<a class="postlink" href="http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Freeze-Tag-Red-Rover-Deemed-Dangerous-in-New-Summer-Camp-Regs-120195644.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Fr ... 95644.html</a> No wonder kids these days are a bunch of fat fucks. What are they supposed to do during their summers, sit around and discuss how we need to be more culturally sensitive? When I was a kid, my summers were a lot like the movie "The Sandlot". Every day, ride my bike up to three miles, sometimes on a busy country highway WITH NO STUPID HELMET to play organized baseball. After that, I'd ride my bike back home and eat some lunch, and head to the lake. To get to the lake, I'd have my fishing rod in one hand and my tackle box in the other, and ride my bike about 5 miles to the far side of the lake on the shoulder of a narrow, windy road with traffic whizzing by just a few feet away WITH NO STUPID HELMET. If it got too hot fishing, I'd go swimming in the lake with no life guard. I'd usually go home to rest for a little bit from the heat of the afternoon, but then I'd be back out after supper playing ball at the park with my friends until it got dark. My parents' only rule is that I had to be back by the time the street lights came on. When I got older and could stay out past dark, the day would repeat itself, but we'd commandeer the tennis courts at the neighborhood park and turn on the lights so we could play baseball at night under the lights. It was like being in the Major Leagues! In the winter, we always used to play King of the Hill on the playground at recess in grade school. They'd always leave a pile of show, which to my 6 year old eyes seemed to be about a 1/8 scale replica of Mt Everest. One kid would get up on top and the banzai attack would commence. What resulted was nothing short of a whirlwind of snot-nosed kids in fluffy jackets and moon boots tumbling down the side of the hill as the genetically advanced (for his age) bully stood victorious over his vanquished inferiors. It was fun. We used to ride snowmobiles to school and park them on the front lawn of the school where the bike racks would be. Hell, we used to bring guns to high school and no one ever got hurt or suspended. Sometimes the teachers would even come out to look at someone's new gun.* FOCUS: What are some things you did as a youth that would either get you arrested or confiscated by child protective services today? Or discuss the article. *It was common to go hunting before and/or after school. A lot of us brought guns and left them in our vehicles. No one ever thought twice about it.
Really? They are? Kids have always been brutal. I think they were more so when I was one compared to the pussies of today who are so overprotected and sheltered thanks to overbearing parents that don't discipline them when or as much as they should be. And I won't even get into this sense of entitlment so many seem to have now. "We don't spank little Johnny, he gets a time out instead." Yeah because swinging the cat around by his tail is just him "having fun." I time out my fucking dogs. If I had a kid they'd be getting a swat across the ass and something taken away for a length of time. It really is a good thing I don't have or want any. Yup.
I dunno, I grew up right in the knee-point where parents started to get more and more protective. I was still allowed to go roaming through the (small) neighborhood as long as Mom and Dad knew where I was going, but there were also growing fears about razor blades in the Halloween candy. Things seem way too structured nowadays, though.
Most of my childhood was like Huck Fin without the unintentional racism and poverty. We lived on several acres which backed onto forest and farmland, we would just fuck off in the morning, head home at lunch then and wouldn’t be home until dinner, unless the injury seemed to require mothering. Mum stayed home and raised us while dad worked 9-5. The Neighbours had kids about our age so this was cool, there was a river you could fish and swim in, we had BMX bikes and billy carts and there were trees to climb and build forts in. I guess I take it all for granted, in retrospect it was rather idyllic.
I fell off my bike more times than I can count before I was ten. After that, I only fell off twice, but both were fucking awful (once going full speed, because my brakes were fucked, and once when my foot slipped off the pedal and I crotched myself on the cross beam). My parents never once even THOUGHT about making me wear a helmet or knee pads or any other of that shit. I never wore a bike helmet, and to this day the running joke is that if I ever got a motorcycle I'd kill myself within 2 minutes. I also rode my bike everywhere, as my parents didn't drive me around. If I wanted to go to my friend's house across town (little over a mile away)? Bike or walk, no rides. Want to rent a video game at the video store down town? Ride down there. The most rules we were given were to take back streets whenever possible, as our town really only had one main road that was busy, so you could ride in the back streets pretty freely. There is no way I didn't ride at least five miles a day in the summers, between friend's houses, going to the park, the video store, the comic book store, the bowling alley, or baseball practice. We also played street hockey, IN THE STREET! Crazy, right? Just call time out when a car was coming, move the goals out of the way, and move them back when the car passed and keep on going. Everyone wore roller blades, and no one had elbow pads, knee pads, or helmets. If you fell, you got back up or we made fun of you for being a pussy. If we weren't doing that, we were wrestling on my buddy's trampoline. We were way into WWE, so we'd get on the trampoline and beat the shit out of each other. Guys were kicked off of the trampoline, and one kid broke his wrist giving a suplex to another kid, but otherwise we were fine, maybe some bruises. The trampoline didn't have one of those big nets you see on them now to keep kids from falling off. If you fell off, that was your own dumb-ass fault, and we'd mock you mercilessly while you laid on the ground writhing in pain. We also went swimming in the same friend's pool, without his parents home, usually. It was an above ground, 4 foot pool, and by the time we were twelve we were all more than 4 feet tall and could all swim, so his parents didn't think twice about letting us in the pool when they weren't home. Now, that pool would be fenced off and locked up unless a parent was home and directly supervising the kids in the pool. We also played baseball/football/basketball where ever we could, usually in back yards or neighbors' back yards (if they were cool about it, which most were). Finally, yes, we'd play video games fairly frequently, but usually on rainy or cold days. If it was nice, we were outside.
