture.pl?l=english&cat=pics&c=pf&q=l...
It's safe. No, really.
I loved Jarts!
We played Jarts all the time, no one ever got hurt.
Loved that game.
Uh, hitchike to Alaska and back before cellphones?
Shooting rats for a nickle apiece from the guy who owned the stables down the street.
These were gigantic fat juicy rats that lived on the horse grain feed.
Saturday morning with the pump air rifle could get you a few bucks easy. We used pliers to sack em because some of em weren't quite dead and would bite like hell when you grabbed their tail.
The best part (after getting paid) was having Jimmy let us drive the old shitbox jeep out to the far edge of the training track with some kerosine to light em up.
Nothing spelled success like a couple of 11 year old guys smelling like kerosine and roast rat showing up at the corner variety store and buying everything in sight.
When I was 14 years old my grandfather took my cousin and me every saturday to the Junior NRA rifle shooting program held in the basement of the high school Hillary Clinton attended a few years later. Today if anyone got within a half mile of that place with a .22 rifle the SWAT tanks would be rolling.
I fear for our future!
What do y'all expect with bunch of faggots/niggas running USA
Grew up on a farm on the east coast and homework involved a pitchfork, so the whole civilization thing never really took hold.
The parents gave me a checkbook when I turned 16. Big mistake. Cashed out about 200 dollars, bought some camping gear and a bus ticket to California.
Spent 4 months hitch hiking and working in a polo club in Sant Barbara. Called Pop from Montana and told him I'd come home and make hay that summer(77), if he's send some money. He sent 100 and I made it back home with 70. Used it to buy weed, made hay that summer and managed to talk my way back into school for the last year, taking 3 11th grade courses, 12th grade english and 3 and a half credits for "work experience."
Been mostly working with race horses since.
I told my daughter she could be a horse bum too, or stick to school. I also told her that when my generation gets done blowing up the world, her generation will have lots of opportunities for character building, in putting it back together again. At least the ones who live. She is half way through college.
Currently nursing a broken collar bone and too much time to read stuff on the internet.
Yay, I got a perfect score.
I also once built a tree fort about 120 ft. up in a redwood tree. I had to use about 100 ten penny nails to hold the 2 x 4 supports in place (because the rewood bark is soft and over 1” thick).
Then there was the rope swing that me and my buds hung from the branch of a tall tree on a hill. We tied a smaller tree branch to the end of the rope to hang on. When you ran down the hill real fast your feet eventually left the ground and you swung out about 30ft. above a bunch of rocks and briar brush at the bottom of the hill. I did it enough times to learn how to hook the back of my knees over the handle and hang upside down at the peak of the swing.
If I grew up today and tried to do the things I did, I probably would have overdosed on Ritalin already.
Darwin's Theory is sadly impacted when so many in the population are bubble-wrapped.
10 years ago we moved into a new house (new for us). I promptly built my kids a tree fort 10 feet up. Neighbor with high school age kids comes over to tell me how dangerous it was. I just smiled and said the kids can jump from that high and not hurt themselves if they do it right. My kids never got injured.
Brutal tackle football games in any weather. Tackle football in the street. Broken legs, seperated shoulders. Turning the street into a hockey rink by packing down the snow. Learning to stand-back when cars went by because they would often spin out. Staring blankly at any complaining adults & parents - the road was for playing on.
NSA and TSA are going to have a field day with this thread :)
About ten years before my old man died, he met up with the cop who used to be the head of the local detachment when I was young. I had known him well as I was getting thrown in jail so often we were almost on a first name basis.
Anyway the cop told my dad, "Your son was wild, but he was an honest kid and never gave us a headache once we caught him. We knew he would go one way or the other, so we gave him a little rope and he turned out fine."
That I believe is also a difference between then and now. And when a cop did throw a knuckle sandwich it was because you usually deserved it and were often not charged. I think cops had more of a heart in those days.
The cops got respect, something which does not exist today.
In my youth me and a couple friends played hookey from school and went drinking and got caught by the cops. My friends wised off and gave the cops grief (I was terrified my parents would find out so remained church mouse). The cops drove us back to school, dropped me off and took my friends down by the river and beat the shit out of them. My friends never squealed to their parents and nothing ever happened to the cops.
A few standard fare items from my youth;
'Tarzan' swing over a cliff while shooting a .45 at old milk cans. (blew the toe off my sneaker one of those times)
Riding bikes down a hill to dirt jump which sent us far and high enough that I eventually broke my all steel heavy Schwinn frame.
