The, Why am I not dead, thread.

[Baitball Blogger]

Asbesto ceiling tiles. When we were kids, we would pick them out of the trash to create the floors for our jungle floors. That's how you play, why am I not dead?

[Downwinder]

1. Did you also have sword fights with fluorescent lights?

[Baitball Blogger]

3. No. We didn't have to. We used machetes.

[Downwinder]

6. Gee, we used the original light sabers.

[SEMOVoter]

50. We used Fluorescent Lights for Grapevine Jousting

Okay, people usually loose jaw control when I tell stories like this about my childhood, but here it goes.

We would have rodeos / jousting matches in a wooded area of the subdivision.

Now the rodeo included a used 55 gal drum secured with ropes to four greenish trees. I should explain 'greenish'. These trees were thick enough to hold our weight, yet bendy enough to 'give' when a child was on the drum and three or four other kids pulled/bounced on the ropes. The drum would adequately mimic the up/down and side to side motions of a bucking bronco or a whiplash inducing, brain rattling car crash.

The bronco setup was really the brain child of the older kids. 16-19 year olds set this thing up. That doesn't mean we younger kids didn't have some ideas of our own.

We found a sweet cache of fluorescent lights one summer at the school. Grapevine Jousting by swinging across a creek on ropes or grapevines while aiming at the other kid. Since we only had a rope-tied-to-a-tree on one side of the creek, the person on the other bank had to use a grapevine. We worked out a rock-paper-scissors method of determining who would be on the grapevine side. Also, there were some matches of only one person with a light sword.

Yes, we polluted. Yes, there were injuries. Yes, we got in trouble, BIG trouble. We learned a lot though. This was the 1970's.

I learned not to play with clumsy kids.

[Downwinder]

51. If you got near a ham radio tower

they would light up when he transmitted.

[SEMOVoter]

52. If only we knew that then,

maybe we wouldn't have gotten in so much trouble.

[Downwinder]

54. That's why I said we had the original light sabers.

It was great fun in the early evening. The problem was that the lights drew parents. End of party.

[PoliticAverse]

2. Asbestos was a 'miracle fiber' of the 50's and 60's. They put it into so many things...

(it's still in the asbestos-cement shingles that are on the outside walls of my house - I used to smash
the broken ones into pieces with a hammer when I was a kid).

The tiles you played with were likely only 'asbestos containing' not solid asbestos and probably
didn't release many asbestos fibers when you used them.

The 'asbestos scare' seems to have been a bit overblown - most people getting cancer or experiencing
other health issues from asbestos exposure appear to have worked with large quantities of asbestos or
smaller quantities over long periods (it can take 30-50 years for cancer related asbestos exposure to
appear though).

For more on asbestos and cancer see:
http://www.cancer.gov/images/Documents/67e63bef-d6e0-4c0f-9c7a-e8aa56ed969c/fs6_36.pdf

EPA on asbestos:
http://www.epa.gov/asbestos/

Background on Asbestos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos

[GoCubsGo]

4. I played with mercury and rode my bike without a helmet.

And, I bet most people here over the age of 45, or so, did the same thing.

[Baitball Blogger]

5. That's a given.

I remember watching a bead of silver mercury dance around the porcelain sink before it went down the drain.

[femmocrat]

7. Yes, I was about to post the same thing.

We used to play with mercury on the sidewalk. It was very cool stuff.

Also, we never wore sunscreen or insect repellant and were outside from dawn to dusk.

[ashling]

16. I used to drive a Mercury

[In_The_Wind]

8. I did both of those.

Yeah. I'm over 45.

[Downwinder]

13. I used mercury soap.

[csziggy]

18. Forgot about the mercury!

Dad brought home an old 'industrial' sized thermometer about a foot tall with a half inch tube. My older sisters carefully broke the tube and saved the mercury to play with. It was a lot of mercury - maybe a quarter of a cup! We kept it in a jar for years.