I can't remember doing anything out of the ordinary Play Outside All Day Until Dark, but my dad used to take me for cruises around town...while he drank beer and blasted the Stones and Traveling Wilburys. I don't think I'm a future overprotective harpy, but I'm definitely not ok with my future husband drinking and driving. With kids in the car.
My mom was actually a little nutty with the helmet thing but she really couldnt enforce it when she was at work all day. I wasn't allowed to ride on "the major roads" outside of the surrounding neighborhoods until I was in middle school. Otherwise my parent's were pretty lax. Most summers when I was young my parents dumped us off at my grandparents farm that was about 20 minutes away. This is where the real "danger" was as we'd shoot guns, ride precariously on the back of large tractors, creating ever larger jumps for our dirtbikes, and starting large enough fires to warrant a visit from the fire department. I used to spend hours every day wandering around with a single shot bolt action .22 hunting frogs and birds. Nothing really too bad though I thought I had wiped out the population of frogs at our pond (turns out nature was the real problem but I didnt help). I have a picture of me at like 10 years old holding an AR-15 and a groundhog I shot, the gun was 2/3rds as tall as I was. We'd also help our grandpa clear brush and fallen trees. We'd take it all to the burn pile, douse it was enough gas to make it interesting and let her rip. The fire department came out once and claimed we had to put it out. My grandpa refused and lost his shit screaming at them to get the fuck off his land. It was awesome, but the fire chief eventually came and had them put it out.
All this must have happened very recently because I'm only 23 and as a kid I used to play out pretty just every day. As soon as school ended I'd be playing with the other neighborhood kids until it was time to do homework. During the summer I would be outside from the time I woke up until sunset. My little sister, on the other hand, is 14 and never just walks out of the house to play. Any time she goes to visit a friend, it is organized by the parents. Nowadays it has become more along the lines of having parents drop them off and pick them up from the mall as she is reaching that age, but before this any time she played, it was by means of a parent organized play date. Of course, organizing these things is a chore for parents so she'd go out maybe once a week if that. Because of that, whereas my schedule was come home, go outside to play then do homework, hers is to watch tv in that. During the summer, forget, tv all fucking day long. I've managed to get her into reading a little bit, but her default activity when there is nothing that needs doing is to turn on the tv and watch the fucking drivel that comes on teen-nick and the disney channel which do nothing but show 13 year old kids acting like they are in fucking college. Every plot revolves around relationship nonsense. And then parents wonder why kids are becoming sexually active at younger and younger ages, these shows that they are watching because their parents won't let them do anything that kids do teach them that this is what is normal. I'm glad my little sister is smart so she'll probably grow out of these shows quickly but now I realize why kids are becoming fuckups at earlier and earlier ages. I see similar things from my younger male cousins except substitute tv for video games. All they want to do is play video games. A car ride longer than 10 minutes means the Nintendo DS is coming out. Kid doesn't play a single sport. All free time is dedicated to video games. It's fucking pathetic.
I was too busy throwing pine cones at other kids until I was 12 to worry about girls. Cue turning 16 and getting a crush on a girl I had pegged in the face with a cone at one point in time, she remembered, I didn't. Is it still cool for little boys to make girls cry?
I'd just like to point out that anyone who really, and truly feels, that helmets are stupid and shouldn't be worn, is a fucking idiot of truly epic proportions. Being over-protective is one thing. Being ignorant is another.
This may be a tad off-topic, but I got in a fight in 8th grade and got suspended for two weeks because the kid's eye was just fucked. Without that, it would have been a week for me. The other kid got three days, even though he started it, because he missed much more time because of his eye. Anyway, the last day of my suspension was when the whole Columbine debacle happened, and though I don't have any statistics or first-hand experiences, I'm guessing that was when kids started being coddled like they are today. Some dumbasses had to stick up for themselves using guns, not fists, and we all suffer for it. Oddly enough, that happened on April 20, which is today's date. Spoiler That was also the day "Ravishing" Rick Rude died. It was a sad day for me.
