I thought this list was funny, since I had a long conversation about the same topic the other day when that story came out about child services being called when a kid was left alone in his yard for 1 1/2 hours. That has always been SOP around my house -- if any of the kids beat me home and forgot their key (not unusual), they should hang out in the yard until I got home. I had no idea someone might object to it enough to call the police!
Anyway, here's the list of 25 Things We Did as Kids That Would Get Someone Arrested Today.
My favorites were ...
2. Leaving the house after breakfast and not returning until the streetlights came on, at which point, you raced home, ASAP so you didn’t get in trouble
22. Getting so dirty that your mom washed you off with the hose in the yard before letting you come into the house to have a shower
I've done #22 several times and #2 has always been the rule here. If I thought they weren't safe in our neighborhood, I wouldn't live here.
The Last Rebels
Re: The Last Rebels
Yeah, a lot of those are ridiculous to not allow your kids to do. Though, I'm kind of for not doing #1 for anything of any length/speed, #13, and #23.
Also, who the hell plays Cowboys and Indians/Cops and Robbers anymore? I'm 42 and never played either. Though, I definitely played with toy guns and shot real ones as a child.
Also, who the hell plays Cowboys and Indians/Cops and Robbers anymore? I'm 42 and never played either. Though, I definitely played with toy guns and shot real ones as a child.
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jacob
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Re: The Last Rebels
I think, fortunately, that these things would only get people arrested in certain locations where the safety-worshiping asshatishness is particularly strong. It's similar to the lovable characters from the HOA is complaining about "things in the yard as visible from the street depressing property values".
The best response would be to move. Not every place is like that.
From my window, I see one kid (age 8?) riding her bike up and down the street, unsupervised, putting on the miles. There are two kids blasting at each other using water guns on the sidewalk. One looks like a SPAS-12. The gun, not the kid. Admittedly, this is the first area wehere I've lived that I've ever seen this kind of activity in the US. Our area is 80% Hispanic. Many Gen1 and 2 immigrants. I suppose that's why we like it here.
When I was a kid we weren't allowed to bring plastic guns to school (as our teachers were a bunch of peace loving hippies(*)) but we were allowed to say BANG. Playing red vs blue (robbers, indians, soviets, etc.) was the main activity on the playground. Pretty much everybody walked or biked home from school on their own after the 1st grade. If you didn't it was very embarrassing! I was probably 10 or 11 the first time I got to ride my bike around town on my own.
(*) Being hippies, they did take it upon themselves to expand on our sex-ed curriculum and proceed to tell us about the wonders of oral sex when we were 11 years old causing the entire class to get Eeeeeew!! OTOH I am not aware of a single teen pregnancy of anyone I know personally.
I got my first air-rifle at 15 and took it all over the farm. At no time did the cops show up and proceed to kill me in the name of safety. Later (age 17 or so) we bought airsoft guns and walked down mainstreet in full tactical gear. Again nobody bothered us. At one sleep-over we were shooting at each other from the sleeping bag. Of course that was utterly stupid and we were lucky nobody lost an eye (one of us got grazed and went to the hospital after which the rest of us learned that goggles are important). I got hit in the teeth.
Major life lesson from this kind of play?
If I go to war as a grunt, there's a very real and very high chance that I would die or be permanently injured. Therefore I better have very very good reasons to do so. Maybe kids who've been ueber-cuddled have a stronger feeling of invincibility and would thus be inclined to go to war over substantially more supercilious reasons like introduing democracy while lowering oil prices?!
I could go on with experiences some of which might bring me in trouble for even describing them in today's environment (chilling effect?) but the point is that in most but not all cases we were fairly sure on the risks as were our parents. Always pushing the envelope but never substantially exceeding it. In particular, it was often encouraged to at least try something (like beer) under controlled circumstances (like at home) before we went and did something stupid out of ignorance elsewhere, out of control, with no rescue. Here the philosophy was that kids are always going to do stupid things so it's better to make sure that they fail safely and learn from it than try to make it illegal and thus push out the risk (how many 21 yos in the US suffer from alcohol poisoning on their 21st birthday?).
And so on ...
Of course my father has way better stories than me including shooting lead BBs at each other with weak air rifles (enough to break skin) wearing leather jackets. He probably thinks that my generation is a bunch of wussy pansies for only shooting plastic balls at each other
Of course both of us are appalled by a generation who thinks it's too risque to say "BANG!".
Perhaps it's time to remind ourselves that it's only been 150 years since teenagers captained schooners across the Atlantic.
The best response would be to move. Not every place is like that.
