Should you be dead?

[Plakespear]

People over 35 should be dead. Here's why:

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.
Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, ... and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.)
As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors!
We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.
After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. NO CELL PHONES!!!!! U n t h i n k a b l e !
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, DVD's, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.
We had friends!
We went outside and found them.
We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.
We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?
We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment!
Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors!
Tests were not adjusted for any reason. Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.
Imagine that!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever.
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
Congratulations...so far...so good!
Please pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good !!!!!

[FNG]

Heh, I used to remember being so pissed off when my mom would make me & my brother stop playing video games and go outside. Had she not, I wouldn't know how to hot-wire cars, pick locks, and construct elaborate waterbaloon/rock/dead fish artillary.

[Keoni]

When was the last time you saw a good BB gun war in the neighborhood?



edit: I have a sudden urge to play Jarts

[Benny Profane]

BB guns?!

pussy white boys

[Keoni]

I wanted a crossbow.

[dubu]

I miss rock fights..

[bagtagley]

I miss bottle rocket fights.

[VTskibum]

My buddy used to pee in water balloons during entire neighborhood watergun fights. Fortunately I was on his side.

[weibo]

at one of the rafting companies here they have some spare time every day, this time has become games time. There is the rock game and the stick game which of course are games involving throwing things at each other until someone bleeds, you bleed you lose. There are many other examples of games like these, but there are now younger guys starting work that grew up in the 80's and they just can't seem to appreciate the game in the same way. We were the lucky ones.

[bigtrubs]

I miss my 50cc Honda Motorbike, and somehow trying to jump it off things...

[Clack]

I miss bottle rocket fights.

My favorite

[vote4pedro]

we had bb gun fights on my friend's three-story, multi-level roof. you had to stay on the roof, though. there'd be like 10-15 of us running around trying not to get shot or fall 30 feet to the ground. ton a fun till my buddy broke his leg and my friends parents found out what we had been doing while they were at work.

[Parvo Pup]

Ahh - the memories....

Dirt clod fights in the trenches when they dug up the roads for city sewer.

Climbing up inside of spruce trees and trying to slide down the outside of the branches without falling through.

The other "tree stunt" was to climb up some shitty 20 foot tall little sapling and try to hold on to the top as the tree bent and you rode it towards the ground. You lost points for falling off too early.

The Classic - jumping off the roof.

Ditto on the BB/Pellet gun wars - two pairs of jeans, two heavy sweatshirts and a pair of your old man's Ray-Bans for eye protection. Oh yeah - you could only pump the gun twice.

Riding your bike in the DDT cloud behind the summer mosquito sprayer truck - the winner was the one who could hold their breath and get the longest ride.

Yeah baby - bottle rocket wars. Lived in South Carolina at the time and if you could look over the counter - you could buy M80's. We would squat in dirt foxholes we dug in the woods and launch these things at each other with innertube slingshots.

[ak_powder_monkey]

thank god my parents would never let me have video games I would be so much fatter then I am now. I climbed trees made mud damns jumped off roofs slid down tree trunks and played with legos. I rode my bike a bunch pissed off a bunch if moose, went fishing in the local creek cross country skied all the time with my dad. I guess I should be dead too.

[snow_slider]

Ahhh, the memories.

-Wrist rocket wars (we used nuts/bolts, washers, ball bearings, and rocks).

-BB gun battles. Crossman 760's ruled the neighborhood. 5 pump max, but most everyone added an extra pump or two.

-Snowball fights that turned into slush ball fights that turned into ice ball fights that turned into a bloodied face for someone every time.

-Bumper skating. This was a game where two kids would ice skate at full speed towards each other and then throw their best shoulder block as they collided. The loser was the one who fell first.

-Riding motocross bikes on the ice with ice skates on our feet for stability (using our skated feet kinda like outriggers).

I'd probably be thrown in jail for mistreatment or neglect or some other trumped up nonsense if my child was ever caught doing the kinda stuff I did as a child.

[ill-advised strategy]

we had bb gun fights on my friend's three-story, multi-level roof. you had to stay on the roof, though. there'd be like 10-15 of us running around trying not to get shot or fall 30 feet to the ground. ton a fun till my buddy broke broke his leg....

We had an abandoned factory at the end of my block. My buddy fell through one of the skylights when a bunch of us were chasing each other around with fire extinguishers on the roof. That place was too much fun.

[FNG]

I may or may not have been an accomplice to the act of an infant in a pontoon boat being temporarily blinded by a three-person water balloon launcher projectile from 60 feet away.

[snow_slider]

And I may or may not have had a hand in parkinig a Catapillar D11 in the middle of the Rappahannock River.

Man, THAT sure was a mess. The city had to sink a barge next to the bulldozer, crane-drag the bulldozer onto the barge and then blast air into the ballast of the barge to re-float it and the bulldozer.

People were pretty pissed.

Running down street signs and stuff was a lot of fun till my friend lost control of it and we plunged down the bank of the river. I mean allegedly.

[The AD]

BB guns were fun. How about chambering a line of about five BBs and firing them off at once? No accuracy whatsoever, but you had to go for that shotgun effect.

[AfroMullet]

Like AKPM, my parents restricted my video game time. The past few years I may or may have not: had bb gun wars, rock wars, bike jousting, walnut wars, bottle rocket/saturn battery wars, played chicken from across a football field with baseballs, snuck on the roof of my 2-story school and had the cops called, ran from ski patrol at straightline speeds, thrown aerosol cans in the fire, participated in said "tree stunt", and I'll update you if I think of any others. Oh, and I may or may not have snuck out to TP peoples' houses in the middle of the night.