I invite those who lived back in the stone age to contribute and we will highlight the best ones in future installments.
No going back to the old standards like riding a bike without a helmet or playing lawn darts. Those have been done to death. Here are two examples to get you going.
I hope you are getting the TYPE of stories that I want to hear from you by the examples given.
Tempo talked about how kids today grow up without ever breaking a bone. Unheard of in my day. In fact if we didn't have any breaks by the time we left Kindergarten we were required to break one of our own bones. If we didn't choose then the school administration would choose for us and you just KNEW they wouldn't let you get off with just a broken finger. They would go for the arm or the leg just to learn ya.
That was just the way it was and we liked it.
Hungry Timber wolves lived in the forest we had to walk through to get home. We usually lost a couple of kids along the way but it thinned out the slow and weak of the herd and made us all better runners. When you can outwit an Alpha male wolf pack leader then you know you can handle anything life throws at you.
That was just the way it was and we LOVED it.
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7 comments:
We had metal slides. For us down south, it meant 3rd degree burns when you went down it in the summer. Did we avoid the slide? No, we road it till we burned out all the nerves on our legs and butt.
In my school all the kids were required to take a "Lost in the woods" survival course. We had to know how to make a lean-to in case we were lost in the snowy woods all night. We also all had to be "bear-aware". Forget "Stranger Danger" (we knew everybody in town. There were no strangers) we had to be taught to play dead until the bear goes away.
It helped. Only a small percentage of us schoolkids got eaten.
Carpooling to school? No safety seats and curtain of fluffy airbags to deploy in case of a fender bender.
When I didn't ride the bus, we road to school in the back of an old Ford Truck, with rolls of barbed wire and metal fence posts bouncing around with us. When it was bad enough weather for our folks to have pity on us... we got to take the car. My favorite perch was laying on the back window deck where I would become a human projectile if Mom had to slam on the brakes :)
I've fallen down staircases on 3 different occasions, been in a dozen fights, fallen through a barn floor, and I've never broken a bone. You can't equate bone breaking with a rites of passage. Anyways the point is invalid when considering that extreme sports are at their highest point in popularity. And the participants break bones all the time. Not to mention the Jackass craze.
Now the whole wolf thing... that's real.
When I first moved to Ontario when I was 4 and we were staying with my grandpa, I went out sledding in the backyard. I sledded down to the property line which was divided by a thin wire fence (basically there to keep the cows on that side, we kids hopped it all the time). There at the bottom, sitting in the snow, just on the other side was a wolf. I didn't even see it at first. I just heard my family screaming at me. So yeah, wolves.
But I didn't break any bones.
I grew up in Tucson back in the 50s-60s. Metal slides @ 115 degrees, monkey bars, sand pits and swings on bare ground. Got bruised and cut, just like it's supposed to be. No broken bones. And we all played in the desert every chance we got. Got stuck on jumping cholla...got stung by a scorpion when I was 6. Wasn't the last time. I survived. We all did.
Got my first .22 rifle at 11. I loved growing up in the desert.
Funny, part of my job now is to design playgrounds for kids. We have to spec all that idiotic stuff so Johnny will never get a cut or scratch. Pathetic.
Oh yeah! Not only did I break my arm in first grade, it didn't heal correctly and had to be rebroken!
Crap that hurt! Anyway, many broken bones and injuries later, here I am to wish you and your family a Merry Christmans and a Happy New Year!
These are all great. I must do a post about all your adventures.
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