From my window, I see one kid (age 8?) riding her bike up and down the street, unsupervised, putting on the miles. There are two kids blasting at each other using water guns on the sidewalk. One looks like a SPAS-12. The gun, not the kid. Admittedly, this is the first area wehere I've lived that I've ever seen this kind of activity in the US. Our area is 80% Hispanic. Many Gen1 and 2 immigrants. I suppose that's why we like it here.
When I was a kid we weren't allowed to bring plastic guns to school (as our teachers were a bunch of peace loving hippies(*)) but we were allowed to say BANG. Playing red vs blue (robbers, indians, soviets, etc.) was the main activity on the playground. Pretty much everybody walked or biked home from school on their own after the 1st grade. If you didn't it was very embarrassing! I was probably 10 or 11 the first time I got to ride my bike around town on my own.
(*) Being hippies, they did take it upon themselves to expand on our sex-ed curriculum and proceed to tell us about the wonders of oral sex when we were 11 years old causing the entire class to get Eeeeeew!! OTOH I am not aware of a single teen pregnancy of anyone I know personally.
I got my first air-rifle at 15 and took it all over the farm. At no time did the cops show up and proceed to kill me in the name of safety. Later (age 17 or so) we bought airsoft guns and walked down mainstreet in full tactical gear. Again nobody bothered us. At one sleep-over we were shooting at each other from the sleeping bag. Of course that was utterly stupid and we were lucky nobody lost an eye (one of us got grazed and went to the hospital after which the rest of us learned that goggles are important). I got hit in the teeth.
Major life lesson from this kind of play?
If I go to war as a grunt, there's a very real and very high chance that I would die or be permanently injured. Therefore I better have very very good reasons to do so. Maybe kids who've been ueber-cuddled have a stronger feeling of invincibility and would thus be inclined to go to war over substantially more supercilious reasons like introduing democracy while lowering oil prices?!
I could go on with experiences some of which might bring me in trouble for even describing them in today's environment (chilling effect?) but the point is that in most but not all cases we were fairly sure on the risks as were our parents. Always pushing the envelope but never substantially exceeding it. In particular, it was often encouraged to at least try something (like beer) under controlled circumstances (like at home) before we went and did something stupid out of ignorance elsewhere, out of control, with no rescue. Here the philosophy was that kids are always going to do stupid things so it's better to make sure that they fail safely and learn from it than try to make it illegal and thus push out the risk (how many 21 yos in the US suffer from alcohol poisoning on their 21st birthday?).
And so on ...
Of course my father has way better stories than me including shooting lead BBs at each other with weak air rifles (enough to break skin) wearing leather jackets. He probably thinks that my generation is a bunch of wussy pansies for only shooting plastic balls at each other
Of course both of us are appalled by a generation who thinks it's too risque to say "BANG!".Perhaps it's time to remind ourselves that it's only been 150 years since teenagers captained schooners across the Atlantic.
Re: The Last Rebels
I've done all but #3 (I don't think peanut butter was a thing around here when I was a kid) and #13 (what kind of a snake lives in the river?)
Re: The Last Rebels
It's a miracle that anyone lived through the 70s and 80s.I picked green beans and grapes and strawberries for hours in the sun in my single digits and this was not child abuse... it was a fun afternoon working alongside my parents. I caught and cleaned my own fish (which entailed using sharp pointy things called "knives" and "fishhooks"). I caught crawdads in a creek, barefoot, and was occasionally pinched by them and I lived to tell the tale. I shot guns and arrows and used explosives (M-80s, anyone?). I also ran into an electric fence, fell off a pony, got bit by the neighbor's dog, hit by a bicycle, stumbled into an unmarked and unfilled sinkhole, and was disciplined (occasionally physically) by persons other than my parents when I acted a fool. This was all considered a normal part of growing up in the country and no one got pissed off or sued.
@henrik: there are several snakes that swim, but the one that might have got me to throw rocks would be the uber-territorial cottonmouth, which is the only snake that I have ever seen chase people.
Edit: and what was once called "parenting" is now called "free range parenting." I admit to putting my then-11-year-old on a plane alone to go see his grandparents... I suppose that makes me a child abuser.
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jacob
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Re: The Last Rebels
@GandK - Alright, I admit it ... I actually built explosives and various fire throwing contraptions out of kitchen utensils when I was a young teen. Don't tell my parents! Voluntarily admitting the fire incident at the creek was embarrassing enough. Of course my dad took a piss on an electric fence on a dare when he was a kid. This makes me believe that I was the smarter kid since I still have all my fingers. FYI I'm told that taking a piss on an electric fence is a really really really bad idea to the one doing it albeit apparently quite hilarious to everybody else.
