I Survived Childhood In The 70’s

The Husband Dude is of the opinion that today’s kids are a little soft. He loves to point out that we used to ride bikes and skateboards without helmets and pads. His own kids had a trampoline without a net around it.

Don’t get me started on trampolines. Taco Larry posts often on his Facebook page about seeing more injuries from trampolines than sports, which is not news to me. When I briefly handled Homeowner’s Liability claims, trampoline injuries were the claims I saw the most next to dog bites.

On a side note, if you have a trampoline in your backyard, I know nothing I say is going to make you get rid of it. So instead, I’ll just say that if you ever let anybody besides your own kids jump on it, call your Homeowner’s insurance carrier and increase your liability limits.

Like right now.

Trust me on this.

Leg and arm breaks on the growth plate are expensive.

My own granddaughters have a trampoline in their backyard. I just pretend I don’t know it’s there because I don’t need to worry about something that’s not likely to happen.

THD accuses me of being a real party pooper. Sorry. Can’t help it. My day job has ruined me for life. I worry about things that most normal humans don’t ever even think about. Ninety percent of the time, nothing happens. It’s that ten percent that keeps me up at night.

Anyway, back to The Husband Dude. He likes several retro Facebook pages that post all kinds of things that remind him of his childhood and teen years. He recently went on and on about this one toy called “Creepy Crawlers”. They looked like this:

THD: Do you remember these?

Me: No. What is it?

THD: Creepy Crawlers! You made your own bugs and stuff.

Me: Like with a plastic mould?

THD: The moulds were metal. Everything back then was metal and it lasted forever.

Me: So was there like a gel or something you poured into the mould?

THD: That’s right! You poured the goop into the mould and then you plugged it in and baked it without asking your Mom because it was YOUR toy!

Me: Oh yeah…the days before there were any actual safety features on kids’ toys.

THD: That’s right! Creepy Crawlers and Easy Bake Ovens. The days when you didn’t have to ask you Mom if it was ok to burn the house down. You just plugged it in and lit that motherfucker up!

This conversation made me think about all the things we did as kids in the 70’s that are either banned or greatly modified these days.

Shane grew up playing on plastic playground equipment with either mulch or rubbery material made from recycled tires that cushioned his fall.

I grew up in El Paso in the desert so my playground equipment sat on a bed of sand with a lot of rocks of varying sizes everywhere. All of our playground equipment was metal so after you scalded the backs of your legs on the metal slide, you landed butt first in scratchy sand and jagged rocks, then you turned around and got right back on the metal ladder with rusty screws sticking out so you could do it all over again.

The first elementary school I went to had these giant concrete tubes that were just big enough for a first or second grader to climb into and stand up hunched over. We used to make up all kinds of games around these “tunnels” and I remember being chased by a friend of mine into the tunnel. I hopped in and turned around just in time to see him badly miscalculate his own jump into the tunnel and crack open his forehead on the top of the opening of the tube.

He was back at school the next day proudly bearing a bandage covering several stitches.

I don’t know how we all survived it, but it was just a different world back then. There was no such thing as car seats and seatbelts were not required for anyone in a car. I remember many road trips that consisted of hopping over the front seat from the backseat to sit between my parents. My brother and I would scrunch down on the floor boards to “hide” from other vehicles in some game we invented where we had to be stealth. I can even remember stretching out on the little ledge between the backseat and the rear window and watching the sky as we sped down the highway across Texas.

Don’t even get me started on pickup trucks. I’ve spent my fair share of time riding in the bed of a truck being driven my alcoholic cousin who may or may not have been sober at the time.

And now I’m worried about a trampoline, right?

I guess we had to be tough in those days, because our conditioning literally started in the womb. My mother did not give up her pack a day of smokes habit for a little thing like pregnancy. I’m pretty sure she ate her share of tuna, lunch meat, and TAB soda.

This probably explains a lot of what’s wrong with me. I guess I should be thankful she wasn’t a drinker or we’d all REALLY be in trouble!

Even our games were violent.

Dodge Ball anyone?

How about Red Rover, where you literally got to clothesline the kids you hated?

And then my personal favorite: Wall Ball.

Wall Ball was a game you played with a small rubber ball (like the racquet ball variety) against a wall, or in our case, the garage door. In the same tone as racquet ball, the object of the game was to throw the ball as hard and fast against the wall as you could. Your opponent had to catch the ball when it bounced back and throw it back against the wall.

If you were supposed to be catching the ball, you couldn’t let it bounce more than once or your opponent would get a point. But if you caught the ball before it bounced at all, your opponent had to run and touch the wall before you threw the ball and “beaned” him with it as hard as you could.

If you tried to “bean” your opponent and missed them, you had to run and touch the wall because your opponent could grab the ball and “bean” you. If you got “beaned” you were automatically out and your opponent won, no matter how many points you both had.

If you touched the ball, or it touched you, but didn’t catch it, you had to run to the wall because your opponent could “bean” you. And then I get a little fuzzy on his next part of the game, but there was some infraction that would cause you to have to do a firing squad.

The firing squad was when you committed some infraction and had to stand against the wall while each other opponent (you could have several kids playing at once) got a turn at throwing the ball directly at you as hard and fast as they cared to. You could not pass on firing squad or move out of the line of fire or you would automatically be out for the rest of the game.

Basically, the REAL object of this game was just to get to throw the rubber ball at your friends as hard as you could and leave as many red welts as possible. That’s why they eventually banned this activity on the playground at school.

But that didn’t stop my brother and his friends from playing it in our driveway and torturing me by inviting me to play it so they could “bean” me as much as possible.

Again, I’m really starting to wonder why I’m worried about a trampoline?

I really don’t have an ending for this story, other than I guess I understand now why THD seems to think kids these days are soft. I mean, going from having an electrical toy with molten hot goop in a sharp metal tray to literally everything nowadays having rounded corners and bumper pads, I guess kids these days are pretty protected from anything dangerous that might leave a scar.

Of course, thanks to modern medicine and removing lethal electrical currents from modern toys, kids these days probably also have a longer expected lifespan too.

But their stories won’t be as good!

Stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring!

By the way, I made this shirt and it’s also available in plus-size and men’s versions!