When we first moved to Canada from England, we lived in small-town alberta (Hardisty). In Grade 1, my dad bought me a 50cc bike and me and a friend rode every day (separate bikes) for hours on end through the woods, around town. No problems. It was great. I'm sure this still happens in rural alberta, but it's a great memory of freedom.
Ah, Pylon ... that was a great story about your Dad with the bike jump. I laughed pretty good. The funniest thing is I can see me doing something like that with my kids (5, 3, 1) ...
I too remember running around the neighborhood with my friends in the early late 70's and early 80's. We played Cops N Robbers .... we'd split into groups, one would go hide anywhere (yards, under cars, on rooftops, in garbage cans, etc) and the cop group would go hunt the escapees down. We had bikes, so we must've travelled more than a few miles from home sometimes.
I'd freak out if my kids did something like that now ... and I am not over protective. It's a different time, for sure.
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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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Okay, I am sure the statute of limitations has run out on this, so I will tell the story.
1986, 12 years old, Major Unnamed Hardware store on Mcleod Trail. Me and a friend are in there getting bike parts. Anyway, they had these Coleman Canoes piled up by a wall. Without saying a word,I heave this Canoe over my head, and walk out the front door and start walking down Bonaventure Drive. Still to this day I have no idea what possessed me to do that.
Okay, so the store lost a canoe, I am a horrible thief that is the scum of the earth and deserves to die according to puckluck. I am sure the thousands of dollars in tools and car parts I purchased in my late teens early twenties made up for it.
Anyway..... So we literally walk back to Lake Bonavista with this canoe, get a set of oars and life jackets at the rental shack, and paddle it around for a couple hours. Well, we are both sitting there thinking.... ok, we can't take it home, what will our parents say? We can't take it back.... we stole it... so we just pushed it out into the lake.
In retrospect, now that I have a conscious and understand how things work, I have always wondered, what happened when they found an empty canoe, with 2 life jackets and oars in it, floating around the lake? I don't recall the dive team being out there, then again, I didn't think about that until many years later, when me and my cohort were laughing about it over a beer.
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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.
I will quote you, as you once said about me....
"Sometimes I think I am looking in a mirror."
I think we even grew up not far from each other... and apparently, you busted up my old mans fence.
For some reason or other my dad acquired a very large jug of mercury, as a kid I remember him letting us play with it it. We'd pour a bit out, manipulate it with magnets and then we would take pennies and rub the mercury all over them with our barehands to make them look like dimes.
There was also the chucking of pure sodium into puddles to watch it ignite, and being taught how to make good smoke bombs, and getting magnesium shavings to burn by milling large bars of magnesium with a milling machine.
But it wasn't always safety first, there was the handling of large amounts of lead solder and soldering without any kind of fume hood, working milling machines, lathes, bench presses, etc during summer breaks from high school.
I watched "the cove" last night, I should probably get tested for mercury levels.
We roamed everywhere too, latchkey kids with nothing to do, just walk to the lake and go swimming or walk along the railroad tracks and hope you can get a train to roll over a penny to flatten it.
I disagree about playground equipment, there are still merri-go-rounds in the city (downtown by Memorial Park, and some school by Macewan Park). Anyway, I am pretty sure you could damage yourself falling from equipment or falling on equipment. Plastic slides also get pretty hot in the sun, and there are still a lot of the metal slides too.
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I was just having coffee with the old man today and we talked about a fight I had with a kid on my block who ended up going through a fence.
Sometimes I miss being a kid.
I agree. When I readopted the cycling lifestyle this year it really started bringing back a lot of memories. I live by Chinook Centre, and my parents still live in Bonavista. When I go over on Sundays, I usually ride my bike down there now, and on my way, I always make sure to go past one landmark, through one of the old shortcuts we used to use, or past one of my old houses. as my mom was a realtor and I lived in about 7 different houses in Bonavista, as my parents would flip them.
I went by one house we lived in earlier this summer, and cut through the alley. There was a guy about my age out in the alley who now owned the place, and I stopped to talk to him, told him I lived there for a few years, how I helped my dad build the detached garage...etc. Anyway, I say to him, I bet, up behind the framing, where the joist meets the top of the wall... there is a stash of about 10 vintage penthouse magazines..... lo and behold we looked up there, and they were still there, wrapped up in a dusty glad bag. The guy asked me if I wanted them, and I just said... "Stuff 'em back up there where they have spent the last 25 years."
