By today's standards, it's a pure miracle that any child growing up in the 1970s made it to

[Yavin4]

adulthood in one piece.

I was taking public transportation by myself when i was 11 years old. Today, that same 11 year old is being pushed in a stroller.

[rzemanfl]

1. In the '50s I walked seventh-tenths of a mile to a bus stop on the busiest street in town

early in the morning to catch a bus for day camp. I was almost seven years old. The bus dropped me off in the same place around five in the afternoon and I walked home. I didn't carry any ID except the name tag on the duffel bag my swim suit, towel, Nellie Fox baseball glove, and lunch were in.

[Thomas Hurt]

2. My grade school had monkey bars and teeter totters and such on pavement.

Sixth grade we did our damnest to spin the merry go round so fast it would throw us off into the dirt. Rode our bikes around the neighborhood everywhere. Had a bike track and jumps in the empty fields across the street from my house. Rode our bikes to the pool.

We played tackle football on hard packed dirt. A friend of mine got knocked into a chain link fence and a piece got jammed into his leg. Fire dept had to cut the fence piece from the rest of it and take him to the ER.

Another got a greenstick fracture of his leg.

Within another year or two I was riding my bike across town with friends and bailing off into the canyons outside town with the rattlesnakes and irrigation ditches.

Ahhh, the memories.

[SCantiGOP]

3. My wife and I watch our two-year old twins twice a week

She will freak out about a toddler food that might have 10% of their daily allotment of added sugars, or 10% of saturated fat.

My usual answer is, "How the hell are we still alive?"

[GumboYaYa]

4. I grew up in the country.

I was riding around on a three wheeler with my shotgun by the time I was 10. Still have a giant scar on my leg from a time the three wheeler flipped over on me and I burned my leg on the exhaust pipe.

[OldBaldy1701E]

9. Yep

Although we had dirt bikes with gun holsters, I was doing the same thing. I was driving the farm equipment by the age of ten as well. My little ass in that big duel-wheeled International, plowing up the farmland with my cassette player blasting in my ears. I used to ride my bike several miles in desolate wilderness just to get to town. I did this as well to get my learners permit. When I recently saw that the term 'pediatric' included people up to age 25, I knew that reason had left this country.

[Walleye]

5. We had electric wood burning sets and made toy soldiers with molten lead

What could go wrong? Also explored the woods and stream behind our house on my own when I was 5. Rode my bike all around town and down to the mill pond. Went crabbing in the bay in small rowboats on my own. It was a good time even though it was before Title IX. Then came the sixties. Yes, I’m amazed every day that we survived. Today is my birthday, 71. A 1949 classic. 🎂

[The Genealogist]

6. My experience was s bit different

I grew up in the late 70s and early eighties. My mother was very overprotective. She didn't even like me to go outside, but would let me play outside in our yard at the end of a dead end street sometimes. If i ws ever sweaty from playing outside, i got an earful. I didnt have my first swimming lesson until after she died. My father would overrule her and let me play with the other kids in the neighborhood when he got home. I think i was in second grade before I was even allowed to ride the school bus, and even then there was a fracas and tears. I was he last kid in the eighborhood my age with training wheels. My mother didnt want me riding a bike at all. She had no problem dragging me to bars with her, though, when I was 6 or 7 or so.

[The Figment]

7. Lol

Dirt bikes
Dirt cheap muscle cars...seat belts and airbags,nada
Click-clacs and nunchucks
Real chemistry sets and Creepy Crawlers
Bicycle helmets...what's that
Climing ropes in gym class over hardwood floors
Lawn dart fights
Bottle Rocket and Roman Candle wars
Free range kids
And a hundred more that escape me at the moment!

[gratuitous]

8. I dunno

I lost a few friends and acquaintances to totally preventable or survivable accidents before I graduated high school. Had a couple more survive suicide attempts. Seat belts, bike helmets, regulation of firearms, all seem like a small price to see Bob or Tom or Tammy again.