I wonder where it went? Probably down the drain or into the county landfill.

[Art_from_Ark]

37. Mercury wasn't very easy to get for me

but I did, and still do, ride my bicycle without a helmet.

[pipi_k]

9. When I was a kid, we

rode our bicycles without helmets (head injuries) , took aspirin when we were sick (Reyes Syndrome), and ate raw cake batter with eggs in it (salmonella).

[fleur-de-lisa]

10. I have a co-worker . . .

who, as a kid, used to ride his bike behind the mosquito truck, inhaling deeply as it spewed poison into the air. Come to think of it, he's not quite right, so this may not be a good example!

[Baitball Blogger]

11. Oh, I tried to play hide and seek with the DDT truck too.

As I said before, why am I not dead?

[PoliticAverse]

12. Because you're lucky ? n/t

[MiddleFingerMom]

14. 'Fess up... your proboscis fell off, didn't it?

[Baitball Blogger]

15. I lost my thirst for blood.

But I do have an unquenchable enthusiasm for zombies.

[csziggy]

17. I grew up in a house with asbestos siding

It was sold to my parents on two main features - fireproof and it would never need to be painted! Both were true. The house never caught fire and the siding was never painted in the 50+ years it stood. Of course, when the house was condemned and torn down, it cost a bunch for the asbestos removal.

As kids, we also played in a swamp known for having alligators and water moccasins. Ran in and out of the mosquito killing fog from the trucks that roamed the neighborhood weekly, took off on our bikes for long rides on country roads or to ride all over town with no adult supervision or bike helmets. One of my bikes was scrounged from a garbage pile. It had no brakes or tires so traction was iffy. I'd ride it downhill (what counted for hills in flatland Florida) to the deadend of the road and let the grass at the end bring the bike to a halt and cushion my inevitable fall.

It's pretty amazing how few accidents I had before I got horses. Maybe not - I had a broken arms, third degree burns, constantly scraped knees, etc.

Life was dangerous in the 1950s and 60s!

[Arugula Latte]

19. I had some crazy close calls with horses. Looking back, I'm amazed I escaped major injury.

One time my horse kicked out at me and his hoof just grazed where my heart is. He ran away with me a couple times, bucked me off numerous times, scraped me under a giant tree limb and one time spooked when I was on his back and fell over. I fell clear but cracked my elbow (I only had to be in a cast for three weeks). That was the worst injury I got, miraculously. No helmets, of course. Later I did a little jumping with horses and had a few refusals where I flew out of the saddle. I was wearing a helmet for those, at least.

[hedgehog]

20. All joking aside - I can't help but notice the rise in cancer among my contemporaries.......

[Baitball Blogger]

21. Yeah. There's always that.

By the time people start connecting the dots, it's already too late.

[agracie]

22. Remember Mr. Potato Head ?

You used a real potato, and stabbed the eyes and ears etc. into the potato - little metal parts with sharp points !

[agracie]

23. Help me understand "jungle floors". n/t

[Baitball Blogger]

25. Our forts were built in the "jungle"

Which is to say, in the backyard which was a bit overgrown. We had a favorite spot for the forts. It was a maranon tree with a limb that curved upward and made a great "front" window. The walls were mostly make-believe cardboard or wood junk that we could put around the tree, and it had a top floor because the front window doubled as a step up to the top branches. So the tiles were dropped on the floor just to give us something better to sit on than dirt. Who knew we were safer with dirt?

[agracie]

24. Oh, and a 24" bike when I was 5 yrs. old...

so I could "grow into it". No training wheels. No helmet. Had to ride it standing up - couldn't reach the pedals.

[Art_from_Ark]

38. My mom had the sense to get me a bicycle that matched my size

I had a pint-sized one when I was 5 to 7 (training wheels for the first couple of weeks, but no helmet), then graduated to a "Buzz bike" when I was 8 and continued riding that until I was 13 and my mom made me sell it so I could upgrade to a 10-speed.

