You might hurt yourself!

Here's another thing: When we were out playing baseball at the sandlot or on the tennis courts or playing any other game for that matter, we never had any kind of refs or umps for any of the games we played, yet there were disagreements and without adult supervision, we learned how to compromise and come to a resolution. When the ball went into the crabby neighbor's yard, we had to knock on the door and ask to go get it. We had to learn how to deal with people.

Now, kids aren't learning these skills. They don't have to learn how to compromise or to deal with the crabby neighbor by playing computer games. Their skills of human interaction are severely lacking. Then again, that could have something to do with all of the drugs and shit they're pumping into kids these days.

 

I lived out in the country with a pasture bordering my parents property. During the day I could do whatever I wanted including heading three miles down the road to ride trails in a woods, still don't know who owned it, fishing, or riding my bike to friends houses (with permission) up to 10 miles away. No biggie. My friends and I did however throw apples and pears at the cows in the pasture next door, until a bull ran the fence over and forced us to scramble up the trees. Scared the shit out of me, though not literally if I remember right. We also used to take our four wheelers and motorcycles down to the neighbor's gravel pit and ride all over the pit, up and down walls. We found jumps and all manner of stupidity to engage in. That is until the owner caught us. Today we'd have been arrested, then we just had to stop riding there. Simpler times...

 

My friends and I did that and we graduated high school in 2008. From late April to May and from September until December, I keep a gun in my truck at all times. During hunting season we would go hunting before first class and if we didnt kill anything we would come to school still dressed in our Camo. If we did kill something we would leave the deer or turkey or geese in one of our trucks to show off what we murdered.

 

I used to have my own 4 wheeler, which i would ride all around the town and the surrounding bush on my own with no protective gear in what could arguably be called one of the most hostile environments in the country (the Kimberley in Western Australia), id usually be gone all day long on the weekends. We were a 2 cop town at the time and both were great mates with my old man, so i had free reign to ride wherever the hell i wanted.

Id catch snakes (venomous and non-venomous) and lizards all the time and bring them home, i kept many as pets (although it did freak my mum the fuck out). My dad had taught me how to identify and safely catch and keep these critters at a very young age because it was next to impossible that i wouldn't come across them at some point, so it was better to teach me to be safe with them.

I got my own .22 at the age of 9, and was shooting my dad's .308 by 12. None of our guns were licensed.

If i fucked up i got caned. With a fucking broom handle, swung at full pelt by my old man (he'd be arrested promptly these days for even just smacking me). I only ever fucked something up once as a broom handle to the ass/upper thigh is a wonderful deterrent for childhood stupidity and misbehavior.

EDIT: Oh i forgot i also had a pretty decent collection of knives. All razor sharp. Most were for functional shit like fishing but i also had some fancy ones that served no real purpose except looking cool (unless i wanted to kill someone i guess).

 

Do kids really not ride bikes everywhere anymore? Or is this just a group knee-jerk reaction to what the retarded media and government promote. I'm not that far removed from childhood at 23 and we definitely rode everywhere. I also have younger stepbrothers who definitely will ride their bikes to go meet up with friends. I will admit they don't use them as much as I did when I was a kid, but I also grew up in an area where my closest friends were all within 15 minutes on a bike and they didn't.

I definitely agree with lhprop that unsupervised activity is how kids learn to interact like human beings instead of little entitled robots, but I'm not sold that this isn't a case of an older generation grousing about how things aren't the way they used to be.

 

I still see a lot of kids on bikes where I'm at. I also see far more adults too, although that might just be a result of my location. It's hard to make a proper judgment on memory alone, given that when I was a kid I was too busy being a kid to pay attention to that shit.

 

I remember roaming freely around the neighborhood as a kid. The only rules were that we had to be home by dinner and stay within the boundary between the elementary school and the river behind our development (about a 2 square mile area).

My parents are physicians, so by default my house became the one that everyone went to when something happened. When I was 5 or 6, all the neighborhood kids were sledding down a big hill at the bottom of my street. At the bottom of the hill was a thick mess of thorn bushes, so as we came down the hill we had to bail off the sled at the last second to avoid getting tore up. My friend Zach wasn't paying attention and went into the thicket, slicing his chin and lip open. There was blood everywhere; from my 5 year old perspective, it seemed like his entire face was ripped off. Immediately, we ran to my parents house.

Instead of the reaction we'd expect from parents today, my dad calmly gave Zach two stitches, put a band-aid on his chin, and called his parents to tell them what happened. Then he turned to me and told me I had to walk Zach home before I could go back and play with everyone else. Later that night, Zach's dad bought my dad a case of beer. The next morning, we were sledding again in the same spot (Zack included). There is no fucking way that would have happened in 2011.

 

I know where I am all the kids ride around in golf carts. I am nowhere near a golf course mind you, but there are at least 10 that go by my house regularly. I am 30 and we rode bikes all over the place. I still ride mine to work occasionally. No helmets, ever.

I am not saying this was a good idea, but we never wore seat belts growing up. I only remember having to wear them when we were on the interstate. We also rode in the back of pickup trucks all the time.

The guys I grew up with always played pickup games of 'tackle' football and we continued to do so into our mid 20's until most of them moved away. No pads or referees. I don't recall any serious injuries either. We had a few guys scrap when someone took it too far, but we settled our differences without killing each other.

