O.T. What did you do for fun as a kid? Pre Nintendo... - Page 2

grade school years: Played Hide-N-Seek,  "Daniel Boone", Cowboys & Indians", etc.  with friends, played with my "dolls", Johnny and Jane West  and their horses,  took horseback riding lessons, walked my dog, trained my dog, walked the neighbors' dogs. Teen years: Rode my horse every day and everywhere, showed my horse and other horses, rode my bike & went to the beach (I live in Ft. Lauderdale, FL).   

Forts, yes! And then bombing the other fort with oranges, or sometimes even rocks.......We also took all the Christmas day trash from neighbors and when we found thrown out skates fopr example (or something we never would get since we were very poor), we would make go carts with found boards and nails and ride them down a hill into the street. We took the large cardboard boxes someone's new refrigerator came in and turned it into a capsule to crawl in and ride down the steep hill by the school. We also planted the trees people threw out after Christmas, thinking they would grow. Of course, they did not, but we had a nice hideout called "Christmas Tree Land". We scavenged for a dime to buy a large dill pickle out of a jar and would keep it for days, just taking a small bite out now and then. We built rockets using CO2 cartridges and launched sow bugs into space....always hoping to recover them alive. We spent time in the storm drains telling scary stories and eating the wild berries that grew in the wet areas near them. We traded baseball cards, and played baseball for hours on end. We went to the school rec center in the summer and watched FLash Gordon movies. We played chess....we jumped on trampolines and played football. We plugged up the water fountains at the school with anything like paper towels and caught the aligator lizards and put them in a flooded fountain to race them. We boosted my brother onto the roof of the school auditorium and he jumped down through the open skylight, let us in, and we would play there and tell stories, and when finished, make sure everything was back as it was. We caught snakes, we hiked to the dump to find treasures....and on and on. And no one supervised us, and no one cared about us. But we rarely got into trouble. And miraculously, we never got killed doing some of the dangerous stuff we did. LOL Sad to think that most kids today sit on their butts and do nothing like this, either watching the damn TV or playing with the computer.

WHAT A FABULOUS THREAD FROM A FABULOUS MAN AND SIFU. 
WHERE DO I BEGIN? I GUESS I SHOULD BEGIN WITH THE FORM OF TRANSPORTATION I USED. MY MIGHTY STEED WAS A CINNAMON RED SCHWINN STING RAY BICYCLE.  IT WAS LOW AND EASY DISMOUNT ON THE RUN AFTER I HAD THROWN A WATER BALOON AT A CAR AND THE DRIVER WAS AFTER MY CHUBBY ASS.   I  LOVED THE TELEPHONE AND OF COURSE STILL DO BUT BACK THEN BEFORE *69 IT WAS MUCH MORE FUN.  CALLS TO MANY PLACES OF BUSINESS ASKING FOR JACK NEHOFF AND PHILLUP MCCRAKEE WERE ALWAYS A FUN WAY TO SPEND AN HOUR OR TWO.    ALWAYS BROUGHT HOME ANY OLD MANGY DOG OR CAT THAT WAS RUNNING LOOSE AND BEGGED MY MOM TO LET ME KEEP IT AFTER SHE SAW THEM.  HAD A LIST OF ALL THE GIRLS AT SCHOOL AND THEIR ADDRESSES. ALWAYS RODE MY STING RAY TO THEIR HOUSE AND TRIED TO KISS THEM.  MOST ALWAYS I WOULD GET RUN OFF BY PARENTS.  THERE WAS A JEWELRY STORE NEARBY AND WHEN THEY WERE CLOSED IF YOU BEAT ON THE DOOR THE INSANELY LOUD ALARM WOULD GO OFF. THE ALARM SET OFF WAS ALWAYS A BLAST.  MY FRIEND AND I WOULD RIDE THE BUS DOWNTOWN AND RIDE THE ELEVATOR AT JOSLINS DEPT STORE.  WE WOULD ACT NICE AND BE LITTLE GENTLEMEN.  WHEN THE ELEVATOR WOULD FILL UP WITH LADIES ONE OF US WOULD PRESS THE RED EMERGENCY BUTTON AND THE LIGHTS WOULD GO OFF AND THE ALARM WOULD GO ON.  AT THIS TIME WE WOULD SCREAM AT THE TOP OF OUR LUNGS IN VERY HIGHT PITCHED VOICES AND SOON THE LADIES IN THE ELEVATOR WOULD BEGIN SCREAMING AS WELL.   THEN ONE OF US WOULD PULL OUT THE BUTTON AND ACT CALM AS THE LIGHTS CAME BACK ON AND WE WATCHED ALL THE WOMEN SCREAMING.  TP ING HOUSES WAS ALWAYS FUN LATE NIGHT AND ANYTIME WE COULD GET OUR HANDS ON ILLEGAL FIREWORKS IT WAS A BANNER TIME.   WHEN DOWNTOWN SNEAKING INTO LADIES DRESSING ROOMS AND LAVATORIES  AND THEN ACTING LOST WAS ALWAYS TOP ENTERTAINMENT. AT AGE 10 TO 12 IT WORKS THE BEST. AFTER AGE 13 THE IM LOST EXCUSE DOESNT WORK AS WELL.  DURING THE SUMMER AT SWIMMING POOLS THAT HAD PRETTY GIRL LIFEGUARDS I MOST ALWAYS DOVE IN THE DEEP END AND BEGAN TO DROWN.  IT WASNT MY FAULT WHERE MY HANDS WENT. I WAS DROWNING FOR HEAVENS SAKE.

