I’m GenX, my entire childhood was dangerous.

I see a lot of similar stories here about wandering free and living like feral kids but I want to second making homemade Explosives from hobby shop Rocket engines.

Run around in the woods with a good stick.

Some friends and I used to soak a tennis ball in lighter fluid, light it on fire, and play “hacky sack” with it. I’m completely shocked none of us ended up with any bad burns.

Edit: to be fair I do have plenty of burns but they are all from baking or getting baked, not from playing with fire.

go to school in America

Holy shit man, so much. So so so much. Honestly I’m surprised I survived childhood.

We used to free climb cliffs. One of my step brothers took a pretty bad fall, about 60 feet down. He cartwheeled and banged against the cliff face, then landed in a sitting position. His right arm was torn open from armpit to elbow, and the bones were sticking out. Compound break. We had to walk him though about 2 miles of desert to get back to civilization and get help. He survived with no other major injuries, but that was a close one.

I used to go camping out in the desert by myself as a kid. From like 10 to 14 years old. I’d take a bow and arrows with me and just stay out there for a few days with my parents thinking I was spending a few days at a friends house. So much shit could’ve gone wrong, and sometimes it almost did.

Then there’s the normal kid shit like playing with fire and chemicals, almost blowing ourselves up or burning everything else down.

People wonder why I never had kids and all I can do is think about all the shit I got up to as a kid. I don’t need that kind of stress.

I’m an Australian, as a 16 ur old I’d slong my gun over mu shoulder and rodee my trail bike up the range to hunt for pet food. Drape a gutted dead roo over the back of my motobike and bring it jwome, meat for the dogs and skin it. No one batted an eyelid or said anything.

Now I’d be labeled a terrorist, have police helicopters chase me down and be in jail for decades.

Back in the 60s, i was a Free-Range kid. On on a nice non-school day, I would go out after breakfast on my bike, and be gone all day, without any money, a watch, ID, cell phone (didn’t exist back then), anything, and I’d be gone all day. The only rule was to be home by 5 pm.

Nobody knew where I was, who I was speaking to, or anything. If i bumped into friends, I’d hang out for a while, but if I needed to know the time, I’d ask some stranger. If I was thirsty, I’d knock on a random door and ask for a glass of water. Once, I stopped at the end of a driveway to watch some guy doing woodworking in his open garage. He saw me watching and this stranger invited me into garage, and showed me his tools, and what he was building. Turned out he was a decent guy, and I probably reminded him of his grandson, but what if he wasn’t? My primary fear was running into the Robolotto boys, but as long as I didn’t see one of them, I was happy.

This was routine for years, and it was the same for my friends. I started doing this when I was about 7 years old.