People Share All the Dangerous and Unsupervised Things They Got up to When They Were Kids

There’s no doubting that we are living in different times now. Back in the day, kids got up to some incredibly dangerous capers while unsupervised.

I remember riding my bike through an abandoned half-dug sub-division down the road from my house in the mid-80s when I was about 11. People were lighting fires and doing god-knows-what with each other behind the “dirtpiles” as we all called them. Some of the dirtpiles were turned into BMX  jumps of varying difficulty, and I remember watching many a kid come-a-cropper in the dirt, half a suburb away from home and with no adults in sight. At least I wore a stack hat.

My story is not all that unusual either. People on Reddit were asked “What unsupervised childhood activities did you participate in, that probably should have killed you?”, and their answers will probably make you shudder that kids were ever allowed to be let loose in such a way!

? “Swimming in the drainage canal by my house. Barbwire, horseshit, concrete, fertilizer runoff, etc.” – Singdownthetrail

? “My brother and I would bend our mattresses in half and then sit on them, release them and fling ourselves across the room into the wall. We were not bright children but damn did we have fun.” – saturatedscruffy

? “When I was a kid, we used to toss apples under the tree, climb the tree, and when the horses, that my grandparents raised, would come to eat the apples, we would leap on the horses. Most of the time the horse would buck and take off running, with a kid on its back.” – Albanian_Tea

? “Tree riding. Climb a tree and have your friends cut it down. We would have contests to see who would climb the highest. I won more than once. I cannot fathom how I nor anyone else was not seriously hurt, nevermind killed.” – Babydontcomeback

? “The Great Rock Wars. In grade school, we played this during recess. We just whipped pebbles at each other. Hard. Also, I pay homage to my fallen 4th-grade friend, may we never forget you.” – Im_running753

? “My cousins and I, from the time we were toddlers, were just sent out into the forest in the morning with nothing but whistles to “scare the bears.” One time I chased a bear.”  – Katy-L-Wood

? “The previous owner of my childhood home left a bunch of random chemicals in the garage (he was into home improvement and stuff) and my siblings took to playing “Mad Scientist”. Several instances of unknown gasses spreading through the garage later and we’re still around.” – pandawrath617

? “Lawn darts. Except no one was throwing em at the rings. Nope toss em straight up in the sky and scatter.” – BigBald

? “I used to rollerblade off the roof and onto the trampoline….it hurts to think about it now. I’m still shocked I never got hurt!” – Melrob17

? “Evel Kneivel’ing my BMX bike off jumps into roads while a friend was supposed to be watching for cars but mostly stood there picking his nose and looking at his untied shoelace.” – bosephjones2006

Do you have any similar stories of your childhood to share? Sound off in the comments!

You can read the full Reddit thread here.

Source: Giphy and Tenor