Weren't we more on our own?

SifuPhil said:
We used to have the roller skates that clamped onto your sneakers. Heavy, all-metal things.

We'd start at the top of our driveway, shove off and fly downhill until we hit the ramp we put at the curb, launching us into the air and into the street.

A lot of drivers taught us colorful vocabularies.

We also used to race around in my basement, smashing into things, laughing, getting up and going at it again like demons.
Click to expand...

I remember those rollerskates! We had a big hill on one of our neighborhood streets and we used to race down it. It's a wonder any of us grew up alive, but we did!

We learned the colorful vocabularies from drivers trying to get through our street softball games. Lesson learned there: Do NOT slide into third on blacktop pavement.
 

We used to play baseball (with regular bats and balls) on the street in front of my house. Across the street were thick woods, that led down several hundred feet at a sharp angle to another road below.

Every so often there'd be a high fly ball, and one of the neighborhood kids would yell "I got it!" as he backed up closer and closer to those woods ...

Johnny Jones and Teddy Smith were never seen again.
 
I think a movie that brought back my feeling of the years I grew up in more than any other was The Sandlot. I laughed so hard all through the movie. If you have never seen it I give it a big thumbs up


 

SifuPhil said:
Boy, how true!

Yet, people look back at (in my case) the late '50's / early '60's and say "Oh, it was a regressive time - a time of Neanderthals". No, there were a LOT of wonderful things about those times. In fact, one of the central themes of my book The Great Hamster Land-Speed Record is the freedom that we kids had to do (mainly) stupid things, but also the learning opportunity it presented to us.
Click to expand...

I've read things online where people say that those days never existed, that programs like "Leave It To Beaver" and "Father Knows Best" weren't the way the world really was, nobody really had parents and neighborhoods and a life like that.

But we did. It was real.
 
A great thread! In my early youth (say early to mid 60s) I can recall being allowed to ride my bike anywhere! As someone said earlier, just make sure you were home for dinner. In my house there was hell to pay for not being home and at the table for dinner. I remember riding all over town.

I don't know how it was for other guys, but I was taught that you stand up for yourself and sometimes that meant fist fights. My mom told me how she watched from a window and let me beat the snot out of the older boy across the street (who was simultaneously my best friend and the kid I was always fighting with). Ah yes, good times. :)
 
mattc said:
i think the world was considered safer and that led to being expected to go out on your own a bit more.today it seems we feel there is high risk in children being on their own so we are protective and then it continues on into young adulthood.
Click to expand...

I agree. The world is too dangerous now. I used to walk to school with my girlfriends everyday and it was quite a hike. Now, for fear of serial sexual predators, parents arrange to drive kids to school and I think it's a good idea. Better to be safe and overcautious than to lose a child.
 
Bobw235 said:
A great thread! In my early youth (say early to mid 60s) I can recall being allowed to ride my bike anywhere! As someone said earlier, just make sure you were home for dinner. In my house there was hell to pay for not being home and at the table for dinner. I remember riding all over town.

I don't know how it was for other guys, but I was taught that you stand up for yourself and sometimes that meant fist fights. My mom told me how she watched from a window and let me beat the snot out of the older boy across the street (who was simultaneously my best friend and the kid I was always fighting with). Ah yes, good times. :)
Click to expand...

That's how my folks were, too. I grew up in a big city, so no wide open spaces for us. But we'd ride our bikes in packs over every flat inch through several city blocks. Fights happened at least a couple times a week - on the 'wrong' street at the wrong time, someone wanted your bike, or your transistor radio, or your new converse sneakers. Or your Keds, for that matter. But there was safety in numbers, and it didn't hurt that our dad taught us how to fight....with and without gloves.

I honestly don't think a pedophile would have stood a chance.
 
Those metal clamp-on roller skates were great. I went everywhere on those things - until the metal wheels developed holes, and mom refused to buy another pair. According to her, I was 'getting too big', meaning it was time to stop being a tomboy.

I was into baseball until the day I was pitcher, and the batter made a magnificent (and very straight) hit, directly into my eye. That, and a slingshot hit from nowhere in junior high that turned my eye around in it's socket, started my eyeglass wearing days.

Being a quiet, shy little girl, and a year younger than everyone else in grade 1, made me a target for the schoolyard bully .. redheaded Harvey. Little did he know that I was also feisty if goaded. He found out the day he pushed me off a swing, and I turned around and gave him a bloody nose. He was so shocked, and as far as I know, the school didn't get in touch with my parents.
 
I always had bloody knees from those clamp on skates. It's a wonder I have no scarred up knees. I always had two big scabs on my knees LOL

Just realized what I've said..no comments from the peanut gallery plz :p
 
We had swing set with a slide with a small go cart that went down the slide. My sister had a crush on the boy across the street so she thought she would impress him with a daredevil stunt. She put a big box under the end of the slide. Her plan was to ride the go cart to the end of the slide and glide through the air into a landing. What did happen was that she got to the end of the slide & the go cart flipped face down and she broke her nose. She was bloody and snotty and crying & had to go to the hospital. When she got back she was very sad because the boy had seen her fail and all messy. I remember saying to her " You're supposed to just shake your butt from side to side like this..that's what the women in the movies do. None of them do stunts."
 
