Growing Up in the '60s and '70s (or How Am I Still Alive?)

Growing up, we did not have rubberized safety surfaces. We had gravel, more specifically, asphalt.

Because nothing builds character like falling off a jungle gym and being told, “You’re fine,” "rubs some dirt on it," while actively bleeding.

Playground equipment that spins is most commonly called a merry-go-round. That sounds delightful. What we had was a manually operated centrifugal device powered by the strongest kid in grade school who had just discovered torque.

The goal was simple: spin it until someone achieved low orbit. If you flew off and hit the ground, you were not a victim. You were entertainment. Then there were the twelve-foot metal slides. In July, those were less playground equipment and more branding irons. You committed at the top and accepted whatever skin sacrifice was required at the bottom.

And of course, lawn darts. For the uninitiated, these were metal-tipped projectiles marketed as a wholesome family yard game. Somewhere in America, a committee approved that sentence. In Greg Anderson’s backyard, however, lawn darts evolved. We were the cast of the Hunger Games pilot.

We would stand a few paces apart. One would lob the Jart high into the air, attempting to land it as close as possible to the other’s feet without impaling each other. If you jumped out of the way — or even flinched — you were whipped with a pussy willow branch.

I would like to pause here and say this was a bad idea. It was a terrible idea. At the time, it felt like a test of passage conducted with yard equipment. 

I once had a Jart pass through my shoe, between my toes, by what I can only describe as the grace of God and poor aim. It pinned the earth where my foot had been a fraction of a second earlier. I did not flinch. Not because I was brave. Because I had already been on the receiving end of that pussy willow branch more than once… and being impaled did not seem significantly worse.

Context matters.

Also, in those days, we wore our shorts like that cop in the TV comedy Reno 911! — aggressively short and offering very little in the way of protection. There was no tactical fabric. No knee-length modesty buffer. Just thigh, courage, and questionable decision-making.

We drank from the garden hose. We rode in the back of pickup trucks. We built bike ramps out of scrap wood that had no business supporting human ambition. We wanted to be Evil Knievel. 

We left the house at 9 a.m. and returned when the streetlights came on. No helmets. No sunscreen. No hydration strategy. No Lunchables to hold us over. Somehow, we survived.

Now, this is usually where someone says, “Kids today could never.” That’s lazy. Kids today are navigating things we never had to face — digital minefields, social pressures at scale, a world that records every mistake.

But I do wonder if what shaped us wasn’t the danger itself. It was the freedom. We were allowed to test gravity. We were allowed to feel the sting of poor judgment. We negotiated risk without adult arbitration. We learned early that the world does not soften itself for you.

When you flew off the merry-go-round, you got up. When the slide burned, you adjusted your angle next time. When a lawn dart nearly ventilated your foot, you reconsidered your hobbies. Slightly. Risk taught us consequences. Consequence taught us awareness.

Awareness slowly became wisdom, or at least a better aim. I am grateful for safer playgrounds. I am grateful that lawn darts are no longer a standard feature of suburban childhood.

But I am also quietly grateful for gravel. For scraped knees that didn’t require paperwork, every boo-boo is an "Incident Report" today, or backyard stupidity that somehow matured into resilience.

We were raised on metal, momentum, and mild negligence. And somewhere between the spinning discs and the airborne projectiles, we learned something important: Life will not always be padded. You will not always be supervised.

Sometimes courage looks less like fearlessness and more like standing still, and praying a Jart lands just a little to the left. Now pull yourself up by your bootstraps, rub some dirt on it, and get back in the game!