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

So if you don't like my list give us your own instead of just refuting each point. As far as drag racing, I was referring to something informal, like pulling up next to someone at a light and racing for a block or so. It was common when I was in high school but of course it was dangerous and stupid. I thought that was the point of this thread.

And of course people travel without itineraries (note the spelling) now but the difference is that it is easy to stay connected. When I was young it was common for parents to have no idea what country their kids were in or have any way of getting in touch with them. I found it liberating to be completely on my own and cut off from everyone I knew back home. Of course people can still travel that way but most don't.

Spanking it while watching girls outside from my window

I was a latch key kid from about age 9. I would take the bus to school, come home and be by myself until my mom came home from work. And it was not at all a big deal.

I remember riding in carpool with a kid's dad who would smoke cigarettes with the windows rolled up.

We had wood shop in 1st grade. We would trace patterns onto a 2X4 and then carve them out with coping saws. I made a bunch of dinosaurs and only cut my thumb once.

When I was a toddler, I could wiggle my way out of my car seat so easily that my parents gave up and just let me sit in the back seat. And I once fell out of the back of our station wagon when my mom failed to close the back all the way. When she pulled out of our house, the door to the back flew open and I went flying out of the back. I had a few scratches but was fine. I put on a show and cried a lot because I had swim lessons and it was cold that morning.

Never wore a helmet riding bikes, skiing, horseback riding, etc. But after learning about TBIs, I am ok with moving on to helmet wearing.

But I think I most missed the days when kids would just go out the front door and play in the neighborhood without having parents around. I used to go over to my friend's house and we would go over to a bunch of warehouses next to his neighborhood. We would collect old florescent bulbs from the dumpsters and launch them like javelins off a bluff that overlooked the warehouses. The would make a nice pop when they hit the ground in the parking lot. Every now and then a guy from one of the warehouses would come out and yell "Hey!" at us. We would scamper into the woods to hide. You could tell that the guy knew what we were doing and actually held back a little smile as he knew that he would have done the same thing when he was a kid.

Growing up in the 90s we spent more time playing “unsupervised” basketball, baseball, football, hockey than we did in any organized youth leagues. I still see plenty of kids playing on their own without adult supervision so not sure much as changed.

One thing I did as a kid that wouldn’t fly now in my 30s. Ding dong ditch on summer nights.

interesting thread. strongly agree with all who remember fondly the pickup baseball games and such that seem to have given way to kids' being on their phones or playing video games inside.

On the ones related more to safety/overprotection........I relate to both sides of it, having been a kid on very long proverbial leash in the '60's and a somewhat more uptight parent of little kids in the 90's.

reminds me of Lenore Skenazy's book "free range kids". Excerpt from my goodreads review pasted below pretty much summarizes my take........

..........For the most part, I really liked it -- funny, reasonable, and balanced. By "balanced" I mean that her overall take is certainly one-sided, advocating that you lighten up and quit worrying yourself and your kids to death, but she does sensibly acknowledge that some safety tips are important, empirically supported, and well worth it. Yes, outlawing "tag" at recess because some kid some time might fall and get a skinned knee is ridiculous, but the "Back to Sleep" campaign to reduce SIDS worked and saved many infants' lives. Baby knee pads for crawlers and toilet lid locks are overkill, but keeping kids from swimming in backyard pools unattended is a sensible way to reduce drowning risk. Eating lead paint really is bad for kids' development. And so on.......

Merry-go-rounds and see-saws.

Playgrounds nowadays suck.

LSD

Actually I still do it sometimes, but now there are other ways said to be better for getting results.

Lots of people still do some LSD, but they call it something else.

Runner's high.

Actually i still do that sometimes as well, but for the most part, when i go light enough to get it, it's because i am recovering and a bit beat-up, or if not, i tend to push myself a little so as to make it uncomfortable.

Or I'm just feeling my age.

To all the hose heads out there - Bumper skiing eh

Walked to school

Ate microwave popcorn

Drank water from the tap

Played outside when it was hot or cold

Also not personally but spanking as punishment

I can do any dangerous thing I used to do.

But these things people are calling dangerous aren't. They might impact your likelihood to live 100 years, but they're generally part of the ordinary background risk of life.

It's particularly strange to think hitchhiking is so risky. You can meet strangers anywhere, and a stranger preoccupied with driving a car is less of a threat than in many other situations.

While it's true they are overprotecting kids nowadays in lots of ways, they also build them skate parks where they can break all their bones.

Hitchhiking is deemed dangerous for the driver, not as much the one bumming a ride but both parts are definitely considered more dangerous than they were "back in the day". The dangerous part for the hitchhiker is suffering exposure while not getting picked up for a month. See all those homeless people? They are really hitchhikers that haven't got a ride yet.

No way I am picking up a hitchhker. I live in a rural border town. It is very common to see day laborers and some students hitching rides to and from the border crossing towards more urban areas. They almost exclusively get rides from others from Mexico who are doing the same travel but have cars., paisanos helping paisanos.

Hitchhiking?

Seriously, hitchhiking?!

In case you haven't heard, the new risky behavior of the day is using your Tesla Autopilot system to go for a drive, and the auto industry regulators are opening an investigation to a series of crashes, injuries, and at least one death involving the system.

Might we one day be listing using the self-driving feature as something now deemed too risky?

Stay tuned, and you might want to think twice if your offered a ride in one of these Teslas while hitchhiking.

Bad Wigins wrote:

I can do any dangerous thing I used to do.

But these things people are calling dangerous aren't. They might impact your likelihood to live 100 years, but they're generally part of the ordinary background risk of life.

That's the point of thread that they are not really dangerous. Activities that were once just considered fun or normal are now thought of as too risky. Take walking to school. All kids used to walk to school (or take the bus in rural areas), even those in 1st and 2nd grade. Now schools have these ridiculous pick up lines because parents are afraid to let their kids out of their sight and schools are afraid of lawsuits.

Are the skate park builders not afraid of lawsuits though? That's the unexplained outlier. Kids didn't use to do crazy stunts with full community approval.

* worry about a community skate park and deny the existence of a once in a century pandemic.

I get the sense you post this stuff just to hear yourself talk.

We used to go to roller skating rinks all the time and now most of them are closed and bulldozed down

We used to be able to use the school tracks during school hours

Going to a gym or restaurant without having to show a “vaccination passport “

yes yes yes yes wrote:

* worry about a community skate park and deny the existence of a once in a century pandemic.

I get the sense you post this stuff just to hear yourself talk.

no, you get a kick out of being snarky on the internet

life beckons out there in the real world, kiddo