All these activities are why we survived. It’s weird seeing kids being so coddled today, all I think to myself is that these kids aren’t gonna survive.
Things I remember: - Getting thrown into Lake Michigan off a pier to learn to swim - Used to follow a river catching snakes etc... grabbed a handful of water moccasins, and amazingly, did not get bitten. - Wading in ponds catching softshell turtles, and coming out with at least a dozen leeches on my legs/belly/back. - The infamous merry-go-round - I did do the exploring of abandoned houses/barns/fields, startling pheasants/rabbits or trying to catch them. - Games like Ghost in the Graveyard when it got dark outside. - Lawn darts was a popular game - Playing football as described in this video - During a blizzard, I dug a snow cave in a pile of plowed snow, and had it collapse on me. Just dug my way out. I was definitely an outdoor kid. I had a few broken bones and a few scars, and wouldn't trade places with the coddled kids of today for anything.
Violets too, they had the little pods on the back, teaberry leaves were great to chew on as well. Several years ago I found an elderberry bush outside the office I was working in, I loved elderberries as a kid, so I picked some and washed them and had them for lunch, the girl I worked with (much younger than me) was convinced I would die at any second 😂
Eating wild food was a real thing as well. You have to remember, a lot of us were Boy Scouts back then... we actually knew what plants were edible, and which were poisonous. Honeysuckles were nice, but they didn't feed you. Where I lived there were a lot of edible wild clovers and berries... and wild pecan and peach trees everywhere. Not to mention the fact that a lot of families still had gardens in the 70s and 80s... so always a chance get get a watermelon or strawberries or whatever happened to be growing at the time.
use to put little stones on the train track and then hide in a pile of concrete pieces of a bridge that was been left next to the rail way,,, it was our secret spot where we use to smoke ( we was 13 ) and hide after we did something wrong... then used to explore an old castle in our town despite guard dogs and the guardian... used to play with every object we found around. Once to impress a girl I took an axe to show her I can chop wood ( I was 11 ) ... I still have the scar where the axe enter my leg. No stitches, my mother just make a bandage and told me to avoid the other leg... beautiful times
I remember being a young kid in the late 70's, and I was always covered in bruises from playing with my friends. We climbed trees, rough housed, had rock fights, and many other things. Honestly, it's kind of sad to realize kids these days aren't able to do what we did.
My GenZ niece, now in college, had reached high school without ever having climbed a tree. I think she finally got around to climbing a tree in 11th grade, just to have the experience. By the time I was out of elementary school, I probably had climbed thousands of trees. For GenXers, even the least athletic kids would've occasionally climbed a tree. It was a prerequisite of childhood. The only reasonable excuse for not climbing trees was to be in a wheelchair.
We used to hop trains to school because we're in the "city" they had to drive slower .. slow enough to hop it and jump off when we reached the high school lol :) sounds insane now but it was a long walk lol
That IS indeed John Travolta in the Band-Aid ad. When my younger brother was 7, he rode his banana seat bike off our porch and landed on the concrete. He was VERY fortunate he only had a busted chin. I wasn't half that adventurous.
Contrary to what you imagine Jay, it wasn't "those of you who survived"... The VAST majority of us did. Yes, there we're a LOT of childhood injuries compared to now... Scrapes, cuts, bruises, more frequent ER visits for stitches or broken bones. But that kind of childhood is what helped make us tuff, resilient, and adaptable physically and emotionally. It's how we learned that life isn't fair (never has been, never will be). But kids weren't droping like flies. There really weren't a lot of childhood deaths. For the majority that did occur, they were mostly attributed to childhood diseases and freak accidents like today. We weren't built any different, children are just a heck of a lot more resilient than most people today realize, have any recolection of or give them credit for.
Everyone I knew has flown over the handlebars and landed nose first on concrete, asphalt, gravel, if you hit grass you lucked out. We got back on that bike, maybe not immediately but not long after
@@rogerboltin4508 Exactly. Bikes, skates, skateboards, giant tires down hills... We all experienced things like painful road rash on nearly every possible surface of our bodies. Fell out of trees, off playground equipment, even roofs. We dusted ourselves off, walked it off, got patched up when necessary and got right back to it ASAP. Each time taking the lessons we learned from every accident in hopes of not repeating our mistakes the next time we tried. Never realizing how much simply being allowed to play and make those mistakes would teach and benefit us in becoming capable adults.
@@rogerboltin4508 Compared to young adults today??? We were pretty "capable". Not that we didn't still have a LOT to learn, but most of us were able to function independently. We left home much sooner and we sure as hell didn't call our parents for help... We took pride in proving ourselves and dealt with our own mistakes and failures... We didn't expect or look to our parents to "save us". I'm a little unusual because I started a bit younger than average... Got married @ 17 and my 19 yr old husband and I moved more than 2000 miles from home 2 days after our wedding. During our 26 yr marriage we never once expected or asked for any kind of help from our parents. Back then, most of us were prepared, confident, and "capable" just enough to begin going it fully on our own between the ages of 18 and 22.
Not to mention asbestos riddled houses and no fencing around construction sites so we kids would go and have fun on the weekend with half made multi-storey home unit buildings. We ran around up and down the half made stairs playing chasings hide and seek, lots of fun!
The train ran behind my favorite burger joint. While my grandparents were inside talking to friends I was outside playing on the tracks. I was confronted by a rail inspector one day about the stuff I had put on the track. I just wanted to see how far a tire would fly when hit. It wasn't just bb guns kids walked around with. We also walked around with 22 rifles. I still explore abandoned houses to this day. Our park had a rusty old train caboose in it. We all climbed on it, Under it and on top of it.
We had an abandoned farm near me with barns and farm equipment to play on. The area got built up not long after but I am so glad that most of the woods that I played in was made into a park. But they still cut down my favorite tree -- the one were my treehouse was built.
APPLE FIGHT ! wild apples were smaller and firmer than store apples. And tart. They weren't for eating. They were for throwing at each other. On the back of kids' bikes was a fiberglass flag pole about 4 feet in length and flexible. Remove it. You take an apple, pop it on the end, and with an overhead flick of the pole, you could hurle the apples at great distances. Even better, you could push an m80 into the apple, have a brother or friend light it as you stood ready. Once lit, you chuck it, hoping it would explode, just right, at the opposing team. GREAT FUN !
oh, the memories. I remember a time where myself and 3 dormmates went to a cafeteria for dinner and helped ourselves to as many apples from a bowl at the exit as we could stuff into every pocket, sleeve, etc. And we got back to our dorm and the apple fight WAS ON LIKE DONKEY KONG. Dear lord we destroyed each other and that dorm had at least 50 apples shattered into smithereens...every surface, never mind our hair, faces, clothes etc. were caked with liquid apple!!! Oh did we ever get into trouble for that!
