Childhood Should Have Killed Us - OK, Boomer Edition

[Progatron]

Television without FOX or FOXNews. Only three networks and a handful of local channels. Nothing digital. For a long time, no TV remotes. No videotapes.

Yep. If you weren't in front of the TV when your show came on, you missed it. Even cartoons were only on weekends, or super early in the morning. I suppose as a child, the thought of today's cartoon networks that ran 24/7 would be paradise, but like anything else, if you have anything you want, any time you want, you don't learn to appreciate it the same way.

BTW I'm a Gen X'er, born in the early 70s, but I think my childhood experiences are far closer to those of Boomers than they are of today's kids.

[Dave (in MA)]

At scout camp, we held competitions for axe throwing, into a tree. If you didn't hit it dead-on, it glanced off and went... elsewhere.

We played baserock in the woods. We had no bat or ball, so we used a log and a rock. The pitcher would throw a pitch standing next to a tree and then duck behind the tree to avoid getting killed.

[markwoll]

Remember waiting for this to be replaced by cartoons, or Davy and Goliath?

[Progatron]

^^^ I seem to remember up here it was just colour bars and an odd tone until around 6:00 am when the cartoons came on. I also remember when programming would stop for the night, they would play the national anthem with a Canadian flag blowing in the wind and then it went blank for several hours.

[JKL2000]

In college (early 80’s) a friend made a gun, and he made one bullet too. The was made of copper tubing and stuff, and the bullet was a little a metal cylinder with cement poured in, and I guess gunpowder. We took to an uncrowded place ON CAMPUS and fired it at a dumpster or something. It worked!

When my dad was a kid he stuck a bean from some game in his nose and couldn’t get it out. He was afraid to tell his parents. After a few days he complained of pain in his sinuses. They took him to the doctor, who found that the bean had started to sprout!

[Progatron]

In college (early 80’s) a friend made a gun, and he made one bullet too. The was made of copper tubing and stuff, and the bullet was a little a metal cylinder with cement poured in, and I guess gunpowder. We took to an uncrowded place ON CAMPUS and fired it at a dumpster or something. It worked!

Ahhh, the stupidity of youth. We used to whip cigarette lighters at the ground as hard as we could to make them explode, and make homemade flamethrowers out of aerosol spray cans and a lighter.

When I was a kid, my parents were out one day and I was playing with matches, lighting pieces of paper on fire. Sure enough, one got away from me and made two large burn holes in the carpet in my bedroom. I panicked and jacked the thermostat up as high as it would go, thinking I could convince my parents that it was so hot that the carpet burned. This did not fly with them, and I was in major trouble. I must have been some sort of pyromaniac when I was a kid, because I also once took a boxed set of old 78 rpm records that my dad had, a classical collection that I think his dad had given him, they were old, heavy RCA vinyl in boxes - and burned them in our fireplace just to watch them melt. They were probably pretty valuable - or at least, would be today. Again, the stupidity of youth.

I don't remember if I got a spanking for any of that stuff, but I did get them on occasion. But I raise that subject to tell you this: in the first grade of elementary school, I received a punishment for doing something stupid in class: I had to go to the principal's office, hold my hands out, and have them smacked with a ruler while I bawled my eyes out. Hard to believe that ever happened in my lifetime, but it did. Something similar happened to my uncle, this would be back in the 1940s or early 50s, and my grandfather on my mother's side, who was a boxer, went down to the school that same day and punched out the teacher who had hit his son. Knocked him out cold in front of everybody. Such different times!

My parents did not defend my honor the same way. I guess I deserved the beating.

[progmatist]

My parents would actually kick us out of the house to run wild so they could enjoy peace and quiet.

On a July 4th, my younger brother, the neighbor kid Leo and I were setting off bottle rockets. After lighting one, the bottle tipped over and shot the rocket right into Leo's little brother Andy's lap. He was about 4 or 5 at the time. After the rocket exploded, we were yelling out "ANDY!!!" with all the terror imaginable in our voices. Andy just kept laughing...thankfully, he was completely uninjured.

Yep. There were no belts and the dashboard was entirely made out of metal. As an extra bonus, our car was a 2-door Dodge Dart sedan and the front bench seat folded forward to permit access to the back seat, but the seat back didn't lock into position, so in the event of a panic stop the seat would fold forward with the added weight of whatever kids were standing in the back pushing against it.

A Dodge Dart coupe was my first car. The front driver side wheel was severely toed out, causing me to have to replace the tire every couple thousand miles. Every other similar car I ever saw had exactly the same issue, so it was apparently quite common.

[Vic2012]

I remember my mom taking me to register for elementary school. When they asked her if she would allow the school to discipline me with paddling she said absolutely yes......

[markwoll]

I don't recall any kind of 'corporal punishment' in elementary school in the 1960's.
In middle school several teachers had elaborate paddles hanging prominently in their classrooms. Never saw them used.
The neighborhood in Kansas where I 'grew up' ( ages 5-11 ) was close to the country. We roamed. Home by dinner or when the street lights came on.
Parents knew us all. Word always got back.

[Plasmatopia]

I remember my older brothers made a small cannon in shop class that we fired off a few times. Also a friend's older brother had one hidden in some cliffs that we fired off across the valley one day.

