Probably the most stupid thing I have ever did....and now makes me shutter...was when I was in high school.... I had a girl friend whose dad was a doctor and always had a "hot" car. Anyway, she took a challenge from a boy from a nearby town to race him in his '57 Chevy...and when I looked at the speedometer, it was pegging out at 145 mph on a weavy blacktop road!....but we won!!!

Oh lots of things. But the craziest was hanging on the flood gates under the bridge when the creek was high and racing. I never learned to swim either. If my kid did that I'd faint.

Our family had a gold mining claim with log cabins, no inside plumbing or running water.

My cousin and I would leave after morning chores to go exploring......with our .22 rifles.

We cut down trees, shot ground squirrels, ran across rattlesnakes and drank creek water.

Lots of great memories, some scars and a lot of learning by doing.

Yes to the garden hose. That rubbery tasting water was so refreshing on a hot summer day. Also I used to taste growing things in the yard. The unfurling tips of growing ferns were a favorite. There were a number of things as a teenager, but I'd like to forget them.

I lived across the street from the city park. I played there everyday. There was a cannon that I would walk the length of, sort of like the balance beam but I didn't do flips on it. Ha I never fell off which was good because it had cement under it. Also I would walk across some of the other play ground equipment that was several feet off the ground. I would go down a tall tall slide that later was removed because it was "too dangerous". Years later someone told my sister that my siblings thought they owned that park, she laughed and said "we did". It was our front yard.

We would go out our bedroom window onto the roof and jump for the tree branch to sneak out. Also drank out of the hose. 3 riders on one bike, got my foot mangled one time in the spokes coz I was on the handle bars. We would also go to the park, get on the swings, get as high as we could and jump off! Sometimes from sitting positions, sometimes from standing positions. I don't know how we didn't break anything.

There's a bridge at the end of town that goes over a river. I honestly don't know how high up it is, it's high! I was dared to walk on the railing of it and I did! Good Lord!

The other really crazy thing I did was jump off the old Iron Bridge. A bridge out of town that everyone jumped from, almost like a rite of passage. Well, not everyone. I was with my boyfriend (who is my DH now) my younger brother and one of his friends. We got up on the rail stood there for a second then jumped. It was so far down I didn't know when to take a breath. I took a deep breath, jumped, let the breath out and took another just as I hit the water. Luckily the water was deep at the time. The current was pretty fast, I came up on the other side of the bridge! Talk about stupid, haha.

Oh we nearly gave my mom a heart attack. My grandfather's barn was directly across from the kitchen window at our house but there was a good sized rice field between our house and the barn. It was a huge barn with an upstairs hay loft. There was a hay loft door facing our house. There was a beam that protruded above the door with a rope that they used to pull the hay bails up into the loft from the wagon below. One day my 2 older sisters were ordered to take me with them and get out of the house. They were not happy about that because I was much younger. So they took me with them to the hay loft, we could almost always find a litter of kittens nested up in the hay. There were always lots of barn cats around taking care of the mice. This day they decided they would bet each other to swing out of the hay loft door on that rope and not fall and kill themselves. So began the game. I of course wanted in on the fun. So they wrap my hands around the rope, tell me to hang on and they shoved me out of the door. I was having a great time. But it just so happens that mom was standing at the kitchen sink and looked out of the window about the time they flung me out of the loft door! We could hear her screaming all the way in the barn. But that little woman somehow flew across a rice field, over the barb wire fence, and and up the ladder to the hay loft before we could get out of the hay loft. I honestly have no idea how. They nearly left me dangling from the rope in their panic. Mom jerked me up and checked me over then began to run down the list of just how punished my sisters were! I of course was too little to know better so I wasn't punished. That didn't improve the relationship between my sisters and me. LOL none of us every forgot that and we never did that again. I lived on a big working farm I probably did something every day that was dangerous but it was just life on the farm.

While growing up, we did things that make me wonder why we survived. One of us did not survive stupidity, and he was the brightest kid in high school. He played a mean clarinet, won musical contests with it and graduated with the highest score in school, but soon after came a fatal mistake. He had ordered chemicals to make small batches of explosives thinking to construct giant firecrackers for the 4th of July. He and a buddy were experimenting at building a big bang, when in fact, they had constructed a pipe-bomb. Explosives were packed in a thin walled metal tube and the ends capped. They lit the fuse and tossed the 'fire cracker' out on the front lawn. A very loud, satisfying bang resulted, And then his buddy turned to see this boy on the ground flaying his arms and legs - He died. A thin sliver of metal had pierced his heart.

Our country grade school had a pair of outdoor toilets. A large elm tree grew near the Boy's toilet. this magnificent tree had drooping branches typical of American Elm and the tip of one of those branches was near the roof of the boy's toilet. We boys would climb up on the roof, lean over to grab this tree branch and swing to the ground. Mind you, the heavier ones had to grab the branch far enough up to avoid crashing into the ground. With a good grab, we Tarzans could get a goodly swing distance. Lucky, elm branches are flexible and tough.