Like most people here, my childhood consisted of biking around the neighborhood, throwing rocks at my siblings, and making jumps off the mulch pile. My parents were pretty indifferent, although they refused to let me go biking on Route 20, which was a busy highway near my house. It amazes me these days how much time kids spend indoors. Sure, I would occasionally play video games, but it was a secondary activity; I was much happier throwing snowballs at cars. I went to see my former Boy Scout troop's scoutmaster yesterday; he was really frustrated that he had to tone down the trips because all the kids were in terrible shape. When I was 14, we went hiking in the Adirondacks. Carry everything on your back, hike 8-10 miles every day on rugged terrain. None of the kids in the troop today would be able to do it with the exception of a couple of the senior kids. I recall doing some random part of the Fitness merit badge right before I left; they had the kids run around the church twice to warm up (less than a quarter mile). Most of them couldn't do it. I don't expect every kid to be an awesome athlete. But seriously, if you're a guy and can't do a single pull-up, it's a sign that you need to put down the controller and start working out.
While undoubtedly fucking retarded, this was really more of a political move in order to force tighter regulations on smaller day camps. If they run one of the "dangerous" activities as part of their curriculum, they now have to pay the state a fee and basically fund supervisory visits to their camps. FOCUS: My friends and I used to ride our bikes EVERYWHERE. I mean, at 12, the gang of us would ride two towns over to buy as many McDonald's hash browns as we could (we figured out that it was the cheapest item that still came with monopoly pieces). My parents both worked all summer and usually hired some neighborhood high school tart to babysit, but she never knew where we were. As long as we were home in one piece when my parents got home from work.
Yeah, I did this, too. Waaaaay, beyond the limits of my neighborhood. Then, we graduated to go karts. It's amazing to me - I used to ride my go kart out of my neighborhood, up busy streets, and across a 4 lane divided highway. I just shake my head thinking about some of the close calls . . .
Did you wear a stupid ass helmet when you were a kid? If you did, you were in the minority which is probably part of the reason none of the other kids played with you.
I had two working parents growing up, so I went to a lot of day camps during the summer. These camps were highly structured, but even then, I played a shitload of Red Rover. My friends and I were unstoppable. No one could break through our hands nor could they withstand our awesome breaking power. When I wasn't at camp, I was digging in my cousin's backyard. Somehow, my uncle convinced all the kids that digging him a garden would be a fun way to spend an afternoon. We ended up doing this every spring until the year we accidentally dug up the bones of his childhood dog (the house originally belonged to my grandparents, and he inherited it after my grandfather died.) That was the only time any of us were told to stop doing something. Otherwise, we ran around the neighborhood like wild animals. We were the kids other kids weren't allowed to play with.
When I was a counselor at camp, on a slow day all the available Sailing, Motorboating and Athletics counselors would play Counselors vs. Campers Dodgeball. 20-30 Counselors would line up against some 60 kids, and play no-holds-barred dodgeball. All of the rage and aggression built up from dealing with these kids would be expressed in the form of rubber kick balls being whipped as hard as possible into the battle line of kids. In essence there were the standard dodgeball rules, but in reality as long as you went out when you were supposed to, you could come back in whenever you wanted. Inevitably some 10 year old kid would take a ball to the head and have to be carried to the infirmary. The administrative staff would tell us in a disappointed tone that dodgeball was banned. But a week later the campers and the counselors would line up and try to hurt each other again. I can only imagine that if a social worker saw us playing this game we'd all be serving time.
My parents were really old fashioned in a lot of ways. They are big on personal responsibility and lax safety rules, so we never had knee pads or helmets or anything like that. If you fell down, tough shit. You won't fall down next time, will you!? However, with 5 girls, they were super protective of other people. We were never allowed to play in the front yard or go down to the street, because we "might get snatched!" Anytime we were invited to a friends house, my mom would have a come to Jesus meeting with the poor kid's parents. I swear to God, she knew where the parents grew up, how many siblings the parents had, what the kid's grades were in school, and what color the kid pooed on a daily basis by the time she got finished berating the parents. It was awful.
I never wore a helmet, whether I was riding a bike or taking a warmblood over 8' jumps. They were uncomfortable, dammit! On the flipside, I make my sons wear a helmet now. This is mostly due to the fact that a) people act like you're an abusive/negligent parent if you don't and b) I would feel pretty shitty if they got hurt very badly and I could've prevented it.