Attaching shotgun shells to the tip of arrows and shooting up over the trees to hit a road when cars were coming down the road. (never came close but they do explode)
Fighting my older brothers until I was knocked out (I mostly lost those fights)
Shooting slingshots at birds no matter what was in the background including my brothers (no deaths or lost eyes)
cutting the heads off of enough wooden matches to make a giant firecracker that really turned out to be a bomb (that was a close one)
Italy, at age twelwe during a hot summer I asked my mom for a beer. She bought me one and I had my first beer. Believe or not, I never was drunk in my life, though I like to (moderately) drink beer, wine and spirits.
A friend of mine, during the sixties in Liguria region (close to Genoa), found a WW2 German backpack full of plastic explosive. With his friends, in open country, they spent a summer to blast trees! Had they been checked by the police, they would just suffer a scolding!
Americans are supremely weird about alcohol. You don't realize it until you leave the U.S. for a while.
Making a cannon with calcium carbide rocks and a Steen's syrup can. My grandfather is the one who showed me how to do that! God rest his soul.
Campbell soup can and a tennis ball. Memories. Drill small hole to ignite.
Climbing the airport fence and lying down in the grass next to the runway as a 727 (which had already landed) screamed past my head (I have no idea how the pilots didn't see and/or report me).
Pouring gas on the lawn and setting it on fire.
Grabbing onto the back of 18-wheelers in the winter and skiing down the snowy streets.
Launching apples, tennis balls and other projectiles with improvised beer-can-and-lighter-fluid cannons.
Imitating Gene Simmons by using a Bic lighter to fill my mouth with butane and igniting it with said lighter as I exhaled.
Taking turns with a friend pushing each other down a steep hill in a baby carriage, until I crashed into a telephone pole and broke my collarbone.
The usual no-equipment tackle football and ice hockey.
And the list goes on...
Glad I was born when I was!
I think it is mostly about the citizenry ceding control to an elite, you know, the "Public Health" degree know-nothing nabobs of nuisance. They want what Lenin, Stalin, and the Bolsheviks desired, the "New Socialist Man", one that can be perfectly and precisely constructed, programmed, and controlled, aka Robot, Borg, Zombie. Get it? Your children belong to and are instructed by the State, not you. Who do you think you are? Just because you are the parents, you believe you have a say in how your child is raised? An arrest warrant is being written for you.
State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.”
-Fredrich Nietzche
“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats, procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.”
- Thomas Sowell.
That Sowell quote is great.
Here's another I found that pretty much sums up Europe in 2015:
"If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win."
Thomas Sowell
The battle for civilization HAS come down to the Euro-pussies vs. Islam and Islam is crushing Europe into the dustbin of history.
Sowell is a clear thinker, one of the guys who gets it.
I fingered WeeZee Darby and her 4 younger sisters out in the woods every day one summer....WeeZee was 11 and I was 7....those were the days
Only 2 "no" answers on that list for me. I was a "free range" kid but everyone was. About 4 square miles of small town America for my friends and I to ride our bikes around all summer (and even that is a lot less than older generations enjoyed). No helmets. No car seats. Plenty of water for fishing and swimming down at the creek. Rode my bike onto the military base in town to visit friends or go to the pool (only pool in town) and I don't even think the gate was guarded most of the time. Nobody ever stopped me if it was.
The post 9/11 kids of America have grown up in an authoritarian police state environment and I feel very sorry for them. But at least they won't know the pain of loss those of us feel that saw what America was before.
My younger brother got his arm broke playing 'smear the queer' at recess back in the mid 70's...Yep, you guessed it, hes now a fundraiser for the Catholic Church!
When i was a kid, my mom kicked us out of the house at dawn. i lived on a six mile by six mile islandid in france. we played hide and seek using the island as our playground. We played all day longd, biking from one end of the island to the other. no TV, no video games. just good wholesome fun, something today's kids will never know!
My mom received a phone call from the assistant principal (James Jackson) one morning. She just listened to him claiming I was kicking soccer balls onto the elementary school roof. My mom told him that I was home sick for the day..Jim Jackson choked on the phone.
Ferris Buellars day off. In reverse. The assistant principal in the movie mirrors, Jim Jackson. True story.
reminds me of the day the animal control dude came to the door saying that my dog was barking too much.