BlunderWoman said:
I always had bloody knees from those clamp on skates. It's a wonder I have no scarred up knees. I always had two big scabs on my knees LOL

Just realized what I've said..no comments from the peanut gallery plz :p
Click to expand...

Every time we got new jeans mom sewed big denim squares on the knees. Not so much to protect our knees but so she wouldn't have to buy new jeans again the very next day. We were embarrassed about the patches. Made us feel like babies, so we drew skulls and snakes and stuff on them. Badass baby patches. I got a whipping from dad when I wrote a profanity on mine but he didn't mind the drawings even when they were gruesome. Probably they were gruesome only to us.
 
Wrigley's said:
Every time we got new jeans mom sewed big denim squares on the knees. Not so much to protect our knees but so she wouldn't have to buy new jeans again the very next day. We were embarrassed about the patches. Made us feel like babies, so we drew skulls and snakes and stuff on them. Badass baby patches. I got a whipping from dad when I wrote a profanity on mine but he didn't mind the drawings even when they were gruesome. Probably they were gruesome only to us.
Click to expand...
hahahaha :)
 
Pinky said:
... Being a quiet, shy little girl, and a year younger than everyone else in grade 1, made me a target for the schoolyard bully .. redheaded Harvey. Little did he know that I was also feisty if goaded. He found out the day he pushed me off a swing, and I turned around and gave him a bloody nose. He was so shocked, and as far as I know, the school didn't get in touch with my parents.
Click to expand...

Those redheads - boy, you have to watch out for them! :rolleyes:

I think every schoolyard had a redheaded Harvey - something to do with school regulations.
 
I wonder if the fact that I've always been attracted to redheads since then, says something about me. Hmmmm ...
 
BlunderWoman said:
We had swing set with a slide with a small go cart that went down the slide. My sister had a crush on the boy across the street so she thought she would impress him with a daredevil stunt. She put a big box under the end of the slide. Her plan was to ride the go cart to the end of the slide and glide through the air into a landing. What did happen was that she got to the end of the slide & the go cart flipped face down and she broke her nose. She was bloody and snotty and crying & had to go to the hospital. When she got back she was very sad because the boy had seen her fail and all messy. I remember saying to her " You're supposed to just shake your butt from side to side like this..that's what the women in the movies do. None of them do stunts."
Click to expand...

BW, I can relate to your sister, but could have used a sensible friend like you.
 
Pinky said:
BW, I can relate to your sister, but could have used a sensible friend like you.
Click to expand...

hahaha I think that might be the first time anyone called me sensible. Thanks :D

I didn't have any common sense. I have no idea how I'm still alive. I think I thought I was invincible or something. I remember diving off this bridge called 'Devils Leap' and climbing back up there to do it again when a law officer in a boat with one of those things you yell through yelled at me to get down from there NOW. So I dove again thinking I could hide from him underwater. I had to spend the next hour explaining that I was NOT trying to kill myself especially since it wasn't even a school day :D
 
BlunderWoman said:
hahaha I think that might be the first time anyone called me sensible. Thanks :D

I didn't have any common sense. I have no idea how I'm still alive. I think I thought I was invincible or something. I remember diving off this bridge called 'Devils Leap' and climbing back up there to do it again when a law officer in a boat with one of those things you yell through yelled at me to get down from there NOW. So I dove again thinking I could hide from him underwater. I had to spend the next hour explaining that I was NOT trying to kill myself especially since it wasn't even a school day :D
Click to expand...

Definitely my kind of friend! Great story, hahaha!
 
Shalimar said:
C'mon Dr. McPhilly, let's hear your diagnosis.......zzzzzzzzzz. Oops, sorry, dozed off. Lol.
Click to expand...

Huh, wha..? I dozed off too. Time for coffee, then start dinner! Meanwhile, I look forward to hearing an analysis of my penchant for redheads.
 
Pinky said:
Huh, wha..? I dozed off too. Time for coffee, then start dinner! Meanwhile, I look forward to hearing an analysis of my penchant for redheads.
Click to expand...

Well, it's YOUR hour ...

Obviously you've already passed through the primitive oral phase. Remember that the character of the ego is a precipitate of abandoned object-cathexes and that it contains the history of those object-choices.

Along with the demolition of the Oedipus complex, your female object-cathexis of red-heads must be given up. The super-ego retains the character of your father, while the more powerful the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression, the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on.

The tension between the demands of conscience and the actual performances of the ego is experienced as a sense of guilt.

Certainly your religious, moral and ethical values cannot be properly arranged in your mind except by way of the ego, which is the representative of the external world to the id.






In other words ... you like redheads.
 
SifuPhil said:
Well, it's YOUR hour ...

Obviously you've already passed through the primitive oral phase. Remember that the character of the ego is a precipitate of abandoned object-cathexes and that it contains the history of those object-choices.

Along with the demolition of the Oedipus complex, your female object-cathexis of red-heads must be given up. The super-ego retains the character of your father, while the more powerful the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression, the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on.

The tension between the demands of conscience and the actual performances of the ego is experienced as a sense of guilt.

Certainly your religious, moral and ethical values cannot be properly arranged in your mind except by way of the ego, which is the representative of the external world to the id.






In other words ... you like redheads.
Click to expand...

Sankyu, DocTOR, for ze velly thorough analysis!

I understood the last sentence!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top