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?

We used to buy individual cigars that we’re 8p. I also remember picking up discarded chewing gum, washing it in the sink and then chewing it. 🤢

Playing out in the woods for hours unattended, 'looking for dead bodies' (). Buying sweets from a random woman named 'Ann' who just had a sort of tuck shop in her living room.

& in primary school playing 'sun bathing' (even in the rain, in fact usually in the rain) which just involved laying on the playground tarmac during break.

Born in the 80s, childhood spanning into the 90s.

Oh and also playing 'Dirty Dancing' when we were around 8, which involved throwing ourselves at each other and around the room. I had two Dirty Dancing related injuries (both of which I was very proud of). I fell onto a screw on the stairs and punctured my hand. And I knocked the glass heart off my earring (from the ear piercings I had begged for) which left the stud embedded in my ear.

My Mum took me to a dentist (naturally ) who kindly unembedded it and gave me a sticker. Win

We were told by my Mum "get out from under my feet and take that dog with you"
So we did.Out for hours aged 8 and 12, dog in basket on bike,no baboons that day, on the koppies (hills) behind the house,so OK to climb them.After all, we had our first aid kit: toffee tin,painted white with a red cross,equipped with razor blade to cut open site of a possible snake bite to aid effective sucking,then after spitting out of venom, permanganate of potash to sprinkle in wound.Tourniquet to prevent spread of poison(frowned upon as a technique nowadays)Mum had snake bite serum in paraffin operated fridge if we made it home.(no electricity in the bush in those days)Only time we needed the kit was when I stepped on a wasps' nest whilst climbing a forbidden rock face,dog had 3 stings round her nose.We applied Nivea cream from the kit.We each sustained about 50 stings,had hair washed in Scrubbs amonia to neutralise the stings.Days later my sister had horrid nose bleeds, thought to be due to stings affecting clotting of blood.The prescription was chocolate ?! To this day she remembers alternating gulps of blood and chocolate! TMI and too much ignorance back then, but so much fun!
We would sit on the garage roof,made of corrugated asbestos, light a Primus stove (well, at least the roof was inflammable) and cook citrus fruit, in default of anything more appropriate.Target shoot at prickly pears with an air gun when one's mother didn't know where one was,eat syringa berries because one got tired of an elder sibling always telling one what was poisonous, lucky to get away with that one !

@Keeshy omg yes! We did that too. So dangerous but it was what we all did at sleepovers

Don't remember this as I was too young but mum has photos, and loves telling the story. I believed that my shoulder blades were wing buds so mum started applying Nivea cream after bath time to "help them grow." I would then stand on a chair and jump, making little movements with my arms to make my wing buds stick out. Apparently this went on for a while, until I finally realised I wasn't going to fly!

Walking to the stables which was a couple of miles away on my own. Meeting my friends and catching, grooming and tracking up ponies. Going off all day, roaming wherever we wanted. Jumping random fences/logs. All with a hoofpick pand 10p in our jodpur pockets for an ‘emergency call’. We were in the middle of blinking nowhere, so I don’t know how we could have called for help.
I would have been about 10-13 years old and this would have been circa 88/99 something like that.

Mabel your account is at once horrifying and fascinating!

Yes watched those public information films on YouTube not so long ago. Bloody awful, but they did get the message across.
We used to play "shitstick" where one child was on, that child got some dog shit on a stick and then chased the rest til they caught someone, then they were on! Always a better game if we could find white dog shit!!!

Climbing up hay bale stacks (plastic covered ones) to slide down them.

Going off on my bike in the morning and riding around farm tracks - having to cross train lines.

The train safety book illustrates by Quentin Blake - someone gets decapitated by a passing train.

That Robbie film still haunts me now.

Loads of stuff.

In the 70's. Going out on bikes all day with other kids. Being out all day with no parent actually having any idea where any of us were.

In the early 80's. Ringing BT from a call box and asking to speak to Busby. We thought it was hilarious. BT not so much.

School leavers trip to London mid 80's - we were 16 and it was an all girls school. We were taken to Knightsbridge and let loose with the proviso we must not under any circumstances leave that area, get on a bus or tube or behave in a manner which would bring the school into disrepute. So a friend and I promptly jumped on the tube to covent garden, bought two bottles of cinzano and drank them both. We then got our heads shaved and returned back in time to catch the coach back absolutely shit faced. And no one said anything. Not the teachers, not our parents. Imagine that happening now.

Also in the 70's, knocking on random doors and asking to walk a dog. We got handed this huge alsation once and promptly took it out up to the woods. We must have been about 9 or so. This thing was not trained at all and dragged me and another kid through a ditch and a hedge before we eventually lost the hold on the lead. The dog went home and we didn't get paid. :o

"Surfing" in the back of a transit van with my friend while their Dad drove it somewhere. There was an old mattress in the back so we used it to bounce off the side of the van. Hopefully it was being taken to the tip!

I haven't thought about this since it happened but I can't even think it would have been ok then, I guess our Mum's never found out!

We had horses and often used to travel 20 or so miles to shows. I always got made to travel in the back of the horse lorry with mums friends kid who was just a year younger. We were about 14. We used to SMOKE. In the back of a lorry full of straw!! It horrifies me now as if that went up we would not have stood a chance!

