![Kids used to play on playgrounds that were unfathomably dangerous. This is a real playground from the early 1900s located in Dallas. [700x442 - 487KB]](https://pic8.co/sh/5e3fYD.png){kind=link}
We still had stuff like this around up into the 60's. Then, for some reason, everything started to change...
Play of this kind is what makes a child a master of the calculated risk. "Don't worry about it. The ground will stop your fall."
I think that one of the problems we have as a society today is that we have people running things now that never learned how to take risks as a child. Now they just don't know how. "Beware the daring of a cautious man."
When I was a kid in the early 90s we used to just make our own dangerous fun. One particular thing we liked to do was ride cardboard boxes down the exposed-wood exterior stairs at the apartments I lived in. Or if inside, mattresses down the interior stairs.
We also used to ride bikes around the construction zones that had jumbled mounds of dirt. One time the grip on my handlebars slipped off while I was going downhill on one of those and the bike handle gouged the shit out of me. A friend of mine around the same time broke his collar bone and had to wear a sports bra for a few months.
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