How did we survive childhood?

hold blowtorches, cigarettes, beers....or whatever they had in their hand at the time that would get in the way of whatever they were going to do next.

"hey kid, hold my beer!"

once i went with my mom and her boyfriend out to visit some of their friends in the middle of the desert. i was like 5 or 6 at the time. they let me shoot a gun off.

Well shit, my poppa ran me over with the car by accident and I turned out pretty o.k. I was a fairly accomplished bartender by 14-15 as well.

Me = sheltered

I was around crack cocaine before it was known as crack. I learned how to cut it, grind and package it, and cocaine before most kids even knew what it was..
D.A.R.E was a fucking joke to say the least.
The good part about the drugs I was around was that it turned me off of most of them, and short of pot, shrooms and acid, I never wanted to do any of them.

my dad used to let me drive his one ton duelly while he through hay bails of the back for his cattle. also said father was a fireman so he would leave me at the ranch, alone, for the twenty-four hours he was on duty, there were lots of loaded guns around. i'm sure as many of your parents were, my mom was a smoker she used to drive around with us and be puffing away with the window cracked a little. another good one, the 'rents used to take me to the lake and they'd put rocks in my crib so it wouldn't float away, i'd sit there playing with my toys and they'd all be standing around in the water drinkin' coors light. awh, texas

i didnt, and they let me do anything

I climbed trees and fell out of them regularly. I tried to swing high enough to flip over the top of the bars. I still have scars on my knees from the various things I thought I could do...but couldn't.

from now on, i'm gonna have a real hard time saying my parents sucked... stick to the eye-opening chemicals i say

my father owned a VW bug and would let me turn the wheel when I was 6 and he would push the accelorator and brake for me. Also I used to suck on the ice cubes of his alcoholic beverages when I was 5. Much like tabbycat I climbed all sorts of things trees the house and I would fall constantly, that might explain why my brain refuses to work at times

It is a fucking miracle i made it this far. My dad gave me beer in my bottle, i got set on fire, i wrecked a motorcycle, i smoked, i fell from high places, i played with many guns and knives, i fought, i cursed, i ran away from home, i rode in the car while my dad was drunk, all of these things were made possible by my folks and happened before i hit my teens.

I caught my charge with is fingers in a film canister filled with blotter. He also used to put his finger on his nose and sniff grandma's table….I just thank god that I am not my father.

Absolutely nothing. Until age 17 (when I broke free) I wasn't allowed to read secular literature, interact with the fair sex, or leave the jewish ghetto. If it was pleasurable it was forbidden.

well, my parents let me do crazy flips and whatnot in gymnastics, ride horses, swim in the ocean, and tonnes of other things that could have got me broken, killed or devoured whole.

survival of the fitest!

The only thing I can think of is a time when I was around,say,six. My dad handed me his glass, and demanded I have a gulp of his orange juice. Cool,I thought. Orange juice...I like orange juice. ~gulp~ HOLY SHIT!! Thus my first encounter with the screwdriver.
Most of the dumb shit I did dosen't count,as my parents never knew about it.

*raises hand

Um, they left me unsupervised a great deal of the time, and when I was in their care, they let me watch the goriest stuff on tv and in movies, including the original Night of the Living Dead when I was 4. I didn't go near doors or windows for 2 weeks after that.

They let me beat up other kids, they defended me so as to avoid suspension/expulsion, let me pretty much stay up however long I wanted, and let me get stoned with my cousins and aunt when I was 11. Way too much information that may explain a lot.

Denial. Oh no wait...that's adolecence...

My parents let me run around and hurt myself all the time. I fell off swing sets, ran my bike into trees, etc etc. It taught me how much doing stupid things can hurt. They also taught me how to avoid foolish things like blowing my arms off or getting myself shot.

A lot of stuff I shouldn't have done.

I lived such a sheltered childhood...but there was that time I got lost in the woods for 2 hours during a massive snow storm...ever since I was 8 my parents would let me hike with the neighbors...and if they knew that we were hanging on the cliffs that hung about 150 feet above the highway I would have been in deep shit...

My parents were crazy by having me NOT do stuff that everyone else was doing. Most kids did baseball / tee ball - I did martial arts... really brutal and traumatizing at times. Most parents would send their kids to a psychiatrist for threatening suicide at 12. Most kids aren't sent away 2000 miles routinely to relatives only to get in the middle of a raging family feud. Most kids don't have to deal with losing every opportunity to make any sort of lasting relationship with anyone because their parents didn't like any of them. Most kids are given praise at some point or another - I got criticism instead.

But hey, I turned out A OK!! I'm a fucking ray of sunshine goddammit! Hating every person on the planet and self-mutilation is perfectly normal!

My whole generation had no idea what seat belts were, as they were usually buried under the back seat and if you would have tried to strap a bike helmet on one of us you would have gotten you ass laughed at pretty hard. We were not to be seen from about 8 in the morning till sundown, except maybe for lunch at someone's house. We built tree forts and go-carts and did all sorts of dangerous things and no one got sued if someone got hurt. The police weren't called if someone got in a fight at school, we took care of it with our own wacked out Lord of the Flies justice system. We didn't live in fear of "strangers" - we knew who the weirdos were and steered clear of them

When I was in my mid teen you could easily get served a drink at a bar with a wink and a smile and buying liquor at a store was no problem. Getting carded for cigarettes was unheard of. I didn't even know it was illegal to smoke for under 18s until they started making a big deal out of it in the 90s. We could also have all the sex we wanted to without fear of death.. There was the occasional pregnancy or a case of crabs, but that's it.

Kids today are fucking sucky-baby wussies. Their music sucks, their cartoons suck, their life sucks and their future is really gonna suck. I hope there's some sort of sea change soon, cause I don't wanna get old with this bunch of conservative, brainless, fraidy-cats minding the store.

My dad used to let me:
1. Clean guns starting at the age of 8

2. Play with saudering irons and glass cutters starting when I was 12

aslo:
3. As a small child, he had me living less than 25 miles from an airforce rocket testing facilate, causing sonic booms to knock our power out at regular intervals (don't ask)

4. My mother took me to get my first fake ID made when I was 14,
plus my parents allowed me to use the city's (where ever we lived at the time) mass transit sytem to stay out until dawn (when it re-opened) starting at the same age...ah, childhood memories!