The classic knock a door run!! I loved it we used to do it to a little old lady a few doors down from us. She always saw the fun in it 😁 I wouldn't dream of Letting my kids do it now, I'd probably end up with a police office on my door because some stuck up fart didn't see the funny side!

We did also used to play out on the street, all the kids together it was great I loved it however i wouldn't allow my children to do the same, although I live in a different area I couldn't settle with the idea. There is too much happening lately that makes me want to hang on to my kids that little bit longer

So many happy memories on this thread. We did lots of this stuff, especially the roaming around unfettered. We weren’t supposed to walk along the road so all the local kids used to travel through the back gardens, climbing over fences and walls. We all knew the best places to cross each boundary - gaps in hedges, missing fence panels, lowest points along a wall etc.

Everyone had the run of all the gardens, and we knew which old ladies’ houses to visit for biscuits, as pps have described.

I’m currently reading ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’ which describes the summer of 1976 through children’s eyes, and it’s a total nostalgia trip, just like this thread. Lots of old lady visiting

My grandson at Cubs plays something he calls the “German game”, obviously based on great escapes from prisoner of war camps in the Second World War. None of the boys has any idea of the historical connection!

So many memories I’ve loved his thread! We used to sleep out in my cousins shed at the end of a really long garden that backed onto a park. Would wander up to use the outside loo at all hours. Scares the shit out of me now thinking about it! At my other uncles we would be allowed to wander off in the country for hours. Climbing the aqueducts chasing cows and canoeing in the weir. We would camp a hell of a lot quite locally and swim in the Thames 🤢

My bro and I used to crouch on the top or near top stair and launch ourselves frog style to the hallway floor below. We believed we could fly…

When the slummy bits of our town were being knocked down (late 70's) we used to play in the derelict houses. Someone had put a few mattresses in the garden of a three storey Victorian terrace so we took to running up the stairs to the attic room and jumping off the first floor bedroom bay roof. Mental!! And when the university was being built, we would slide down the massive piles of stones. Out on bike from dawn til dusk. I had a paper round from the age of 9! Cups of tea with 'Ada' round the corner.. going to the shop for mum's ciggies...'you can have the change for going'. In the park all summer on the H&S nightmare play equipment. Brilliant childhood.

Remember a 'health check' in the last year of primary where we all had to go along in just our vest and pants - though I was relieved as had previously been told we'd have to go along naked! When I got in the room, a male doctor lifted up my vest and solemnly told me I would start periods soon (I was quite well developed). No idea what the hell was going on there.

At secondary, thinking nothing of girls having much older boyfriends eg the girl from the year above who I'd see snogging her very dodgy-looking late 30s or older boyfriend every day on the way to school. Bus drivers making sexual comments to you as you got on the bus and showed your photocard to prove you were under 16.

Watching TV programmes like It Ain't Half Hot Mum where the Asian characters all had 'humorous foreigner' accents. Or Are You Being Served where Mrs Slocombe could make endless references to her pussy on prime time TV (I never understood those jokes).

Buying cigarettes from the metalwork teacher for 10p.
Watching my brother (9) cut my cousin’s fringe off cus she didn’t like it - she was 2. I still laugh now 30 years later.

At 9/10 I would take the public bus across (a big) the city to school, make my own way to after school activities and often have my own supper until my mother got home. Would this be done now? I guess probably not given the number of threads about not leaving 11 year olds at home when you pop to the shop, but my children aren't old enough yet to know.

We always went to my Grandparents when we were kids for summer holidays.
We would take long trips on bikes, this was a busy road, full of lorries but we just went off and came back much later after a long trip to a nearby town or down to the river.
We would take my Grandads's shotgun to scare the birds away from his grapes and corn and practised our shooting at apples. Must have been 8 or ten.
My Grandma would send us fetch clover for rabbits. Then we watched her kill a rabbit or a chicken swiftly for dinner. We always knew where our yummy fried chicken or rabbit stew came from.
Life was great and so carefree.

Aged 8 to 11 I would play with friends at the local recreation ground which was adjacent to the grounds of an old fashioned mental hospital. One, or might have been more than one, of the residents would regularly ask 'Do you want to see my willy?' and flash at us, didn't really think much of it then was just funny at the time, thankfully there was a big ditch and bushes in between so don't think we saw anything!

Also what about putting a big loop of dressmaking elastic around two kids ankles while a third jumps around crossing the elastic over itself, game called 'Twang', huge craze in our 70s playground. Weird.

As far as playing outside I’m sure things have changed now. Though I grew up in a different area to where my children live. From around age 10 I used to go out to play all day, visiting friends, going to the park or to the local stables. My parents had no idea where I was but I’d go home for my evening meal. I did grow up in a large town.
Now we live in the countryside and have no neighbours with children so I usually take my children places so I know where they are. Occasionally my middle son (14) will head off on his bicycle to meet friends and I worry constantly. I worry about him riding along on country lanes, where he is etc. I’m not sure whether I’m just a mad woman but when I think what I was like at that age there’s a big difference. I wonder whether my mum worried as much as I do or was it a lot more normal back then?
Maybe I am just a mad woman worrying constantly 😂