Humorist Robert G. Lee wrote this in the September edition of Reader’s Digest. How did we survive? We drank from every garden hose in the neighborhood and now they tell us that it could be a health risk? According to today’s standard, my entire childhood was a health risk!
When I was a kid, we didn’t have padding under our jungle jims. We had rocks. We didn’t have safety belts on our swing sets. The whole goal was to get as high as you could, then launch yourself into the stratosphere. We rode our bikes without helmets. Without shoes. Sometimes without clothes. We played in creeks, ran through abandoned houses, went dam sliding, jumped on trampolines, ran our go carts straight into oncoming traffic, and played with BB guns, with half the time spent pumping them up cause we’d heard you could take out an eye. We parachuted out of trees with bed sheets, threw lawn jarts at each other, and had no sunblock, so we got burned to a crisp. Summer offically started when the first kid turned as red as a thermometer. Then we had peeling parties.We blew up Barbie dolls with M-80s, we ran with scissors, and our Halloween costumes were made of asbestos. But for safety, our moms made us wait an hour after we ate before we went swimming.
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