Another group of friends I had would do tons of stuff with fireworks in high school. One night (probably about 4am) about 6 or 7 of us placed about 100 1/4-mile rockets with slow-burning fuses throughout the local cemetery and then hid in the woods at the edge of the cemetery to watch them go off. Spectacular. They were arcing up and over the street that bordered the graveyard and bouncing off the roofs of houses. Of course the cops came and we took off through the woods. Every year we'd place a 100-shot Saturn missile battery on the railroad tracks directly behind the police station on a slow-burning fuse. We'd be nonchalantly walking up main street when it went off so we could watch the cops, who were usually sitting in their car on the main drag to catch speeders, race off to catch the perps.

I still do stupid stuff though. It was only a few short years ago that I couple of friends came over and we were out on the deck launching bottle rockets from our butt cracks, lol. One guy tried to launch one from his zipper. It didn't launch and he dropped his pants and danced around the deck trying to get away from it before it exploded. Good times.

[Vic2012]

I knew kids that liked playing with matches and fireworks. I was never attracted to that. You'd hear stories about some kids getting fingers blown off. Sounds a bit exaggerated. I had a firecracker pop in my hand once. Yes it hurt, but nuthin' got blown off.......

[rcarlberg]

I remember my mom taking me to register for elementary school. When they asked her if she would allow the school to discipline me with paddling she said absolutely yes......

Oh, I spent MANY an afternoon in Mr. Malnati's office getting my bare bottom paddled.

Never changed my behavior.

He eventually gave up and befriended me. I ended up mowing his lawn.

[Lopez]

Remember waiting for this to be replaced by cartoons, or Davy and Goliath?

I never understood what the symbols on the test pattern meant, nor why the chief was on it. By the way, the animator of Davy and Goliath was Sneaky Pete Kleinow, steel player in the Flying Burrito Brothers.

[Vic2012]

Oh, I spent MANY an afternoon in Mr. Malnati's office getting my bare bottom paddled.

Never changed my behavior.

He eventually gave up and befriended me. I ended up mowing his lawn.

I only got paddled once. That was Jr. Highschool (1975, or thereabouts). My choices were, take a paddling, or stay afterschool in detention for an hour. I took my medicine like a man.... Fuck staying afterschool.

[Vic2012]

°^^ I had a friend who blew off some fingers with firecrackers.

There ya go. But back then boys dared each other to do stupid shit. There's always a few knuckleheads in the group....

[Lopez]

Speaking of firecrackers, in Rhode Island where I grew up, they were illegal including sparklers. BUT, you could legally buy through the mail, all the ingredients to make them. My brothers and I would send away for tubes, cherry bomb halves, flash powder, even the saw dust to pack the items or coat the outside. We'd buy underwater fuse in 30-foot lengths. One day we were going to camp for the summer, so we decided to get rid of everything we had at once. We got a Mason jar and packed it with powder and toilet paper. We added a 30 foot fuse and buried the whole thing in the lot of the old abandoned girls' school across the street from our house. We lit the buried fuse and casually walked back across the street, sat on the stoop, and waited for the explosion. Foopf! We heard a muffled boom and saw a cloud of dirt rise into the air. We waited a while then went across the street to see what happened. There was a three-foot deep and wide crater where we buried the bomb and burning toilet paper everywhere. Cops would often drive in there to kill time. Good thing one didn't drive in there that morning. Being the good boys we were reputed to be, we put out the fires, walked home casually, and went to camp.

Oh, man, camp! I could go on for weeks about the dangerous stuff we did there. First time I smoked, got drunk, got high, got laid, you name it.

[Buddhabreath]

^^^ Well, I'm a knucklehead lucky enough to still have all his fingers. On one occasion on my grandfathers farm I launched a 3-foot pipe rocket with a huge report, the launch pipe slowly slipped after I had lit it and the rocket went straight at a cow in the neighboring field and BOOM! exploded right next to the poor thing. To my astonishment, the cow did not react in the least, standing there chewing it cud. I shit you not! The only thing I can figure is maybe the report instantaneously blew out the cow's ears.

[Dave (in MA)]

Oh, I spent MANY an afternoon in Mr. Malnati's office getting my bare bottom paddled.

Never changed my behavior.

He eventually gave up and befriended me. I ended up mowing his lawn.

Maybe he really enjoyed those bare bottom padding sessions.

[Buddhabreath]

Maybe he really enjoyed those bare bottom padding sessions.

Hey! I thought we weren't supposed to talk about religion!

[Vic2012]

Maybe he really enjoyed those bare bottom padding sessions.

.

I didn't have to drop me pants when I got paddled. ...

[walt]

Running naked through the cars of the F train*.Ah..halcyon days.



*not really.

[Plasmatopia]

My oldest brother found what he thought was just a piece of metal in a box of stuff that was left behind in the workshop of the dairy farm my family bought back in the early '70s. He put it in a vice and was cutting it with a hacksaw when it exploded. Turns out it was a blasting cap which took a chunk out of his thumb and blew the end of his index finger off.

[rcarlberg]

Maybe he really enjoyed those bare bottom padding sessions.

No, after he gave up corporal punishment and tried "the carrot" instead, I discovered he was actually a pretty cool guy.

He had a hell of a big lawn though

[mozo-pg]

When I was 8, I used to "bunk", as we called it, the school bus. Your just hang onto the back bumper and ski along your feet. The bus driver would hit the brakes and chase us off the bus. Fun but dangerous times.

[soundsweird]

OMG, I've read many posts here that sound EXACTLY word for word like the crazy stuff I did as a kid. I'll add this: falling off a cliff in the South Dakota badlands while rock hunting with my parents, 20 miles from the nearest paved road. Good thing I "landed" on my feet rather than my head or back; I screwed up my back and had a sprained ankle, but any other angle and I would've been dead.