Growing up in a coastal area we had the mosquito truck every week. We didn't play in it because my dad worked with those chemicals and he knew how dangerous they were.
You said at least things are safer and we're more protected, but on the other hand if you don't have any obstacles in life, you never learn to avoid them when they happen. Every good or bad thing in life no matter how small or large is a life lesson. If I had been raised in your generation, I would have entered adult life knowing very little about the real world and being scared or offended by almost anything. I'm glad I was raised in the 70s and 80s because every bump, bruise or broken bone taught me to be more careful, but still live life without fear.
You are just right pal, 100%. Let my expand your observation on life as it goes now, if I may. Anxiety was only an adult thing, kids only suffered that on Christmas eve 😉 We grew up stronger than the Zs age to age and my addition will be about health, food, allergies, analytic thinking, facts and logic, too much protective bubbles, too much "poor baby" attitudes, lacks in memories evoking (it should be us struggling with that at our actual less younger age 🤔🙄😉). Humans are no longer evolving we are just getting weaker and weaker. My respects my man.
Something you might want to look into, but the USA celebrated the Bicentennial in 1976 (200 years!) when I was a kid. Everyone was very patriotic and I was so proud of my country. Those times made me very patriotic, and I am saddened about the state of things nowadays and how some kids are taught to hate their country.
Yes, I was named Benjamin after Franklin, but that was my parent's patriotism as Silents, not having been a choice made by me. Going by my experience, I'd argue GenXers as a whole have long been notorious for their cynicism about hyper-patriotism, war, ethnonationalism, and such. Of any living generation, GenXers have had the highest rate of diversity, immigration, interracial and inter-ethnic dating and marriage, etc. Combined with greater international media exposure than prior generations, we were probably the first generation with a larger percentage who took on a more global identity of shared humanity. I must admit, though, that my radical leftism comes from reading the American Founders, some of whom like Thomas Paine and George Washington declared themselves "citizens of the world." So, I wouldn't necessarily say I'm less patriotic, if my patriotism is informed by my own reading rather than by relying on the Cold War propaganda I was indoctrinated with as a child. Many of us GenXers experienced cable tv and the internet when we were still fairly young. But of course, I'm speaking as a last wave GenXer who was born in 1975. For those of us who spent most of our early life in the 1980s and 1990s, it was during the Cold War thaw and after the Soviet collapse. It was a different world. Older GenXers, though, would've caught a bit of the lingering early Cold War ultra-nationalism when two totalitarian ideologies, capitalism and communism, were in a global battle. By the 1980s and particularly the 1990s, the moral panic, propaganda, etc of the McCarthy Era was a much more distant memory.
I was born in 1969. I still remember the town-wide project they came up with. Every single fire hydrant got painted in red/white/blue with different patterns. Population might have been like...17,000? At almost 7 years old I kinda got it, but not really. I couldn't really grasp '200 years', I just knew our country's birthday was a really, really long time ago (relatively speaking). And I knew that going in the car meant seeing a lot of color for a long time.
We didn't have electric trains, so no shock from the rails. I never did the railroad thing, but I did plenty of things that were so much fun that kids today would be afraid to do.
Me and my best friend Kenny jumped a train in Dayton Ohio when we were15 . We ended up in Louisville Kentucky. When we finally got off we had to call my mom collect to come get us 2 hours and a state away 😂
Never forget hitting the obstacle course in basic training at 18, 40 feet up, but you had to jump up and out to get on the pole above you. The drill sergeant was disgusted that I climbed like a squirrel.
Wow! This does bring back a lot of memories about the things we did. We had to be very creative, daring and sneaky because we were left without a lot of today's devices or supervision. We had to create our own fun while our parents were doing their own thing (cleaning the house, working on the car, watching TV, etc.). Mom, I'm bored...didn't work for us. It was...well, find something to do then. Oh yes, how I remember LOL!!
Greetings Jay! New subscriber here born in 61(technically I'm a baby boomer) and yes I did a vast majority of this stuff. Hitchhiking was popular in the 70s, and yes very dangerous, but we all did it!
I was trying to evoque some hidden memory of that situation and I find none, maybe is my age 🤭😏 A different thing was when the water trucks passed by showering dirt streets and us too in those hot summer afternoons on the deep country/farming town in whatever country we lived.
A little before my time but I've heard Dazed & Confused, the movie, is very representative of the times (1976) and depicts what the last day of school for junior high and high school kids looked like. It's a great movie, very reactable ;)
Would be cool if we had a time machine that would allow you to visit say for a day or a week any decade , then you could get the feel and understanding of what it was like back then...
Near Death Experiences as a Gen X child 1) Drowning 1 Was feeding the ducks at the pond in the historical village. Parents stopped watching me. I fell into the very disgusting water. Did not know how to swim. Grabbed the side of the pond and called until someone pulled me out. Went home early that day. 2) Drowning 2 Neighbor had a pool. My mom took us over to be in the pool and chat with the Neighbor lady. I still could not swim. I was hopping on my toe on the edge between the shallow and the deep end, and I missed, and slid down into the deep end. I was, however, by the edge of the pool. I was panicked, I think, in the first story I told here. I'm not sure. I was very young. But this time, I was just completely calm. I remember the calmness clearly to this day, and the peacefulness of being under water. I figured if I could bounce hard enough, and get close enough to the lip, I'd be fine. So I started working on doing that. I could hit the surface, but I wasn't close enough to the lip and couldn't quite grab it. Meanwhile, neither mother was paying attention, but the neighbor dad had just come out. He was a fireman (later fire chief), and I had a crush on him the way little girls will. He saw me and jumped in and grabbed me and saved me. He still had his sunglasses on and his cigarette was dangling out of his mouth. It was kind of funny. I don't remember afterwards, but my mom has sometime told the story, and apparently he had quite an earful for her and his wife about not watching us. Probably a very good thing when I eventually got swimming lessons. And then the state I lived in even had PE certifications we had to pass in swimming, which included making flotation devices out of my clothes. So chances are very, very good I'm not going to die by drowning ever again unless I'm literally knocked out at the time. 3) Boiling Bath My Nana was watching me and drew the bedtime bath. It was hot. Like way, way, way too hot. She didn't check the water and ordered to to just sit down and take my bath when I told her it was too hot. I was bright red by the time she let me out of the bath, and my skin was tender for days afterwards. I didn't quite have burns. But I'm including this one because it was possibly to get burns from having the water be too hot, and I don't know how close I was. I just know that bath HURT. 4) Overdose. (Probably not what you're thinking.) I was sick. Like really sick. But I had tests to take and things to do. So I remembered last time I was really really sick that we'd gotten a prescription. So I went looking for the prescription medicine in the medicine cabinet and found one with my name on it. I hadn't had any other colds recently and didn't take anything regularly, so this had to be it, right? I took two and went to school. And spent most of the first half of the day walking in zig zags. I just couldn't quite control my body. It got better later in the day. But I had to cross a busy street to get home and my legs ... I couldn't quite walk straight or entirely stop walking. I don't know how to describe it. So I nearly walked myself out into traffic. But I also couldn't stop. I eventually just collapsed to my knees on the very edge of the grassy area to make myself stop. But it was like the brakes weren't working in my body and I had to take emergency action to stop. Later, when I got home, I mentioned something about it to my mother and she told me those were her Migraine meds. They'd put my name on them instead of hers the last time she'd picked them up from the pharmacy, and she hadn't bothered to correct it. And really, normally, I would not have dug through the cabinet looking for medicine, so why should she? So I'd taken the kind of meds that were meant to knock her out for the day. The fact that I functioned at all was kind of impressive. Honorable Mention for Gen Y Sister: Sun Poisoning. We went to Blizzard Beach at Disney the first year it was open. There was no tree cover or other shade. My mother, my two sisters, and I all got horribly sunburned (this kind of thing happens on vacations. We'd packed aloe vera to deal with it). Middle sis, though, she was not like the rest of us. Somehow, she had it worse. Mom had to take her to the doctor while my other sister and I stayed in the hotel room covered in aloe. Turns out middle sis had Sun Poisoning. And she and mom stayed up all night with her hopping in and out of cold baths meant to leech the heat from her body. I'm sure there was other medicine, too. But I don't remember the details because it wasn't me.
