I couldn't have agreed more with Gever Tulley's call for parents to let their children get bruised, scraped, and bumped while exploring the world around them. I do think he was a bit off on ruing the disappearance of the playground merry-go-round. I watched a few kids nearly sent into to orbit on one of those. But As Tulley emphasizes, parents tend to be too cautious about dangers that are extremely unlikely to lead to real problems and too cavalier about the threat's most likely to endanger the health and safety of their children.
Some of the best memories of my youth involved some pretty dangerous activities. I was fortunate to live in a place that was great for adventure and to have parents that were willing to let us play. In general we were free to do what we wanted if we made it home for dinner and didn't cross the highway (fortunately there were fields, forests, and mountains on our side of the highway). In honor of this great little read and in memory of an adventurous upbringing I thought I would make a list of the top ten most dangerous activities from my youth.
10. Swimming-With a creek, irrigation ditch, and many ponds we spent plenty of time in the water. There were a few close calls but to us the toughest part was getting used to the chill of the water each spring.
9. Rope-Much credit here goes to my brother Andrew. He found a tree branch hanging far over a steep hillside which made for a perfect swing. You would alter from soaring high above the roof of the shed built at the bottom of the hill to slamming into the hillside on the return trip. He also connected a sturdy climbing rope to a hillside Box Elder tree and a river bottom Willow for a great zipline. I believe there was an ambulance called to both of these when inexperienced adventurers fell to the shed rooftop and slammed into the bottom side tree anchor of the zipline.
8. Jumping-Our trampoline was not placed at ground level or surrounded by safety nets. It was, however, dragged to the side of Hadlock's pond and under trees. The neighborhood rite of passage was to jump from the tree that arched about 30 feet over Uzelac's pond (for an added sense of danger old man Uzelac was definitely the grumpy old man of the neighborhood with the meanest, scariest, barkiest dogs around).
7. Building-Lots of treehouses and a few underground fortresses as well. We tried to keep their construction secret long enough so that parents wouldn't have the heart to pull the plug on a project that had already received so much hard work. The worst trouble here came from the time we took building supplies from a woodpile that turned out to contain future building materials for our new neighbor and not just scraps. We kept the treehouse but had to put in a day of work for the victim (we got the final world later when we stole his garage door opener and tortured him with a mysterious carport phantom late one night)
6. Climbing-Out my bedroom window to the roof. Out the skylight to the roof. Up countless trees and a few mountains too.
5. Explosions/Fire-This is the one category where the activities were pretty clearly against the rules. We were more afraid of getting caught than we were of losing a finger. Fortunately the former happened often enough to prevent the latter.
4. Motorcycles were not allowed but I flew a paraplane and learned to scuba dive
3. Bikes, Skis, Sleds, and Skateboards-I never had a helmet. We made our own halfpipe, jumps, and had plenty of spots to provide gravity the greatest amount of assistance possible for all of these toys.
2. Tools-There was a lot more trouble to face for not returning a tool than for using one without permission. Hammers, screwdrivers, pics, shovels, saws, sanders, and eventually even the arc welder.
1-Driving-I got my license at age 16. In many ways this led to the end of most of the activities listed above. From a statistical perspective it's likely more dangerous than all of them too.
I should conclude by saying that I'm actually a big wuss. I was not the most adventurous participant in most of these activities and was always happy to let somebody else test out a new bike jump first. As much as I liked and agreed with Tulley's book I do also have to struggle against the parent's natural instinct to keep kids away from danger. It takes a consistent balance of trying to keep them safe but also giving them some freedom to fall, fumble, and even fail.
