Did you survive this....?

Yes I did and probably more than listed here. We chewed hot tar from the streets in the summer. I remember going to Woolworth and my mom buying me a tube of some type of gook that you squeezed on the end of a small straw that was provided , when you blew through the straw it would inflate the gook into a ball that was much stronger than a balloon. The problem was that the gook made us light headed and dizzy which was a pleasurable experience. I can only imagine what that stuff was.
 
Yup!

I'm glad that I grew up in the days before helmets, playdates and being shipped off to daycare.

I think it was Gary O' that referred to it as being a free range kid.

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Yep, did that, survived that.

Injuries, burns, cuts, landing on our heads......things that would make today's parents run screaming with their children to the emergency room were treated with not much more than a raised eyebrow by parents of yesteryear. "Oh, don't be such a big baby....you're not bleeding THAT much!" "Well, use your OTHER hand, then!" "Oh, I bet your head will stop hurting just as soon as the schoolbus goes by!"

My dad pretty much was our GP. As a medic in the Navy during WWII (he once removed a sailor's appendix on a pitching ship in the middle of a typhoon following instructions shouted to him over the radio by a doctor on another ship). As a chemist in the animal labs at a large pharmaceutical firm, he administered tetanus shots and anything else we needed. Got a bad cut? He'd get out his suture kit and you were good as new. Need a penicillin shot? There was usually a vial of it in the refrigerator and a box of hypodermics on the shelf.

We were free-range kids.
 
All the above while growing up in a house full of asbestos insulation. My father was a civil engineer who frequently used it in construction he was supervising, thought it was wonderful insulation . None of us developed any lung problems.
Rode our bikes out to the dairy farm in nearby country side & swam and waded in the same stream as the cows.
cold hose water tasted so good, just let it run a bit to get the ants & spiders out.
 
What about running around bare feet as we did and quite often kicking our toes on stones and making them bleed
and just running water from the tap on the bleeding sore toes ..no running to the hospital or even as much as a band aid.

We only had a bath once a week using water that had been boiled in the same old copper that was used for boiling the sheets that were made from old flour sacks and the same copper was used for dipping chooks ( chickens) for plucking them
Yep I survived so far for 73 years.
And yes I know there’s the threat of pedofiles out there but they have always been there ,we walked to school alone 2 miles each way in boiling hot sun in summer,and strong winds in winter
 
Great Thread!
I like it when some of these old threads find their way back to the surface, especially since I had not ambled through these swinging doors when they were originally posted. It is kind of like finding a great old song that you never heard before.
It brought some great memories of my rough and tumble youth.
 
Apartment house 1947:

Me and Robert was playing in the back of someone's pickup
parked on a cement driveway.
Robert who was daring said, "I'm a deep sea driver." He dived off the back of the pickup head first onto the driveway.
You could see the crack of his head and the blood coming out. I was scared

Robert's mother came out, saw her son, started screaming.
Adults gather around:
"What happened?"
"Me and Robert was in the back of the pickup, he played
deep sea diver."
The adults did not believe me-they did not believe Robert
was that stupid-he was.
My father arrived, started jerking me by the arm-trying to
get the truth.
I started crying, I did not know why they did not believe me.

During this time, Robert lay on the driveway bleeding.
His mother was hysterical.
I eased up to Robert, looked like the crack in his head was
getting bigger.
Someone put Robert in a car...taking him to hospital.

The adults continued to mill about; my father was jerking
on my arm, trying to get the truth out of me. (???)
This event went on forever, it was a big thing back then.

I was put to bed (it was around 4 P.M.) for punishment.
I had done something wrong according to the adult.
A very anxious time for me, the adults had spoke of Robert
dying.
He came close to dying, remained in hospital for a long time.

I was viewed with suspicion for some time,
 
Christmas afternoon, maybe 1955 or 1966. The boy next door got a Daisy Red Ryder BB Rifle and was showing it off. I sooo wanted to shoot it but noooooo, he wouldn't let me.

He was waving it at me, finger on the trigger. I grabbed the barrel and jerked it toward me. I think you can figure out what happened next. BB imbedded in my forehead about a 1/2 inch over my eyebrow (I still have the "dimple" to this day). I ran home screaming, a thin stream of blood running down my face.

My mother: "I KNEW this was going to happen!" My father: "For the love of Pete, can't you stay out of trouble at least on Christmas Day?" He calmly sponged me down, sterilized a needle, popped the BB out and slapped a Bandaid on my head.

No trip to the emergency room, no threatening to sue the neighbors for letting their son have a "dangerous" weapon. All was over a half hour after it happened. Poor Bobby got the worst of the deal; his mom took the rifle away and wouldn't let him play with it for a month. He was mad at me for six months. I never got to shoot the rifle, either. Bummer.

Bubble kids, we weren't.
 