In upstate NY we didn't call it hooky bobbin (holding onto a car in the winter and sliding on the icy roads.) I grew up calling that activity "skeetching". It workreally well with the big rubber boots that went over your shoes and had buckles on the front to close them . Golaches
Yes, back in those days, we could do pretty much anything. Unfortunately, some kids didn't make it. Swimming around a dam was quite fun but once in a while there would be a few adventurous kids seeing how close they can get to the floodgate and never making it back alive. I can even remember breaking a mercury thermometer just to play with the bead of liquid it made on the floor.
Daily dose of anxiety 😂😂 Soo many flat pennies... I can try and find one 🚂 Bloody knuckles anyone? 🧡 Forgot about the tire rolling, must have blocked it out... 😊 Stealing raspberries off of bushes as we walked😍 You may be right, but we didn't kill anyone, at least I didn't 🙊🙈🙉 Snow days??? Barely had those😂 we had to walk to school anyway My worst was a bad Wipeout on a banana board, I landed on my tailbone.. my tailbone is still crooked Yes John Travolta 😊 Absolutely, I don't regret any of my childhood, glad I was free to learn, explore, and experience life🧡 ✌️🏵️💞
Got stuck in the middle of a train tresel with my best friend when we're 11. Thank God for a tiny platform that barely held us . We were both screaming and crying because it was shaking so bad we thought for sure we were going to drop into the river or get sucked under the train! 80's were awesome!
11:06 My grandmother had a station wagon just like that, with the roof rack and the fake wooden siding. The coolest thing was the rear door, which could open up sideways (as seen in the photo) or hinge down like a pickup truck's tailgate. In the back area were two fold-up seats that faced backwards. Kids would often take naps in the back area during long trips. My parents had a 1973 International Travelall, which was an absolute beast of a wagon, the equivalent of a full size SUV of today. We had a mattress in the "very back" which we would sleep. We would also climb over the bench seats or even sit on top of them. Seat belts were not installed in this vehicle.
I'd rather have a free childhood than a coddled one despite the injuries endured. We learned how to survive, think quickly, interact with others, and lived by "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
we grew up without danger warnings on everything that might hurt you in some way. commonsense was necessary to survive and if you didn't have it well..... i think ya got it now.
It was a different time, but you must remember our parents grew up in even a more free time, and our grand parents were born in the era before modern antibiotics, when a significant percentage of kids died from childhood disease that nearly everyone survives today.
The playground was a death trap. Almost everyone of my brothers, sisters and cousins broke a bone on the playground when I was little. Cousin broke her leg on the merry go round, another cousin broke his arm when were trying to see who jump farthest off the swings, I seriously burned my foot walking barefoot near the public grills when stepped into recently dumped hot coals, my sister broke her leg coming down a slide way too fast, my brother broke his arm (I was too young to remember how)... and I'm sure I missed plenty of other injuries... all just from the playground.
You have to differentiate between city and country kids. The BB gun fights, sucking on plants, and playing chicken with trains, that's some country stuff.
"Some kids just can't be told. They have to learn the hard way." A common saying of the 60s and 70s. Probably others after that too. My younger brother used to do the Evil Knievel bike ramps starting when he was about 3. He was given what we call an air rifle (looks like the BB guns shown here, I think) when he was 4 years old. He had a motorized mini-bike to ride laps around our backyard when he was 4 years old too. He had a Mini car when he was 12 years old to drive around out larger backyard when we bought and moved to another home. He used to do "do-nuts" around the backyard and burnouts too.
Hey back in the 70's if you made it to 10 years old and had not broken a bone you where obviously overprotected. Personally fractured skull [8 years old] (knocked off a jungle gym on concrete playground), dislocated shoulder [13years old] (neighborhood football injury) and broken leg [10 years old] (bicycle accident). GOOD TIMES
Actually very few of us used band aids or anti septics. Personally I washed out my cuts with water and kept going. Oh hell yeah I'd do it all over again
My friends and I got on our bikes and went four towns over and back my parents didn’t know where I was all day. When we came home when the streetlight went on all she asked “did you have fun today?” My answer it was okay.
My neighborhood did something called vine diving. The trees were 50-100ft tall around the 20ft mark. Vines covered the trees, in very thick layer of vines. The idea was climbed the tree as high you could. Then dive off into the vine layer. Holes in the vine layer were covered by jackets. Aim for where there were no jackets. Basically a massive trapeze safety net.
At the end you asked a question. No I wouldn't change anything. Life was good, friends were friends and you could see who you were talking to. No to mention all the fun times making up new games.
Almost all of that is true, me and my friends did all of those things except for getting dragged by a car and I never saw a DDT truck ever. I do remember almost drowning because I took a dare to dive off the diving board into the deep end of the pool even though I didn't know how to swim at that time.
My mother was a nurse, she would forbid me to play in the DDT fog….i did break my leg on a sliding board at 5 years old…at 7 I wrecked my bike and had my 2 front teeth sticking straight out into my lip…I slid on loose gravel.
I remember when I was living in Illinois in the late 1970s / early 80’s, a truck would drive through the neighborhood spraying a big fog of mosquito pesticide. I once drove right through the cloud on my bike.
I was shot by a bb gun while delivering papers one day. I kept delivering the papers.... Why do they make such a big deal about BB guns? It's a small welt. I'm sure that today parents would have had the parents in court in a heartbeat. Uh No not back then. I didn't even mention it to the parents.