I pointed at my dog sitting quietly beside me and said - 'this dog' (as the barking was still going on outside)
"have a nice day sir"
Who says the kids are yours anymore? They belong now to the State,from cradle,to grave.."You didn't build that child,the government built that child for you"
Did all that and lots more - including firecrackers playing on train tracks, riding after dark with no lights on bike and sledding off roof of house to name just a few.
My three kids grew up doing most of that - they are now independent young adults who can grow own food in a garden, make their own meals (and clean up afterwards), do their own laundry, do simple fixes on their cars/motor bikes (tire changes, battery changes, change lights, oil, filters and fluid checking and top-ups (honest to God there is a person a work who 1. brings his own car into service for fluid top-ups and 2. all his kids don't drive - because it is toooooooo dangerous - his kids also didn't know what a stove was, when he was away he pre-made all their meals so they could be microwaved - UNTIL THEY WERE IN THEIR LATE 20's))
OMG, it's a wonder I'm alive at all!
I did everything on that list numerous times except for throwing rocks at snakes in the river.
Child of the 80s
--I learned to drive at 10/11. Had my own car at 12. Drove with no license for 4 years. Try that today.
--17 and a bunch of us where out drinking and tried to outrun a cop in a friends firebird. almost lost him. he told us to stop being idiots. park the car and go sleep it off!
--seeing your first pair of real breasts and touching them. (The generation today with the instant access to porn is concerning for obvious reasons.)
One 11 year old kid on the block nick-named Bobby Beeble Booble used to pull his penis out in front of other kids and let his german shepard lick it. Not sure if that would be considered child or animal abuse.
In a perfect world the dog would have latched onto the member and dragged a screaming kid around the block with it....theres a Hallmark moment...
Anyone ever go "road surfing'?
Buddy of mine had a Toyota pick up back in the 80's. We would take turns surfing off the back.
In hind sight, one foot on the ground and only holding on with your other leg over the tailgate at 50 MPH was prolly a bad idea, I know it was murder on your shoes.
lulz
Roads are rough, and I fell off a moving vehicle once and lost a bunch of skin. WOW, that hurt! For a LONG time! :-(
All but one. I never carried a pocket knife to school.
Sorry duplicate
Deleted
Wow, I'm 25 for 25 .... but I was born in the 60s. And he didn't even include jumping stingray bikes off homemade ramps (no helmet), making alcohol powered potato cannons with steel cans and duct tape, roaming the neighborhood with a BB gun, or lots of other good stuff.
me too... don't forget chopping our bikes... blowing up the raft and floating down flooded creek in thunderstorm... having bottle rocket fights.
Raised in a small agricultural town in Scotland, my father was a veteranarians. I had access to his vet supplies, sulphur and potassium nitrate for making bombs which I used to bury in the sand at the beach, great blasts of sand sent up in the air.
Sulphur and potassium chlorate to make frag grenades. Take a nut and two matching bolts, thread one of the bolts one turn into the nut, fill the cavity in the nut/bolt with the pressure sensitive explosive mixture and screw the remaining bolt into the nut finger tight. Throw the bolt, nut bolt combination at a brick wall and the impact pressure causes an explosion and the pieces fly apart. Lucky I’m still alive.
At 10 or 11 my dad bought me ammo for his single shot, bolt action 22, as a reward for going to the dentist. I would ride with him all over the county as he visted his vet cases. If we saw any game, rabbits, hares, ducks geesse, etc, he would stop the car and I would blast away out the car window. I would then sprint across the field and pick up the game and sprint back to the car. We would zoom off before anyone knew what had happened. Great fun, especially in a country with restrictive firearm laws, you need a license to own a 12 guage now. Thanks dad, miss you.
He told me when he was a small boy on the farm in 1920s the local electric utility was installing high voltage transmission lines. Local kids from the village would come out to watch in awe as the linemen scaled these 150 foot pylons stringing cable. The linemen warned the boys of the dangers of high voltage electric lines. After all the lines were installed and all utility men had left, local boys as a dare would climb up a pylon, jump from the pylon onto the HT wire, then make their way along the HT cable using their hands and legs, then jump down onto the adjacent pylon.
Best thread ever, tears in my eyes.
As a kid growing up in England in the 1950s we got some potassium nitrate (easily obtained then as it was simply nitrogen fertilizer)
Great fun!
There are still places that consider it unsportsmanlike if you have to get out of the vehicle to shoot the animals.
Yes to all 25. And many of those are tame.
