Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
I have no problem with some of the safety devices that are in place for kids.
I got my first concussion when I was a kid when I hung upside down from the monkey bars to impress a girl and slipped and pile drove myself on concrete.
I remember that in gym when we took gymnastics it was thin hard mats and not the thick soft mats that kids use now. I remember thinking I broke my neck once when I decided to do a spring board superman over the pommel horse to impress a girl and over rotated.
I remember the rope climbing in gym class where you had to climb to the roof, and there was no safety mat, just the hard wooden floor.
Even our toys were dangerous, they fired missiles at high velocity (BattleStar Galactica's Cylon Raider in the late 70's killed at least one kid with its missile launcher.
I remember my dad giving me a massive knife for my birthday once.
I remember getting my first pellet gun when I was 10, and promptly running off and shooting my best friend with it because we wanted to see how it felt.
We didn't wear helmets when we road bikes, once again I was trying to impress a girl on a home made bike jump and went over the handle bars shattering my face.
I think our parents installed less fear in us, injuries healed as did broken bones, but they were life lessons. My mom didn't scream and cuddle me when I skinned my knee's and whisper "You poor baby" She slathered on the most painful iodine or peroxide solution, slapped on some gauze and kicked my a%% back out the door.
Hell even fighting was handled differently as was bullying. When I got bullied and told my parents, there weren't phone calls made to the bullies parents, or conferences at school with the police involved. My dad would take off his glasses, put down his paper, and tell me that I would never have any self respect or respect among my peers unless I did something about it, and you suddenly knew that it was something that couldn't wait, and you marched over to the bullies house, rang the door bell, asked his parents politely if their son could come out to play, then you went at him.
Again bumps and bruises healed and girls dug scars (except for the one that saw me pile drive myself on the concrete, she didn't talk to me for months)
We didn't have fancy toys or electronics or the internet.
We had dad's tools in the garage and tons of scrap lumber to make whatever we wanted, and we learned that you could make anything with nails, and bandsaw and tons of sandpaper.
We played the game where you stood around in a circle and threw your knife at your buddies feet with the person who flinched being a yellow bellied chicken who earned two punches.
We didn't gang up on people or swarm people, we had good healthy dangerous fun, and once you hit the age of 5 skinned knees and broken fingers were cool, not something to cry about.
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