And this is one of the reasons we have active immune system. We did have people allergic to peanut butter but that was rare. Nobody knew what gluten was you ate what was put in front of you or you went to bed hungry. And you probably had that for breakfast the next day no wasting food. Standard things for cut would be alcohol peroxide and all of my gen X people I forgot the name of that red stuff it made you scream like your soul left your body. Let's not forget the winter time the snowball fights a group of people against another group of people just having fun
I have seen plenty of videos of gen z people doing crazy dangerous adrenaline stuff. From solo free climbing, slack lining, and whatever that thing is called where the person runs and jumps and does gymnastics around the city.
The biggest difference between GenX (and older) and the generations is y'all think being hurt is a big deal. We know that getting hurt was part of life. No big deal. Baby, us country kids had shotgun fights when we got older. We'd be out, dove hunting, the birds wouldn't be flying, so we'd unload .410 and .20 gauge shotguns at each other, with #9 bird shot. (Of course, we'd have fifty yards or better between us, so it's like getting pinged with gravel.) The kids out here do that too. It's just one of those things kids will do when left unattended for extended periods of time. We used to blow things up with M-80's too. (Real M-80's, that our dads and uncles and cousins brought back from Vietnam.) Yes, we raced trains and we hopped trains. We laid pennies on the tracks. Some of us lost friends that way. So yes, we did things that could literally get you deleted. (I've actually heard my own mother say "If you get killed, I'll break your neck!")
I love that we grew up before technology took over, there was no reason to stay in the house - we had no clue how good we had it ... also, I love your reactions, you have the sweetest spirit.
I was born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s. Some of these were before my time, but there was still a lot of dangerous things we got up to. Getting a broken bone was a right of passage as a kid. All your friends would sign your cast. We also had consoles and early PCs for indoor activities by the end of the 80s
Our naïveté about the chemical spraying could be your generation’s A.I. So glad our youth are learning from our mistakes 😊 PS - that was definitely John Travolta at the end 🧡
The things we were taught in school now compared to then is awful. It's not only what they teach it's also what they don't teach anymore. I heard a man talking about his granddaughter took a spelling test on a computer& it was multiple choice! Was no such thing.
I lived a few blocks from a train depot. We definitely spent plenty of time around those trains & walking the rails. There was also an area with stacks of bricks and we loved to climb them and jump from stack to stack.
I was riding my bike one day with friends. Apparently I hit my brakes wrong going around a corner, or so I've been told. I just remember opening my eyes to a strange man over me asking if I was okay. I had road rash all over my body. I told him I was fine but he insisted on taking me home. Loaded me, a friend, and our bikes in the back of his truck then when he dropped us off told me to call my mom and tell her. I did. Apparently I had a concussion and all she did was tell me "Don't fall asleep" . I still have gravel embedded in my skull almost 40 years later.
I grew up in Illinois. We definitely had mosquitoes, but I didn't see a truck spraying anything until well into adulthood. I for dang sure have never heard of this thing of running in the fog. This is literally the first I've ever heard of it. Yikes.
My friend's father had really long rubber bands, we would take some and make a bow, then we would make arrows from sticks, and shoot them at each other. We'd also take a garbage can lid, using it as a shield, and throw rocks at each other, playing Captain America.
Where do you think we got the boards to build our clubhouses or treehouses? Spent many afternoons prying old bent nails out of boards and raiding Dad's supplies for new nails. I was smart (and small) enough to wedge myself under the top arm of the merry go round and have the descending bar in front of me do I could wrap my arms and legs around it. Never came off once. 😂 Nah. We stayed inside while they were spraying until the fog dissipated. I've gotten more cuts, scrapes and bruises as an adult than I ever did as a kid. I could buy stock in Bandaid companies. 😂
I am so glad I grew up when I did . Wouldn't trade it for anything. Even with what Was the abusive spankings from my dad. Watching the kids today it was for the best. I spanked my kids not like my father ,but did spank . My kids are good but now they are 34 and 27 . This generation is fucked.
04:07 ... only our underground trains (subways) had electric tracks. Any outside track was just two steel rails and the engine ran on diesel fuel, not electricity. So, walking on an outdoor railroad track was safe, unless the train hit you or you fell off the trestle (train bridge). I'm now 56 and only knew one of my peers who was killed by being hit by a train and that, unfortunately, was a "self delete" incident.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger wasn't always a song lyric. It was our way of life.
All these activities are why we survived. It’s weird seeing kids being so coddled today, all I think to myself is that these kids aren’t gonna survive.
the minute one of them hits water over their waist they are gonna die
They answer your question at the end I wouldn’t change anything about the freedom we had
It was glorious.
Wouldn't trade my wild childhood for yours for a million bucks. ❤😂
GenX is the personification of "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger."
I remember getting a wood burning kit for Christmas, I was 11....it had a wand that got lava hot, and nobody blinked an eye lol
Oh yeah! I forgot about getting burned multiple times with my wood burning kit, usually doing something stupid and dangerous (i.e. fun)
Things I remember:
- Getting thrown into Lake Michigan off a pier to learn to swim
- Used to follow a river catching snakes etc... grabbed a handful of water moccasins, and amazingly, did not get bitten.
- Wading in ponds catching softshell turtles, and coming out with at least a dozen leeches on my legs/belly/back.
- The infamous merry-go-round
- I did do the exploring of abandoned houses/barns/fields, startling pheasants/rabbits or trying to catch them.
- Games like Ghost in the Graveyard when it got dark outside.
- Lawn darts was a popular game
- Playing football as described in this video
- During a blizzard, I dug a snow cave in a pile of plowed snow, and had it collapse on me. Just dug my way out.
I was definitely an outdoor kid. I had a few broken bones and a few scars, and wouldn't trade places with the coddled kids of today for anything.
I remember our hands turning orange from the rust on the playground equipment.
The chips of paint, usually containing lead...
🔥🖤🔥🖤🔥
So much more enjoyable than staying inside
As GenX~ I will choose freewill and freedom over equitable misery and mediocrity every day of the week.
We used to eat the nectar from the honeysuckles at our school, there was a huge fence covered with them.
And the blackberries! Oh how wonderful was that!
Me too! Braved the bees to do it too😂
Violets too, they had the little pods on the back, teaberry leaves were great to chew on as well. Several years ago I found an elderberry bush outside the office I was working in, I loved elderberries as a kid, so I picked some and washed them and had them for lunch, the girl I worked with (much younger than me) was convinced I would die at any second 😂
@@Llabrickitw Elderberries are awesome
! What would she have done if you didn't wash them? lol
Eating wild food was a real thing as well. You have to remember, a lot of us were Boy Scouts back then... we actually knew what plants were edible, and which were poisonous. Honeysuckles were nice, but they didn't feed you. Where I lived there were a lot of edible wild clovers and berries... and wild pecan and peach trees everywhere. Not to mention the fact that a lot of families still had gardens in the 70s and 80s... so always a chance get get a watermelon or strawberries or whatever happened to be growing at the time.
