I can remember spending nights at friends houses and sleeping outside so we could wander around the neighborhood during the middle of the night or light fireworks at the park and get a rush if the police would cruise by afterwards as we hid.

How about being able to bring every imaginable weapon to school, with the only rule being if it was a gun, you had to leave it with the principal. But you could pick it up after school and shoot it in the hills to your heart's content. And that was Los Angeles County schools.

Leaving the front door unlocked when you went to the corner store (I think that actually qualifies as two...)

Hunting on the way home from school.

How's that for a couple?

FFZ

having to walk 10 miles to school, on my hands, in a white out blizzard, up hill BOTH ways...And we liked it...

Now my kids will just teleport themselves to class and worry that the recombinator shifted the color in their clothing.

I once killed a grizzly with a  notebook.

fireworks

Living in a society that didn't know of the words "politically correct",  and having the honor of raising and folding the american flag in school when it was my turn.

ride a bike without a helmet
play cowboys and indians
play war with fake real-looking guns and not   worry about an over excited cop shooting us.
play smear the queer at school and not even know what a queer is..my kids will probably be taught all about it the way things are going...
2nd the fireworks

How about being a kid without the pressure of having to worry about some cretin abducting you, or having the preventive measures taught to you in school often so you retain the information.  Or not having to watch the World Trade Center collapse on TV in school as a "history" lesson, it is definitely a different time/society we live in and the saddest thing is we will never go back to " the way it was." And to think we will have to live this way because of some misfits who live in tents and caves, may be even yet more sad.

 When we wanted a soda pop, we would just walk to the store, stopping along the way to pick up returnable bottles to trade for the pop. The sodas were 6 cents, candy bars were a nickle... fullclip

Play army with real looking toy guns throughout the whole neigborhood.

Buy cherry bombs and M-80s from the neighborhood bad boy.

Walk the railroad tracks into Detroit and then sneak into the baseball game at Tiger Stadium.

Shoot BB guns in the woods at the end of the street.

Building forts and having dirt ball fights at the vacant lot.

Play mumbly-peg with our scout knives during recess at school.

Riding mini bikes throughout the neighborhood without having them confiscated by the police. Caught and taken home yes, but never confiscated.

We had a General Store in our town where you could buy penny candy and stuff in large glass jars and they had a soda fountain. Candy was often 2 pieces for a penny, big pretzel sticks were 2 for a penny. A 6 oz. coke at the soda fountain counter in the original coke glass was 5 cents. An ice cream bar was a nickel.

My son is an Eagle Scout beginning his senior year so he has been exposed to all the wholesome outdoor stuff. I got a second chance at child hood working beside him as he went through the ranks. I did it the right way this time.

We are fortunate to live in the suburbs with some open land still available for him and his buddies to roam free on.  He rides motorcycle, goes jon boating, fishing, hunting, swimming in the creek.  You know all the stuff from the "Good Ole Days". The only things that he doesn't do, that I did, would be the over the  edge mischievous stuff.

I think that most of us are disillusioned about how bad things are. We pay way too much attention to what's going on in the world and not enough attention to what we might do with our time.

My suggestion is get your kids out....share some time with them....and give the the gift of their own " Good Old Days" ...there is still a heck of a lot of good times to be had.

Much of the stuff you guys mentioned can still be done in rural areas.

Running around with BB guns and .22s.
Playing Cowboys and Indians and War.
Whittling with a Swiss Army or Boy Scout knife.
Fireworks.
Make gunpowder.
Burn stuff.
Hunting out of your bedroom window.
Hike/Swim/Build forts all day and never see an adult.
Write your name in large gasoline letters and lighting it.
Dry Ice bombs.
Etc.

I will never move out of the sticks for that very reason.  I hope my kids have as much fun as I did!

My kids WILL experience lawsuits and arrests, probably by age 6.  Why?  I'm guessing a fight or something that is "kid like."  Remember the law suit against the kindergartener for kissing the other kiddygardener?  

How about telling the smelly kid to take a bath?  I think by the time my kids are born, smelly kids will be a protected minority.  

Cowboys and indians?  Yeah, and toy guns will be banned, so how will they do this?

Kids will also have v-chips installed in their heads which will make all guns look like flowers, and they will all shoot water.

Then there's when I started a fire with some buddies and it kinda smoked towards the junior high, instead of getting arrested, the cops asked us to put it out and do something else.

Then there's the implants in kids hands to prevent them from making a gun with their finger and thumb and imposing their violence on others.

Then there's how kids will all be pussies, since their parents need to impart "sensitivities" on them for fags, minorities and other groups, which when I was a kid, I was allowed to make my own mind up. (Parent's never said anything about race/ethnicity/religion.)

Then theres how kids will grow up suing eachother in school courts, since lawsuits will be so common by that time, that waking up won't be to coffee and orange juice, but subpeonas and depositions.

Then there's the fact that my kids won't be safe playing in the neighborhood since there really isn't a protective barrier in any neighborhood I've been in.  Kids are even vulnerable where they sleep.

Kids won't be legally allowed to shoot any sort of guns till a certain age, since the government in its infinite wisdom, knows that dad doesn't know shit about firearms safety and little Johnny will probably only start a rampage against his classmates anyway. (because they aren't allowed to fight out their aggression, it gets to a boiling point where they feel the need to kill.)


My kid won't be allowed to be a kid.

Not have to listen to PC crap.

Have fast cars with BIG engines and .32 gas.

Ride my bike carrying fishing pole and rifle slung over my back - and nobody thought anything of it.

Not knowing what a moslem maggot was or why they wanted to kill me.

No AIDS.

Mowing yards and fixing mowers to earn my own money.  Working in an automotive machine shop and doing deliveries - at 16.

Being engineer at a radio station and having a free pass to leave school at any time - signed by the president of the school board.  Boy did the admin HATE that!

Of course, the down side:

Fear of the bomb.

Small school with very few offerings.  In physics and chemistry we had a teacher for only 6 weeks.  On our own rest of the year.  What a waste.

A faggot principal.

The "PILL" had not come into widespread use.

No computers.  How that would have made English class SOOOOO much easier for me!  My handwriting is horrible.  Only now can I express myself well with the written word.  (Well, some of the time!!)

Keggers in the park.[8D]

[beer]

[b]Quoted:
My son is an Eagle Scout beginning his senior year so he has been exposed to all the wholesome outdoor stuff. I got a second chance at child hood working beside him as he went through the ranks. I did it the right way this time.[/b]


Now you know, and we know, why your son is an Eagle Scout.

Bill

Like most of us, I enjoyed playing with very realistic looking toy guns without fear of being killed by the police.  My dad was military and he gave us a used LAW rocket launcher.  Whichever one of us had that dominated the "army man" game.

I also miss shooting bottle rockets down the street at each other in the city.  And shooting roman candles at the photo sensors on street lights to turn them off.  Simple pleasures now gone forever, like so many others.

Also, as I was starting high school, we moved out to the country.  We used to leave school at lunch time and drive to the local beer joint and shoot pool for a couple of hours (ahhh, nice to have a study hall after lunch).  We were allowed to eat snacks and drink soft drinks in class since the school had no A/C and this was in South Texas with 1500° temperatures.

I keep my 7-year-old boy on a much shorter leash than I was on and I feel terrible about that.  It's tough to balance his need for freedom and his need for protection from an increasingly evil world.