Things you use to enjoy that you can't do anymore because they are deemed dangerous or improper

Mocking and pushing around weak, degenerate men.

Riding in an innertube being pulled by four wheeler or a pick up truck

Children playing outdoors without adult supervision.

Going to the grocery store without a mask.

amkelley wrote:

Children playing outdoors without adult supervision.

Yes, and organizing a baseball game, including kids you didn't really know, without adults present.

Your parents not knowing exactly where you were every minute of the day. Greater freedom and independence.

Not wearing a seatbelt. No one wore seatbelts when I was a kid, though they were required in all cars.

How about all the dangerous, risky things I did and somehow survived, and now cringe at the very thought of?

retired guy here wrote:

Some of these things may have been dangerous or improper but they didn't seem wrong or bad at the time.

1 Slip and Slide - my kids loved doing this on a hot summer day.

2 Jarts - it was a fun family game.

3 Riding in the back of a station wagon - loved doing this when I was a kid.

4 Harmless mild sexually suggestive banter with coworkers. You knew the people you could do it with and often it was initiated by the female.

Homemade slip and slide: A hill. Some tarps staked down. A garden hose. A lot of Dawn.

You're welcome.

Alan

Runningart2004 wrote:

retired guy here wrote:

Some of these things may have been dangerous or improper but they didn't seem wrong or bad at the time.

1 Slip and Slide - my kids loved doing this on a hot summer day.

2 Jarts - it was a fun family game.

3 Riding in the back of a station wagon - loved doing this when I was a kid.

4 Harmless mild sexually suggestive banter with coworkers. You knew the people you could do it with and often it was initiated by the female.

Homemade slip and slide: A hill. Some tarps staked down. A garden hose. A lot of Dawn.

You're welcome.

Alan

My kids are adults now and I don't think they would want grandpa putting their children, his grandkids, on a home made slip and slide.

But thanks anyway.

WiTuLo wrote:

Not wearing a seatbelt. No one wore seatbelts when I was a kid, though they were required in all cars.

At least you cars had seatbelts. Here are some things I remember growing up in the late 50s and 1960s.

Drinking out of the hose

Walking or riding a bike to the store with friends when I was 7 or 8 to buy bubble gum or candy

Riding in the back of a pickup

Playing in the gutter after a heavy rain

Holding on to a car bumper on a snowy road

Lighting firecrackers/fireworks on the 4th (not possible in CA where I live)

Playing with toy guns/BB-guns

Riding a bike without a helmet

Playing games like dodge ball with no adult supervision

After school fights with no adult around

Learning to drive on a three on the tree in a car with no blinkers

Drag racing

Not carrying a phone everywhere I went, even on long hikes or runs alone

Traveling to another country without an itinerary and no way to contact anyone I knew

All of the safely rules and adult supervision around today are mostly just in economically advanced countries. In most developing countries kids are still on their own a lot with freedom to wander and older siblings watch out for the younger ones. And things like crosswalks and safety rules for bikes and scooters etc. largely don't exist.

Smoking salvia

It's funny how older/boomers people cite this "playing outdoors without adult supervision" as something that happened "back in their day" and bag on millennials for not doing this. Yet, it's these very same boomers who were the ones who raised children *with* supervision...

Running

Grew up in the 90s/early 2000s...Did almost all of that surprisingly.

Cap guns used to be sold without orange tips letting you know they weren’t a real weapon. In the late 80s my parents bought me a dark steel revolver cap gun that I promptly took to 1st grade to show off. I had it there a week before taking it home.

If a kid tried that today they’d call SWAT and expel the student on the spot.

What about riding your bike to school? Me and my buddy would do that a couple times a year in elementary school. The school even had a bike rack for this purpose so it was a sanctioned event. Now the kids are on lockdown and I have to have the proper school sign in order to pick my 4th grader up from school. If I don't have the sign with me then I have to go in the school and speak to the police officer (SRO). He can't hop on his bike or walk home. No way!

80s/90s but same.

I never drag raced or hung on a bumper in the snow but, most of the rest.

We'd go offshore fishing 20 miles in a 20' boat with only a vhf radio.

That does not mean I endorse no helmets or fighting but, I get your point.

Age 9, take the bus downtown and hang around department stores with one friend same age.

Age 10, build hangglider, jump off garage, didn't work...

Age 12, climb on roof of schools...fell, completely winded.

Slingshot fights.

Homemade Zipline in backyard... nearly killed friend.

That was all before the teen years where things got crazy.