To ask what stuff you did as a kid that now seems weird and/or wildly inappropriate

[CheeseyToast]

For whatever reason, today I was reminded of being three years old and lunching with the street cleaner. He drove a little cart/sweeper thing and would take his break sitting on the grass outside our house. I called him The Jigger Man.

When I spotted him, I'd run inside and say, Mim! The jigger man is here! Can I take my lunch outside?

She'd give me little sandwiches wrapped up in paper and I'd rush out to sit beside him on the grass.

Oh I loved my jigger man picnics.

Was I a complete weirdo or did other kids do stuff like this?

I like the sound of most of these things and don't think they are THAT bad!

We used to climb up the fences and onto the flat roof at the back of Woolworths, then drop down into their yard and go diving in the big wheelie bins for the toys they used to throw out (returns I guess looking back). I had a collection of things including some plastic animals with various faults and teddy bear with no stuffing in one ear as the seam had split.

Parents used to send kids to the shop for ciggies or booze and they always got served (1990s). The shop also sold individual (real) cigarettes for 20p even though they knew the kids smoked them themselves.

It wasn't unusual to see mixed age groups hanging around on street corners (also 1990s). Teens up to early 20s, sometimes younger children if they were with older siblings, and girls of 13-14 thought it was cool to have boyfriends ten years older. Casual sex, smoking and drinking was common. The younger kids (perhaps 6-7 years old) sometimes smoked, drank or attempted to copy the sexual acts they saw. Some of the teen girls got pregnant but nobody called social services, not even parents. I spent a lot of time alone because my parents didn't allow me to join those street corner groups.

There was a disabled lady who we used to visit who lived 3 doors down. I'd always assumed that my mum knew we visited but my sister and I were talking with my mum recently (I'm 37) and she had no idea we ever went there.

She used to give us biscuits which is why we went

Whiskyowl I read some report or research or something said that this is in part due to the decline of 'housewives' and partly due to the 'luxury' or retirement and additionally of living away from your parents before marriage. In the sense that when elderly relatives mostly lived with family there were very few household which housed no children and every house in the street had a stay at home mother. This meant that there was generally much more day to day interaction between these women and thus between all the household on the street creating communities rather than just roads and these neighbours would run errands share childcare favours for one another as necessary.

As times have moved on in any street there are some houses occupied by people without children, whether it be young house-sharers, couples without children or elederly retired people. Additionally the households with children are less likely to have a stay at home parent so people don't have cause to meet or get to know most of their neighbours. This, coupled with increasing house prices have combined with the desire to make what is yours, YOURS. and people want to both make their homes private and their personal space as well as not knowing those who live around them much.

Obviously there are exceptions but I think it's one of the saddest losses.

@soupforbrains - I am sure that is part of it: a neighbourhood that is depopulated in the day is never going to be interaction-rich, is it? But I suspect there are also other patterns of movement through space that have changed - more car trips, less walking means less likelihood of bumping into your neighbours. More shopping at huge stores instead of small ones means less likelihood of building relationships with local small busineses. More fortification of properties (not just gatedness but CCTV) and a greater sense of boundaries as in need of shoring up means that private space has become more private. Less media concern about paedophiles, less social concern about accidents, means a more laissez-faire attitude to kinds playing out. I suspect there's also, in some cases, a bit of social snobbery in there about children associating outside of their social group....

I agree with you, I think this is all a loss.

Climbing out of the attic window onto the roof (3 storey house) to smoke!

That one actually makes me sick to think back it was so dangerous!

Endless playing out with no parental contact and no clue where we were.

Walking to and from school from age 7 (late 90's) and walking up to my nans for the key. I was trusted on the commute and in the house alone but not with the actual key

Buying cigarettes from the 'fag house' on the estate near school.. the owner of the house was a dinner lady! She would refuse to serve us if the bell had gone for the end of break. She had her principles

Yes whisky all those things were mentioned in the piece I read.

I didn't grow up that long ago I was born in the mid 80s so my childhood reached through the 90s but we still had far more freedom and a closer knit community. I live in the same village now in a similar cul de sac of a similar number of houses. But my son doesn't play outside with the other street kids and people don't talk to each other. (N.B I let him play out and he does so but the other kids usually aren't allowed unless their parent is out the front too which is rare) I feel sad for him that he's missing out on adventures to the woods and the imaginative, collaborative outdoor play I loved so much only 20 years ago.

I think that key cases and the associated media coverage have moulded attitudes a lot. cases like Sarah Payne, Jessica and Holly and then Maddie McCann stick in the minds of many people and of course with more traffic many of our residential streets aren't as safe to play on.