[bobclark86]

26. I got bored at work one night...

Long answer: I work at a small daily newspaper, and we have a bunch of old papers on microfilm. A few weeks ago, I was working on something from 1936, and I started counting the number of fatal car accidents. The average day had at least one fatal accident reported, and that was over a 3-month period. For 2012, I can count the number of fatal accidents in our area on one hand.

Short answer: You're lucky.

[nolabear]

27. Played tag in the mosquito fogger. Sweet, sweet DDT...

It is a freaking MIRACLE we all aren't dead.

[SEMOVoter]

53. Last summer saw a kid following the BUG TRUCK on a bike

No helmet.

The spirit of fogger tag lives on.

[TrogL]

28. Throwing lawn darts over the house landing near a sidewalk

[HarveyDarkey]

29. Then there's just general youthful exuberance

[Bucky]

30. When you use commas like that in the heading, I'm surprised Grammar Nazis haven't killed you.

This is a precious resource. ==>
Please it use sparingly.

[Baitball Blogger]

32. Just, for, you,,,,,

[Jamaal510]

33. Reading YouTube comments

and spending time on Urban Dictionary and the Yahoo Answers politics section.

[mokawanis]

34. Crashed and rolled three cars in my teens

and walked away from every crash with no injuries. The last one I flipped the car end over end at 75 mph. No idea how I survived all that, but I'm a careful driver now.

[sadbear]

35. I shit my pants during the draft.

-- Ted Nugent.

[pinboy3niner]

55. Heh heh

As a draftee and Purple Heart vet, I can appreciate that.

[geardaddy]

36. We had those too.

We used to have bottle rocket wars. I was hit in the chest and legs many times.

Also had a roman candle blow up in my hand. Not a scratch.

[Baitball Blogger]

41. In our neighborhood, the illegal rockets are sounding cannon loud.

January 1st and July 4th. They get bigger and bigger.

[Tom Ripley]

44. If you removed the sissy bar from your bicycle, it made a great double-barreled rocket launcher

[geardaddy]

49. Oooh!

Yeah! I could totally see that.

[RedCloud]

39. We used to get inside of huge cardboard boxes and pretend we were robots!

Why didn't cars run us over because we always went out into the main avenue to do it?

[Rhythm]

40. I pick-up-truck surfed, had a g/f's mom shoot at me, went the wrong way in the mosh pit...

had two high-speed head-on collisions, and and all other sorts of misadventures...

Why am i still vertical and breathing oxygen unassisted?!

[texanwitch]

42. My friends and I played in the railroad yard, under, in, and over the rail cars.

None of us lost a leg, arm, or life.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

43. Jump seats in cabs. Maybe the cabbies drove more safely back in the day...

[Tom Ripley]

45. 35 cents worth of gasoline and a box of matches would keep us entertained all afternoon

[benld74]

46. As I tell my wife when our kids get into trouble(little crap)

Honey, the crap my friends I did growing up AND in high school, its even a wonder why I'm not dead,,,,

[Myrina]

47. ... snuck into bars underage, got insanely drunk & went home with ...

... God knows who ... how many times. No witnesses, no cell phones for 9-1-1 or GPS locating, most likely no condoms.

My bestie from those days and I look back in amazement now that neither of us ended up dead in a cornfield.

[Baitball Blogger]

48. You WERE lucky.

Thank the stars.

[WCGreen]

57. You .... Sound.... Vagely..... Familiar.....

[RiffRandell]

56. No seat belts riding around in the Country Squire wagon.

Yes, it had the wood paneling. No bike helmets, and the only thing I'll mention about substances because there was plenty of opportunities involving those was the time I was so drunk I swallowed a bite of a hot dog (gross---haven't eaten them in over 20 years) without chewing and was choking so badly and couldn't breathe I thought I was going to die.

I gave the choking signal to my boyfriend at the time and his friend but they were also drunk and didn't believe me.