Comments on: What can’t kids do that you could do as a kid?

By: sambosambo

sambosambo — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:40:54 +0000

This isn’t so much a matter of permission or safety, but I loved going to the Natural History museum and looking at the dinosaur exhibits. You would think something so simple and wonderful would be easier and more prevalent now, but it just isn’t. My 15 year old sisters have never stood in front of a fully assembled Tyrannosaurus skeleton, and it amazes me that in 1990 Albuquerque had a better museum of natural history than the SF bay area does in 2008. (hopefully the California academy of sciences will change that!)

By: iguana

iguana — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:20:44 +0000

Provide self transportation. From kindergarten (age 5) and up, I got myself to and from school on a daily basis, alone. I’m not sure, but I’m under the impression that that doesn’t happen anymore where I lived. (Nice suburb.)

By: mullacc

mullacc — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:55:15 +0000

Whoops, someone put the wrong question on the same page as my ketchup/hot dogs answer.

By: mullacc

mullacc — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:54:36 +0000

The only reason I eat french fries is for the ketchup. But just ketchup on hot dogs is for kids. When my friends do it around me, I ask if they’re 12.

By: wavering

wavering — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:43:07 +0000

Try and find a local arcade, they’re drying up quickly. I remember lots of times being dragged to the mall with parents and the only consolation was getting to shove some quarters in a game. Then the malls started closing down, next the putt-putts started closing down. Now in a city of half a million we might have a couple of arcades like we remember them as a kid.

By: Kickstart

Kickstart — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:51:11 +0000

When I was a kid, in the redneck culture I grew up in, it was ok to call the little licorice candy people “nigger babies”. I think that would get you shot in most places now.

Candy cigarettes, as above.

As well, it was just fine for my mom to send us kids out on summer mornings to play and have no adult supervision until the call for dinnertime. In retrospect, my long-distance wanderings across private land and onto the indian reserve miles away was perhaps not the smartest thing, but it was extremely formative of my current personality.

And we kids would “play doctor” and show each other our private bits without being branded sex offenders for the rest of our lives.

By: BitterOldPunk

BitterOldPunk — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:05:09 +0000

Disappear into the woods behind the house for hours at a time without setting off an Amber alert.

Jump on trampolines that didn’t have padded sides.

Take a gun to school without being arrested (it was a prop in a play, OK? But it was a real gun.).

Get into bottle rocket wars with the neighborhood kids and have your parents think it funny rather than horrifyingly dangerous.

By: Meatbomb

Meatbomb — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:52:42 +0000

Smoke in a designated area on highschool property, smoke in the hall at university.

By: starman

starman — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:15:47 +0000

Candy cigarettes, go to a video arcade (well, getting there), buy baseball cards for fifty cents, toy guns that look like guns, watch cartoons Saturday morning because that’s the only time they are on…