Name something that you did as a kid that would get your parents strung up today

[IOWA DON]

I grew up on a farm and my dad was very interested in hot rodding/racing. We had a go-kart when I was 13 that had two 10-hp engines on it. He built a race track so we could have fun with it. Also, he would let me drive his old '54 Ford around the country. This was before before I was in high school an had no driver's permit. Of course the first thing I did was drive it down a curved gravel road where I could power-slide it around each curve and my dad knew that. We also had a motor-bike and when in the 8th grade I rode it to our one-room country school, at least for as few days until one of the other kid's parents complained about it. When in high school a buddy and I had a cannon. I think the bore was a 2-inch pipe with another pipe over it. It would shoot a steel ball through a 10-inch green tree. We shot it quite a bit at the farm until I finally blew it up. I also made a large "bomb". I put two pounds of 4831 military surplus powder in a glass jar suspended in a 5-gallon bucket and filled it with concrete with a lot of baling wire for reinforcement. This I set off in the creek and it sounded like a couple sticks of dynimite going off.

[guzzijohn]

Operating tractors/farm equipment without supervision at age 11.
First BB gun at 6, first rifle at 10, first shotgun at 11, first handgun at 13.
Let me drive by myself with just a restricted license at 15 from the Wichita area to Kansas City and stay over night with a girlfriend's family I had met at camp.
That is all I am going to admit to.
GuzziJohn

[magooch]

My list is just too long and extensive, so I'll just say that almost everything we did would have gotten us in trouble these days, but we didn't do alcohol, or drugs.  Sex...well hell yes and we were too young to even know why we liked it.  By the time we knew a little about what we were doing, the girls weren't so cooperative.

Anyway, I got my first motorcycle when I was 12 and rode it anywhere and everywhere.  I got very good at evading the cops and never got stopped until I was 15.  That was on my third bike that had no lights, no muffler, no horn, no license and it was going down the freeway.  The highway patrol just rolled his eyes and said, "get this thing off my highway" and he didn't even give me a ticket.  I think I had a charmed life when I was a kid.

My buddy and I used to carry our loaded rifles right through the middle of town from the age of 12 and no one gave us a second look.  And this was no small town.

I've only been behind bars once at 17 and that was a fluke where the cops were completely out of line and had to let me out with an apology.

All of this and we were considered good kids.  Times have changed and probably not for the better.

[tallyho]

buy a six pack of beer at the local carryout when I was 15; this was 1970 in Kentucky.  I was a little nervous the first time until a 8 year old girl came in an bought a bottle of cheap wine.  The clerk looked at me and said it was for the girl's grandma.  I told the clerk my Grandma preferred Strohs and left with my beer.

Beans, be grateful your granny had better taste than the 8 yr old girl's granny.   

[steve y]

It seems we all have similar tales to tell. We brought our guns to school in our cars to go hunting afterwards. Beer, wine and tobacco at 12 or 13. We would make bombs and go blow up stuff out in the boonies like stumps etc. We just wanted a big boom and a hole in the ground. Hunt and fish all day as long as we were home by dark. Rode our bikes everywhere and got into alot of mischief just being boys. We just had good clean fun. We never played games unless it was raining all day and it was board games, no videos back then. There's not enough time or space to tell it all but you get the idea.

[wreckhog]

Too bad you can get the genie back in the bottle. Get rid of internet, cell phones, soccer moms, weekend houses, chess tutors, and the incomes that enabled all those to happen.

[steve y]

It may just be us lookin back on our childhoods with fondness but it was alot better to be young then than it is now. The reason we are where we are at is because of the progressive indoctrination of our kids over the years since we were young. Because we can not be allowed to parent without the government telling us what to do. We as a society are the product of that warped evil thinking. I hope we can pull ourselves back from the edge. I want my grandkids to know what it's like to live a childhood like mine. We sure could use some Devine intervention. Steve