19. The rope trick. At night you and another pal pretend to stringa rope across the street just before a car and see their reaction.
20. get 5 guys, pour ketchup over the head of one, go to the street where cars are passing and start chasing the ketchup covered guy.
21. cut a hole in the boys dressing room at the High School back stage, cut the hole to the girls dressing room next door. Peek!
22. Walk behind the girls slowly on the school stairs seeking the best upskirt view you can get.
23. Playing Tarzan in the woods, building rope swings to swing from tree fort to tree fort.
24. Jump off the 100 foot cliff at the local water falls. Jump far enough to miss the underwater ledge.
25. set grass fires for fun.
etc.
26. Get some steel fence posts , and cross all the railway tracks in town, having all the railway crossing signals flashing and clanging at 3:00 AM.
Geezus Jack, we may know each other?
I thought the part about a coffee press was pretty gay, but I have used [and will] a percolator over fire.
Love your avatar [and the last one] by the way.
I am told kid could walk thru town with air bb pellet gun normal expectation not to die
After reading all these stories I have to say I am proud to know most of you and we still have what it takes to stop this nonsense that is invading a really good way of life for young people.
The stuff we did taught us a lot, but also instilled the determination to follow through with our dreams and creativity come hell or high water.
I don't cause anyone problems, I'm easy going but still have it in me to look .gov in the eye and say no and mean it.
BOTTLE ROCKET WARS!
Ah, the streets in southern Ohio in the 80's.
Man we were little priks!
it was the war between feminists and everyone else.
Everyone else lost. For now. The moms should have fought for us, but were conned.
My kids think I made all of my schooldays up, and my kids are pretty world-ready.
We learned early that you got the belt at school for being innocent as often as guilty, so somehow it didn't hurt as much. There was always a line of us; I can see doctors, MDs, lawyers, gays, Engineers, all future success stories in that line even now.
battery running low ....... who needs technologeeee.
Bought up in England in the 1950s, I checked off most of the list of 25. (two thumbs up for #8)
But add this one: I received a small plastic maze puzzle, you remember the kind, it had a large blob of mercury (about an inch across) that you had to manuoevre through the maze to the center. I broke it open to get the mercury out. I was intrigued with how it would run between my closed fingers.
My God, why don't I have brain damage!?
And don't even get me started on fireworks leading up to Guy Fawkes night! (three-ha'penny bangers: Brock-busters)
LOL...my childhood dentist (who was my mother's cousin) used to give us mercury to PLAY WITH while we sat in the chair. This is the same guy who didn't use novocaine--I literally didn't know that you were supposed to get novocaine for drilling until I was an adult... :-)
All of these and much much more. Growing up in the early 60's was wonderful. Fuck every one of these big government busy body statist pricks. I hope Vlad nukes DC
Yes to all but 11, 21 & 23.
It was time to get my FEZ on!
"Weenies"? No.
Pussies? Yes.
Had to share 1 more, Ping pong balls + box of strike anywhere matches + electrical or masking tape.
Cut heads off matches pack them into the ping pong ball "gently" then wrap the ball with a few layers of electrical tape.
Made a hell of a blast when you threw it against a brick wall.
Couldn't have said it better...
What a great thread, LMAO. I must be the most immature person in the world because I have somewhat recently done a few of these things. A while back enjoyed a potato cannon at my buddies orchard in Wa, he told me to come over immediately as his new California neighbors had moved in with "warm blood" horses and he had to break them in.
I believe no self respecting individual should ever go without a pellet gun and I went ni**er knocking (pardon the term) at this guy Gay Steeven's house a few houses down from a friends recently, this will continue since I haven't been caught yet.
Went rattle snake hunting in ND last year, which was an absolute blast. We then skinned the snakes and pinned them to boards for use as idiotic clothing accessories (I traded a snake to have someone skin mine).
Life is too short to allow ninnies and tyrants take all of the fun away. Everyone should do at least a couple of these things this year.
Can't relate most of my childhood exploits, they may still be looking for us..
I worked on my Uncles farm in Fresno CA during the summer, along with my cousin. When it was time to "change the water" as it was known, my Uncle would drive us both out to the other side of the farm and drop us off. There were a couple hundred 2" aluminum siphons that we had to pick up 6 or 7 at time, and carry them to where the last row was. It took a while. Then we had to start each of the sipons by hand. And that took a while in the 100 degree Fresno heat.