Furryanimal said:
View attachment 61172
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Babies cribs (back in the day) were all finished with lead-base paint. I remember the railings on my baby siblings cribs had all sorts of chew marks. Crib railings made for a great place for a baby to bite down on when they were teething.

No seat belts, riding in the backs of pickup trucks, being doubled on someone's motorbike with no helmet. All the above for me!

Dipping a baby's soother into a jar of honey to help soothe the child.

The dangerous and now obsolete/banned baby walkers with casters on the bottoms of the legs. Even back in the day when I was a babysitter I thought they were dangerous, yet there wasn't a household around where one wasn't in use.

Scorching hot stainless metal park slides, where you could scald the backs of your legs on a hot day! And yes, I did, a few times!

Diaper pins. How many babies suffered pin-pricks when getting their diapers changed. No Pampers in those days...

Hot, greenhouse, diaper rash inducing rubber pants. Kids didn't wear diapers until they were in kindergarten, unlike today.

Having your mouth washed-out with a bar of soap for swearing. Neither myself or my baby siblings suffered such punishment, but I do remember a few neighbourhood kids did!
 
Kadee46 said:
What about running around bare feet as we did and quite often kicking our toes on stones and making them bleed
and just running water from the tap on the bleeding sore toes ..no running to the hospital or even as much as a band aid.

We only had a bath once a week using water that had been boiled in the same old copper that was used for boiling the sheets that were made from old flour sacks and the same copper was used for dipping chooks ( chickens) for plucking them
Yep I survived so far for 73 years.
And yes I know there’s the threat of pedofiles out there but they have always been there ,we walked to school alone 2 miles each way in boiling hot sun in summer,and strong winds in winter
Click to expand...
Uphill both ways as I recall 😂
 
jujube said:
Christmas afternoon, maybe 1955 or 1966. The boy next door got a Daisy Red Ryder BB Rifle and was showing it off. I sooo wanted to shoot it but noooooo, he wouldn't let me.

He was waving it at me, finger on the trigger. I grabbed the barrel and jerked it toward me. I think you can figure out what happened next. BB imbedded in my forehead about a 1/2 inch over my eyebrow (I still have the "dimple" to this day). I ran home screaming, a thin stream of blood running down my face.

My mother: "I KNEW this was going to happen!" My father: "For the love of Pete, can't you stay out of trouble at least on Christmas Day?" He calmly sponged me down, sterilized a needle, popped the BB out and slapped a Bandaid on my head.

No trip to the emergency room, no threatening to sue the neighbors for letting their son have a "dangerous" weapon. All was over a half hour after it happened. Poor Bobby got the worst of the deal; his mom took the rifle away and wouldn't let him play with it for a month. He was mad at me for six months. I never got to shoot the rifle, either. Bummer.

Bubble kids, we weren't.
Click to expand...
When my husband had an MRI a few years back, the docs found the pellet, from a BB gun, embedded in the bone of his forehead. Gosh, he said, forgot about that.😂. 🤦🏻‍♀️
 
Aneeda72 said:
When my husband had an MRI a few years back, the docs found the pellet, from a BB gun, embedded in the bone of his forehead. Gosh, he said, forgot about that.
Click to expand...
A few years back, I was on a ladder, finishing a roof
My wife was holding the ladder.....'helping' by poking me in the hind end every few minutes
She said 'hey, what's this?'
It was a little nodule in my calf
She sez 'it rolls around under the skin'

I got off the ladder
Opened it up with an xacto knife
A little BB plopped out
....from BB gun wars of the'50s
 
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We took in a foster kid when I was around 10 yrs old

Brady

I didn't much care for him

a little story;

One of the things us neighborhood kids loved to do was play king of the trees.
Douglas fir trees are plentiful in NW Oregon, and huge. They can reach 300 ft in height, and these were not the exception.
Three or four of us would pick our tree and race each other to the top. Whoever would first get to the point of being able to bend the top over and touch the tip was king. The best part, however, was not being king, but just camping there in the limbs, letting the wind blow us back and forth.
Folks woulda crapped their pants if they’d known what we were doin’.
Well, little Brady (my personal Timmy) wanted to climb.
I became a bit evil right there, and cautioned him that climbing those trees were not the same as yer everyday apple tree…but in the tone of lure and enticement.
The little guy was doin’ quite well, as doug fir limbs are rather close together…hell you could almost walk up them. Then he musta made a misstep. I heard some yelling, and some thumping sounds. Then I caught sight of him flopping from one bough to the next.
Kathumping all the way to the bottom.
Seemed like he took forever.

Thing is, there’s about 20 feet of no limbs at the bottom, and he was in no way gonna grab wunna those boards we used to start our climbs. So he landed in a little Timmy heap, on his shoulder, in the bed of fir needles.

For another evil moment I sat at my treetop, kinda hoping he’d not move, at all, ever.

But the little [censored] just got a dislocated shoulder and some bruises….and a new guardian.

Things sometimes just have a way of workin’ themselves out.
 

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