I wonder whether all this safety-BS is blowback to the liberty Gen-X enjoyed when we were kids. I must admit that I'm very reluctant to teaching anyone the amazing things that are possible with things found in the kitchen to a 12yo at this point. Is GenX especially onerous on parenting because we were especially free when raised?
I wonder whether all this safety-BS is blowback to the liberty Gen-X enjoyed when we were kids. I must admit that I'm very reluctant to teaching anyone the amazing things that are possible with things found in the kitchen to a 12yo at this point. Is GenX especially onerous on parenting because we were especially free when raised?
Re: The Last Rebels
Owned no actual weapons and I was the kid with deadly peanut allergy eating cream cheese and jelly on Wonder bread but did everything else on the list even though I grew up in super-bland suburbia in the 70s. Let my own kids run around naked with finger paint as much as possible in the 90s.
OTOH, back to the top of my pet peeve list is people who allow their toddlers to wander around near traffic unsupervised. I was attempting to keep 30 second graders under control on urban playground the other day and I had to dart out to stop cars because neighborhood toddler was running after lost balloon. On the plus side, I am now more motivated to improve my aerobic conditioning.
I've also had to deal with two very young escapees from the school system. If you let some of them go to the bathroom unescorted, they will run out of the school and head for home or wherever. One of them returned a couple hours later with two glass bottles of soda in the side pockets of his pants (serious danger given this kid's typical behavior which is not unlike that of a Tasmanian devil.) Apparently, he went home watched TV with his dozing grandfather for awhile and then got bored so decided to return to school with snacks.
OTOH, back to the top of my pet peeve list is people who allow their toddlers to wander around near traffic unsupervised. I was attempting to keep 30 second graders under control on urban playground the other day and I had to dart out to stop cars because neighborhood toddler was running after lost balloon. On the plus side, I am now more motivated to improve my aerobic conditioning.
I've also had to deal with two very young escapees from the school system. If you let some of them go to the bathroom unescorted, they will run out of the school and head for home or wherever. One of them returned a couple hours later with two glass bottles of soda in the side pockets of his pants (serious danger given this kid's typical behavior which is not unlike that of a Tasmanian devil.) Apparently, he went home watched TV with his dozing grandfather for awhile and then got bored so decided to return to school with snacks.
Re: The Last Rebels
I think like Jacob said it is location dependent. I entered my teenage years 10 years ago and we were doing about everything on that list with the exception of 2 or 3. Although I'll admit. things could have changed a fair bit during that period.
@Jacob- I think it is blowback. In The Fourth Turning they talk about how the 4th generation (in the cycle) has the strictest parenting. The 2nd generation (Gen X) was raised with the loosest restrictions. Parenting was strengthened during the 3rd generation and after the next transition ultimately arrives at what they are today. I don't think this is anything new, just part of the cycle.
@Jacob- I think it is blowback. In The Fourth Turning they talk about how the 4th generation (in the cycle) has the strictest parenting. The 2nd generation (Gen X) was raised with the loosest restrictions. Parenting was strengthened during the 3rd generation and after the next transition ultimately arrives at what they are today. I don't think this is anything new, just part of the cycle.
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George the original one
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Re: The Last Rebels
#4 resulted in getting 4 concussions
#7 sadly not much... I nearly drowned at the beach, age 5, so I was traumatized a bit and didn't learn to swim until age 10. Strangely, I was perfectly comfortable climbing around in a boat?
#13 Unlike water moccasins in the southern states, the snakes in Oregon generally avoid water, though I was stunned when I met a bull snake coming across a stream I was wading once...
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@ffj - visiting a friend's house (high school), they had a bottle rocket war with the neighbor kids across the street. Game ended when one bottle rocket went sailing inside friend's house and detonated in the kitchen. Nah, nobody's parents were home.
***
Let's see, now about the stories...
A) When I was 2 or 3, the I-5 freeway was being built through north Portland. The residential street in front of our house was all there was before you encountered the freeway-to-be. It was a sunken freeway, to contain noise. Somehow I slipped away from mom to go play with the "big Tonka Toys". Before I got crushed, a workman scooped me up and delivered me back to the neighborhood; only it was on the other side of the freeway because I'd made it that far across before being collected! Lady on that side of the freeway called the police while giving me milk & cookies. Meanwhile, mom noticed I was missing and called the police. The dispatcher was smart enough to figure out what had happened and facilitated return of oblivious smurf-child. Hey, wait a minute, the police WERE called, but nobody was charged, LOL!