Let’s just put it this way, Guardian Angels back then were extremely busy . They’re all on on an extended, well deserved vacay w/the new generations 😂
are the angels still a thing in NY? i remember watching a movie about them in the 70's
My guardian angel was so busy he had an assistant!
use to put little stones on the train track and then hide in a pile of concrete pieces of a bridge that was been left next to the rail way,,, it was our secret spot where we use to smoke ( we was 13 ) and hide after we did something wrong... then used to explore an old castle in our town despite guard dogs and the guardian... used to play with every object we found around. Once to impress a girl I took an axe to show her I can chop wood ( I was 11 ) ... I still have the scar where the axe enter my leg. No stitches, my mother just make a bandage and told me to avoid the other leg... beautiful times
I remember being a young kid in the late 70's, and I was always covered in bruises from playing with my friends. We climbed trees, rough housed, had rock fights, and many other things. Honestly, it's kind of sad to realize kids these days aren't able to do what we did.
My GenZ niece, now in college, had reached high school without ever having climbed a tree. I think she finally got around to climbing a tree in 11th grade, just to have the experience. By the time I was out of elementary school, I probably had climbed thousands of trees.
For GenXers, even the least athletic kids would've occasionally climbed a tree. It was a prerequisite of childhood. The only reasonable excuse for not climbing trees was to be in a wheelchair.
We used to hop trains to school because we're in the "city" they had to drive slower .. slow enough to hop it and jump off when we reached the high school lol :) sounds insane now but it was a long walk lol
I forgot about that, we would hop the train to the swimming, then hop one back, man that was some good stuff.
@crsy3 it's funny as adults 🤣 😂 😆 because back then, we really had no F's to give, lol, and it has translated to adulthood ...
@@CrashCourseFarm we certainly did not and it certainly did go to adult hood🤣🤣🤣
That IS indeed John Travolta in the Band-Aid ad. When my younger brother was 7, he rode his banana seat bike off our porch and landed on the concrete. He was VERY fortunate he only had a busted chin. I wasn't half that adventurous.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
Contrary to what you imagine Jay, it wasn't "those of you who survived"... The VAST majority of us did. Yes, there we're a LOT of childhood injuries compared to now... Scrapes, cuts, bruises, more frequent ER visits for stitches or broken bones. But that kind of childhood is what helped make us tuff, resilient, and adaptable physically and emotionally. It's how we learned that life isn't fair (never has been, never will be). But kids weren't droping like flies. There really weren't a lot of childhood deaths. For the majority that did occur, they were mostly attributed to childhood diseases and freak accidents like today. We weren't built any different, children are just a heck of a lot more resilient than most people today realize, have any recolection of or give them credit for.
Everyone I knew has flown over the handlebars and landed nose first on concrete, asphalt, gravel, if you hit grass you lucked out. We got back on that bike, maybe not immediately but not long after
@@rogerboltin4508 Exactly. Bikes, skates, skateboards, giant tires down hills... We all experienced things like painful road rash on nearly every possible surface of our bodies. Fell out of trees, off playground equipment, even roofs. We dusted ourselves off, walked it off, got patched up when necessary and got right back to it ASAP. Each time taking the lessons we learned from every accident in hopes of not repeating our mistakes the next time we tried. Never realizing how much simply being allowed to play and make those mistakes would teach and benefit us in becoming capable adults.
@@misslora3896 i wouldn't say "capable "
@@rogerboltin4508 Compared to young adults today??? We were pretty "capable". Not that we didn't still have a LOT to learn, but most of us were able to function independently. We left home much sooner and we sure as hell didn't call our parents for help... We took pride in proving ourselves and dealt with our own mistakes and failures... We didn't expect or look to our parents to "save us". I'm a little unusual because I started a bit younger than average... Got married @ 17 and my 19 yr old husband and I moved more than 2000 miles from home 2 days after our wedding. During our 26 yr marriage we never once expected or asked for any kind of help from our parents. Back then, most of us were prepared, confident, and "capable" just enough to begin going it fully on our own between the ages of 18 and 22.
I would NEVER trade my Gen-X youth, or change a thing about it.
Not to mention asbestos riddled houses and no fencing around construction sites so we kids would go and have fun on the weekend with half made multi-storey home unit buildings. We ran around up and down the half made stairs playing chasings hide and seek, lots of fun!
some of my friends broke bones. I broke a few friends bones by accident too, one in football, and another wrestling at another friends house.
I was spotting my best friend in gymnastics and she broke her leg. I carried her books the whole recovery.
A shot of adrenaline..."turning off my location". 🤣😂🤣
🔥🖤🔥🖤🔥
The train ran behind my favorite burger joint. While my grandparents were inside talking to friends I was outside playing on the tracks. I was confronted by a rail inspector one day about the stuff I had put on the track. I just wanted to see how far a tire would fly when hit. It wasn't just bb guns kids walked around with. We also walked around with 22 rifles. I still explore abandoned houses to this day. Our park had a rusty old train caboose in it. We all climbed on it, Under it and on top of it.
We had an abandoned farm near me with barns and farm equipment to play on. The area got built up not long after but I am so glad that most of the woods that I played in was made into a park. But they still cut down my favorite tree -- the one were my treehouse was built.
APPLE FIGHT !
wild apples were smaller and firmer than store apples. And tart. They weren't for eating. They were for throwing at each other.
On the back of kids' bikes was a fiberglass flag pole about 4 feet in length and flexible. Remove it. You take an apple, pop it on the end, and with an overhead flick of the pole, you could hurle the apples at great distances.
Even better, you could push an m80 into the apple, have a brother or friend light it as you stood ready. Once lit, you chuck it, hoping it would explode, just right, at the opposing team.
GREAT FUN !
oh, the memories. I remember a time where myself and 3 dormmates went to a cafeteria for dinner and helped ourselves to as many apples from a bowl at the exit as we could stuff into every pocket, sleeve, etc. And we got back to our dorm and the apple fight WAS ON LIKE DONKEY KONG. Dear lord we destroyed each other and that dorm had at least 50 apples shattered into smithereens...every surface, never mind our hair, faces, clothes etc. were caked with liquid apple!!! Oh did we ever get into trouble for that!
Growing up in a coastal area we had the mosquito truck every week. We didn't play in it because my dad worked with those chemicals and he knew how dangerous they were.
You said at least things are safer and we're more protected, but on the other hand if you don't have any obstacles in life, you never learn to avoid them when they happen. Every good or bad thing in life no matter how small or large is a life lesson. If I had been raised in your generation, I would have entered adult life knowing very little about the real world and being scared or offended by almost anything. I'm glad I was raised in the 70s and 80s because every bump, bruise or broken bone taught me to be more careful, but still live life without fear.
You are just right pal, 100%.
