O.T. What did you do for fun as a kid? Pre Nintendo... - Page 5

Anything outside.  LOTS of bike riding and imaginary adventures.  Rainy days meant Legos :)

Splendid thread & a few random thoughts from across the pond:

Dens rather than forts

We also did cowboys & indians but WW2 was a favourite which included competitions on who could do the best death throes when falling off a wall after been riddled with machine gun fire. Also had aircraft dog fights with spitfires, hurricanes, messerschmitts & heinkels, arms spread wide running about going neeeeehhhahhhh & rattattat....

Climbing trees and squirting water from washing up liquid bottles onto windscreens of passing cars. This abruptly stopped when one 'victim' screeched to a halt and chased us across a field. I nearly broke my jaw on my knee when jumping from the tree..

Monster 40 a side games of football (soccer) whilst trying to impress the girls with George Best (google him) like skills which went on till sundown.

Going down the corner shop for me mum and seeing if I could rob some penny sweets.

Rope swings over streams - I remeber once the rope snapping and I sailed on for 10 yards more and winded myself after landing on my back.

Riding two wheeled scooters as fast as we could down a hill and it always ending in a massive speed wobble & crash.

Building sites with scaffolding.... if there ever has been a better playground built for kids I've yet to see it.

And all the while the boxer/lab mix (Rocky) from 2 doors away would be with us. When coming back from school he used to wait for me and come running down the road when I called or he spotted me. You could throw a stone for him, even into a pile of gravel, & he would always come back with the same one. That's when I fell for dogs.

Great days and have you noticed it was always sunny?

AandA

Did you guys use to catch pollywogs? We used to put them in an old Coleman cooler until they were morphed enough to climb out. We put bugs  in the sash windows until they spun cocoons and butterflies or praying mantises came out. I remember most of the windows being full of milk-weed for the caterpillars and flies for the mantises. We always had an injured bird or chipmunk; of course the dogs were always there, but I thought EVERYone had those. In fact, in those days we knew which dogs to avoid and how to go up a tree fast if the dog was out, including the GSD Sergeant. We had a fantasy that he ate kids, but I don't remember anyone ever actually getting bitten. Just an excuse to scream bloody murder and shinny up a tree. Oh, and all the broken bones and stitches! That never shook my parents up too badly; they acted like that was just part of childhood, not some tragedy in which I was forever disfigured! Wouldn't happen now; you stay inside and if you break a bone someone calls CPS. Sigh. Good thing they didn't do that when I had two black eyes from some swan dive I took into the asphalt.

Pollywogs??!!! I would totally go right this minute and catch some.
And I still LOVE praying mantis, mantises, manti ? Oh who cares!? They are AWESOME...
Stacy

Edited to admit... I played with dolls too...And stuffed animals, til I was like 14

Sticking plasters on cuts & scraches - great for showing off how hard you were but turning into a girls blouse when it was time to rip them off. I used to let them hang half on & half off for days & days & they would pick up dirt and hairs and crap. & then take 30 minutes to remove them in the bath with lots of water & deep concentration.

Remember once me mum letting me go up the ladder into the loft and when my knee was at head height ripping a big plaster off my knee.... damn! lured in by the excitement of it all... again. Mums were wise ol' birds.

How many of you guys had to wear short trousers and for how long? I used to have to wear horrid cheap lined nylon jobs until I & was around 7 - and then I ripped my first pair of long trousers and had to endure 6 months more with the shorties.

And knitted balaclavas just don't get me onto that topic..

AandA

played cowboys & indians on bareback ponies, racing through the woods

I had dolls and played with them on rainy days.  Still remember the smell of a new doll on Christmas! 