When very young, I went barefoot for much of the summer donning shoes only when there was work to be done or to walk through thistles, cockleburs, jimpson weeds, and other stickers, One day, at the swimming hole in the river, I ventured too far downstream to the shallow part of a gravel bed and got into the area where frfeah water muscles lived. When these die, they relax, their shells open, the meaty parts are consumed, and the shell begins to deteriorate. Often, these shells end up parked with the open edge pointed up and worn to knife edge sharp. i stepped on one and nearly sliced my heal off. I limped home (1/4 mile) keeping my heel out of the dust and dirt the best I could. aT home, the wound was cleaned with water and the edges sanitized with kerosene and then bandaged.

I learned to drive in my Dad's old 1928 Model A Ford. One day while going around a corner (after a stop), the front wheel fell off. I examined the mess and found that the entire assembly had come off, wheel and brake drum. The lug nuts were in place and tight. The spindle nut was laying in the dirt and the wheel bearings were exposed. i jacked the axle up, cleaned the dirt off the bearings and spindle, added a bit of grease to the bearings, and slid the wheel back in piace. When I spun on the spindle nut, I found the problem. I could not snug the spindle nut because it was stripped! All that had been holding the wheel on was the cotter pin and when it sheared, the wheel came off. It was only minutes before this mishap, I had been going 40 mph on a gravel road. I rummaged around under the back seat for another cotter pin, put it in, and gingerly nursed the car home. (Anyone who has driven a Model A knows that stuff like a jack, tire pump, tube patching kit, wrenches, and other assortred junk that might be useful someday are stored under the back seat.)

That car had only a hint of brakes. The best brake was the hand brake. Some folks called this a parking brake, but we drivers in the know called it an emergency brake. I had to plan my stops well in advance, double clutching and gearing down in concert with the foot brake to rub off speed and sometimes i had to grab a handful of the 'emergency' brake to complete the stop.

One night when my sister and I was returning from a fall party, We were going around a corner and the steering locked in place. (The king pins were badly worn and jammed.) The car kept turning and slammed into the ditch coming to an abrupt halt. My body pushed against the steering wheel, but my sister lurched forward and banged her forehead against a steel cross member. A large knot raised on her head. A friend happened by. He pulled us out of the ditch and we found that the tie rod was bent. We partly straighten it and drove the car to his house which was about 1/2 mile away. There, we removed the tie rod, straightened it and put it back in hoping that it was the same length as before the accident. (Tie rod ends are adjusted to give proper alignment of the front wheels for steering.) My sister and I completed our drive home.

Why did we survive?

The one thing that I always think about that was risky that I used to do was when I was little, not even old enough to go to school, I would walk to a feed store that was just a few blocks from the house but still, I was probably 5 years old! I would go over there and play on the bags of feed and sit on the saddles and was totally amazed by all the stuff there. The only person that was there was just this old man...imagine I never was molested or anything. HA! I did a lot of other things that people would never allow kids to do these days, but this one thing stands out.

Play tag, Red Rover, snowball fights, rake leaves, all at school recess. Today our schools don't let kids play tag or run for fear they get hurt.

Another thing is lose at a game. Kids aren't allowed to lose at sports, so that they aren't disappointed. No one is allowed to fail a grade, and repeat it, either.

Happily, my sons did not get in the mischief and dangerous situations their mother did. To this day I feel sorry for my mother (dad was working and not aware of most stunts).

No seatbelts in cars, riding our bikes in the street with no helmets. Although my sister did hit a car once (the car did not hit her as the story goes, LOL. She was riding bike with her friend looking back and banged into a car coming up the road. He was driving very slowly because he saw my sister on her bike but did not blow his horn because he didn't want to frighten her??!!!?? My sister hit his side mirror and broke it off, then my father made her to up the street to his house and pay for the mirror. Crazy).

W also played other games in the street like tennis and such and just got out of the way when cars came by.

If we were eating candy or blowing bubble gum and it fell on the ground we just picked it up, washed it off with the hose and continued eating it.

Kisiverd, I could have written your post. Other than the kids that grew up in my neighborhood, and my sibs, I don't know anyone who remembers running after the "mosquito man" as we called him. Kid would be running in the street, riding their bikes into each other, generally screeching and having a blast while breathing in clouds of insecticide. And our parents never questioned it, boggles my mind! And we did all of the other things--fires in the woods to "cook" food, forts in the backyard with blankets or refridgerator boxes, riding our bikes on busy roads. Never would I have let my kids do the things I did!

arkansasgirl - we did that too! Only it was a mill up town. Can you imagine how dangerous that was to be around the big grinders and pits in the plank floors? No one told us to get out, if they told our parents, we never knew. And best of all we used to hang around the slaughter house! Oh my. I saw things a little kid probably should not have seen, but at the time it was seen as a natural occurrence I guess. Yes I sympathized with the animals but somehow knew this was how it was, everything from the actual killing to the slaughtering. Gosh. I can't even imagine that now.