B) When I was 5, I carefully walked to the nearest grocery store that also had a few toys (5-6 blocks away, across a bridge over the freeway <ahem>), plunked down a quarter to buy the slingshot, walked back home, and whole family never knew until I explained several years later how I'd obtained the slingshot.
C) Parents had grown up with a fair amount of responsibility heaped upon them, so it's not surprising that I was given a power jigsaw at age 7 and a .22 rifle at age 10. Mom wasn't too happy about the rifle (dad's purchase), but she let me keep it.
D) Age 9, we were in a new neighborhood in newly constructed subdivision out in what used to be farmland. Lived there beginning age 6. New stingray bicycle (a green huffy single-speed Huffy; friend was cooler because he had the 5-spd with Hurst shifter guaranteed to neuter boys if they fell off the seat going forward!) gave me the range to ride 1-2 miles to the stores and other interesting places. Parents had divorced back when I was 6, so mom (being practical about child raising, especially since I was #4 and the others were grown) basically gave me free range provided I played by her rules and knew the other parents would help keep an eye out for the neighborhood kids. It worked, knew only one kid who got hit by a car, but that was due to a driver ignoring the flashing lights on the school bus. We prowled house construction sites and dug forts in somebody's field behind our house and had dirt clod fights and organized our own football teams and had bicycle races and strung the backyard with everybody's Hot Wheels track and ...
#7 sadly not much... I nearly drowned at the beach, age 5, so I was traumatized a bit and didn't learn to swim until age 10. Strangely, I was perfectly comfortable climbing around in a boat?
#13 Unlike water moccasins in the southern states, the snakes in Oregon generally avoid water, though I was stunned when I met a bull snake coming across a stream I was wading once...
***
@ffj - visiting a friend's house (high school), they had a bottle rocket war with the neighbor kids across the street. Game ended when one bottle rocket went sailing inside friend's house and detonated in the kitchen. Nah, nobody's parents were home.
***
Let's see, now about the stories...
A) When I was 2 or 3, the I-5 freeway was being built through north Portland. The residential street in front of our house was all there was before you encountered the freeway-to-be. It was a sunken freeway, to contain noise. Somehow I slipped away from mom to go play with the "big Tonka Toys". Before I got crushed, a workman scooped me up and delivered me back to the neighborhood; only it was on the other side of the freeway because I'd made it that far across before being collected! Lady on that side of the freeway called the police while giving me milk & cookies. Meanwhile, mom noticed I was missing and called the police. The dispatcher was smart enough to figure out what had happened and facilitated return of oblivious smurf-child. Hey, wait a minute, the police WERE called, but nobody was charged, LOL!
B) When I was 5, I carefully walked to the nearest grocery store that also had a few toys (5-6 blocks away, across a bridge over the freeway <ahem>), plunked down a quarter to buy the slingshot, walked back home, and whole family never knew until I explained several years later how I'd obtained the slingshot.
C) Parents had grown up with a fair amount of responsibility heaped upon them, so it's not surprising that I was given a power jigsaw at age 7 and a .22 rifle at age 10. Mom wasn't too happy about the rifle (dad's purchase), but she let me keep it.
D) Age 9, we were in a new neighborhood in newly constructed subdivision out in what used to be farmland. Lived there beginning age 6. New stingray bicycle (a green huffy single-speed Huffy; friend was cooler because he had the 5-spd with Hurst shifter guaranteed to neuter boys if they fell off the seat going forward!) gave me the range to ride 1-2 miles to the stores and other interesting places. Parents had divorced back when I was 6, so mom (being practical about child raising, especially since I was #4 and the others were grown) basically gave me free range provided I played by her rules and knew the other parents would help keep an eye out for the neighborhood kids. It worked, knew only one kid who got hit by a car, but that was due to a driver ignoring the flashing lights on the school bus. We prowled house construction sites and dug forts in somebody's field behind our house and had dirt clod fights and organized our own football teams and had bicycle races and strung the backyard with everybody's Hot Wheels track and ...
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enigmaT120
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Re: The Last Rebels
I've seen several garter snakes swimming in rivers. One I was teasing with a stick (he thought he was a little rattle snake) and he got disgusted and headed to cross the river. I don't know why the others were in the water.
Re: The Last Rebels
Yes, I think it is. I agree with the posters who see this as a largely cyclical thing and we are back at the coddled generation stage like we were circa 1937 when the "Greatest Generation" was thought to be incompetent imbeciles. History is written backwards.jacob wrote:
I wonder whether all this safety-BS is blowback to the liberty Gen-X enjoyed when we were kids. I must admit that I'm very reluctant to teaching anyone the amazing things that are possible with things found in the kitchen to a 12yo at this point. Is GenX especially onerous on parenting because we were especially free when raised?