Let my expand your observation on life as it goes now, if I may. Anxiety was only an adult thing, kids only suffered that on Christmas eve 😉
We grew up stronger than the Zs age to age and my addition will be about health, food, allergies, analytic thinking, facts and logic, too much protective bubbles, too much "poor baby" attitudes, lacks in memories evoking (it should be us struggling with that at our actual less younger age 🤔🙄😉).
Humans are no longer evolving we are just getting weaker and weaker.
My respects my man.
Something you might want to look into, but the USA celebrated the Bicentennial in 1976 (200 years!) when I was a kid. Everyone was very patriotic and I was so proud of my country. Those times made me very patriotic, and I am saddened about the state of things nowadays and how some kids are taught to hate their country.
Yes, I was named Benjamin after Franklin, but that was my parent's patriotism as Silents, not having been a choice made by me. Going by my experience, I'd argue GenXers as a whole have long been notorious for their cynicism about hyper-patriotism, war, ethnonationalism, and such. Of any living generation, GenXers have had the highest rate of diversity, immigration, interracial and inter-ethnic dating and marriage, etc. Combined with greater international media exposure than prior generations, we were probably the first generation with a larger percentage who took on a more global identity of shared humanity. I must admit, though, that my radical leftism comes from reading the American Founders, some of whom like Thomas Paine and George Washington declared themselves "citizens of the world."
So, I wouldn't necessarily say I'm less patriotic, if my patriotism is informed by my own reading rather than by relying on the Cold War propaganda I was indoctrinated with as a child. Many of us GenXers experienced cable tv and the internet when we were still fairly young. But of course, I'm speaking as a last wave GenXer who was born in 1975. For those of us who spent most of our early life in the 1980s and 1990s, it was during the Cold War thaw and after the Soviet collapse. It was a different world. Older GenXers, though, would've caught a bit of the lingering early Cold War ultra-nationalism when two totalitarian ideologies, capitalism and communism, were in a global battle. By the 1980s and particularly the 1990s, the moral panic, propaganda, etc of the McCarthy Era was a much more distant memory.
I was born in 1969. I still remember the town-wide project they came up with. Every single fire hydrant got painted in red/white/blue with different patterns. Population might have been like...17,000? At almost 7 years old I kinda got it, but not really. I couldn't really grasp '200 years', I just knew our country's birthday was a really, really long time ago (relatively speaking). And I knew that going in the car meant seeing a lot of color for a long time.
I use to sleep in the back window on our 5 hour trips when I was little. I was born in 74’. And yes, this video is spot on.
We didn't have electric trains, so no shock from the rails. I never did the railroad thing, but I did plenty of things that were so much fun that kids today would be afraid to do.
I didn't but friends would jump on trains and jump back off down the track 😬
Anyone else still feel the sting of the metal slide? Ripped my arm on a metal chain of a swing...fun times😂😂So many scars!
We had a metal Merry Go Around that everyone loved! Most of us still have scars from falling when it was your turn to push!
Me and my best friend Kenny jumped a train in Dayton Ohio when we were15 . We ended up in Louisville Kentucky. When we finally got off we had to call my mom collect to come get us 2 hours and a state away 😂
Never forget hitting the obstacle course in basic training at 18, 40 feet up, but you had to jump up and out to get on the pole above you. The drill sergeant was disgusted that I climbed like a squirrel.
Wow! This does bring back a lot of memories about the things we did. We had to be very creative, daring and sneaky because we were left without a lot of today's devices or supervision. We had to create our own fun while our parents were doing their own thing (cleaning the house, working on the car, watching TV, etc.). Mom, I'm bored...didn't work for us. It was...well, find something to do then. Oh yes, how I remember LOL!!
We never had ddt trucks in our area. 🤦♂️
We did. You needed them on the coast
the craziest part is our parents told us we were soft and had it to easy
Greetings Jay! New subscriber here born in 61(technically I'm a baby boomer) and yes I did a vast majority of this stuff. Hitchhiking was popular in the 70s, and yes very dangerous, but we all did it!
I'm a child of the seventies and eighties. I never met anyone stupid enough to run behind a pesticide truck.
I was trying to evoque some hidden memory of that situation and I find none, maybe is my age 🤭😏
A different thing was when the water trucks passed by showering dirt streets and us too in those hot summer afternoons on the deep country/farming town in whatever country we lived.
A little before my time but I've heard Dazed & Confused, the movie, is very representative of the times (1976) and depicts what the last day of school for junior high and high school kids looked like. It's a great movie, very reactable ;)
@@EmmaBadOne I love that documentary
Would be cool if we had a time machine that would allow you to visit say for a day or a week any decade , then you could get the feel and understanding of what it was like back then...
Near Death Experiences as a Gen X child
1) Drowning 1
Was feeding the ducks at the pond in the historical village. Parents stopped watching me. I fell into the very disgusting water. Did not know how to swim. Grabbed the side of the pond and called until someone pulled me out. Went home early that day.
2) Drowning 2
Neighbor had a pool. My mom took us over to be in the pool and chat with the Neighbor lady. I still could not swim. I was hopping on my toe on the edge between the shallow and the deep end, and I missed, and slid down into the deep end. I was, however, by the edge of the pool. I was panicked, I think, in the first story I told here. I'm not sure. I was very young. But this time, I was just completely calm. I remember the calmness clearly to this day, and the peacefulness of being under water. I figured if I could bounce hard enough, and get close enough to the lip, I'd be fine. So I started working on doing that. I could hit the surface, but I wasn't close enough to the lip and couldn't quite grab it.
Meanwhile, neither mother was paying attention, but the neighbor dad had just come out. He was a fireman (later fire chief), and I had a crush on him the way little girls will. He saw me and jumped in and grabbed me and saved me. He still had his sunglasses on and his cigarette was dangling out of his mouth. It was kind of funny. I don't remember afterwards, but my mom has sometime told the story, and apparently he had quite an earful for her and his wife about not watching us.
Probably a very good thing when I eventually got swimming lessons. And then the state I lived in even had PE certifications we had to pass in swimming, which included making flotation devices out of my clothes. So chances are very, very good I'm not going to die by drowning ever again unless I'm literally knocked out at the time.
3) Boiling Bath
My Nana was watching me and drew the bedtime bath. It was hot. Like way, way, way too hot. She didn't check the water and ordered to to just sit down and take my bath when I told her it was too hot. I was bright red by the time she let me out of the bath, and my skin was tender for days afterwards. I didn't quite have burns. But I'm including this one because it was possibly to get burns from having the water be too hot, and I don't know how close I was. I just know that bath HURT.
4) Overdose. (Probably not what you're thinking.)
I was sick. Like really sick. But I had tests to take and things to do. So I remembered last time I was really really sick that we'd gotten a prescription. So I went looking for the prescription medicine in the medicine cabinet and found one with my name on it. I hadn't had any other colds recently and didn't take anything regularly, so this had to be it, right?
