I am amazed today the kinds of cotton wool measures in place around kids to stop them from being hurt ... I grew up in a time when we would be out all day playing with friends and had to be called in from the street after the sun had gone down! We rode bikes without helmets and we rock climbed, climbed huge tree's ... swam in the open ocean where sharks were known to breed! To look at it by todays standards we were dare devils! This story below is from my Grandfathers generation ... we look around and see how obesity has skyrocketed among kids and wonder why? I'll tell ya why ... cause they aren't allowed to be active, the Nanny state is protecting them into being fat and lethargic!

Picking up knocks and bruises when you were a kid was normal ... bang your head, leg or arm ..., it heals! We didn't go to pieces over a fall from a bike ...

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Proud Member ...
Lithgow Small Arms Rifle Club - LSARC
Sporting Shooters Association Australia - SSAA
New South Wales Rifle Association - NSWRA
R License Holder - NSW Game Council

I want to go back to those times and relive my childhood

Although I have been home schooled, and did a lot of this stuff, you can't really have a boxing ring without any brothers

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John Calvin's T.U.L.I.P.
Total depravity
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irresistible grace
Perseverance of the saints

"Do not drink alcoholic beverages while taking this medication."

Challenge accepted.

What do you mean your childhood mate? Your profile says your 15 years old ...

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Proud Member ...
Lithgow Small Arms Rifle Club - LSARC
Sporting Shooters Association Australia - SSAA
New South Wales Rifle Association - NSWRA
R License Holder - NSW Game Council

Last Saturday my 8 year old son Isaac broke his arm while having a little fun. He stood on a 55 gal. drum that was on it's side and jumped to the swingset frame, trying to catch it. Well he didn't do as good as the biger kid and missed. He landed on his right arm and broke it. He will be in a cast for 12 weeks.
I have a felling that this is not our last trip to the ER.

If it doesn't kill them, it will only make them stronger.

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I do not relish to feel what the men that used these weapons felt when they saw the elephant. For the elephant has tusk and to see him is to have his tusk dig deep into your soul. You will always have a part of you that will be cold and empty.
Semper Fi

My kids are in their 20's now. When they were little, there was one of those multi-story, all metal rocket ship slides in our local park. It had ladders to climb inside to the different levels, including a small room in the nose cone. Quite a few parents (including myself) ended up in the thing to "assist" their kids. Many of them grew up playing on it themselves as kids. The thing had been there for 30+ years before that and was one of the most popular items at the park. Lawyers made the city take it down as it was a "injury hazard".
My kids were heartbroken!

I'm pretty sure the ER here has a file on us, we've been so many times. Although I say that tongue in cheek, I'm not so sure it isn't true, and the sad part is that what would have been normal bumps and scrapes back in the day (three boys can do alot of damage to each other and their surroundings, let me tell you), could be cause for a CPS visit nowadays. I cringe when my middle son has a doctors appointment; he has a perfect track record of bruising somewhere on his face immediately before the checkup.

I have noticed something that overweight kids all have in common: video game consoles. Every single one of them.

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I'd rather have an old friend than two new ones.

Of course, that is nearly true of the NON-overweight kids as well.

It isn't the console...it's the lack of anything else. As a kid, I played football and kickball and baseball in the street, we watched for cars, got out of the way quick when they came, and drivers waved at us as they passed. Today, kids will glare at you as they cross the street, as if daring you to hit them, and drivers are more likely to hit a kid than wave at him, if they bother getting off their cel long enough to notice.

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Bubba really ticks me off...
and I sure wish he would give me the OEM stock for my 7mm Spanish Mauser...

I mean THEIR age when I said "childhood" That age was the BEST!
And if I were to do most of this stuff here in Kalifornistan, an over-zealous mother at the park would call the cops and CPS on my mother and I because she would be "recklessly endangering her child!"

PPPPPFFFTTTTTTT!!!!!! We've actually had something like this happen to one of our very close friends. Her son (jokingly referred to as my brother) was climbing the monkey bars with his feet to make it challenging. His head was about 3 feet from the padded, wood chipped ground and STILL, a mother at the park called 911 and was hysteric that this boy was "in danger". Well, the police and CPS came out and talked to his mother, and it finally took a visit from her husband, WHO WORKS WITH CPS, to come out and tell them to scoot, everything is fine.

People these days, can't mind their own business...

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John Calvin's T.U.L.I.P.
Total depravity
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irresistible grace
Perseverance of the saints

"Do not drink alcoholic beverages while taking this medication."

