Toys that Kill

Have you ever given a thought about what life was like for kids back 30 or so years ago? Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how our views of life change as time goes bye and how expectations or certain belief systems evolve as we grow as a society. It’s crazy to me how when I was younger there we so little safety precautions and such a lack of foresight to see what could go wrong with some of the things we used to play with.

I know I’ve written about some of this before… like the fact that buckling my son into a car seat is more complicated than sending an astronaut into outer space, or how a cup of coffee has a warning label to make people aware that it’s hot. 

I guess we’ve come a long way from playing with lawn darts… you know those 12 pound weapons that you literally threw directly into the air and would render anyone who was hit with it unconscious. You could take down an elephant with those. Or how about every kid’s favorite fire hazard… the wood burning kit. I knew I had to have this and apparently my parents saw nothing wrong with me using a poorly wired soldering gun to set paper thin wood on fire which was set up directly on the shag carpet. My mom gets mad if she sees me having one beer on Thanksgiving yet she allowed me to play a chemistry set that contained banned substances that kids in high school chemistry class can’t even use anymore. 

Today there are bumper guards on top of bumper guards for the crib and bathtub. Kids have seat belts in grocery store shopping carts and there is a gate in every doorway. When I was five years old I convinced my brother to sit on a rock that I knew had a snake den underneath it. I literally used my three year old brother as snake bait. Today everyone in the family is CPR certified.

Have you seen the video if the toddler catching his baby brother from falling off his changing table? That would never happen when I was a kid. We were literally looking for ways to injure each other growing up. It was a rite of passage. It’s how you bonded. I guess times are different now. No dangerous toys and brothers becoming best friends by fighting for family supremacy, but over saving each other from smashing heads on the hardwood floor and preventing future CTE symptoms… Tomāto, Tomăto 

This kid will never have to buy his brother s birthday present as long as they live: https://youtu.be/fHxodMNqgVs

Here’s a link to another blog about things we did as kids that were dangerous from s couple of years ago: https://chroniclesofanewdad.com/2014/11/09/15-things-we-did-as-kids-that-were-really-dangerous-article-review/