The Last Rebels: 25 Things We Did as Kids That Would Get Someone Arrested Today
Raise your hand if you survived a childhood in the 60s, 70s, and 80s that included one or more of the following, frowned-upon activities (raise both hands if you bear a scar proving your daredevil participation in these dare-devilish events):
1 - Riding in the back of an open pick-up truck with a bunch of other kids
2 - Leaving the house after breakfast and not returning until the streetlights came on, at which point, you raced home, ASAP so you didn’t get in trouble
3 - Eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the school cafeteria
4 - Riding your bike without a helmet
5 - Riding your bike with a buddy on the handlebars, and neither of you wearing helmets
6 - Drinking water from the hose in the yard
7 - Swimming in creeks, rivers, ponds, and lakes (or what they now call *cough* “wild swimming“)
8 - Climbing trees (One park cut the lower branches from a tree on the playground in case some stalwart child dared to climb them)
9 - Having snowball fights (and accidentally hitting someone you shouldn’t)
10 - Sledding without enough protective equipment to play a game in the NFL
11 - Carrying a pocket knife to school (or having a fishing tackle box with sharp things on school property)
12 - Camping
13 - Throwing rocks at snakes in the river
14 - Playing politically incorrect games like Cowboys and Indians
15 - Playing Cops and Robbers with *gasp* toy guns
16 - Pretending to shoot each other with sticks we imagined were guns
17 - Shooting an actual gun or a bow (with *gasp* sharp arrows) at a can on a log, accompanied by our parents who gave us pointers to improve our aim. Heck, there was even a marksmanship club at my high school
18 - Saying the words “gun” or “bang” or “pow pow” (there actually a freakin’ CODE about “playing with invisible guns”)
19 - Working for your pocket money well before your teen years
20 - Taking that money to the store and buying as much penny candy as you could afford, then eating it in one sitting
21 - Eating pop rocks candy and drinking soda, just to prove we were exempt from that urban legend that said our stomachs would explode
22 - Getting so dirty that your mom washed you off with the hose in the yard before letting you come into the house to have a shower
23 - Writing lines for being a jerk at school, either on the board or on paper
24 - Playing “dangerous” games like dodgeball, kickball, tag, whiffle ball, and red rover (The Health Department of New York issued a warning about the “significant risk of injury” from these games)
25 - Walking to school alone
http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/the-last-rebels-25-things-we-did-as-kids-that-would-get-someone-arrested-today-06162015H/T - WRSA
OK, as-is score would be 23/25, I didn't throw rocks at snakes in the river and I don't recall eating pop rocks and soda, but change "snake" to "muskrat" and "river" to "reservoir" and I can score 24/25.
And all the other stuff they missed...which I am sure I am forgetting as much as I am remembering...
26 - Launching bicycles/sleds off ramps built on the street, or a hill or off a roof.
27 - Picking gravel out of your bloody legs (see above).
28 - Shooting Polish Cannons, shooting dirt clods with homemade slingshots (there might be a rock in there!), tossing handmade spears and such at each other (nobody lost on eye...maybe black & blue, but they still had a working eye!).
29 - Treating construction sites like gym sets at a playground (bruises, sprains, cuts...the usual from running atop frames, jumping gaps, etc).
30 - Treating a newly excavated foundation as your private swimming hole if it has been rainy lately (note: get dry sand wet before trying to egress the water!).
31 - Hanging onto another moving vehicle (often at the hosts ignorance) while riding a bike or boot-skiing behind a school bus in winter.
32 - Catching blackbirds with bread-baited hooks on fishing poles.
33 - Making/using tree houses at unsafe heights without proper safety precautions and having only hastily applied surplus wood to the tree trunk as the entrance and a rope of uncertain durability as the exit...and all the horseplay that ensures in between.
34 - Riding a 10-speed without a helmet and steering without using the handlebar or your hands at any time of day.
35 - Using aerosol cans as flamethrowers.
36 - Using M-80's and just about anything you can imagine.
37 - Using gasoline as a payload in an Estes rocket.
38 - Drawing violent cartoons in school.
39 - Having firearm safety class and a firearm in school.
40 - Destroying plastic models with gas, firecrackers on land, air and sea.
41 - Being alone on a paper route before you turned 12.
42 - Throwing knives...at each other.
43 - Participating in neighborhood boxing matches.
44 - Throwing fluorescent light tubes against a brick wall.
45 - Dunking each other in the local swimming pool/lake/whatever.
46 - Jumping out of windows and off roofs 2 stories or more high.
47 - Tunneling into snowbanks and making igloos warmed and lit by burning candles.
48 - Capturing and teasing crawfish, salamanders, frogs, anything that creeps or crawls. Scaring other kids with 'em.
49 - Throwing stuff and older kids and running like the devil...and sometimes not making it.
50 - Fights, seriously...we fought a lot, and would make up and that would be the end of it...nobody ran home for a gun or ran somebody over with a car or some stupid crap...it was understood stuff would happen and a kid has to stand up for their self! No CPS, no cops, no expulsions.
Come on, add some more!