[TexasBushwhacker]

14. Me too

A couple of guys in my neighborhood had been blinded in one eye by BB guns.

My brother was riding in the cab of a pickup with the driver and a bunch of other guys were riding in the back. The driver hit a bump or a curb and all the guys in the back were thrown out. One got a head injury and died.

I think things SEEMED safer because we didn't here about accidents or abductions unless it was local. With the internet, local news can become national or even international at the speed of light.

[hunter]

10. After a rare victory our little league coach put us all in the back of his pickup truck...

... and drove us twenty miles down the highway to an ice cream parlor, where we all stuffed ourselves with sundaes, banana splits, etc.

A few parents tagged along but we all wanted to ride in the back of coach's truck. And our parents let us.

That was the 'sixties. That would probably be considered felony child endangerment today.

I was a pyromaniac and had started making my own explosives and rockets when I was eleven, so maybe it is a miracle I survived. I do have some shrapnel scars, however.

Playing with guns was discouraged in our neighborhood after an older kid I didn't know accidentally shot and killed one of his friends while they were out shooting ground squirrels.

My siblings and I were largely feral children. In the seventh grade I was in trouble for something or other and a teacher took me outside to lecture me. I didn't like it so I ran away, jumping right over the fence. I spent the rest of the day hiking around in the canyons. The school frantically called my mom and she told them not to worry, she expected I'd be home by dinner. And I was.

My wife and I raised our own children with more supervision than we ever got, possibly because we remember the near-death-experiences of our own youth, but I don't think we were "helicopter parents."

[csziggy]

11. When I was a kid we played in a swamp filled with alligators

The swamp had been a dredged lake in our little subdivision. It had filled with runoff and allowed to grow wild. After Hurricane Donna with all the flooding, the city dredged the lake out, but the alligators remained as did the water moccasins.

We were restricted on where we could ride our bikes so we'd stay off the main roads, but otherwise we were free to go where ever we wanted in that area.

Mom never worried - when she was six and beginning school, her mother waved down the daily train that ran behind the farm where they lived, put her on the train, and sent her to school all alone. Mom's little brother had her to show her the ropes, but she had to learn them on her own. As children they ran wild on whatever farm my grandfather was working on. I guess that wildness ran in the family!

[Archae]

12. We used to play "War.." (just read how we did it!)

We used to have plastic guns, that didn't shoot anything.

And inevitably, two kids (or more) would get in arguments over if someone got shot or not.
"I got you!" "No, you missed!"

One of my friend's dad found some older spring-powered Daisy BB guns, he handed those out.

Someone got "shot," we knew it!

"Ow ow ow!"



Nowadays they do that with paintball guns.

[onethatcares]

13. born in 51, lived in what was called suburbs

my friends and I had miles of back roads, a length of river, apple orchards, forests, wheat fields, corn fields and an airport to play in or near.

the airport had air shows every year and we had to climb a fence to get in but vendors and the pilots paid a entry fee. Man, we got all kinds of doo dads from every concieveble vendor. Most got lost. One year a few of us lay on the embankment where the runway was and watched the Blue Angels perform. There's nothing like seeing those guys 50 ft above you. Same airport had a United SportsCarClub of America race each year, Again, we'd jump the fence and watch the porsches, aston martins, and others race around the track.I'd love to metal detect the roadsides there. There were hot dog stands and pit areas and concessions everywhere, and probably a lot of silver coinage got dropped. I wonder how many people remember those areas.

M-80s and cherry bombs were available from someones older brothers, We set off a lot of those. Hell, we'd toss em in the river just to kill fish (didn't say we were smart). Those quarter sticks of dynamite were quite impressive.

While playing football in the street, one guy went to catch a pass and fell hard on his back and head. Ever hear a skull break? It sounded like a cantalope being hit by a baseball bat and he turned green. A nurse that lived on the block saw it happen and ran out of the house and did what first aid she could until the police arrived. There was no 911 in those days. I'm not sure what happened with him but we quit playing football in the street.




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