Sir this is the 1970s you mean to tell me a child on a bicycle is supposed to wear one of those same things I wore to deflect Nazi bullets?
Last time I was in my hometown, I showed my wife the highway we used to cross in the middle of the night when I was 10 to hit up the gas station to buy candy. The old days were fucking wild.
You just had to accept your childhood mortality when you got your first bike. Put a baseball card over the rear tire to make badass dirtbike sounds and go tempt fate. Remember when I got my first ten speed with hand brakes. Parents told me to try it out but take it easy. So of course I fucking gunned it, and squeezed the brakes hard cuz for some reason I thought you had to do that, and went forward somehow absolutely wrecking my gooch bone on the handlebars as I flew over them. Somehow didn't hurt anything else but I've never felt more pain than I experienced in my taint that fateful day. I was pissing blood but was more afraid of getting in trouble for not taking it easy so I just did that for a day or so without telling anyone and I still don't piss right to this day. Tl;Dr they need to make taint helmets
When I was like 13 my uncle was moving but had to sell his first house while his new place was being built, so he stored a bunch of his stuff at our house... including his ATV. We were instructed to NEVER ride it from our parents, too dangerous. So of course any time that my parents left us alone my brothers and I ran the piss outta that thing on our 90 acres. We had a super long driveway (like 700 yards uphill) and would do time trials where one person would stay at the house with a stopwatch and time the other person, shit got competitive quick. Long story short, I decide to try and power slide while rounding a 90 degree corner...flip the ATV, throws me off and I land in a single patch of grass (surrounded by boulders) unconscious with the ATV still running on top on me. My brother runs down from the house turns off the ATV and wakes me up saying "We cant tell mom and dad". We used my moms makeup to cover my scrapes, burns and bruises and they were none the wiser. Being a kid was so fucking rad.
My buddy similarly wrecked himself on a maiden voyage of a new bike while him and me were home alone, maybe 10 years old. No helmet, landed on his head. Then he went inside and took a shit on the rug and passed out on the couch. My training kicked in and I woke his ass up and made him deliriously watch MTV with me until his mom got home later. Maybe shoulda called 9-1-1 when I look back at the tape on that one. Went on to become a doctor.
One time we built a thing with skateboard wheels bolted to a piece of plywood, steered by string or a rope on the wheels. Its maiden voyage was down the biggest hill in the neighborhood...an absolute beaut. Was headed straight for a parked car at the bottom when I correction steered too hard into the curb and went flying. Survived with just some deep road rash. Think I earned some street cred for not crying
Big brother I take it? Because I heard that line almost daily growing up. Both brothers were quite a bit older so I got used as a crash test dummy, punching bag, tackling dummy, etc all the damn time, just constantly getting the piss and shit knocked out of me with the caveat of “don’t tell mom and dad or YOU’LL get in huge trouble.”
I will tell you. You know that thing dudes in middle age start to get where they gotta do all these yoga poses just to get all the piss out at the end or they'll get a huge dump of endpiss in their pants? I've had to do that since I was 9.
Stupid shit we did as kids could be a great thread I was once on a 4 wheeler in the dark riding as fast as it could go with no helmet of course when I hit a bump the headlight bounced just enough I could see my buddies standing where I was headed and they were WAY closer than I had thought. Hit the brakes, went into a slide and flipped. I flew off and somehow the 4wheeler flipped over me and almost hit them. They had to run out of the way. Still can't believe how little I was hurt. Friends were laughing there asses off.
God I remember everytime someone would get hurt while we were doing the dumbest stuff we'd convene this emergency shitcommittee like we had to cover up the crime of the century or our lives were over. Poor Jeff's over there screaming and bleeding again and we're busy trying to tighten up the cover story
I never did too much stupid shit on my bike as a kid. However, my unsupervised use of a go-cart at age 7, and 4-wheeler at age 11 were completely different stories.
I recall getting angry at kids/friends that got hurt bc we knew we were going to get in trouble. Kid broke his hand playing tackle football at night and instead of asking if he was ok it was “god damn it Chris you ruined our weekend”
All of these stories are simultaneously funny and terrifying as I think about keeping my feet on the bottom of my kids' chairs at the dinner table so they don't push off too fast and fall backwards
Why did the bikes have the metal spiked pedals in the 80’s? At 46 yrs old I think I’ve still got scars on my shins and Achilles from my feet slipping off the pedals.
That’s why they were nicknamed bear traps. And yeah, I have no idea why they decided those spikes were needed to grip the bottom of shoes.
Got tattooed near my knee on Tuesday. After the artist (who is a child of the late 70s) shaved the area he was like, you do a bunch of BMXing as a kid? I was like I guess, why? He noticed a bunch of scars from those damn bear traps.
There used to be a place by my house that did hibachi burritos. I can only imagine the enjoyment those would have brought me high as a bat in college.