Small child I guess we played cowboys and Indians most of the time and had a fort we built. Once in 4th or 5th grade we played football or baseball or basket ball 24-7 it seemed. Depended on the season. Once in High-school all extra play was football and wrestling as was most of my adult life. Now I pay the price  OH my aching body,,,,,,,,lol  Always had a dog , I really can't remember not having one

My earliest years in the city was neighborhood kids, the ball park, bikes and climbing trees.
Once we moved to the country it was horses and ponies, the woods and my first .22,
hunting, fishing, smoking grape vines, yeah we build those forts too, BB gun fights instead of Walnuts.
Camping out gave us the freedom to cross country and sneak into the drive in and soon after came chasing of girls, go karts, and stealing alcohol from our parents...lol

I grew up with all guys. My brothers, all the neighbors kids were boys. I was the only girl besides Elizabeth who wasn't allowed to play with any of us. LOL Except for cheerleading, rifle twirling or tennis practice, then she would come around.

My parents were weird, we wasn't allowed in the house most the time, so we had to do outside stuff..  ride the horses, mow fields, cut wood, milk cows, deliver news papers, dishes, wash the windows, read the Readers Digest to ggpa and ma, slave labor type stuff LOL

No tv video games allowed here. They did buy us a PC and video game code magazine and the first one to code the game right got a new John Deere to mow the grass. It was 500 pages of code !!!!  LMAO  Sorry Bro's ...

We played alot of football, kickball, target practice, marble shoots, gymnastics, double dutch, big cheif little cheif, doctor, cowboys and indians, fishing, too much to mention ... it was all fun. The neighbor guys still play big chief little chief every now and again.  LMAO

We built and flew alota box kites too.

We lost our tv privileges when we watched that Creep Show movie on HBO without asking one night. The only tv programs we were then allowed to watch was Dukes of Hazzard, Dallas and Falcon Crest on Friday nights while mom was @ Bingo.  

Ohh ya, an Fraggle Rock an Rocky and Bullwinkle.  lol

Don't even ask about my teens .. I'm still pissed.

I'm so deprived, glad the neighbors still play big chief little chief.  LMAO   TOOO FUNNNY

Baby Eagle:

                          I was a Johnny Quest kid on Sunday morning before church.

B.E.  how were your teen years? 

Horses and books. LOTS of books. I suspect I was the best customer the Los Altos library ever had. My dad had to meet me at the library after work because I always checked out too many to carry the 3-4 miles home on my horse.

Dolls? HA! I didn't want anything to do with the stuff most girls liked.
S

Wow, so many things.  I grew up in a very close-knit neighborhhod, an average of 4 kids in almost every house.  There was always someone to play with and we spent all of our waking hours outside.  I was quite the tomboy, climbing trees, building treehouses and forts, playing cowboys and indians and army.  We'd "plant" apple seeds in maple trees by climbing high, cutting an "X" and peeling back the bark, then wonder why they never grew.  Catching snakes, salamanders, crayfish, tortoises and lightning bugs (our state insect).  Going to the corner store for ACTUAL penny candy!  Candy bars cost 5 cents, Popsicles were 7 cents!  And we'd slap our Bonomo Turkish Taffy on the sidewalk to crack it before eating every tiny piece.  In winter, plows only took care of main roads so all steep streets were sledding heaven!  We had snowball fights, built snowmen and snow forts.  We walked to school, which was in our neighborhood, only had snow days with more than 12" and never a delay!  90% of Moms were home all day  and families had only 1 car.  We rode bikes, which we built from old ones we got out of the garbage.  We also built go-carts from scraps and rode them until they fell apart, literally.  We put pennies on the streetcar tracks to "smoosh" them.  In summer we'd walk to the pool and swim all day when it was really hot, buying snow cones from "Eyeball Pete" and ice cream from Mr. Softee.  We even had a truck that would come to our neighborhood with a merry-go-round and it cost a nickel to ride.  We played baseball, football, kickball, red rover, hide'N Seek, buck-buck, fugitive, dodge ball, tug-o-war and the most wicked of games, hide the belt.  I could go on and on but I guess I've hit on most of the best in my memory banks.  A few "bad" things I did when I got older...put a box of Mr. Bubble in a fountain in downtown Pittsburgh.  Made prank phone calls, played "tick-tack" and threw snowballs at streetcars.

And the best part of it all was, I always had my dog by my side.  It makes me sad that most children can no longer experience such a free and carefree childhood.

Hodie, we used to crawl through the storm sewer too, to cross main roads!