When I was a kid, it was a very different world. We did things we wouldn’t dream of our children doing today, and I think that is a shame. Of course, not all of it was safe, but it didn’t thin the herd any, it just injured a few of us and left scares that help us remember what we learned. I thought I would list a couple and the injuries that resulted and perhaps lessons learned.
1. Building a diving platform off the roof; We had an above ground pool, and as what always happens things escalated until we were all trying to out-do each other. One note, you had to dive out far because the platform was on the shallow end, so when I tried a back flip into the pool, hitting my teeth on the bottom of the shallow end should have been obvious. Lesson learned, showing off has consequences.
2. Unsupervised Estes rocket use; putting those little things in a cardboard rocket and sending it into the sky is fun. I also wondered what else they could power? So I took some duct tape and strapped a couple of engines to a toy jeep and sat G.I. Joe in for a ride. When the engines fired, it sent the jeep instead of straight down the street, into a death spiral. G.I. Joe was tossed aside, and the whole jeep was a mass of fire and melting plastic. Lesson learned, there is a lot more to rockets than just thrust. Also learned melted plastic is hot!