And I'll tell you one more thing related to the above. We hung out and swam in the creek constantly. Sometimes a kid would alert us to get out of the water until the blood coming from the slaughter house and into the creek washed on down. This was a time when not all houses had indoor plumbing too ( up into the 1950's), so you know what else could appear. This is a true story! Incredible, we never got sick.

I'd forgotten Red Rover -- one game where the fat kids were chosen first.

I remember the mosquito sprayer. My mother kept me inside when it came by, but I inhaled more than my share of smoke from leaf bonfires in the gutters every fall.

Nobody wore a *helmet* to skate or ride a bike. (When did construction crews start wearing hard hats?)

Construction sites were never fenced. We climbed around in houses before the floors or stairs were installed. I 'rescued' a nest with three baby rabbits from one tall dirt pile. I tried to feed them from a doll's baby bottle before my mother 'took them to the vet'.

Our parents would drive us to the Des Plaines River to sled down an embankment, going out onto the ice at the bottom. This river never completely froze over, but I don't remember anyone falling in. Kids hitched rides on running boards of cars driven by...*their parents*. I was very upset when I got too tall to continue to lie on the shelf under the back window of our car to watch the stars when we drove home after dark.

When I was about 12, we vacationed at Estes Park. My mother let me get a horse from the stable and ride out alone. After a few minutes I realized I had no idea where I was. Mom knew the horse would eventually want to go home -- and it did -- but not for a *long time*.

A few years ago, topic on irreverent talk radio station was a "proposed" ban of potentially LETHAL games/activities at camps?!? Red Rover was on the list of "top 10". Can't remember all but Frisbee was there... tug of war, dodge ball, OF COURSE.

My brother used to teach at a school for, shall we say, juvenile delinquents... I'm SURE that term is NOT PC any more?!? Had to endure a "professional development workshop" on PE activities. It was strongly suggested that games like TAG be total NON-contact... like PRETEND you tag or were tagged? THAT was a deciding factor on deciding to RETIRE for him!

Once I was walking home from school, through the city park, and found a swinging rope rigged up in a tree in the park, along the path, at the top of the hill. I swung on it once, and realized I was wearing my school clothes, so I went home to change. My mother asked where I was going, and after I explained she said, "Well if you break your arm, don't come crying to me."

I got back to the park and there were four or five kids there counting me and my younger brother. We started by taking turns swinging out over the hill, and back to the starting spot. After a while someone tried swinging out and when he reached the apex of his swing, intentionally let go, to drop down to the hill below. Others soon followed suit, and before long it evolved to a contest, to see who could land the furthest down the hill.

The other kids tried getting a running start, or even running up the hill behind them first to get more speed so they could go further down the hill. I was observing that the additional speed barely affected how far out the apex of the swing was, and so it barely affected where they would land. I had the brilliant idea to let go while I was still swinging outward rather than letting go at the apex of the swing, so I would go further, and I would win!

On my next turn, I tried that plan, and the very instant I let go while still swinging outward, I knew it was a bad idea. As I started flying outward, I tried to turn and grab the rope, but, no dice. The hill was fairly steep, and became steeper toward the bottom, so the further out you went, the further you would fall. From the point where I let go to the point where I hit the hill was about 30 feet. I landed hard on my outstretched arms and legs and tried to absorb some of the impact, before slamming my chest into the ground, knocking the wind out of me.

I stood up and asked the other boys to hit my back in the hopes that would cause me to start breathing again. It did. I took stock of the situation and didn't have an obvious injury, except
my right arm hurt some, and if I moved it a certain way, it hurt a lot. I wasn't sure what to do though, since although I had escaped serious injury, it really seemed like my arm was likely broken, and my mom had specifically said if that happened, to not come crying to her.

I tried running cold water on it, and sat on the swings, trying to decide what to do and eventually went home and went to my room saying I wasn't hungry. About five minutes later my brother came into the kitchen, (immediately below my room) and asked, "How's Bob's arm?" The parents came upstairs and demanded to see my arm. I held out the left one saying "see, it's fine" they said show us the other one. They just turned the arm over, and I yelped in pain, and we were off to the emergency room.

If I had gone just a few feet further down the hill, instead of hitting the steeply
sloping hill which lessened the impact, I would have landed on the flat blacktop walkway at the
bottom of the hill, and very likely would have died, or at least would
have broken everything.

Though you "telegraphed" your story... it's a GREAT one! I can almost hear most of these being narrated in a style similar to "A Christmas Story"!

