Being a kid has always been tough.

All anyone ever does is tell you to grow up and yet they treat you like a baby. Adults never take you seriously and it seems like you’re always getting yelled at.

But while kids today have a different set of privileges and challenges, 70s (and 80s) kids were soaking up that radiating sun with great abandon while we were kicked out of the house from sunrise to sunset (which was fine by us!). How’d we spend our time? Doing death-defying stunts and surviving the rusty, metallic death traps we called playgrounds (also fine by us!).

Take a look back at some of the things that made childhood “back in the day” so great – and yet, sometimes, so dangerous.

1. Jarts!

Call them what you want – lawn darts, lawn javelins, javelin darts, etc. – these things had to eventually be banned because they were such a safety hazard.

But look how much fun that family is having! Dad’s even got a belt on for the occasion. This is what counted as 70s family fun – throwing sharp objects.

It’s too bad most of us used to try to hit our siblings with jarts and plenty of kids actually ended up in the ER with some gruesome injuries.

2. Hopscotch

If you couldn’t find chalk, trying to scratch a driveway or road with a rock would do.

Other than where we played it, there wasn’t anything too dangerous about hopscotch though. Most of us played with bare feet too.

3. Self-propelled merry-go-round

Like so many dangerous things, this one was pretty fun. At least until you decided one of two things:

1) That it would be good idea to stand in the middle, thereby making yourself so dizzy that falling down was the best-case scenario (barfing all over your friends was the worst)

OR

2) Losing your grip and flying off of it – or worse, losing your footing and keeping your grip.

We dealt with a lot of blood and bruises as kids.

4. Double-dutch

Only your pride got hurt (most of the time) when displaying your double-dutch skills.

There was always some kid better than everyone else while the rest of us occasionally got the humiliation of slinking away after a 3-second try.

Falling was fairly rare and only required a band-aid, if that.

5. Metal slides

Was it even summer if you didn’t burn or otherwise maim yourself going down a fiery-hot metal slide that had been sitting in the sun all day?

The worst part was when you were just sweaty enough to stick a little – or was it landing in that pile of rocks at the bottom?

6. Duck Duck Goose

We mostly played this in school and it certainly wasn’t confined to the 70s, but it was very popular at that point.

The beauty of the game lay in the ability to tell who might like you or who was most popular when assessing who was chosen as the goose.

7. Climbing domes

Oddly enough, some companies still make these, although now they’re colorful and plastic and come without the added challenge of burning your hand on metal.

They also tend to be much smaller and closer to the ground. That’s probably because they caused one too many ER visits for a broken arm in the 70s.

But at the time, we were only concerned about training for the circus.

8. Heads Up, Seven Up

It dates back to the 50s, but kids up until the 90s will remember the official game of rained-out recess.

Playing this meant the weather was too sketchy to go outside during the school day.

Of course, this was back in the days when recess was still a thing and kids were encouraged to move around during the day.

9. Maypole swing

If you think about it, we probably all had great flexibility in our upper bodies from playing on things like the maypole swing.

And, sure, it made you dizzy sometimes, but the real thrill was in trying to get off the apparatus while it was in motion.

Most of the time you could make a slick dismount, but the problems came in when your hands were sweaty. Then you just had to hope you could clear the concrete underneath.

10. Musical chairs

Yet another seemingly innocent game, there were sometimes injuries but more often hurt feelings after a game of musical chairs.

And there were always lots of accusations of “I got here first!”

11. Wheeling around without helmets

Helmets weren’t really an option for most kids until the 90s.

Before that, you just got a concussion and hoped for the best.

Now maybe we know what’s wrong with so many of us today.

12. Group swings

Leave it to kids to take a fairly safe toy and make it dangerous.

Swing not deadly enough? Just add more kids until someone falls off!

13. Bike stunts

Were you even riding a bike if you didn’t try to do something stupid with it?

We could make a ramp out of just about anything – though it didn’t always hold.

For whatever reason, the goal when you were a kid “back in the day” was to spend as much time as possible being airborne.

But as we all know, what goes up must come down.

14. Animal rockers

These weren’t too bad, safety-wise (at least compared to some of this other stuff).

And since they were for little kids, they often made a great place to leave your younger sibling while you played with your friends on the big kid toys.

15. Monkey bars

Some parents are now calling for monkey bars to be banned. And, honestly, it’s probably not such a bad idea.

Just because we survived them doesn’t mean they’re safe – and we all knew at least one kid who had to spent the summer in a cast after breaking an arm after falling off.

But if you enjoyed these in the 70s you’re probably looking at this photo and thinking “wow, there’s grass under there instead of pebbles!”

16. Ice cream truck time

Running down the street chasing a truck was just a part of summer in the 70s.

While we could never manage to hear our parents asking us to do a chore, we could somehow hear the ice cream truck from roughly 3 miles away.

17. Four square

At least it was pretty hard to hurt yourself playing four square.

While the game dates back to the 50s, it was always a good alternative to basketball or HORSE if you had a ball and asphalt but no hoop.

The most drama usually came from someone insisting the ball was “out” when it wasn’t.

18. Clackers

More than one kid ended up with a clacker straight to the face – after all, they were basically nunchucks for kids.

Technically, the goal was to get the two balls to clack against each other (what can we say, we were easily amused).

19. Rope climbing

For some reason, P.E. class morphed into S.E.A.L. training every now and then.

While climbing the rope was fun for some, it was utter humiliation for others.

And it was rope burn for everyone.

20. Tetherball

Many of us were stunned to eventually find out that tetherball had rules.

We had just been hitting that ball as hard as we could in the vague hope that it would hit someone we didn’t like right in the head.

***

There’s nothing wrong with a little nostalgia, but it’s nice to know kids are safer today than they were 40-50 years ago while playing.

Please SHARE this with your friends and family.