O/T What did you do as a kid that would be considered dangerous today?

[phild]

Throwing ourselves down a huge hill sitting on nothing but a piece of cardboard. Sitting in ya dads car and NO child seats and No seat belts. We would play in the fields the back of us and climbing trees at 7 years old and wouldn't return home until hours later. Throwing bangers at the neighbours

[mickd1961]

Crawling through drain culverts miles away from home whilst out on our bikes when I was about 11 or 12.

Going into derelict houses and balancing on floor joists three floors up with not a floorboard in site.

Going into the pitch black cellars of these ruined houses.

S h a g g I n g in graveyards and farmers fields and in the local woods as a ****ager.

[DaveP67 is back!]

We used to make a huge bonfire on the hill opposite my house, many a night me and my mates would camp in the middle, got burned down one night, thank god no one was inside, we also used to make bolt bangers, which was two large bolts and a nut in the middle filled with match powder, how no one was killed when those things went off I’ll never know! Never wore a helmet on a bike and came off many times (might explain a few things!) Making rope swings off a cliff, swimming in the river Severn, climbing to the top of huge sycamore trees and swinging on the top branches as a dare. Amazing I’m still here really!

[Omegstrat6]

I clearly remember playing on the building site over the road from us when I was about 10/11. Once the builders had gone home for the day it was dead easy to get into the houses they were building. Often we would be up on these bits scaffolding about 20 plus feet off the ground before they put the floors in with no safety rails or nothing, just sheer drop. My best remembered one though was making a home-made flame thrower with a mate from a gas cylinder he pinched from somewhere. Brilliant thing as it shot flames out just like in those old war movies about WW2 you used to see. My Dad went light when he found out!

Aside from occasional spud picking, my first job was when I was about 15 which was to paint this local factory over the holiday lockdown. I worked with a bunch of lads much older than me who were in their late ****s/early twenties who smoked weed and drank beer. For some reason, they were really good to me despite the age difference. Anyhow, we were simply left with odd bits of scaffolding and left to get on with it so they just built the scaffolding themselves over these rather dangerous looking machines so we could get to the walls and ceiling to paint them. Health & Safety in the 60s and 70s eh 😂

[Omegstrat6]

Throwing ourselves down a huge hill sitting on nothing but a piece of cardboard. Sitting in ya dads car and NO child seats and No seat belts. We would play in the fields the back of us and climbing trees at 7 years old and wouldn't return home until hours later. Throwing bangers at the neighbours

Ah yes, spent many an hour-just as my own parents had-sliding down either the Lickey Hills or at Malvern with just a piece of cardboard under your bum racing down to the road at the bottom! Happy days 😁

[kettering_baggie]

I recall my sand a mate finding a bonfire going in the school gardens, nearby was an empty oil drum. We put some water in it, screwed on the cap and chucked it on to the bonfire. It didn’t take long……..BOOM!

[Stevil81]

We made a petrol go-kart with an old kettcar and a lawnmower engine, then fitted some tyre innertubes to the plastic wheels for grip.

We also went into a derelict house and built a staircase upto the first floor with loose bricks.

I have an older brother (2 years) so was pretty much left to fend for myself with him and his older mates.

Kids these days (I have 2) only seem to get any sense of adventure on YouTube watching mindless Americans mucking about, what a shame!

[Omegstrat6]

There is certainly a place for Health &Safety but it's all been going a bit overboard these past few years and there have also been a few studies to support the idea that children-and (apologies to any Wokies) especially boys-benefit from taking degrees of risk as this helps in their development. Too much mollycoddling is not a good thing. It's all about finding the right balance.

[kettering_baggie]

Predictive text, drives me crazy, my last post, above, I wrote ‘Myself and a mate…..’, it changed it to something completely different! Only had one pint……….!

[WBA1955]

Walking home from junior school in the fogs of yesteryear.
I think we were all attracted to houses being built or houses that were derelict.
I remember us going upstairs in a house being built, the builders had left a pile of sand outside and we had great fun jumping into it from the upstairs.
We did the same thing on swings after a heavy snow fall.
We would pile the snow into a big drift and go high on the swings leaping off at the highest point which was usually level with the crossbar.