I had an alligator snapping turtle as a pet. Baby turtles I kept in little dishes with palm trees. We slid down arroyos in Albuquerque on pieces of cardboard and tumbled down the sand hills head first. My friends would gather at the creek and there was a rope swing we'd try to swing out and not drop off the rope into the water "or" drop into a deep spot. I dared myself to eat chili dogs at Tasty Freeze that were so hot they'd set your mouth on fire. I wore dresses in gym class, no special uniform and climbed a rope without using my feet competing with the boys. In 3rd grade I spent ALL year trying to beat Zoe at tetherball at recess, she was the reining champ. I finally beat her and she never played again.

My parents were in some ways overly protective of us. I think it was probably because my dad had so many people in his life who died young.

His 8 year old cousin drowned along with her 13 yo friend. Neither could swim and one got too far out in the water. The other went out to save her. They are buried next to each other in the cemetery. My dad wouldn't let us go out in the water above our waist.

My dad's little sister died when she was a toddler of a childhood disease that can now be prevented. He turned four the week she was buried. He was very insistent about immunizations and medication when we were growing up.

Some of his neighbor kids were playing on the train tracks when he was a kid. I'm not sure if he saw that actual accident or just saw the aftermath Their skulls were showing. My grandfather told me about that story.

IMO, we are too cautious today although we don't necessarily need to go back to all of the old ways.

Schools had monkey bars, swing sets, teeter-totters and 10' high slides. And chisue, you could call them "fat kids" in those days but not anymore. They're anorexically challenged".

I have to shake my head when I see people out riding bikes with their "helmets" on. One person I know calls them "yamaka helmets" since that's about as much of the head they really cover or "protect". But they have their colorful helmet on and wear spandex shorts and shirt. So only the top of their head concerns them on protection. They don't know about road rash, gashes in the legs and stuff. Yup, they're "safer". And they put their kids in a suit of armor but put them in a trailer behind the bike.

Of course we'd go wandering. And didn't need a cell phone to know when we're supposed to be home. We'd walk miles. Climb trees. Some would even go into a room alone with a priest! But not anymore!

The mosquito fogg reminded me of something. My dad was a rice farmer, our house was surrounded by Rice fields. At certain times of the growing season they hire a crop duster plane to come fly over the fields and dust it with chemicals, some times fertilizer some time pesticides. There was 2 people in the field with a pole and a white sheet on it called flag men, they would line up with each other and the pilot knew to follow that line and dust his load from one flag man to the other. Of course being a flag man meant you also got heavily dusted with what ever it was. I have been flag man many times. But this day I was not working the fields with daddy, I was helping mom do chores. She had a huge load of sheets she washed and we were hanging them out on the clothes line behind the house which was right between 2rice fields. We kept hearing a plane it was apparently looking for it's scheduled field to dust. Suddenly we thought wow that plane sounds close and very low. About that time he dumped his load directly on top of me and mom and the clean sheets. He saw sheets and thought we were flag men and he saw rice fields so it must be the spot. I thought we were going to die. We dove under the sheets which were not much protection. My mom was furious. She was going to have to spend another day washing sheets! She took me to the water hose and washed me down then I did the same to her. Daddy was in a different field waiting for the crop duster that went astray!

Istarted hunting with my family, daddy, gramppa, cousins, when I was in first grade. We had extensive training with rifles and shotguns very early on and you would never hear of accidental shooting because we never played with the guns we used them to hunt for food. Same holds true today for my family, the kids are trained very early on how to shoot and how to safely handle your guns. My nephews were bagging deer before they were in school. The only person I knew that died from a gunshot injury was a man who lived down our road, he had a depression disorder, he went out into the woods and committed suicide.

Ihad a motorcycle before I had a bicycle and all of my friends got them too. We would ride all over the place. One of the group had his dad make a dirt track on their farm, the bayou ran right along side of the track. I can't tell you how many of us kids went flying off the track into the bayou...deadly snakes and lots of gators lurking in that muddy water. No one died, a few injuries.

Ihad a loggerhead snapping turtle too! That thing tried many times to take off one of my fingers. My mom finally got fed up with it and it suddenly "escaped" one day when I was at school. Daddy used to bring me all sorts of little critters he would find in the fields and woods. Once it was a whole litter of baby foxes that the mother had been killed. We raised them like puppies. I would walk them on leashes. When they were fully grown we turned them loose. They would come visit us for years.

Those little turtles you kept in the bowl with the "palm tree". One, poor things DIED quickly... they could turn that little bit of water absolutely disgusting in a day or 2. Two, they are actually a major carrier of salmonella?!? Here and I thought it was from raw chicken?!?

I still love the taste of "garden hose" water!

I grew up before there were seat belts. Hey! Cars didn't even have air-conditioning!

I ate fruit and veggies raw, and directly from the source- even carrots! You just have to brush them off on your pants-leg or your sleeve "real good"! I can think of no flavor better than that of a vine-ripened tomato, sunshine warmed, and plucked directly from the source...unless it is a peach a grape or a pea or a berry of any kind!

