I grew up in SE Calgary during the 70s and 80s.
Fall and winter it was street hockey from the end of school until around 9:00 pm (or if you got so cold you just couldn't play anymore-that didn't happen very often though). Spring and summer it was full on tackle football with no equipment-vicious stuff, many many minor injuries, but no whining or medical attention.
Of course getting on the bike, meeting with some friends and being gone all day was a regular thing. Some times we'd bike down to stanley park (Calgary) and hang out by the pool and stare at the girls in bikinis.
The marble craze was a lot of fun and just like Jiri said there was a guy in our school who had a few king cob steelies, he was the marble king for a while. It got so ridiculous that he brought this giant industrial ball bearing, we're talking about 4 inches in diameter, and if you played against him you had to hit him 15 times or something absurd like that. No one ever beat him and shortly after that the marble thing just sort of faded away. That giant ball bearing was like jumping the shark, I guess.
I also remember yo-yos being a bit of a fad before the marbles. There were the Coke and Sprite yo-yos and few other types I can't recall.
Building model cars and then going in the back alley and setting up car accident scenes and lighting them on fire with whatever combustible I could find in the garage.
"Rumbles" against students from the Catholic school which was a few blocks away from our school. They never really amounted to much but it was a big deal to us.
Taking the train down to the Stampede grounds to go to Stampede Wrestling was always a blast. Seeing the Harts, Dynamite kid, Davey Boy Smith, Bad News Allen, Mike Shaw, Kerry Brown, The Great Gama etc etc.
The older guys hanging out near our school with their muscle cars doing burn-outs.
Hanging out at the local arcade, spending every quarter I could possibly find on pinball.
Ah, memories.
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