Based on your title I watched the whole 2 minutes expecting a high speed baby/maple tree encounter.  Standards are slipping!

opsec wrote:

Based on your title I watched the whole 2 minutes expecting a high speed baby/maple tree encounter.  Standards are slipping!

I don't know about that.  The child could have snapped his neck or at least gotten a case of whiplash from being swung around like that.  And it's certain the child will have serious emotional problems because of this episode.

In retrospect I don't know what my dad was thinking, but when I was six or seven we needed to get rid of this tree, so someone got the idea to climb to the top and tie a rope around it.  I can't remember if they were going to try to pull the tree over, or what.  Anyway, we had fun that afternoon by letting out the slack, having the kids grab the rope one at a time, and having the rest of the kids pull the rope, so that we got hoisted about 10 feet in the air.  We used to do a lot of that stuff.  I have no idea how I managed to never get seriously injured.

Dirckman wrote:

That's not so bad.  When I was a kid my dad let me play with coyote traps, firearms, full size tractors and would hand me a hot shot and put me in the middle of a pen of cows to move them towards the headcatch.  I never got involved with the rodeo much myself, but most of the kids my age did and most of them had broken multiple bones by the time they were ten.  Yea, some kids get fucked up, but I think in general it's good training psychologically for children.  It helps them become independent and unafraid of the world.  Training children that everything around them is dangerous and that they need someone to watch out for them extends out into adulthood for many people.

Cows can be scary when you're a kid.  The neighbor's cows would occasionally jump the fence and we'd have to chase them out of our property by waving sticks at them.  I tend to agree with you that protecting kids from all danger like some people try to do these days is unhelpful.  A few years back I stopped by Dennis the Menace park and they'd stripped out all of the slides so kids couldn't hurt themselves.  That's a damn shame. 

Another thing I'm surprised we never hurt ourselves seriously with:   We used to build forts out of shipping crates that things like refrigerators and stoves came in.  When your fort was finished, the other kids got to throw rocks and cinder blocks at it to see if it was strong enough with you inside.  Sure, we all had our fair share of skinned knees, smashed fingers, head bumps, et cetera, but that's all just part of growing up.

Dirckman wrote:

That's not so bad.  When I was a kid my dad let me play with coyote traps, firearms, full size tractors and would hand me a hot shot and put me in the middle of a pen of cows to move them towards the headcatch.  I never got involved with the rodeo much myself, but most of the kids my age did and most of them had broken multiple bones by the time they were ten.  Yea, some kids get fucked up, but I think in general it's good training psychologically for children.  It helps them become independent and unafraid of the world.  Training children that everything around them is dangerous and that they need someone to watch out for them extends out into adulthood for many people.

Yeah, I can remember George W. having tee-ball 'games' on the White House lawn, then going inside and spouting about how competition was good for business.....