We rode our bikes (pre-helmet days) to a narrow part of "Sewer Creek" (yes, it has that name for a reason) and enjoyed jumping over it, time-and-time again.

We did not use sun screen. We used a baby oil and iodine blend to "help" us tan. We didn't have aqua-sox to protect our feet from ocean, lake and river dangers. We learned to swim before there were Aqua-wings and floaty swim suits.

My list goes on and on! I enjoyed a safe and seemingly-sheltered childhood in a small town.

We would ride standing up next to Daddy on his bench seat car. OH I remember one thing, back when my sister(much older than me) and her husband were young parents, they had two small kids and owned a Corvette. They drove up to our vacation home all the way from Houston to Galveston with the two kids in the back, sitting on the floor behind the front seats. OMG! Even at the time, I thought that was not very safe!!!!! HA!

Ha! Same with me and the mosquito trucks! I also had a pet snapping turtle, and also the little turtles with the palm tree. We never washed our hands after handling them. We also never had seat-belts, many times when dad had to slam on the brakes we went flying because we were standing on our knees looking backwards out the back window. I used to run around with the boys in our neighborhood, we'd go down to the pond and throw rocks at the massive alligator there (no fence.) We used to play in the rain-swollen ditches and gutters and catch tadpoles, crawfish and baby fish. And we never had shoes in the summer. And every kid had that first day of a bad sunburn at the lake or beach in the summer. We were made to drink out of the water-hose, too. We knew better than to run in the house, mom would make us do chores like scrubbing and waxing the floors or something. Once I caught an armadillo and brought it into the house. After 3 days of sitting in the corner of the living room I let it go. Years later I found out they carry leprosy! We climbed trees and made bows and arrows from the sticks and branches outside, the arrows were sharp enough to imbed themselves in a tree trunk. We went riding our bikes and were out for hours, no-one thought anything of it and no helmets. We skated with those steel shoe skates on the rough concrete, no protective padding. When you went down on that stuff on your knee or elbow, particles of concrete were imbedded in the gaping, bleeding wound. The monkey bars at one school were so old and rusty that when you swung all the way across them the rust would cut your hand up, yet no-one thought of sueing the school system. They figured if you were stupid enough to play on it you deserved it! We were expected to learn by our stupidity or else die from it.

I wrecked my bike because of my own clumsiness earlier this summer. I fell over and the helmet saved my my head from direct impact with the pavement. It came in handy there. The bike clothes don't protect you from road rash, but the closer fit keeps the bell bottoms out of the bike chain. (Happened to my brother years ago.) We're very light complected and sunburn easy. I buy the spf jerseys and sun protection sleeves for my husband and redhead child who wants them to protect from sunburn. I also buy the jerseys in fluorescent colors so they can be seen by motorists. When I was a kid, we didn't have paved areas or sidewalks to ride on. We didn't worry about getting hit by a car very much.

We grew some of our own fruit and veggies. I picked up cow patties from our couple of cows with my bare hands to use for fertilizer. There was an old outhouse there too that we used when too far away from the indoor bathroom. No ecoli that I know of.

We used to have a well at our house. A brother and I ended up with ulcers from what was most likely a bacterial contamination of our well water by surrounding farms. No fluoride, but I had nice teeth anyway. We didn't have nasty tasting chlorine/chemical water back then.

My youngest brother got bit on the nose by a big snapping turtle. He was trying to look inside it's shell. He still has the scar. We're told he was lucky it let go.

When I was a kid my older brother trapped snapping turtles. I always thought it was so sad but many times he made me go with him to check the traps cause he was afraid to go alone. ha. Mom made turtle soup.

"In summer, we would have "mosquito trucks" that would ride all over neighborhood with huge billowing clouds of who-knows-what coming out the back." We did that too and so did my DH.

Up to the age of 5 1/2 we grew up on a 40 acre farm way out in western Mass. Later we moved to 5 acres and closer to town. At both places my 3 older brothers and sister and some friends would play all day outside from sunrise to sunset, only coming back to the house for meals. My mom had a huge bell on the back porch that she would ring when lunch and dinner was ready. There was no adult supervision and we did all kinds of crazy scary things.

One my older brothers who was 5 years older than my sister and me (we're twins) invented a game of 'Playing Chicken'. In the upper loft of the barn there was a board connecting one side to the other. One person was on each side and would run out to the other. You were chicken if you ran back to your side. I always gave in but my sister didn't and got knocked off. Luckily she landed on a pile of chicken feed bags and didn't break anything. Boy, did my brother get it when my dad got home.

Another brother tried to play Tarzan and swing from tree to tree. He missed and fell on to a rock wall and broke his arm. He was lucky that was all he broke since he was way up there. My oldest brother was chopping wood with an ax. He missed and almost chopped off his big toe. I fell into a muddy bog and was up to my chin before my sister and brother got a branch to pull me out. I was so afraid I was going to get a spanking for getting my clothes muddy. I think I did.

