🪶 “Back When Safety Was Just a Suggestion”

By Mark Morgan

There was a time — and some of y’all remember because you’ve still got the scars — when safety wasn’t a rule, it was more of a polite idea your mother mentioned once and then forgot about. Back then, if something didn’t have sharp metal, fire, electricity, or wheels attached, it wasn’t considered a toy — it was called decoration.

We didn’t grow up wearing helmets. The only people wearing helmets were football players and fellas who worked on power lines — and even then it was optional if your boss wasn’t looking.

Seat belts? Son, we didn’t wear seat belts. They were tucked so deep in the back seat cracks they may as well have been fossils. If the car came to a hard stop, you just ping-ponged forward and learned character.

And we rode in station wagons, too — the original minivan for people who smoked inside the car and believed second-hand smoke was just “extra flavor.” Some of them had that secret third-row bench seat that faced backwards. Folks today worry their kids see too much on social media — we grew up making eye contact with strangers doing 45 mph. That’ll build grit. Or trauma. A little of both.

And don’t forget two keys — one for the door and trunk, one for the ignition. If you lost one, you didn’t panic — you just borrowed a coat hanger, whispered a prayer, and hoped the deputy on duty liked your daddy.

🎯 Yard Darts: The Original Hunger Games

Kids today have foam darts. We had yard darts — steel-tipped flying weapons sold in the toy aisle like they were hula hoops.

Nothing says “childhood memories” like a whistling spear landing six inches from your small intestine while your cousin hollers,

“MOVE! NO — OTHER WAY!”

If you never jumped a ditch with a bicycle and then turned around and set up yard darts, I regret to inform you — you did not grow up properly.

🔥 Wood-Burning Kits: For Children… Apparently

Some genius decided children deserved fire-pens that could melt wood, linoleum, and the neighbor kid’s GI Joe if you got bored.

You got one for Christmas, plugged it in next to the artificial tree (no water, plenty of flammable tinsel), and the whole house smelled like scorched pine and hope.

And we loved it. Today kids need adult supervision to use slime. We were out here branding our initials into picnic tables like frontier outlaws.

💥 Playgrounds Were Just Lawsuits With Swings

Our playgrounds? Dirt. Maybe gravel if the school had grant money. Monkey bars so high they needed aircraft clearance. Steel slides heated by July sun until they glowed the color of judgment.

If you fell off the merry-go-round, you weren’t comforted — you were told,

“Walk it off. And don’t bleed on your school clothes.”

By second grade, we all limped like Civil War veterans.

💻 Technology? We Didn’t Need No Stinkin’ Computers

We had three channels and rabbit-ears wrapped in aluminum foil like leftovers. The biggest “search engine” we had was Grandma, and half the time she just made stuff up with confidence.

If you couldn’t fix something, you didn’t “Google it,” you hit it. Hard. Twice if it was important.

And we turned out alright — mostly.

🚲 No Helmets, Just Faith

We rode bikes with no helmets, no pads, no brakes if the handle tore off. The only safety instruction we ever heard was:

“Be home before the streetlights come on.”

If you wiped out, somebody poured peroxide on your knee until you saw Jesus, and then you went right back outside because Nickelodeon didn’t babysit us — boredom did, and it was mean.

🏁 Somehow, We Survived

We didn’t wear sunscreen. We drank from the hose. If you swallowed a bug, that was “protein.” If you complained, somebody’s dad said,

“Builds your immune system.”

And the crazy thing?We made it. Not because life was safer — but because seat belts, helmets, and common sense hadn’t caught up to us yet.

Nowadays we bubble-wrap the corners of coffee tables. Back then, our toys came with tetanus and no warning labels — unless your mom yelling, “DON’T LOSE A FINGER, I JUST BOUGHT THAT!” counts.

🪨 Moral of the Story

We weren’t tougher — just too unsupervised to realize we should’ve been scared.

But hey…we lived, we laughed, and we learned.

Mostly not to throw yard darts near Uncle Roy’s feet again.