The only time I ever put my dog in the house was when we were catching snakes, he hated snakes.  If he saw one, he went into a frenzy and guts would fly in all directions!  One wicked thing my brother and I did to our older "girlie" sister...  she told on us for something and we were really mad about it.  We caught snakes all afternoon and put them in an old garbage pail.  We had so many, they were crawling on each other and escaping so we put a board over it.  When we thought we had enough, we called our sister out and told her we found some baby rabbits.  When she got close, we knocked the can over and all of those snakes were right at her feet!  HA HA HA, I can still hear her screaming!

"New Doll Smell"....Yep I remember vividly!!

VomRuiz, Stacy,
That was a very good post,
being born in the early fifties it pretty well hit the nail on the head.
You left out that in those days we had corporal punishment and discipline in schools, and parents spanked their kids in public. 
My parents supported me but never held me back, schools were governed by the PTA, not the federal government and parents actually showed up for the meetings.
Children were taught to think not just memorize, parents and grand parents passed on knowledge to the next generation and people knew who they were.
Corporate America targeted adults and not children, the good guy always won on TV, and they used moral judgment that doesn't exist today. 
It had more to do with common sense than any particular religion.
The world was much larger then and our markets were held accountable to the people who built them, supply and demand worked.
The mentality behind competition was build it better, not cheaper.
A man could work forty hours a week and support his family and mothers ran a household.
We had hero's of achievement, not hero's of disasters.
You had to earn the American dream instead of buying it with plastic.
People were held accountable for their actions, neighbors knew one another, your doctor and dentist knew your name without looking at a chart.
I could go on forever about the difference between then and now.
I'm ashamed to say most of these changes happened on my watch, we became the Me generation and I'm not really sure why.
I mostly blame it on Corporate America and Television which was their stage, we were sold a bill of goods that didn't serve our purpose and we gave up the will to say no.
Paper and credit replaced assets and we let others take control of our lives.
As much as I loved it, if I could go back in time, I'd throw the damned television set out the window.
And would have said no a little more often.
Moons.

Catching pollywogs - snakes, lizards etc. Yes.

Differences between when I was a child and now? Too many to count. Far too many people are not able to think or memorize anything, because there are no standards anymore. It is pathetic to see the college students I see who have so little skills, or knowledge, expect everything to be given to them, and have no ethical standards either. But they are a mirror of their parents. Not one person,  in a class I was teaching last June, knew what D-Day was!

People used to be accountable. Now they are not. People used to be different, and some excelled and some failed, but now everyone is equal supposedly....to hell with any type of work ethic and earning anything. You deserve it all. it just isn't true how ever much we would like to think it is. Kids played outside and, in many cases as with my brothers, we invented things and activities from stuff we saw around us on the ground....we were very poor and unsupervised.

Teachers could read and write and more importantly, could and did care about their charges. The term hero was not misused as it is today....almost every day we read of someone being called a hero who is not really the definition of a hero at all.

As to why it happened? It did happen on our watch and a few others that came after us, and in large measure it is because this is how history and societies develop and morph. And when people sit around smoking dope, drinking etc., etc., and taking more pleasure in how to pleasure themselves rather than thinking about how they can contribute to the society in which they live, it happens just as this swing has. What can my society do for me is our current frame of mind, rather than what can I do for my society and others. We are, in general, selfish and indulgent. From restrictive society to liberal, to restrictive, to liberal to restrictive. Sooner or later it will change in a predictable way. In the meantime, we have some real messes on our hands, including that people cannot discuss issues rationally or without threatening people they elect. We are a nation of people who like to give the finger to others. It is rare someone is courteous and opens a door for someone. 

Though I had a very tough childhood in many respects, I am very glad that I did have it, in most ways, because it made me the person I am. And I still am glad I did not have everything and had to work for it.

For an interesting view of where our society has been, read the book titled "The 50's", by Pulitzer Prize winning author David Halberstram, and read also his book titled "A Bright, Shining Lie". Then just read something like Jacque Barzun's "From Dawn to Decadence". Then one gets a much better perspective of where we are, and why.

Now I have to get to work because a blizzard is coming later today.