I am surprised we all made it to adulthood. We did all the other stuff like drink out of garden hose or creek, ride bikes with without helmets or knee /elbow pads, ran around barefoot - only wore shoes for church and school, every one smoked in the car with windows rolled up in winter, rode our sleds down roads and crashed the toboggan into trees. My brothers had guns in their early teens and they would let us girls shoot them if we didn't tell our parents. I think I was 10. My parents cars didn't have seat belts and my mom's was so rusty, most of the floor was gone and you could watch the road go by.

I am not saying we should go back to those days, I am glad my son had a safer childhood, but I do feel sorry that kids don't know that kind of freedom.

It is sad that kids now a days kids don't have a clue what they have missed. I have done most of the things posted here. There were 5 of us kids and we lived in a small town with lots of kids in every house. We played out from morning to night most days. We had an outdoor drive in around the corner. We would take a blanket and pillow and walk over. So many wonderful memories.. I remember a neighbor girl layed in poisin ivy when we were playing hide and seek. I had a boyfriend that would ride his horse in on Sunday afternoons and we would ride around the lake at the edge of town. One Sunday he fell asleep and when he woke up he was back home. The girl that lived right next door to us introduced me to my husband.

My Uncle had a cement business and had a really deep gravel pit. We would go out there and fish. One day I was sitting out on some tree roots that hung out over the water. I stood up to throw my line in the water and fell through into the water. Talk about scared. To this day I can't swim.

We we hung our clothes out on a clothesline in the dead of winter. I remember them being stiff as a board when we brought them in. We slaughtered our chickens out back by our alley. My grandma swung a mean ax!! We had an outhouse that would get knocked over at Halloween time. My dad would get so darn mad. My dad was a truck driver and would go out every Sunday and get back on Friday night. We would get our baths, get pj's on and drive to the Dairy Queen for ice ream before taking my dad to his semi. We all sat in the same place when in the car. My youngest brother sat up front between my parents. Same way at the diner table. We lived In a one bedroom house until I was 10 years old. My youngest brother slept in a baby bed in my parents room, oldest sister slept on the living room couch and the rest of us slept on a couch that had a long cushion. We would flip the cousin onto the floor and us two girls would sleep there while my oldest brother slept on the tallest part of it.

I had a wonderful childhood. I tried to do some of the same things with mine when they were growing up. Life is so different now. Kind of sad!!

Things used to be so much better as far as I'm concerned. I would hate to be a child now...knowing what I know now. Of course the kids now don't know any better. All this technology has NOT made life better IMHO. We used to enjoy life and I had a blast as a child. I wouldn't trade my childhood for anything...I had the world's greatest parents.

Did anyone else have that one creepy guy in the neighborhood? You know what I mean. All our parents told us was to "stay away from Mr. Smith and don't ever get in the car with him". Unbelievable.

My creep was the school janitor. Everyone knew that Mr ___ "liked" kids and we had to give him a wide berth. None of us really knew why we had to avoid him but we sure did.

Also, school bullies ruled the playground and that's just the way it was. It was unthinkable to ask for parental or teacher interference. Though summer vacation provided a temporary respite.

Nope not a single person around that was a dangerous person. The man who committed suicide was never a danger he was very nice to the kids. I knew his son and daughter but they were older. I think he had been in the military service and that probably contributed to his problem. I don't think any person who did things to kids back then made it to trial if you know what I mean. Business was taken care of, likely why there was not much of it happening they knew the consequences. Bayous and gators...

Nothing special except our neighborhood was safe then. We walked or rode our bikes to our friends house & never worried about being abducted.

The worst thing we had to worry about then was the flasher on the street. (Guys standing on the street corner with a trenchcoat & flashing cars as they drove by).

Other than that, I never worried or felt in danger. Not that way anymore.

OH OH, and when people would stop & ask if you needed a ride, it was 99% safe to get in their car and they drive you home. Or when your car broke down & people pulled over to help & were genuine.

You know, we grew up around different individuals too - adults and kids. They weren't considered dangerous (other than the kind you were told about or got a certain vibe about), they were just tolerated as eccentric or had physical and some mental issues that, yes, made them amusing (teased unfortunately but not by us, that was a big no-no for me and my siblings) or just ignored or even befriended.

In fact there was a mental hospital up on the hill from our small town. When they would blow a certain whistle pattern, it meant that there had been an escape. We kids who were playing outside or down at the creek would be called after to come home quick! My Mom tells the story of seeing one such person running down the road towards the bridge and she was so scared for us that she and the other mothers ran for us. We weren't there, playing safely somewhere else.

