This is so frick'in true! I also remember riding around in the back of my dad's carpet installation van sitting on top of either a toolbox or box of tackstrip. They both slid all over the place as he turned or braked. The tackstrip was bad if you went over a big enough bump; it came through the cardboard and stuck you in the rump. 😉 Remember these days +Keith Cramer ?
Thanks +Nancy McCoy for the post!
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it was all or nuthin' back then.
Yeah, and me and my brothers used to jump off the roof of our parent's house…. for FUN. (we WERE indestructible, after all…)
My Dad used to pick us up from the skating rink and we all would go back to my house in the back of his El Camino.
+Nancy McCoy Absolute LUNACY!! 😀
+Mark Gesswein Didn't seem so then. Try that now and he probably would've gotten charged with child endangerment or something.. It sure was fun riding in the back tho. Hell, when I was a kid they used to let me stand up in the seat as they drove. Mom finally put a stop to that and I had to start wearing a sealtbelt.
+Rob Gough Like Mark said, we were indestructible!
+Mark Gesswein Hehehe… Yes, did that. If I tried that now, I'm pretty sure my legs would snap off at the knees. Also jumped off the house into the swimming pool. If my daughter were to try any of that I'd have a conniption! (Bill Cosby reference)
There was construction going on in my neighborhood (this is when I was about 7) and the neighborhood kids, my brothers and I would jump off the top of the 2-story roof into the sand pile at the side. My little brother, who was around 6, had to be like the big kids but he missed the pile and broke his foot. We have pictures of him riding his bike with his walking cast on (no helmets back then of course).
It's a miracle we survived our childhood. Good times!
+Christie Cannon Helmets? Lol, would have been laughed off the street back then!
this new generation is a bunch of wimps
The other insane thing we did was nail fights in the construction houses — a team upstairs defending and the kids downstairs trying to get upstairs. We threw nails at each other on offense and defense. I remember being on the downstairs team and getting a nail stuck in my head.
It's a miracle no one had an eye put out.
Yeah, helmets would've spelled social destruction.
On the other hand, there weren't insouciant idiots texting while they drove over the skateboards in the street, either.
I was a child of the 80s. I started seeing awesome things get phased out. Dodgeball became banned in my school when i was in 7th grade. We wanted to beat up the kid that complained to his mommy.
Yep, +Christie Cannon we did the same with rocks at construction sites on the weekends. At least, until someone took a shot to the head and started bleeding…that usually ended that for the day….
Both my kids were crazy hotwheels drivers (same time period). The pictured stunt is just like the stuff they loved to do. There were some injuries, but what the hell. We were not neglectful parents!
+Randy Resnick Good point. However, I think we probably had more drunk drivers.
+Scott Cramer and I used to have domino fights. I remember getting in trouble for the dents we left in the walls… . Dominos hurt when you throw them at each other from 10 feet away. We healed. The head trauma might explain my bro +Scott Cramer's spotty memory! haha.
I also remember one time when mom and dad left that we had a flame thrower battle in the house. I believe you had the Pledge and I had spray deodorant. The "oil slick" on the tile when mom and dad came home (and lack of Pledge and deodorant) kind of sunk us.
+Scott Cramer based on Mad Men, yeah 🙂 But kidding aside, life was simpler in many ways, including -) think about this – sexual predators. Either there were as many and no one knew, or life was just a lot more restrained without instantaneous communication.
My friends and I were playing on a construction site and a cement mixer knocked me in the head. My mom found a dentist who fixed me up on a Sunday.
+Randy Resnick Agreed! I used to walk a mile or more to grade school and middle school. Also, used to ride my bike that far to go to the arcade (another memory of days gone by). I never worried about abduction and/or worse. I don't let my daughter out of my line of sight. I think the world is more dangerous now. Yeah, the predators were there, but unless I'm just being naive, I think there were less.
+Scott Cramer hahaha. I remember someone walking in the door and falling on their arse. (not mom or dad, we would have been dead)
+Randy Resnick agreed, I used to walk to school and home from school from like 3rd or 4th grade through 8th grade. I would NEVER let my son do this today – even with a cell phone in his pocket.
+Scott Cramer We as a society have gotten both more dangerous and more cautious, basically what this thread is about, right? I think authority figures like police were a little more feared those days, people weren't up front about sexuality which meant pdeophiles – who btw didn't have the Internet to live on – must have been cautious, too. Travel was way less common, so drifters were from less far away, also. And so it goes 🙂
+Randy Resnick Would love to walk around back then with today's eyes.
Who knows, maybe we'd see all the ne'er do wells with our 3rd millenium suspicions!
If you live on an island, your kids can still get away with things like riding in the backs of trucks, not wearing helmets, jumping off the wharf in Jan. fun stuff like that. Things my kids have done that they shouldn't:
throw the neighbor's mail in the woods, eat bugs to traumatize their friends, drive golf carts and cars underage, jump into the wake of the ferry as it pulls away from the dock (they do this dozens of times a week in the summer. ack). I'm not a hovering mom, but they still tell me i'm too protective.