Things you hardly dared use, because they were "dangerous" (lighthearted)

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Children are always being told things are dangerous, such as fire, escalators, roads, and so on. Were there any things which you hesitated to use as you got older, because "danger" had been drummed into you? (Lighthearted, obviously: otherwise this thread is too dangerous!)

Matches were one of mine. I could hardly bring myself to light them, in case I got burnt.

My grandmother emphasised how dangerous her appliances were, such as her ancient twin tub, and her electric lawn mower, and I almost forbade her from operating them, on this basis. (I was six at the time.)

In my first year at secondary school, I was astounded when we were made to use methylated spirit (to erase permanent marker), from a bottle prominently marked "poison".

Omg… very sorry to hear that, I thought I was just being ridiculous and it wasn’t possible!

I am not proud but my kids are not allowed to switch the overhead light in the car😔, when they ask why I STILL can't tell them why....

As a child,I lived with my grandad

I saw my parents but lived mainly with him

He was health and safety-he saw danger in every single thing (this was the 80's)

He was too scared to let me touch the hoover in case I got an electrical shock,would always walk down the street with me on the 'inside' in case I tripped and went under a car,I wasn't allowed anywhere near the gas fire in case I set myself on fire,he vetted my clothes to make sure they where not flammable-the list was endless

My parents saw danger in nothing-seatbelts/car seats where unnecessary,chip pans where perfectly safe,the pressure cooker was used daily,not strapping kids into pushchairs/pushing the pram into traffic to test the cars (my mother was a childminder!),bonfires/open fireplaces at home where safe to walk past etc

For some reason,my parents where shit scared of sparklers (not fireworks,just the sparklers),those lilos you can buy for the swimming pool and the sea (didn't touch it until I was an adult-our seaside holidays where 'look at the sea,just don't go near it')

Oddly,when I had my own children,they went with my kids for their first paddle in the sea!

I'm still scared of sparklers-i did let mine have them but was very weary of them

So many pressure cookers!

I wasn't taken in by many "scary" adverts about these things: I thought a lot of them were quite funny. I was only scared of things if I felt they were dangerous. The matches and candles were a big one, and I kept having to do dangerous (to me) things with candles at church: holding them, and getting hot wax on my fingers. There was a time when all the children were given thin candles, which were put in a tray of sand; they gradually bent together, and became a flaming mass which started to melt the tray, and an adult was only making a half-hearted attempt to get it under control. Of course, the children were far more interested in this than the talk we were supposed to be listening to.

With the iron, my brother once burnt himself by touching the bottom of it, and at school the following day, a teacher asked me why he had a burn on his hand. I'm glad to know teachers were looking out for us in the 1980s!

@AngelinaFibres The only farm thing I was nervous about was the possibility of a charging bull. As for the girl in the nightie who burned to death, I remember my dad warning me that if I sat too close to the fire, I'd get my feet burnt off, like Pinocchio.

@CassieMaddox I was not scared of record players, but I was not allowed to operate our one until I was about 8 or 9, in case I scratched records.

@Appalonia I actually had the ring thing happen to me: the ring on my finger got caught in the sticking out piece of a door handle. It was incredibly painful! I did get the ring repaired, though, as it completely changed shape.

We were told it was illegal to use while the car was being driven, and dad would get arrested 😂😂. I told all my DC this too😂

Microwaves due to fear they would explode if I accidentally left a metal spoon or tiny piece of foil in my food while it cooked. Also terrified if I closed the door whilst it was empty but still switched on it would also explode. Always switch mine off and in by the mains plug when I use it

My Mum had one of those tin openers. Mind you, I did cut my thumb badly on a corned beef tin, after opening it with the key. I've still got the scar, 40 years on!

When I worked in a hospital pharmacy, we had to make a 50/50 mixture of white soft paraffin and liquid paraffin. Highly flammable, so it's probably what you're thinking of. It's now made commercially, but we always had to give out a FLAMMABLE warning leaflet when we dispensed it.