We never did any illegal but we did so many other things that could have hurt us and some things that could still hurt us health wise. We played with mercury, even in school during science class we held little silver balls of mercury in the palms of our hands. We used to go upstairs in the loft of the garage next door where they had boxes of hospital thermometers. The kids that lived there would break the bulbs on the thermometers to get the mercury out and we would roll it down the stairs of the loft. I remember as a child playing with a cone of DDT that was used to kill ants. Have you ever chewed tar? The kids around here did. Shiny smooth black hot tar right from the tar drum that was left on the side of the road or scooped up out of a crack as soon as the road workers left. I never chewed it but my brothers and friends did.

It is any wonder I was never kidnapped as a child haha. My brother who was 12 years older than I was would take me in my buggy if he was babysitting me and meet up with his friends down the street. He would get involved in doing whatever they were doing like racing go carts or looking around for wood to make them he would forget about me. Someone would eventually call my Mom and ask if she was missing a child.

I started babysitting across the street when I was 8 years old. I remember taking the baby who was probably 1 year old on the bus downtown to go see The Herman Hermits who were performing on the roof of CKLW radio station. It was nothing for us to take the bus downtown when we were little or take the bus to my Grandparents. I remember when I was probably 6 and my other brother was 12 we took the tunnel bus across the border to Detroit, bought my Mom a tea pot at Hudson's and my brother bought me an Alvin and the Chipmunks 45 that was coloured turquoise blue. It was nothing for us as young teenagers to go shopping downtown Detroit using just a Christening Certificate to cross the border.

Living close to the river many of my friends had boats, we would go across to the island and come home at night on a busy river without lights on the boat or anchor in the middle of the channel and go swimming. We never had life jackets or even thought of wearing them.

I never had a curfew unlike some of my friends but my Dad put the fear into us that none of his 7 kids ever got into any trouble haha. My Mom used to say just don't do anything that would bring the police to the front door or have your name in the newspaper for doing something wrong. My brother broke that rule by getting caught on the eve of his 21st birthday and went into a bar where he got caught. Yep, his name ended up in the paper and I remember how my siblings hid the paper so my parents wouldn't see it but neglected to think of my parents friends calling to ask about it haha.

I loved the neighbourhood I grew up in, huge families some with 10 kids or more and we never lacked anyone to play with, wonderful group games, hide and seek at night, tag, you name it we played it. Our parents never knew where we were, came home when the street lights came on or our parents yelled out the front door for us to come home. Most neighbours had their own system of calling the kids to come home. My Dad with his booming voice would yell out Anne, Paul supper, next door the oldest boy would start yelling out the name of the 10 children from oldest to youngest. The other neighbour whistled for his kids and each had their own whistle. I would hear my Dad calling me from blocks away or one particular neighbour kid would find me and say Anne Aweese (he couldn't say Louise) your Dad is calling you so you better get home haha

I just read an article in the Sunday Chicago Tribune telling people to stop 'sanitizing' their children. It says children need to develop their immune systems, starting in their first months. In other words, "dirt" is vital. ( Having a dog is a plus! Let the dog lick the baby!)

This isn't saying to allow children contact with sick people, sores or poisons, just quit the overkill. Save baths for times a baby is really dirty; a full bath isn't necessary every day.

Babies also pick up beneficial bacteria in the birth canal; C-section babies don't get this.

My Gram was right. People are going to eat "a peck of dirt" before they die.

I loved mysteries, and at 10 I invented the Junior FBI. Most of what we did was pretty harmless. But I always wanted to search for bodies. There were a few homes being constructed nearby, and I convinced a friend to help me get in the house in case there was a body. Don't remember exactly how we got in, but we searched everything and didn't find a body.

Do kids ride stick horses anymore? We couldn't afford to buy them so our dad's or somebody's dad would make them out of wood for us, complete with a wooden block for a head. I remember mine had a mane made of something but don't recall what. And painted eyes. We would tie canning jar lid rings (those metal ones) on our feet and when we went down the road it sounded like horseshoes on our "horses" feet.

cacocobird, we played games like that too. I can't believe how neighbors let us roam about their barns and sheds like that. Today kids would be arrested for trespass, but we were never destructive like I imagine some kids could be today. There was smoking sometimes though, a friend and I got caught smoking blades of straw in a corn crib once!

Worst by far, in fact, hair rising when I look up there now a days... we climbed on the roof, and walked the ridge line, on the barn by the winery. YIKES!

When I was about 10, me and my younger brothers were riding our bikes down the highway to a friends house. A semi truck was approaching us from behind, and for some reason I felt I had to ride very fast and then make a left turn across in front of the truck to be the first to get to our friends' house. I am sure that trucker had gray hair after that!

Here's one from about 30 years ago that DH likes to remind me of: at a new year's party, I joined a circle of people passing around a bottle of Jose Ceurvo, and he said I ATE THE WORM! I really don't think I did. Just the thought makes me ill. I pretty much became a teetotaler after that.

When I was young they didn't have the orange road cones used today, to alert one to construction or a roadside emergency. They used little cast iron 'smudge pots' that were lit with kerosene. The cross street at the end of our road had some construction going on, so it was lined with many of them, that were just too tempting to some of the neighbourhood boys.

