Wacky stuff you did as a kid; and what might you be up to were you born this past decade….

Thelonious Monk

We used to play football on the roads, imagine.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117879177#Comment_117879177

Never sure either. There are days recently where I take my 11 year old daughter to capture live rabbit to eat - to go horse riding - and to go training with a friend of ours on how to handle and care for and use rifles. When her friends call over and we find out what they have been doing with their time - it seems they have been doing much the same stuff online in "Fortnite" or one of that ilk.

Seems a lot of her friends call over now because she is guaranteed to take them out of the house and do stuff they do not know how to do on their own without her. If they call around to anyone else they end up on a phone or console.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117893859#Comment_117893859

Not easy where I live now - but when visiting the kids grand parents recently I taught them the old game of "kerbs" where you stand on opposite sides of the road with a ball and try to hit the Kerb on your opponents side (for 1 point) so that it bounces back and you can catch it (bonus 5 points).

Had totally forgotten about that game and playing it as a kid but was just standing outside the parents house and I saw the kerb and it suddenly rushed back at me out of nowhere so I had to run off and get the ball and show the kids.

Not just football on the roads though. I remember "rounders" which was like a very small area form of cricket/baseball. Can't remember the exact rules or play style now but looking back on how tiny my cul de sac road was I can not remember how we never broke the window of a car or house.

JimmyVik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117894279#Comment_117894279

Rounders, Kerbsy and kick the can.

I think we spent every evening doing one or the other.

And then there were the days we would go off on an adventure and walk all day though field after field til we got to the top of a mountain or something.

And then when we got home long after dark because we lost track of how far we had gone noone would bat an eyelid. No phones to get someone to collect us or let them know where we were.

Kick the can definitely is a phrase I remember well but right now my brain will not remind me what it actually was or what it entailed. In fact now I think about it the specifics of Rounders escapes me too. I know I played it a lot and it was some kind of baseball/cricket derivative but I can not remember what the goals and rules and specifics actually were.

Which is odd cause I know I played both a hell of a lot with the kids around the Cul De Sac and from "over the wall". But no notion now what I was doing :)

silliussoddius

I remember rounders being pretty straight forward. Like baseball without the silly hats, chewing gum and looking off to the side. Someone throws the ball and the batter tries to get a home run, if the ball is caught in the air the batter is out (I remember a dodgy rule creeping in where if the ball is caught in one hand only then the whole team was out).

ok - so what was kick the can? Was that the one where you had to creep up on the coke can before the person who was "it" spotted you coming?

Purple Mountain

As an 80s child, I often wonder how we survived. Think kids were a lot more physical then, hence open to a lot more danger.

For fun, myself and a sibling used to go down the stairs, headfirst on our stomach on a single bed mattress. It was always a roulette to hope the mattress stopped before getting to the glass front door in the downstairs hall.

We also used to get into an empty wheelie bin at the top of the road and one of us would push the other down the steep hill in it.

I miraculously never broke a bone or had any serious injury.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117906071#Comment_117906071

I am probably crediting him with more than his due - but a few years ago the singer "Glen Hansard" made a music video for one of his songs which he recorded somewhere in Africa. And during the music video we get to watch one of the locals - an adult male - swing off a contraption made from a tree - and I wondered was Glen doing that to hark back to the old days when we used to do things like that hanging ropes off trees in St Annes Park. Back when throwing ourselves down stairs was a game and not an insurance claim or a medical emergency :)

I miss the days when I used to literally sprint along the rocks in Howth without anyone screaming at me that I might break a leg. Though I was lucky - and I am sure the parents who had a kid who did break a leg look back on it differently :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgG2rljJqH4&ab_channel=ANTI-Records