I took two and went to school. And spent most of the first half of the day walking in zig zags. I just couldn't quite control my body. It got better later in the day. But I had to cross a busy street to get home and my legs ... I couldn't quite walk straight or entirely stop walking. I don't know how to describe it. So I nearly walked myself out into traffic. But I also couldn't stop. I eventually just collapsed to my knees on the very edge of the grassy area to make myself stop. But it was like the brakes weren't working in my body and I had to take emergency action to stop.
Later, when I got home, I mentioned something about it to my mother and she told me those were her Migraine meds. They'd put my name on them instead of hers the last time she'd picked them up from the pharmacy, and she hadn't bothered to correct it. And really, normally, I would not have dug through the cabinet looking for medicine, so why should she? So I'd taken the kind of meds that were meant to knock her out for the day. The fact that I functioned at all was kind of impressive.
Honorable Mention for Gen Y Sister: Sun Poisoning.
We went to Blizzard Beach at Disney the first year it was open. There was no tree cover or other shade. My mother, my two sisters, and I all got horribly sunburned (this kind of thing happens on vacations. We'd packed aloe vera to deal with it).
Middle sis, though, she was not like the rest of us. Somehow, she had it worse. Mom had to take her to the doctor while my other sister and I stayed in the hotel room covered in aloe.
Turns out middle sis had Sun Poisoning. And she and mom stayed up all night with her hopping in and out of cold baths meant to leech the heat from her body. I'm sure there was other medicine, too. But I don't remember the details because it wasn't me.
Train trestles.....that's a rush. Heaven forbid you take step while running and you step into the gap.
In upstate NY we didn't call it hooky bobbin (holding onto a car in the winter and sliding on the icy roads.) I grew up calling that activity "skeetching".
It workreally well with the big rubber boots that went over your shoes and had buckles on the front to close them . Golaches
Yes, back in those days, we could do pretty much anything. Unfortunately, some kids didn't make it. Swimming around a dam was quite fun but once in a while there would be a few adventurous kids seeing how close they can get to the floodgate and never making it back alive. I can even remember breaking a mercury thermometer just to play with the bead of liquid it made on the floor.
Daily dose of anxiety 😂😂
Soo many flat pennies... I can try and find one 🚂
Bloody knuckles anyone? 🧡
Forgot about the tire rolling, must have blocked it out... 😊
Stealing raspberries off of bushes as we walked😍
You may be right, but we didn't kill anyone, at least I didn't 🙊🙈🙉
Snow days??? Barely had those😂 we had to walk to school anyway
My worst was a bad Wipeout on a banana board, I landed on my tailbone.. my tailbone is still crooked
Yes John Travolta 😊
Absolutely, I don't regret any of my childhood, glad I was free to learn, explore, and experience life🧡
✌️🏵️💞
@@kerriniemi9525 broken tailbone club! 👍👍
I still get the willys thinking about it. Mine has a curve too. 😳
Got stuck in the middle of a train tresel with my best friend when we're 11. Thank God for a tiny platform that barely held us . We were both screaming and crying because it was shaking so bad we thought for sure we were going to drop into the river or get sucked under the train! 80's were awesome!
When I was 6 years old growing up in 1970's Florida, I had to walk around the alligator pond to catch the school bus.
We survived the 70s. Kids today could survive the same things if given the chance to
6:06
Yep, I got stuck in my foot when I was a kid, lol.
Yup once maybe twice then you learned
1971 checking in, this is true and went on through the 80's too! Half of us had hunting rifles in our trucks at school!
11:06 My grandmother had a station wagon just like that, with the roof rack and the fake wooden siding. The coolest thing was the rear door, which could open up sideways (as seen in the photo) or hinge down like a pickup truck's tailgate. In the back area were two fold-up seats that faced backwards. Kids would often take naps in the back area during long trips.
My parents had a 1973 International Travelall, which was an absolute beast of a wagon, the equivalent of a full size SUV of today. We had a mattress in the "very back" which we would sleep. We would also climb over the bench seats or even sit on top of them. Seat belts were not installed in this vehicle.
I'd rather have a free childhood than a coddled one despite the injuries endured.
We learned how to survive, think quickly, interact with others, and lived by "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
wow, thats john travolta in the band aid ad. thats cool. i never remembered that
we grew up without danger warnings on everything that might hurt you in some way. commonsense was necessary to survive and if you didn't have it well..... i think ya got it now.
It was a different time, but you must remember our parents grew up in even a more free time, and our grand parents were born in the era before modern antibiotics, when a significant percentage of kids died from childhood disease that nearly everyone survives today.
The playground was a death trap. Almost everyone of my brothers, sisters and cousins broke a bone on the playground when I was little. Cousin broke her leg on the merry go round, another cousin broke his arm when were trying to see who jump farthest off the swings, I seriously burned my foot walking barefoot near the public grills when stepped into recently dumped hot coals, my sister broke her leg coming down a slide way too fast, my brother broke his arm (I was too young to remember how)... and I'm sure I missed plenty of other injuries... all just from the playground.
You have to differentiate between city and country kids. The BB gun fights, sucking on plants, and playing chicken with trains, that's some country stuff.
Oh so many great memories!The clubhouse was THE THING. Gen Z are absolute wusses compared to Gen X.
Parents would watch us roll down hills inside of tires.
"Some kids just can't be told. They have to learn the hard way." A common saying of the 60s and 70s. Probably others after that too.
My younger brother used to do the Evil Knievel bike ramps starting when he was about 3. He was given what we call an air rifle (looks like the BB guns shown here, I think) when he was 4 years old. He had a motorized mini-bike to ride laps around our backyard when he was 4 years old too. He had a Mini car when he was 12 years old to drive around out larger backyard when we bought and moved to another home. He used to do "do-nuts" around the backyard and burnouts too.
Hey back in the 70's if you made it to 10 years old and had not broken a bone you where obviously overprotected. Personally fractured skull [8 years old] (knocked off a jungle gym on concrete playground), dislocated shoulder [13years old] (neighborhood football injury) and broken leg [10 years old] (bicycle accident). GOOD TIMES
Yes, I remember the honeysuckle bushes. It was so fun.
Yeah, no, I wouldn't change a thing, I grew up in the greatest time in the USA.
Actually very few of us used band aids or anti septics. Personally I washed out my cuts with water and kept going. Oh hell yeah I'd do it all over again
For us, a lot of times we used duct tape.
100%❤ we had fun!
We also watched somebody called Evel Knievel, so I think having challenges and dares just seemed like the most exciting thing to do.
I ve never heard of the pesticide trucks, but watching the reenactment makes it look totally plausible! 😂
My friends and I got on our bikes and went four towns over and back my parents didn’t know where I was all day. When we came home when the streetlight went on all she asked “did you have fun today?” My answer it was okay.
