Miscellaneous Monday - Danger Will Robinson

[Meg Holbrook]

Happy Monday, all!

For better or worse, I bought my nine-year-old a pocket knife this weekend. I'm not sure what possessed me to do it, as anyone who knows a kid this age is aware that nothing but destruction and strife will follow the purchase of any tool that has sharp edges. 

Thinking about it, I probably give my kids a lot of freedom to explore since my mom was quite the hoverparent. That didn't stop me from playing with things I shouldn't though. 

Unironically, even after a long conversation with my son about proper knife usage, three bananas, two cardboard boxes, and a number of plants from my garden have been summarily brought to their death. We also learned that we are out of bandaids. This has been rectified. 

I want to know what 'dangerous' toys you played with when you were a kid. What kind of trouble... erm... fun do your kids get into these days?

[Alana Fernando]

Believe me @Meg Holbrook I've been played with a centipede once (obviously without knowing how dangerous it is)

I have no idea about kids these days. But I found that widget spinner is pretty dangerous. It really hurts when it looses its balance and fall. (I faced few fall off to face injuries)

[Meg Holbrook]

Alana, we're super lucky that you're here with us today is how it sounds to me!

Agreed that those spinners are a mess when an already clumsy kid does even more to take their eyes off where they're walking. We've had more than one go whizzing off and smacking a TV or a sibling. 

[Alana Fernando]

I thought it was a huge caterpillar. And hope it was going to become a big butterfly. 

[Bryan Trummer]

I used to have a BB gun and a crossbow which both proved dangerous. I did not shoot my eye out per a certain movie suggest but I did shoot other random items (non-living) that created danger!

My son is 8 and just recently started taekwondo about a month ago. The higher belts have been using Nunchucks which now he wants. I also had a set of Nunchucks back in the day and were truly a danger to myself and not the people I tried to impress with them. 

[Meg Holbrook]

Oh man, we have these nerf bow and arrows right now... Parental dream, let me tell you. Nothing says 'stop arguing and do your chores' like a nerf arrow to the knee. This is the preferred method of warfare in my home. 

It's amazing the ways we managed to live growing up, right??

I don't know if you have a dollar store handy, but they usually have foam nunchucks that would be right up his alley!

[Bryan Trummer]

We do have a dollar tree around and I thought about hitting that up. Or to go to Toy's R Us and get an epic Nerf gun to handle those arguments as well! Thanks for the two great ideas.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Most of the dangerous toys I had as a kid were dangerous to me rather than others.  Particularly the lead and arsenic found in plastic toys. 

But Jarts were great (i.e. lethal), sweet cigarettes were nice, and click-clacks provided a spectacular shower of shrapnel sometimes!

[Meg Holbrook]

Jarts are possibly one of the most terrifying toys to have been created. You can still find them on ebay for some reason. Eyeballs be damned. 

I recently found candy cigarettes while cruising a vintage candy site. I think I was part of the last generation to actually enjoy these before they brought the banhammer down on companies that glorified smoking. 

These click clacks though, what are they? 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Two heavy plastic balls on a string that you're supposed to hit into each other repeatedly at high speed.  That already sounds like a bad idea as I type it.  The ones I remember shattered and caused a few grazes in a school playground - I guess we were lucky no-one got hit in the eye.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD26mSU7-40 - start at 2:45

[Meg Holbrook]

That poor kid's eyeball! Seemed to be an innocuous enough idea, put some doodads on a string and swing them around.  

I can imagine that if you got them going you would

a. really annoy everyone around you and

b. cause incredible damage to yourself, others, anything in your vicinity. 

[Kat Warner]

I used Google Maps to see how long the walk is that I used to do in primary school alone or with my brother. It's over 20 minutes long with short-cuts and crossing lots of roads, some with blind corners.

I'm not sure many kids would be walking that distance now unsupervised.

[Meg Holbrook]

Kat, we're kindred spirits right now. I lived on the 'wrong' side of the tracks growing up and I remember the crazy people and things I saw (no older sibling though). I seriously wonder sometimes how I didn't end up on a milk carton. 

Now, I walk my kid four blocks every day and freak out when he doesn't wait for all the cars to stop when we cross. 

[Kat Warner]

We used to leave the house to play with the other kids in the neighbourhood. We would climb through trees in public and private spaces. We came home when we were hungry or when it started getting dark (the streetlights came on).

As the youngest, I was left to entertain myself alone a lot more than my parents would have expected. My brother and I knew we should leave home and arrive back together - Mum did not need to know what happened in the middle.

[Meg Holbrook]

That last part made me laugh. Such an eldest sibling frame of mind. 

I'm ten years older than my younger siblings, so I was an only child for long enough to cause lots of trouble. By the time I was a teenager, I spent a lot of my time 'watching' the younger ones, which usually meant the bare minimum of making sure no one died. 

[Emily Errico]

The most dangerous toy I had as a kid was probably freedom, in the form of a bike. It wasn't cool to wear a helmet and riding on the sidewalks was obviously only for toddlers. My parents had me swear up and down to only ride in the neighborhood, but what fun would that be? It's a miracle I didn't end up underneath someone's car.

At least I was always too scared to try and go off a ramp, right?