Somehow, my generation survived smoking mothers, access to medicine cabinets, sandlot sports with no equipment or adults, no car seats, rides in the backs of pickup trucks, water from a tap or hose instead of bottles, sandwiches made of Wonder Bread, sugared drinks, burned calories by disappearing all day only to return at dinner because of hunger, no cell phones, and unsupervised trick-or-treating to collect candy we actually got to eat (after Dad stole some of it).
We sold flower seeds or coconuts (which we had climbed up a 15-foot tree to get and smashed open ourselves with Dad’s hammer and chisel) – all so we could buy our first BB gun and occasionally shoot each other with it. We got smacked by Dad, usually because we needed it. We crashed and burned doing pretty much anything imaginable and turned to our friends and their own twisted imaginations for entertainment.
We got hurt, patched up (with Bactine), and sent out for more action. I suspect the death toll from all that was FAR less than from soaring suicide rates stemming from chronic depression in the modern era.
You know what precautions our parents DID take? They vaccinated us.
Howboutdat???