Another in primary school - doing hand stands against the wall. The first girl would do the handstand and make a V with their legs, the second would do a handstand just behind her and make a V and so on until there were 6 or 7 of you or someone's arms gave way and you all fell on top of each other. Suprised we didn't break our arms or necks.

I remember asking my parents for a packet of ciggies as we were in the back lane acting out scenes from Pretty Woman and wanted to look realistic when we were on the street corners
They gave us some and when we finished our game we thought we would smoke them seeing as my parents didn’t ask for them back

Just been watching 'The Finishing Line' thanks to this thread - what a gem of a retro, terrifying PSI film!

My dad had a three seater van, we took it in turns to sit in a fold up deck chair in the back.
Don't know how we got away with it. Holding on between front seats, going around corners was a real bugger!!!

We changed "kiss cuddle or torture" to "hide and ride" around age 10. Needless to say there was not a lot of riding ( as in shagging) going on but we thought we were cool.

Various parents used to forget to pick us up from the bus stop so we would have to walk home. An elderly couple often stopped and offered us a lift, then once we got in they told us we should not accept lifts from strangers and then drove us home.

Me and my friend used to love playing ‘committing suicide’ by jumping off the haybales.

At the neighbours New Year parties we were often given Bacardi and coke without our parents knowing, from about 13.

At age 6, the street I lived on was a steep hill with 3 or 4 streets going across it.
It was great fun to borrow a tricycle and hurtle straight down the hill, going right across the cross-wise streets without stopping.

Age 3-6 playing out in the street and round the back of the houses with no supervision. From age 7 roaming anywhere within about 3 miles of the house being gone all day. Having sweet cigarettes. Buying 'singles' from the newsagents by the school at lunchtime. Doing cross country in 6 inches of snow wearing a horrible stretch nylon pe skirt.

On leaving primary school the leavers attending "dinner parties" at the headmistress and form teachers houses and being given wine to drink.

From the age of 6 playing out on bikes round the village often biking mile or so to other villages, stopping to play in trees and streams, and playing pooh sticks.

There was athe we'd knock on the door and ask if we could play with thier dogs in there garden, play on the big tree swing, or if we could look at the massive hornby railway they had in the loft of the barn/garage.

Travelling back from a friends Nans (after a stay with her) by train it was a 4 hour journey with a change at major city. Just me age 8 friend age 12

Going on holiday with my brother 10 me 7 to our auntie's via natonal express, stopping for lunch at Nottingham (although DM had arranged for a family friend to meet us take us for lunch and put us back on the bus) when we reached the city my aunt lived in we wondered around the massive bus depot before my aunt found us.

There's probably loads more that I'll remember

Those videos

We used to sing the following in the school playground, when we were about 8

We are the dancing girls
We wear our hair in curls
We wear our dungarees
To show our sexy knees
You know the boy next door
He threw me on the floor
He counted 1,2,3
And stuck it into me
My mother was surprised
To see my stomach rise
My father jumped for joy
It was a baby boy

Sooooo inappropriate. Clearly we didn’t really understand what we were singing

Great thread. I'm loving everyone's childhood stories.

My best friend's parents had a small huckster shop, so she was basically unsupervised after school, and I spent a lot of time in her house. We had the run of the country, and one time ended up soaked to the skin after falling in a pond while catching newts in a jar. We divided our time between a neighbours farm, the beach, and friend's granny's house, where she would make us "honey" sandwiches with golden syrup on them!

From the time we were quite small, dad took us with him when he went shooting rabbits. We were even allowed use his rifle to shoot rats in the back garden.

Our lives were pretty wild and rustic and wouldn't have been out of place in a Roald Dahl story. We were also desperately poor and dad was a volatile alcoholic, so not all good, but I remember my childhood fairly fondly.

My dad and my best friends step dad used to let us watch really random 70s/80s horror films. I saw so many random films at her house. Killer clown films, the fog, a film about Diane downs (lady who tried to kill her three kids by shooting them in the car and blaming a 'strange man'), that one stuck with me and I didn't realise it was a true story until much later!

@Cosmiccowgirl84 we sang a very similar version to that but started 'we are the pompey girls'

Totally forgotten about it until now

Here is a cheerful memory from the 1970's
Protect and Survive
What do it the bomb goes off

Aged 10 or 11 - long summer evenings playing on the half built houses on the new estate near our home. Swinging on the scaffolding and balancing along the roof beams. Not a hard hat (or safety fence) in sight.