On the other hand, I have never taught my children the joys of creating hydrogen with lye and tin-foil in a glass quart coke bottle that could be used to inflate large balloons that might fly away or happen to catch on fire a la the Hindenburg. The days of being able to buy saltpeter and sulphur at the local pharmacy also appear to be long gone.
We didn't play cops and robbers, but we did play "war" with sticks for swords and trash can lids for shields.
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reepicheep
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Re: The Last Rebels
I'm 25. As a child/pre-teen I organized my local neighborhood kids into a milita ala Girl Who Owned a City in preparation for the inevitable day when every adult would lose their mind/physical capacity due to <some nebulous major disaster impacting only adults>.
We had a tree-house base that someone built in the woods, maps of our local elementary school, an established military-esque hierarchy, camoflauge "uniforms", home-made ID badges, and a 4-wheeler we drove around on in order to plan for our coup/dam up the wetlands with sandbags/move fallen trees around.
We also had a several year-long game of Little House on the Prairie in my backyard (1/3 of an acre).
I might have benefited from more supervision.
We had a tree-house base that someone built in the woods, maps of our local elementary school, an established military-esque hierarchy, camoflauge "uniforms", home-made ID badges, and a 4-wheeler we drove around on in order to plan for our coup/dam up the wetlands with sandbags/move fallen trees around.
We also had a several year-long game of Little House on the Prairie in my backyard (1/3 of an acre).
I might have benefited from more supervision.
Re: The Last Rebels
We did war and Star Wars, with rope swings and hay forts. A barn is a fantastic play ground.Dragline wrote: We didn't play cops and robbers, but we did play "war" with sticks for swords and trash can lids for shields.
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jennypenny
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Re: The Last Rebels
Pictorial Essay: 18 Things I Did That My Grand-kids Can’t Do Without Someone Getting Arrested
More of the same, but still funny. And sad.
More of the same, but still funny. And sad.
Re: The Last Rebels
Where can drinking water from the hose get you arrested?? I do/did this all the time, I enjoy the taste having grown up on an acreage.
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enigmaT120
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Re: The Last Rebels
No idea. I still drink from my hose, if I"m outside and thirsty. Of course my spring water isn't treated in any way so it probably doesn't matter.
Re: The Last Rebels
On the subject of, 'what we did then, what they do now', here is a link to a post in a travel forum on the differences between then and now. In particular, on what youth today call 'Gap Year Travel'.
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/ ... ned-travel
My favourite example of the difference between then and now was a post by a Mother asking for advice to give to her daughter half a world away. The daughter called her Mother on her cellphone to ask her what to do when her card did not work in an ATM. My heartfelt advice to the Mother was to tell her daughter to figure it out for herself.
Not only have they sanitized kids at play, they've sanitized just about everything else. Adventure by definition requires 2 things, risk and the unknown. That's apparently not allowed now either.
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/ ... ned-travel
My favourite example of the difference between then and now was a post by a Mother asking for advice to give to her daughter half a world away. The daughter called her Mother on her cellphone to ask her what to do when her card did not work in an ATM. My heartfelt advice to the Mother was to tell her daughter to figure it out for herself.
Not only have they sanitized kids at play, they've sanitized just about everything else. Adventure by definition requires 2 things, risk and the unknown. That's apparently not allowed now either.
Re: The Last Rebels
If I can substitute killing a snake or throwing rocks at beehives for #13, then I can say I've done them all. Huzzah!
I remember one time my freshman year in college when some friends had been playing football on campus and somehow the ball got stuck in a tree. About five of them had been trying in vain to get it down for several minutes. I walked up and instinctively climbed the tree and got the ball down in less than 30 seconds, and they looked at me like I was some kind of superhero. I was similarly flabbergasted to learn that some kids never climbed trees growing up.
I remember one time my freshman year in college when some friends had been playing football on campus and somehow the ball got stuck in a tree. About five of them had been trying in vain to get it down for several minutes. I walked up and instinctively climbed the tree and got the ball down in less than 30 seconds, and they looked at me like I was some kind of superhero. I was similarly flabbergasted to learn that some kids never climbed trees growing up.
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George the original one
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Re: The Last Rebels
DW was not allowed to climb trees or splash about in the creek by her mom, though her brother was (he was 4 yrs older). She had never watched the usual '60s reruns either, like Gilligan's Island and Adam's Family and Scooby Doo. How un-American can you get for someone born in '62, LOL!Tyler9000 wrote:I was similarly flabbergasted to learn that some kids never climbed trees growing up.