Don't talk to me about the 90s if you weren't soaking a tennis ball in lighter fluid and firing the flaming missile out of a "potato gun" made out of beer cans... in the 70s. Also something about all the kids trying to imitate Evil Knievel and jumping their bikes off ramps made out of planks and milk crates... Without protective gear of any kind.

Everyone who got out of that decade alive and with at most minimal brain damage thinks that we're too obsessed with safety today.

;-)

Don't worry we know you were alive in the 70s just from you including a hyphen in that emoticon (and everyone knows I was alive in the 90s because I said emoticon and not emoji) ;)

> Everyone who got out of that decade alive and with at most minimal brain damage thinks that we're too obsessed with safety today.

There must be a word for this, but the issue today is the normalization of zero-risk.

Did some kids likely die because of the shenanigans free range kids were allowed in the 70s - 90s?

Sure!

Were those kids as cohorts on the whole better off because of the freedom they were allowed at formative years?

I'd be hard pressed to argue against that...

Sometimes it takes a few broken eggs (or children) to make an omelette (a responsible and creative adult).

Maximize the good to each individual, but only up until it begins impacting the good of the many.

The most I will say about the bullshit we got up to, as "the last chopper out" before literally everyone had CCTV, is that we made it our personal goal to get everything we did listed in the local newspaper's crime blotter

11 yr old me bought canned hairspray in the drug store, walked straight to the payphone 12 feet outside the drug store, ignited the hairspray and torched the phone until it didn't work anymore.