No kid thinks that hot things can burn until they understand what "burn" means and that means they really have to touch that hot stove *once* before they "get it". I usually get a look like I just slaughtered a kitten when I say this though. :-)
~~
Even Frankenstein's monster had to learn it thata way. If you had said a kid has to slaughter a kitten to learn what "burn" means, then maybe somebody'd be thinkin you've been reading too much into Greenie's posts while getting metaphysical over your God Told Me To (’76) Directors Edition DVD
...
as kids of the 60s-70s, mostly 70s as I was pre kindergarten in the 60s, we boot-hopped
off car bumpers & jumped the b’jesus out of our western flyers in the snow, played lawn darts
while our drunk parents watched, stayed out all day until the streetlights came on, built homemade
tents in the backyard where we spent some summer nights camping-out wit th neighborhood girls our
age, learning lotsa new things like 11 minutes in heaven or how to minimize the use of so many sleeping
bags and the like, rode our bikes lightning fast downhill on brick streets without helmets on, built pop-can canons to fire in tight-nit neighborhoods, climbed the undersides of bridges with pellet guns on the hunt for rats (the four legged kind) hopped railroad trains (twice) beside the junkyard, coke yard and slaughterhouse, avoiding the guys in the caboose and engine where they kept salt-loaded shotguns and a penchant to aim very well, slid down sometimes rusty slides or hot skillets often it seemed, smoked Marlboros in plum trees before th blight killed-off all the plumb trees, & I loved the smell of the Creepy Crawler goop (never actually owned one but played with one a few times), …& still pretty much all my limbs & organs are intact….
Safety has become a bit of a crutch, just like no trophies and no-score baseball, etc.,
but some of it is a sign of enlightenment. It’s just that those who push for these
sorts of things are busybodies with far too much drive than common sense.
But that’s just one take on it. I suppose we could have done without
most everything we ever played with or broke or chanced or tried.
& probably I came up on the other side of the tracks, our moms
and dads weren’t educators as much as tired,
trodden & short-tempered laborers.
