50 dangerous things you should let your child do

[SeerSGB]

When I was seven my uncle walked me down to the end of the street and let me shoot his .45, my thumbs hurt all day.

I think that as around the age that my dad and uncle took me out to the lake and let me fire off every type of shotgun my uncle had in the back of his truck. Just empty the racks out till I got bored or we ran out of ammo, whichever came first. Shoulder, my back, my ribs, my ears, all of it hurt for a couple of days but damn was it fun.

Had a pocket knife and carried it to school every day, you can't do that anymore.

Yep, did that. Had a case knife (family heirloom) and then a Swiss Army knife that I never left the house with.

Hell, I remember having classmates that had pistols in their purses (in fact, a lot of the girls had mace, stun guns, or small cali pistols in their purses for protection), backpacks, or lockers and no one thought anything of it. One of the boys on the student-body council and head of the "See You At the Flagpole" group had a .22 in his pickup; when he got bored would go outside at lunch and plink Coke cans off the backwall of the student parking lot. Granted this was the late 80s into the mid 90s before Columbine, and in rural South-East TN.

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

Oh man I remember when everyone in school had to have a McGyver style swiss-army knife. Plenty of desks bore the scars of bored kids sitting around carving in the tops for wont of anything better to do.

I remember having a little toy robot as a kid, a little metal figurine with hard plastic horns. One day I was lying sick in bed and feeling at a loose end, I carved away at the wooden bits of the bed. Surprisingly sufficient was the damage that Mum and Dad blamed the penknife and it was confiscated for a few days

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

I did play with fire a bit. Somebody showed me that after shave was flammable, so I used to draw figures on the cellar floor with it and light them.

*Blink* Cooooool. The little kid in me suddenly wants to go do that on our cement patio. Unfortunately I don't have any aftershave.

 

[JiNX-01]

play with fire: been there (actually, we ended up starting a grass fire behind the school across the street from our house).

drive a car: yeah, dad let me sit on his lap to try driving.

own a pocketknife: yup.

superglue your fingers together: we didn't have superglue when I was a kid.
fry a CD in the microwave: didn't have CDs and microwaves, either.
put a 9 volt battery in your mouth: Um, no.

 

[Dale]

Fire: we'd douse stuff with gasoline and set it on fire. We'd build apartment houses out of cardboard boxes, put army men in all the windows, park hot wheels around the base, stuff the whole thing qwith newspaper and burn it in the driveway. My friend used to pour rubbing alcohol on his arm and burn it off.

Microwaves: I once microwaved my gym lock for 10 seconds. It was cool. There were sparks.

I had a chemistry set, have mixed ammonia and bleach, used to dig long, unsupported tunnels through relatively loose soil. We used to hang out in flood control channels on rainy days, sometimes slide a mile or more downhill in the slime.

I think the main thing kids should be allowed to do that they are not, these days, is be exposed to germs. Hand sanitizer does not lead to healthy kids, it leads to stronger germs.

 

[SeerSGB]

Here's one-- and no clue why we did it: Take 8 D cells, tape them together, take a piece of cloth wet with salt water, then lick the + side of the stack. A pretty good buzz but nothing to bad.

 

[Dale]

When I was three I stuck a a key in an outlet. I was playing car.

I learned a healthy respect for electricty that day.

 

[Commander Rabbit]

the hapless barbies I buried myself in hopes of eventually getting 11" skeletons

That is too funny!

 

[RJDiogenes]

Oh, yeah, we did the unsupported tunnels thing, too.

I did play with fire a bit. Somebody showed me that after shave was flammable, so I used to draw figures on the cellar floor with it and light them.

*Blink* Cooooool. The little kid in me suddenly wants to go do that on our cement patio. Unfortunately I don't have any aftershave.

Neither did I. I used my Uncle's.

 

[Ruaidhri]

When I was seven my uncle walked me down to the end of the street and let me shoot his .45, my thumbs hurt all day.

I first shot a .44 magnum when I was ten. I was a small kid, and with my elbows locked the recoil knocked me clean on my ass.