By the time we had finished we were hot and tired. There was a 6 foot wide ditch filled with water that ran around the ranch, and we jumped in to cool off, while we waited for my Uncle to come pick us up. When he showed up, he would have none of us getting inside the car soaking wet. So he rolled down the windows front and back, and told us to get on the running boards and loop our arms around the center post. We did, and took off. At about 25 mph he would say, "are you holding on?", and we would say yes. He increased speed to maybe 50 mph and both me and my cousin hung on the outside of the car, wind blowing in our faces like puppy dogs with their heads sticking out of the car window.
By the time we go back home our skin was bone dry, and our clothes were almost dry as well. Every once in a while we would pass one of the neighbors and they would wave, and we would wave back. Nobody thought it was unusual for somebody to be driving a car 50mph down a country road, with two kids on the running boards hanging on to the center post of the car.
Both me and my cousin were probably 12-14 years old at the time. It was great fun, and gave me a hint as to what riding a motorcycle would be like. And as soon as I could afford one, I got one. Rode many different motorcycles for many years, and each time I got on my bike, it reminded me of riding on the running boards of my Uncle's car.
I'm thinking somebody would probably get their panties in a bunch over that kind of activity today. Back then, nobody would give it a second thought.
.
#26 Shoot an arrow straight up into the air and try to get it to land inside a hoola-hoop lying on thr groud 20ft away (we were careful we didnt use the hunting arrows for that, only the target ones).
#27 Gather all the dud firecrackers from the 4th of July and make a "july 5th Specilal" containing the powder from 50-60 firecrackers into one real firecracker (using the cardboard tube from a spent large bottle rocket)
#28 Make 'jumps' with some planks and bricks, ride bike as fast as you can and see who can jump the furthest, extra points for a wipe-out on the landing.
I was reading this and noted that my 18 year old nephew has done ZERO of these things. He doesn't know what he missed...
"Teach your kids what freedom feels like."
Why do you have to be pompous? A mere "let the children play as they like" would have been enough.
Why do Americans always have to give freaking lectures?
Lea, please don't lecture me about giving lectures - especially while I'm standing on my soapbox. :-)
26. Hitchhiking.
Thomas Jefferson said, "when we are as crowded together as they are in the cities of Europe, we will have as few rights as they have in the cities of Europe".
These days if some neighbors see your kids in the street, they will call the cops, and the cops may come to your house and take your kids away. What turned Americans into Nazi neighbors like that? I'm going to guess "television". I'm going to start saying, "Nazi Television".
I notice there is not one down vote on this entire comment section. Is that a ZH first?
lol...to the prick who did a down vote.
hee hee :-) No it wasn't me. But apparently EVERYBODY on the internet has an "internet little brother" just waiting for an opportunity to drive him crazy. :-)
I did all 25 and more. Tempi cambiando.
All of them and...:
26. Fighting battles among eachother with paper arrows and blow pipes.
27. Jumping from the third floor of a construction site in a big heap of sand
28. Getting soaked by falling through the ice but continue to play instead of going home to escape an angry dad.
29. Falling from a concrete mixer, unconsious, and dragging yourself home through the snow after waking up again.
30. Coming home as white as a snowman after falling in a pit of gypsum.
31. Biting away the pain of having twisted your ankle and continue playing, instead of ruining your free wednesday afternoon (again!) by going home.
I had lots of fun though!
Everything you describe above, plus kicking the shit out of each other at school, playing in construction sites long before the days of idiotic law suits, getting spanking from my parents because I deserved it (and no I didn't grow up aggressive or maladaptive), jumping off quarry cliffs, skate boarding, bumper hitching in the snow (without going to juevenille hall) and a host of other activities that we did before all these new electronic insanity came along.
We simply did not need most of the stupid distractions we have now. We were healthier, stronger and better prepared for the world. Long before big government came along with all the morons that work for it that know more about bringing up our children than you or me. It will only get worse before it gets better until we get rid of the idiots that create all these uneeded jobs where all these patsy's have to justify their existence. Get rid of the lawyers, the judges, politicians, overly large CAS and a host of other legislation and you will have freedom again.
not exactly infantile stuff, but when still in my teens in the '50s
LSD (Sandoz ampules) could be bought out of the Calbiochem catalog.
Anybody ever push their bike up a big hill, just so you could ride down it?
All this reminds me why I have so little respect for Big Propaganda (which I hope I do not forgetfully call "journalism", which it is not).