Rolling down hills in a tractor tire was something we did at recess, the tires were playground equipment.
My neighborhood did something called vine diving. The trees were 50-100ft tall around the 20ft mark. Vines covered the trees, in very thick layer of vines. The idea was climbed the tree as high you could. Then dive off into the vine layer. Holes in the vine layer were covered by jackets. Aim for where there were no jackets. Basically a massive trapeze safety net.
At the end you asked a question. No I wouldn't change anything. Life was good, friends were friends and you could see who you were talking to. No to mention all the fun times making up new games.
We lived near the mountains. As teenagers my brothers would hike everywhere with friends even exploring old mine shafts and rock climbing.
Almost all of that is true, me and my friends did all of those things except for getting dragged by a car and I never saw a DDT truck ever. I do remember almost drowning because I took a dare to dive off the diving board into the deep end of the pool even though I didn't know how to swim at that time.
My mother was a nurse, she would forbid me to play in the DDT fog….i did break my leg on a sliding board at 5 years old…at 7 I wrecked my bike and had my 2 front teeth sticking straight out into my lip…I slid on loose gravel.
I don't remember ever comiing across a DDT sprayer truck but I don't think kids and parents were stupid enough to chase after them if they did.
Nope, my brothers did.
I remember when I was living in Illinois in the late 1970s / early 80’s, a truck would drive through the neighborhood spraying a big fog of mosquito pesticide. I once drove right through the cloud on my bike.
Millennial and gen-z idea of an adrenaline rush is when their uber shows up on time.
Turning off your location?We're fucked!
The danger was part o the fun 🤘🏻
You know how you're doing generation is softer than Charmin on a pillow. It's because of everything being safe and participation trophies.
Love watching you vids, each of these you can just see you anxiety rise with every new thing you see about us
I was shot by a bb gun while delivering papers one day. I kept delivering the papers.... Why do they make such a big deal about BB guns? It's a small welt. I'm sure that today parents would have had the parents in court in a heartbeat. Uh No not back then. I didn't even mention it to the parents.
And this is one of the reasons we have active immune system. We did have people allergic to peanut butter but that was rare. Nobody knew what gluten was you ate what was put in front of you or you went to bed hungry. And you probably had that for breakfast the next day no wasting food. Standard things for cut would be alcohol peroxide and all of my gen X people I forgot the name of that red stuff it made you scream like your soul left your body.
Let's not forget the winter time the snowball fights a group of people against another group of people just having fun
Mercurochrome a.k.a. Monkeys Blood
Mercurochrome. It was a staple of my youth.
I miss my 70s childhood! Someone said the other day,"where are the casts? There are no kids in casts anymore" and its true!
I have seen plenty of videos of gen z people doing crazy dangerous adrenaline stuff. From solo free climbing, slack lining, and whatever that thing is called where the person runs and jumps and does gymnastics around the city.
We always called "hooky bobbin", bumper skiing ....the good old days 😅
The biggest difference between GenX (and older) and the generations is y'all think being hurt is a big deal.
We know that getting hurt was part of life. No big deal.
Baby, us country kids had shotgun fights when we got older.
We'd be out, dove hunting, the birds wouldn't be flying, so we'd unload .410 and .20 gauge shotguns at each other, with #9 bird shot.
(Of course, we'd have fifty yards or better between us, so it's like getting pinged with gravel.)
The kids out here do that too. It's just one of those things kids will do when left unattended for extended periods of time.
We used to blow things up with M-80's too.
(Real M-80's, that our dads and uncles and cousins brought back from Vietnam.)
Yes, we raced trains and we hopped trains. We laid pennies on the tracks.
Some of us lost friends that way.
So yes, we did things that could literally get you deleted.
(I've actually heard my own mother say "If you get killed, I'll break your neck!")
I love that we grew up before technology took over, there was no reason to stay in the house - we had no clue how good we had it ... also, I love your reactions, you have the sweetest spirit.
I was born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s. Some of these were before my time, but there was still a lot of dangerous things we got up to. Getting a broken bone was a right of passage as a kid. All your friends would sign your cast. We also had consoles and early PCs for indoor activities by the end of the 80s
All this made us tough and strong, that we could survive anything. ❤
Our naïveté about the chemical spraying could be your generation’s A.I.
So glad our youth are learning from our mistakes 😊
PS - that was definitely John Travolta at the end 🧡
The things we were taught in school now compared to then is awful. It's not only what they teach it's also what they don't teach anymore. I heard a man talking about his granddaughter took a spelling test on a computer& it was multiple choice! Was no such thing.
I lived a few blocks from a train depot. We definitely spent plenty of time around those trains & walking the rails. There was also an area with stacks of bricks and we loved to climb them and jump from stack to stack.
I was knocked out a few times playing tackle football with the older boys with no gear.
I was riding my bike one day with friends. Apparently I hit my brakes wrong going around a corner, or so I've been told. I just remember opening my eyes to a strange man over me asking if I was okay. I had road rash all over my body. I told him I was fine but he insisted on taking me home. Loaded me, a friend, and our bikes in the back of his truck then when he dropped us off told me to call my mom and tell her. I did. Apparently I had a concussion and all she did was tell me "Don't fall asleep" . I still have gravel embedded in my skull almost 40 years later.
I grew up in Illinois. We definitely had mosquitoes, but I didn't see a truck spraying anything until well into adulthood. I for dang sure have never heard of this thing of running in the fog. This is literally the first I've ever heard of it. Yikes.
My friend's father had really long rubber bands, we would take some and make a bow, then we would make arrows from sticks, and shoot them at each other. We'd also take a garbage can lid, using it as a shield, and throw rocks at each other, playing Captain America.
Where do you think we got the boards to build our clubhouses or treehouses? Spent many afternoons prying old bent nails out of boards and raiding Dad's supplies for new nails.
I was smart (and small) enough to wedge myself under the top arm of the merry go round and have the descending bar in front of me do I could wrap my arms and legs around it. Never came off once. 😂
Nah. We stayed inside while they were spraying until the fog dissipated.
I've gotten more cuts, scrapes and bruises as an adult than I ever did as a kid. I could buy stock in Bandaid companies. 😂
Having a cast from a broken bone was a badge of honor. Signing the cast was priceless.
I was jealous I never got a cast. You were popular when everyone signed it!
I am so glad I grew up when I did . Wouldn't trade it for anything. Even with what Was the abusive spankings from my dad. Watching the kids today it was for the best. I spanked my kids not like my father ,but did spank . My kids are good but now they are 34 and 27 . This generation is fucked.
04:07 ... only our underground trains (subways) had electric tracks. Any outside track was just two steel rails and the engine ran on diesel fuel, not electricity. So, walking on an outdoor railroad track was safe, unless the train hit you or you fell off the trestle (train bridge).
I'm now 56 and only knew one of my peers who was killed by being hit by a train and that, unfortunately, was a "self delete" incident.