One time two brothers kicked them all over, so the kerosene inside them spilled onto the road. Imagine what could have happened if a car had driven by and one little spark ignited the road under it! If I recall, the boys' sister tattled on them and sand was soon poured over the spills to prevent them from igniting. The boys were rightfully grounded from playing outside for two weeks.

The only dangerous thing I can recall personally was walking across a trestle bridge that connected two neighbourhoods, because there didn't seem to be any particular train schedule. One kid would rest their cheek on the rail and feel for vibrations, while everyone else looked down the tracks in both directions. If no vibrations were felt, we'd happily scamper across the trestle bridge, assuming we'd have time to complete our crossing if we suddenly heard the train whistle!

One thing that happened in our area during my childhood, was the Detroit race riots. Our family left on the morning of Sat. July 22, 1967 for a cottage on Lake Erie that we'd rented for a week. That night (actually early Sun. morning) the Detroit Police raided an unlicensed bar, which led to a public disturbance that ended up turning into the Detroit race riots.

I lived in Ontario, right across from Detroit, and some personnel from our Police and Fire Departments were sent over to assist in Detroit. My father was a police officer, but we had coincidentally gone away during the exact time that the rioting took place. When we returned the following Saturday, we learned that the skies over Detroit had been filled with smoke from fires and the sound of sirens and gunfire, until the rioting was finally brought under control. It was the worst of times for our neighbours to the north.

http://mashable.com/2014/11/26/detroit-riots-1967/#B5PyEFmc8kqF

When I was like 8 yr old we went to local lake with family.Parents never watched us, we were lucky many times.They had a huge spill way.bigdrop all rocks ,other side churning rough water.My brother decided lets walk ACCROSS.oNCE OVER THERE WE'LL YELL HEY MOM.i GOT 1/2 WAY ,IT WAS SO SLIMMY.i TURNED BACK.nOW TODAY I CANT BELIEVE I DID THAT.That same year our insurance mans son was 4yr drowned up there.Found him at the spillway.I almost drowned there once too.

In gym class in elementary school, Fridays were often do whatever you want days. Some would shoot baskets, or lift weights or play ping pong. One time I remember setting up the mini-tramp and the thick mat and diving off the trampoline, and landing in a somersault on the mat. Then steadily dragging the mat further and further from the tramp and diving further, until the 12 foot long mat was about 18 feet away from the base of the mini trampoline. At one point I kneed myself in the face while landing, but I'm really surprised I wasn't badly injured doing that.

Another time, this other student set the mini-tramp right beneath the basketball hoop and tried slam dunking the basketball. He ran, jumped and slammed the ball all the way through the hoop -- along with his arm. He came down with his arm still through the hoop and broke it badly.

The EMTs came and loaded him into the ambulance as we all watched. One student asked what had happened, and another started to explain -- "All he was trying to do was use the mini-tramp to slam-dunk the basketball, here I'll show you."

At which point he showed what the first student had tried to do, including catching his arm in the rim, and breaking it as well.

Another thing I remember is how nonchalant most adults acted when something happened. No panicing, fussing or babying us. A lot of times they would be angry and we would be punished for doing something dumb.

Once when I was around 9, I was wading out in a lake in Vermont I got over 2 dozen leeches on my legs. They hide in the rocks covering the lake shore. I ran out screaming. My mom, aunt and uncle just used their cigarettes to burn them off. They acted like it was no big deal. Maybe that was to keep me calm. I didn't go swimming in that lake again until they built a dock far from the shore and the leeches.

OMG This thread has got me hysterical laughing. Today's kids don't know what they're missing. In some neighborhoods around here, kids are not allowed to play outside in their suburban yards alone without an adult present. Talk about helicopter parenting.

We swam in rivers and creeks, skated and rode bikes without helmets, much of the stuff mentioned above. My earliest memory of Spring/Summer is when I was 3 and toddling around with an empty coffee can ( the kind with sharp edges you opened with a key) and picking up crawdads that hid in the rocks at river's edge.

Camping with friends parents. We would be gone from dawn to dusk. Swam in what ever water we found, drank from springs, hiked miles in desolation. We were around 12. Once we got treed by some cows. Another time we hung out with some older guys who were playing Russian Roulette.

Hitchhiking

Hill climbing on motorcycles at the quarry in shorts and bare feet

Growing up in the 60s in the San Francisco Bay Area. Lived to remember it. At least most of it ;-)

I grew up in the 90's and experienced a little bit more than kids do now. Though many of the stories shared here made me cringe! Yes, you survived, but then again, the many who didn't survive can't share their stories!

It's more than just overprotective parents though. Our society has changed. I remember an article about parents getting in legal trouble or a fine cause their 10 year old went to a park alone.

I agree Chi. If I had kids I would be worried about them all the time.