 

...Did you just do meth every day as a child? "BRING IT ON, TRAFFIC!!! FUCKING BRING IT!!! I'M GOING FISHING AND THEN I'M PLAYING BASEBALL AND THEN I'M JUST GOING TO EAT A BUNCH OF GLASS!!! RAAAAAAWR!"

Focus: I grew up on a hay ranch, so I had basically unlimited room to fuck around. My dad bought me a used golf cart when I was 11 or so, and I absolutely beat the shit out of that thing. I would go out for a couple hours at a time, trailblazing my way though forests in my 1 wheel drive Club Car. You'd be shocked at the places I managed to make it to/through in that thing.

Shit really got crazy when I had friends over and we would get two motorized things going at once. I crashed a 50 cc dirt bike into the golf cart, being driven (poorly) by my (girl) cousin, and flew about 10 feet and smashed my helmet on a rock. I'd probably still be eating through a tube if I hadn't had my stupid helmet on. Women drivers, eh?

 

This thread reeks of Grumpy Old Man Get Off My Lawn-ism.

 

Man. I was the perfect kid when I was a tyke. I was an only child, and my parents were very protective. Fair and generous, but protective. And stern. I didn't talk back. I didn't give lip. I din't break boundries or curfew. If I did, I would get my ass tanned all the way down the street. That is not child abuse, pussies. That's the 1980's. It worked. I'd never smack my daughter, but I'll be goddamned if I'm going to buy her love like so many parents today.

 

They didn't have helmets when I was a kid, and I can guarantee my old man wouldn't have bought one if they did.

Much of our time was spent playing basketball in the school yard, street hockey, crabbing in the bay, or hanging out on the street corner in front of the candy store (sold more than candy--newspapers, cigarettes, coffee, ice cream, old-fashioned soda fountain. Became a mob front for numbers-running). Wiseguy University.

 

I grew up in a fairly rural area for Massachusetts and without a bike we wouldn't be able to go anywhere. The one convenience store and House Of Pizza was a two mile ride and to get to the train was about seven. My folks pretty much let us do what we wanted as long as we were home for dinner.

I could get away with just about anything other than skipping dinner or watching television. Both my folks worked so we were unsupervised for a few hours after school and the first thing my mom would do when she got home was to feel the television to see if it was warm.

 

But in their day, they didn't have helmets or safety pads, you got your head caved in and broke every bone in your body.

And that's the way it was and they liked it! They loved it!

 

Here's a whole bunch of stupid....

When I was a kid (mid-late 80's) we used to play on the ice clampers. Picture a harbour (not a lake, a harbour, open to the ocean) full of sheet-of-plywood-sized pieces of ice, about 6 inches to a foot thick all pushed together and piled on one another. We would spend most of the day on them. We'd stay relatively close to shore, but if someone ever fell through, their body wouldn't be found until late spring.

 

Fuck what we did unsupervised, the stuff we could do in middle school Gym will never be allowed again in a lot of districts. We had a wrestling unit (girls did volleyball) in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade that was by far the best way to cope with bullying I've ever seen. Considering I was picked on by the bigger guys all the time (like literally everyone who ever went to middle school), sending me loose on someone my size was like sicking a pit bull on a field full of bunnies. Plus seeing some of the big guys get their asses handed to them warmed by early adolescent heart to no end.

It's now banned in the school system, and it's probably because of the game we called Mat Ball. The class was divided into two teams of about 12 or 13 kids and we sat on opposite ends of the mat acting as an out-of-bounds line. You were supposed to be paired up with someone on the other side that was roughly your size, but it never worked out all that fairly. In the middle of the matted room would be one of those big exercise balls. The teacher would call out two pairings and you'd go after the ball and try to drag it back to your side. The problem was that bringing the ball across would end the round, but was only worth 1 point. However, dragging an opposing team member across to your side got you 2. What usually happened was the smallest guy would be targeted first, he'd be taken down and drug to the end of the mat where a game of tug-of-war would ensue between an entire team of 12 year olds and his teammate. Everyone would just grab a limb and pull. No idea how no one dislocated anything during that game.

Sadly, I think the wrestling unit was pulled in favor of Ping Pong or something like that. Ah, the good ol' days.

 

My parents let me build a rifle in the basement without any training or supervision and let me go hunting with it by myself too... before I was 18. I realize they must have trusted the hell out of me or had no idea what I was doing. I'm gradually drifting towards the latter side.

 

My friends and I used to play tag on our bicycles with no helmets. Our version of tag had a few variations, a favorite being La Migra. To preface, I am Chinese and my three best friends at the time were Mexican. We all grew up together and lived only several houses away from each other. So it was only natural that I would chase them on my bike yelling La Migra until I tagged one of them. They also let me have the honor of being a Mexican once in a while too.

Something that I would never have gotten away with in this day and age was bringing a pocket knife to my elementary school. I used to be a complete dick to one of my larger friends and one day I chased him around with the knife saying that I was going to make turkey strips out of him. Not my proudest moment. We are still good friends and even though his father told the principle, the only punishment I got was a warning.

One of the best games on the play ground was pelting each other with sand blocks. The way you would do this was to grab a small thick stick and find a spot of sand that was packed pretty tight. Then you would use the stick to carve at the sand until you were about an inch deep. The carved shape would resemble a square. After that was done you would break chunks of that square and toss it at the other team. There was really no end goal except to bombard the other players as hard as you could.

 

This whole thread reminds me of a bucky covington song.