Well, now, it seems to me that according to the gubmint, I should have gone belly up by the age of six, seeing that I never wore a bike helmet. And just how did I make it to 10, what with the chemistry set and the homemade bombs?
Apparently the way the gubmint sees it, they're Mom and Dad, and we're drooling babies who need to have our diapers changed. Heck, why don't we just make the entire world out of Nerf, huh? We'd be safe, all right. The flip side of that coin is we'd be so bored our brains would turn to mush right in our skulls.
These days, when I wander through stores, I can't find any of those fiendish toys I had as a kid, the ones liberals think were created by all those nefarious companies looking to make a profit at the expense of one or more of my digits. They weren't dangerous then (well, okay, just a little bit), so how did they become so dangerous these days you can't find them?
One of the toys I had, and wish I had kept –- because now it sells for $125 –- was my Mattel Vac-U- Form. It was a box with a hinged lid on top. You put a sheet of thin plastic in the frame and then flipped it over so that it fell on a heated plate with a model on it. I suppose it got to about 130 degrees -– Inferno in a Shoebox! The heat softened the plastic so it took the form of the mold. You could get a nasty burn, if you were stupid enough to stick your finger on the plate! And hold it there!
Now that I think about it, it was a rather dumb toy. The TV ads claimed you could make helicopters and airplanes that flew. Har. I made bugs and frogs. Still, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I wish I knew what happened to mine. Dang, I really do wish I still had it. When no one was looking, I'd still make cicadas and toads. And chase my sister around with them. The same sister who hit me over the head with a frying pan. And bashed on the same head with one of her roller skates.
Then there was the chemistry set my parents bought me at a local store, the one which I had no intention of using other than to make explosives, but of course did not tell my parents that. They apparently entertained the futile hope I was going to be Jr. Einstein instead of a maniac who burned down the barn and set a wheat field on fire. Not to mention the fact that when I wrapped breadwrappers around a stick and set them on fire so the melted plastic went zip zip when it dropped, I dropped it on my own hand.
Try to find a chemistry set today at Walgreens or Walmart. You can still get them rather furtively through the mail, the same mail that my 11-year-old self brought a stiletto through, no questions asked by anyone. And did I dismember anyone? No, I did not. And in this particular case, I didn't even cut myself, not even once.
A fair amount of the chemistry bottles were marked POISON (in GREAT BIG LETTERS), which I guess is why you can't find them these days by walking in a store. Lawyers would have a field day when some parent claimed their retarded kid swallowed the contents of a bottle. Which I never saw any kid do.
Did I swallow the contents of any of those bottles? Nope. I was maybe 10, but I knew enough to realize you don't gulp down what's in a bottle when there's a skull-and-crossbones on it.
I don't remember too much about what experiments I did (maybe I didn't do any), except for some explosives I made, which I used to spectacularly blow up some airplane and ship models I had built. Those models are why to this day I can recognize the Japanese Zero, the P-38 Lightning, the Me-109, the Me-262, and the P-51 Mustang. All of which went flaming straight into the local pond.
Believe it or not, I still have a model of the P-38 sitting on my desk, although it looks like one of the pitiful models Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes put together.
And don't get me started on BB guns. I know a woman who several years ago became so hysterical her teenage son brought home a BB gun she called the police and had them haul it away. I guess she thought he was going to shoot his eye out, just like Raphie in A Christmas Story.
I knew exactly one kid who shot himself with his own BB gun. Sammy, who was skulking in the barns behind my house, without permission, and somehow shot himself in the lower lip with his own gun. I remember my mom trying to dig the BB out with a needle, to no avail. I assume the retard had to go to the hospital.
It never surprised me to find out Sammy was a liar and a thief. After all, he was on our property without permission. It also didn't surprise me when years later I found he had become a drunk who had croaked after guzzling a bottle of whiskey. Every kid I knew who was stupid as an adult started as a stupid, irresponsible and selfish kid.
The bike I mentioned? The rage in those days was one called the Stingray. Looks dangerous, huh? It was, pretty much. Once while riding on some kid's handlebars I somehow fell off and did a somersault onto the pavement. Another time while racing some other bikes two or three of us collided and fell over. The girls, who were playing nurse, carried us off the field of battle on homemade stretchers.
I won't even talk about the scar I still have on my left knee when I fell off of a minibike while out on the river levee. Actually, I did a somersault off of that one, too. That was because the throttle came off in my hand.
The most fun thing of all, more fun than the horses and the minibikes and the Styrofoam sailboat we got for sending in about 2000 coupons from packs of Kool cigarettes, was the rope swing -- Sea Snark.
We lived within hitch-hiking distance (yep, we hitch-hiked) of an old flooded shale-pit, about 90 feet deep, that my father used to swim in when he was a teenager.
The surface of the water was about ten feet below the bank, so someone had tied a thick rope, with a knot at the end, to a tree branch. We'd sit on that knot, some friends would haul back on that rope and whang us out over the water. Woo hoo! At the top of the arc it was probably a 15-foot-drop to the water.
I remember being at the top of that arc, looking down at the water, and thinking, "You know, that water's 90 foot deep, and my dad says there're old trains at the bottom of the pit." And then, wham!, I'd hit the water and go down several feet before making my way back up.
I only saw one kid get hurt. He didn't let go of the rope and fall to the water. Instead, he swung back, and went right into a sawed-off tree branch. All we wore were cut-off jeans, which he was wearing.
Whack! was the sound when the right side of his hip hit that sawed-off branch. He fell to the ground, jumped up, pulled down his pants – and we found ourselves looking at a black bruise the size of the stump he had hit. You should have seen the look on his face.
Next thing we know, he takes off screaming down the path, followed by his friends. I assume they took him to the hospital. I never knew his name, but I knew he got what he got by being stupid.
We had a lot of fun and adventure in those days. I had a friend recently admit to me how envious he was at the things I did when I was a kid. He had to suffer a nice, safe, boring kidhood, followed by a lot of lunacy in college. And even in adulthood.
I wonder if kids have much fun now? Maybe things are safer for them, but what happens when they get a little older? Think they might go crazy from not having the childhood they should have had? From trying to stuff an entire childhood into a few years when they get older?
And God knows what all the prudes and spoilsports and other PC types would have thought of my Secret Sam Attaché Case, with the sniper rifle, hidden camera and the fake finger with a bullet in it. Why, if this thing was around today, the manufacturer would be hauled before Congress.
Personally, I'll take a little bit of danger and a whole lot of fun over being safe and bored any time.
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