I saved a two-frame cartoon.
A man is sitting in his easy chair.
The television news guy ("fake journalist?") is saying "WHAT can people DO to cope with all the TERROR?"
The man clicks off the television and flashes a wry smile.
Every babyboomer kid probably did enough stuff that the Nanny State could lock him up in prison for the rest of his life.
Napoleon Bonaparte: "There are so many laws that no man is safe from hanging."
Also, this is why I keep saying, "have fewer children". When there is a glut of people, the rulers don't need YOU. If there weren't enough people, you would have a lot more bargaining power against them. Law of Supply and Demand.
That's why "Liberals" keep pushing immigration. They want more of you, so you won't have bargaining power against the rulers.
And that's why "Conservatives" keep pushing "defense of life". They want more of you, so you won't have bargaining power against the rulers.
It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous.
This is some Studs Terkel gold right here in this thread by golly
This is some Studs Terkel gold right here in this thread by golly
"Teach your kids what freedom's like" (just be sure and tell them not to tell anyone - it might get you investigated by CPS and your kids sent to a foster home in many states).
Anyone ever MAKE their own "M80s"?
I'll never tell.
M80's got to be where they were not powerful enough and the ante of fun needed to be upped. Ever try and M200 in a watermellon?
Wow, excellent thread. My pyrotecnic's years we blew up anything and everything you could think of, too numerous to mention here, but the most fun was putting an M-80 in a watermellon, since the chunks flew everywhere. If you could catch a flying chunk of it in your mouth, you got bonus points.
Liquor stores used to be "drive in" and a carload of us kids would pull up to the drive-in window totally shitfaced, hand our dixie cups to the attendant, ask them to fill them full of ice, while we mixed our drinks right in front of them. If the cops caught us drinking, they would take our booze, pour it out and tell us to drive home, and if they caught us out later that night then we were in trouble. Out running the cops on our dirt bikes was also great fun.
We also had a quarter mile strip of highway way out of town where you could see both directions for miles, and we would go out there and have drag races, with our exhaust "cut outs" welded in with caps that you would remove for racing, and nitro injectors in the trunk. We got our airplane fuel from a buddy who worked at the airport.
We cruised up and down the boulevard, drinking and racing our hot rods, until a party was formed, and as many as 200 people would wind up out in the woods with their car speakers out on top of their roof while their 8 track tapes blared Led Zepplin and Jimmy Hendrix way into the night, drinking, smoking and dropping LSD, until the night turned into a sex fest. This was after the pill and before aids.
We rode down the train tracks cause we liked how it made the car bounce, and the first one to spill their drink had to buy the next round. We got caught on the tracks one time with the train coming, and you'll never know how fast you can drive in reverse until you have a train chasing you.
One night, we drove through town and stopped at every rose bush we passed, picked them until the car was completely full of rose pedals to the roof, and then me and my girlfriend rolled around in the rose pedals and had sex.
By all rights, I should be dead due to all the near misses, but I guess your card just does not get pulled until it is your time, and I think someone or something was wathcing out for kids like us. Those were the days...
Never wore a helmet on bike
Climbed on trees
Lawd forgive me
Gunpowder. I made gunpowder. Enough to get me sent to GITMO. The ant hills never saw it coming.
1) Rode on sleds being pulled by cars. Less than 10.
2) Drove my grandfather's used cars around town at 12.
3) Golfed with cherry bombs instead of balls. 11.
4) Carried a knife - always , including now.
5) Sat on top of the back seat in convertibles.
6) etc., etc.
Yes to all but #23.
But I had to stand in a corner in front of the classroom for 5 minutes, which was more humiliating.
That was first grade. And from then on I realized that other people had feelings just like me and I thank my first grade teacher, Mrs. Allen, for expanding my horizons.
But I did take my 12 gauge shotgun to school in 7th grade on the bus. After school was gun safety training class taught by my shop teacher, Mr. Olsen. When I got on the bus, the driver complemented me with a positive comment about it. My home room teacher wouldn't let me keep it at my desk because it was too distracting to the other students, all the guys wanted to handle it. She made me keep it near my locker in the back of the room
I went on to be a serial entrepeneur, the bane of the Progressive Leftist today.
Thank you Mrs. Allen.
George Carlin swam in the river as a boy in the Hudson river, next to the raw shit floating down the river beside him.
GERMS! GERMS! GERMS!
Pussies! Take a fucking chance in life!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X29lF43mUlo