We've both got Psoriasis, but when I get a flare it goes everywhere. Every single time he helps me apply the head to toe covering of assorted ointments, lotions and potions, DP always says 'Now, don't forget, you're very flammable now' because it was what his father would say to him as a child to make sure he didn't sit too close to the woodburner.

'Oh, that's OK, you're doing the cooking, aren't you?'.

The car one, I do know, though. You know how when somebody switches the damned Big Light on when you've been sitting comfortably in the dark or somebody shines a torch in your face and you can't see anything else? That's what the internal light does to the driver in a car - they can't see as much outside the immediate bit the headlights fall directly on (if even that) because their eyes are adjusting to the higher light level in the car.

Heaven forfend I touched photographs anywhere other than the edges.

i can still feel the absolute anxiety pouring out my mother at the thought of me as a grubby fingered child touching her prized pics. I just didn’t bother in the end and looked at them from afar

I've remembered that I didn't like "radioactive" things either, especially alarm clocks with numbers which glowed in the dark.

@sueelleker There's a much quoted line in my family about corned beef tins: there was this film in the mid 90s called Eskimo Day, where a mum thinks of the things she's never told her son, before he goes to university; one of these is how dangerous corned beef tins are. My aunt bought me a tin of corned beef when I started university, a year or two after.

70s public information films definitely left their mark on us kids growing up in that era.
A rug on a polished floor.
You be as well set a mantrap.

I remember those pointy tin openers
Pierce the tin then work it round the tin lid , then once open peel back a very jagged tin lid.

DH has a vice in his garage, I'm terrified of it, was warned again and again growing up how dangerous my dads was

My grandad used to say "if children see a vice, they want to turn the handle; and it drops down, and they get their fingers caught".

An ex's mother did similar, the key bit broke so she used a normal tin opener (butterfly style) on the thin end, cut her hand open. Bandaged it up by herself. Used tin opener on thick side and cut her other hand open pushing the corned beef through. A and e visit. I've not eaten corned beef out of a tin since. The ready sliced stuff is all I want.

My grandad had one of those brute force only angled tin openers and I was too weak and puny to open a tin with it.

Angled tin opener that's it ,I recalled it as pointy.😁

Another fear of fireworks one here. Yet lighting a coal fire and frying chips in an open chip pan on a gas stove: piece of cake.

The microwave fear ones have reminded me of my first microwave experience, I was 12, in 1982. I came home late from school after athletics, parents and sisters had gone out and there was a note:

Cover your plate and put it in the microwave for 3 minutes.

I duly covered it in tinfoil and watched, as sparks flew. "Ooh," I thought, "so that's how it works!" Plasticky smoke came out and I felt uneasy... My dinner was cold, apart from a few hotspots and I thought the device was rubbish.

Parents came home, demanding information regarding the burned plastic smell... Well, the note didn't say cover it with cling film - what sort of idiot would cover a plate of food with cling film and put it in the oven, for God's sake?

My dad got it replaced as faulty.

@SinnerBoy I recently had a microwave explosion, caused by food which had not been cleaned from inside. I too got it replaced as faulty. 😃

The waste disposal, to this day I still would get my mum to use it instead of me 😂 i find it terrifying even when she uses it

Heated blankets. They catch fire the second you stop looking at them.... like some weird version of the weeping angels in Doctor Who.

Power tools. Both of my Design & Tech teachers in school had part of a finger missing. Heck, my own grandad was into woodwork etc, and he had lost a finger too. So, that ruled out band saws etc for me. And your humble home power drill just blasts its way through water pipes hidden in the wall, so no using them too.

The internal light in cars (saw it mentioned on the last page... not read the whole thread). I was told that it was against the law to have it on when driving.

Yes me too! I am convinced it will explode and at the very least maim me!

I had a huge fear of sleeping with jewellery on in that I used to go and lock it all in a jewellery box because someone told me I’d choke if I slept with it on when I was little.

33, have slept with the same necklace on for 2 years, am not yet dead.