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Riding in the back of the family station wagon in the rear facing seat...they didn't even make seat belts back then. That's like double naught spy dangerous.
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Riding in the back of the family station wagon in the rear facing seat...they didn't even make seat belts back then. That's like double naught spy dangerous.
That was the best seat! You could flip off and make faces at the motorists behind you without your dad seeing it.
However, when my dad traded in our 76 Torino wagon with vinyl interior, and we got a 1983 Chevy Starcraft Travel van... THAT was awesome. Cocktail tables, shag carpet, captains chairs that weighed 200 lbs each draped in only the finest velour....and 12 MPG. Now they are pedomobiles, back then, they were the ultimate family travel companion.
Me and my sister had ground rules in that van. You don't go near my captains chair on the drivers side, and I won't go anywhere near your seats. My captains chair had access to the TV and VCR switches, but I had to give up access to the rear bench seat / convertible bed for that luxury. Didn't care, I had my switches, my table for choose your own adventure books / hockey cards, and she had her stupid Barbie Benchseat.
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I'm 15. Today me and my friends biked to the river in saskatoon and climbed the under side of the university bridge. When i'm as old as you guys i'll say the same things you guys are saying about my generation
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I'm 15. Today me and my friends biked to the river in saskatoon and climbed the under side of the university bridge. When i'm as old as you guys i'll say the same things you guys are saying about my generation
By the time you're my age the kids brains will be living in glass bottles in a lab 10,000 meters below ground.
i spent my childhood roaming the streets of Marlborough,Forest Lawn and 17th avenue, rollerskating at rollerland , drinking 4 Macs Slurpees a day and playing soccer in the street till 11 pm on beautiful summer nights..its a shame we only get a chance to be a kid once and not having the perspective yet to realize how great it is to young.
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Last edited by the crispy badger; 08-09-2011 at 06:18 AM.
Generations have different good things going for them.
I grew up in a world which looked like it was going to get better forever. I was in school during it's most abundant time (and at a time when Finland was more social democratic than ever). As an example, I remember how we had a competition on who could stack up his pile of chicken bones highest. Obviously you had to eat them clean first, no cheating. We just kept going for thirds, fourths and fifths, and I think the only reason we had to stop was because the next class was starting. I remember the first years we got _used_books_ instead of fresh new ones... It was just weird. My class sizes weren't over 20 until I reached high school. I got free bus rides for years because my school was far enough for me to get a permanent ticket. I could use that ticket for what ever outside school. These days you only get enough tickets to get you to school and back. Fifteen years ago you could just turn up and see a free a doctor on the same day (assuming you did it in the daytime), these days you only get nurse and that can take hours.
My parents had a spotty work history to say the least, my dad was unemployed for a long time in the nineties, and yet I pretty much never felt any of that. These days a kid in a similar situation would not be so lucky.
Considering that Finland as a whole is a much richer country than it was those days, I keep thinking how's it possible that we can afford so much less these days.
On the other hands, safety is better. People joke a lot about "we never used helmets and we were fine". Thing is, those that are not fine are rarely here here to tell the story. Kids have a notably better chance of surviving until adulthood than before.
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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
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.
I think that part is and has always been largely a personality thing. There were always the "crybabies" or "scaredy cats" when I was young too and there were kids who ganged up on others, although they were looked down upon.
As to skinned knees and broken fingers, I think that's a personality thing too, and for a large part propably even genetic. Despite me and my wife making a terrible fuss over her, my daughter has always been of the type who just goes 'eh', picks herself up and keeps going whenever she hurts herself. She's just one of those kids who doesn't make worry about little falls and scrapes, unless it means she can get a pretty band-aid.
Her mother and I are like that too. We fuss over her (and each other to some extent), but take weeks or months to do anything about our own sores and ails.
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I remember playing soccer pretty much every day... on gravel - yeah, go ahead, make that sliding tackle... It was a different time - I remember when I was 8, my classmate and I would go off wandering after school, often winding up at the WW II museum (this is USSR), where we'd climb all over T-34's, IS-3's and all sorts of other wonderful toys. I can only imagine what would happen now if your kid was missing for 4 hours after school...
I can only imagine what would happen now if your kid was missing for 4 hours after school...
