My kids will miss out on MY Childhood

Dargos · Post by **Dargos** » 2004-01-30 09:03am

Play little league baseball/football just for fun and not have other kids parents screaming at their kids for errors on the field.

Play war outside with his friends with toy guns and I won't worry about him getting shot by police thinking he has a real gun.

Getting into a fight with someone and getting and recieving broken nose or black eye, and not come up on criminal assault charges.

Add on for above...getting into fights with other kids and not worrying about BEING KILLED.

Climb trees build tree houses and fall down breaking an arm or a leg...and not worrying about being sued.

Staying out until the streetlights come on in the summer..without me worrying that some sicko will grab him.

Riding the bike ALL over the damn place...everywhere.

Getting free candy from the neighborhood store because the owner loved the kids in the neighborhood.

Just calling on the phone and asking if he can stay the night at a friends house...without a background check of his friends parents.

Getting $5 a week allowance(when he is 10 or so)and actually being able to DO stuff with that amount all week.

Running around outside half naked in the water sprinkler...without someone complaining about indecency.

Go into the fields and swipe some watermellons or sweetcorn from the from the farmer down the road and if he gets caught he gets a switching and not charged with theft.

I miss my childhood sometimes.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2004-01-30 09:10am

Everything was better in the olden days, people nowadays they just suck, suck and blow.

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2004-01-30 09:25am

Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are no such thing as the "Good Old Days".

If anything, people are safer today then they were even twenty years ago! I can still go to quiet, rich suburbanite neighbourhoods full of young couples where kids play after dark unsupervised and all that good stuff and no one ever thinks twice about it. People in general might have shorter attention spans and quicker blame-everything reactions, but that doesn't mean as much as you might think. There are a lot of happy, fun, kid-friendly neighbourhoods out there to offset every story you read in the paper of some whacko molesting school girls.

You kind of lost me at the fistfight part. There hasn't ever been a time when you could punch someone in the face and NOT run the risk that they'll kill you in a fit of rage.

The Aliens · Post by **The Aliens** » 2004-01-30 01:05pm

Erm, we can play guns on XBOX Live or PS2, no reason to run around with water pistols when you can use submachine guns.

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2004-01-30 01:09pm

Okay, how about Tonka trucks. They don't make real all metal Tonka trucks anymore.

They used to have a commercial showing an elephant stepping on a Tonka truck and the truck taking it.

Here in Arizona children are required by law to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. Now I don't say that it's not a good idea for them to wear helmets but I grew up when kids were trying to do stunts like Evil Kenevil and they survived without helmets. I just don't see why it needs to be a law. People should be pushed and encouraged to wear them but why a law?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-01-30 01:25pm

Tsyroc wrote:Okay, how about Tonka trucks. They don't make real all metal Tonka trucks anymore.

They used to have a commercial showing an elephant stepping on a Tonka truck and the truck taking it.

Mind you, those trucks are more expensive to make than plastic ones. The "Good Old Days" fallacy is really annoying. Do you realize how many serial killers and other assorted scum operated freely back then? Things still happened, they just didn't get sensationalized as much by the media.

Here in Arizona children are required by law to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. Now I don't say that it's not a good idea for them to wear helmets but I grew up when kids were trying to do stunts like Evil Kenevil and they survived without helmets. I just don't see why it needs to be a law. People should be pushed and encouraged to wear them but why a law?

Because the people are too fucking stupid. It's the same as seatbelt laws. Without them, you have jackasses who don't even belt in their own kids because they're too goddamned stupid.

Yes, I just said that the people are too stupid to make their own decisions, which means that I support certain levels of "paternalistic" government, just like all the conservative websites scream about. Sue me for the evil P-word.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2004-01-30 01:32pm

Growing up in the 70s I wasn't alowed to go Trick or Treating on Halloween, due to the remote possibility of getting poisoned candy.

Our parents got a camper, and we had it at a campground with a lake, and that's where we spent every summer in order for us to have a safe place, and not "run the streets" every summer.
Even then, a sicko approached me and asked if I wanted to go "look at dirty magazines" in the woods with him.

There were no Good Old Days, trust me, I was there.

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2004-01-30 02:20pm

Darth Wong wrote: Mind you, those trucks are more expensive to make than plastic ones. The "Good Old Days" fallacy is really annoying. Do you realize how many serial killers and other assorted scum operated freely back then? Things still happened, they just didn't get sensationalized as much by the media.

Who said anything about the "Good Old Days" (okay Lago did

) we're just being nostalgic.

For everything that we might think was better in the past it's pretty easy to find something that's not so good (or worse), usually something of much more importance than playing with Tonka trucks.

I still wouldn't mind a less sensationalized media but still better to be informed than not informed about scumbags running loose.

I understand about the cost of the all metal trucks. I just miss seeing them. Of course I doubt that I would be willing to shell out the bucks to get one for someone in my family because I'm sure they'd cost a lot right now.

Darth Wong wrote: Because the people are too fucking stupid. It's the same as seatbelt laws. Without them, you have jackasses who don't even belt in their own kids because they're too goddamned stupid.

What's funny is I agree with the seatbelt laws and yes it's because people are too fucking stupid or lazy or whatever to just wear the things. We've had child safety seat laws for at least as long as the seatbelt laws and they are much more strict and people still let their babies and toddlers get bounced around the inside of a car, or even thrown from the car.

I also can't stand morrons who ride in the back of a pickup truck through regular traffic, or on the freeway. It also bugs me to see people with their dogs in the same situation. It wasn't too long ago that a pickup with a camper shell packed with people rolled on the freeway here. A bunch of them died and there were so many traumas that they were sending injured people to multiple hospitals.

Darth Wong wrote:Yes, I just said that the people are too stupid to make their own decisions, which means that I support certain levels of "paternalistic" government, just like all the conservative websites scream about. Sue me for the evil P-word.

I do too I just have a thing against the bike helmet law. I think it mainly has to do with where I grew up and not really being around lots of traffic with my bike. From what I've seen bicycle accidents that invovle an automobile are the type in which the cyclist really needs a helmet but really any fall on a hard surface can benefit from a helmet.

I guess I shouldn't complain about the helmet law for kids since it's simply attempting to protecting them from stupid/bad parents until they are old old enough that they can decide to be just as stupid as the people who decide to ride motorcycles without a helmet (we don't have a helmet law here for that, at least not adults).

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-01-30 02:25pm

I have one of those metal Tonka trucks. That thing was bad ass...

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-01-30 02:40pm

i had a metal tonka dump truck, bulldozer and winnebago. The ladder was destroyed upun my reaching junior high. It's firey end involved GI Joe, salutes and a couple of m-80's.