Challenge accepted.

find my own kids lack the creativity and imagination...want things instantly, lack patience and get tired from playing outside after a short time....lol....sound familiar??? Though my youngest tends to be the most creative and enjoys playing street hockey outside with me....so there may still be some hope!!!

AT CANDYMAN -- Last Saturday my 8 year old son Isaac broke his arm while having a little fun. He stood on a 55 gal. drum that was on it's side and jumped to the swingset frame, trying to catch it. Well he didn't do as good as the biger kid and missed. He landed on his right arm and broke it. He will be in a cast for 12 weeks.

My daughter broke her arm at 6, as a result of jumpimg from the jungle gym at the local park, neglecting to use the fireman's pole right beside her....needless to say this was not our first nor last visit to the local ER....

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K98, M-48, K31,P-14, No.4 mk 1*LB, M96, M38, TT-33, SVT-40, 2 x Tula SKS, Izhevsk M/N "beast"

I was born in 1955 , I lived in Enfield , Middlesex , more commonly known as North London now , Our local park had all of those as seen in the photos , as well as swings , two sizes of slides including that big one with leg supports , everything was closed down at some point when elf n safety became an issue .
I also grew up listening to the sound of machine guns being tested at RSAF Enfield a couple of miles away .
After the war tempory housing was provided in the form of " prefabs " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-war_t ... fab_houses when these were being demolished we played on the ruins , they were made of asbestos sheeting and fibreglass matting for insulation , well the walls layed out on piles of rubble made great slides , this was in the day when I wore short grey trousers . When I got home the backs of my legs were red and itching like mad . No elf n safety then .

Happy days

Dave

Interesting old photos, theirs no doubt things are a lot different these days.

In photo #8 "In for a spin" toddlers on the roundabout. I noticed the slide in background, that baby looks pretty darn steep!

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"If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth." Ronald Reagan

The problem is, as stated above, that nobody can mind their own business anymore. Kid gets a broken arm doing kid stuff like walking a porch rail and falling off. No big deal. Take the kid to the ER and now DFCS or DSS is there wanting to know why you broke your kid's arm. While there are cases of abuse people see to have forgotten that kids get hurt. There's some odd mentality now that a child should be kept in a magic bubble until they're 18 then the bubble gets popped and they're expected to have all these life experiences that they can't get in a bubble.

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Proud alumni of Transylvanian Polygnostic University. "Know enough to be afraid."

"Vertroue in God en die Mauser".-Faith in God and the Mauser.

"Send lawyers, guns and money." -Warren Zevon

Pretty much. Kids used to fist fight and someone got a bloody nose and they either went back to being friends or avoided each other, now both sets of parents are treated as monsters for having violent kids. My vise as a kid? Riding a bmx dirt bike without a helmet.. The worst I got was scraped up shins and arms when I had to lay the bike down.

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http://redneckfrankenstien.wordpress.com/

Yup, when I was a kid, parks were built to survive the kids! "Make it out of concrete and steel, so it'll last" . In High School if two guys got into a fight and hadn't got it out of their system, the Principal would make you put on head gear and get in the boxing ring.

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Let courage rise with danger, and strength to strength oppose.
A 9mm might expand, but a .45 won't shrink.

Actually, I really AM amazed I survived my childhood.

Partially scalped myself when my head hit a chain link, military grade, anti-climbing fence (has little spikes inside the links so you can't get your fingers in there)While sliding down a hill in a cardboard box . That required many stitches.

Fell out of a tree and split my head (more stitches).

Conked in the head by a thrown baseball bat during a street lot game (yet more stitches).

Shot in the arm with a BB gun after a fist fight (I won), required removal of said BB and, later, a court visit (I shot him back).

Stabbed myself in the leg with a badly thrown shuriken ricochet (more stitches).

Brother pulled a knife through my hand nearly severing two fingers and cutting two more badly. (staples this time).

Fell off the top of a 10' slide and knocked myself unconscious. (concussion).

Nerve damage to left eye when impaled by a thrown stick on a playground (surgery).

Broken tail bone from a home built go-cart mishap. (still broke).

Had a nail go through my left foot on two separate occasions. (Tetanus shots)

And see!, after all that I still turned out fine, other than some scars and random twitches when I get excited.

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"Growing old is mandatory, Growing up is optional"
Beat the ammo price increases, shoot Russian Surplus!