Well shit, 80s kid here and we kinda did this. We had a pile of old mattresses and cushions. The mattresses were the super cheap and crappy kind with no springs so were actually really good for landing on. The ground floor of our house was maybe 6ft higher than the back garden and we had a kinda small raised patio at the back door with steps down into the garden. We piled up the mattresses on the lawn, beyond the flower bed. And threw ourselves off the wall at the edge of the patio down onto the mattresses. Lots of fun.
My siblings and I used those same mattresses to slide down our stairs, crashing into them at the bottom. That was fun too.
I also remember finding these long smooth metal sheets somewhere and using them to make a slide down our garden steps. Then using a sledge sliding down it and crashing into the mattresses.
I miss those days.
Ah yes, back in the good ol’ days when natural selection was still a thing
That would be a hard pass for me.
Thatcher was PM, if you were a kid then you’d be throwing yourself off a building too.
You say that as if it’s got any better.
We used to jump off the roof into a snowbank. Then when the snow got deep enough we would just sled off the roof onto the snowbank.
Bless single payer healthcare.
What’s “single payer healthcare”?
Apparently it allows you jump out of windows onto a pile of mattresses.
Can you elaborate more on what “it” is though?
Single payer is a system where healthcare is paid for a single public authority, not private and not a combination of both.
No parents. No Internet. Very limited home entertainment. Full boredom.
Growing up Gen-X was like a perpetual episode of Jackass starring The Goonies.
libraries, arcades, malls, bowling alleys, pool halls, swimming pools, console game systems, video rental stores, bikes, parks, dungeons and dragons. There was a bit of things to occupy time.
libraries,
arcades, malls,bowling alleys, pool halls,public swimming pools,console game systems, video rental stores,bikes, parks,dungeons and dragons.Not every kid had money growing up and most home entertainment was expensive.
dungeons and dragons manuals were at my library and arcades had 10 tokens for a dollar. I was able to make enough collecting aluminum cans. libraries also had movies but yeah you neede a friend with a console or vcr which I had. bowling and pool were more high school things when I was able to make that sweet sweet minimum wage. Also when out of funds it was still fun to watch people play at arcades and sometimes you might find an errant token on the ground.
I miss being indestructible.
We jumped off buoys and navigation markers as a kid.
Sure it was water below but under the water … the supports and ladders of the buoys, mangled barnacle mess.
And the ospreys.
Goddamn did an angry osprey make jumping off the buoy that much more exciting, a little bit of “and maybe we’ll get attacked by a raptor” excitement….
Comrade here jumping into an ocean full of sharks and is worried about being attacked by birds…
Veeeeery few sharks in the bay I was jumping into.
Osprey on the other hand will actively rip your face off for getting too close to their nest.
Very few sharks implies some sharks which are way too many for this guy.
I don’t fuck with apex predators.
Comrade over here forgetting that birds descended from dinosaurs.
Comrade here forgetting that not only do sharks predate dinosaurs, but - unlike birds - have hardly changed.
Orcas are still kings of the oceans, and it seems they’ve finally decided they’ve had enough of our shenanigans, so maybe we should be more worried about them that either of the others.
I too was a bay child. We’d use the barnacle covered chains holding the buoys in their place to pull ourselves down to the bottom for whatever reason
I have a scar on my left leg from where I slipped on the ladder abd sliced my calf open on barnacles.
It bled till it didn’t. And I survived.
I’m pretty sure I’d die of some terrible infection if it had happened today.
Comment from an old reddit post:
Ashfield Valley estate in Rochdale. It was completed in 1969 and while it was initially popular, like many housing estates at the time, it quickly declined and by the 1980s was a haven for drug users, glue sniffers and squatters as well as being home to a large number of families, OAP’s and single people. In January 1987, frozen water pipes cracked, flooding 15 of the 26 blocks. Many of the tenants were evacuated, with some having to sleep in a local church. 23 blocks were demolished in 1992.
We used to do this off roofs into the snow as a kid.
Maybe it is just the angle, but why are the kids jumping out those windows and not the ones that seem to be directly over the mattresses? I guess this shows my age: my first reaction was to ensure these kiddos were safe! It does look wicked fun!!
They aren’t falling straight down.
Those windows seem easier (even safer) to climb than the others where they would have to support themselves on the frame.
See? You are the one I want to have around when I’m doing these kind of things. You are completely right, those other windows aren’t as easy or safe! I just didn’t notice and would have fallen to my death with the sash most likely. Having smart friends who think more clearly than “yes, let me do something dangerous for fun!” is awesome and the reason I have to still alive.
What about the kid who is actively falling straight down?
You say that based on Doppler effect or you have more frames?
He’s clearly facing a diagonal that will lead to the mattresses. People usually jump on the direction they are facing, but there isn’t enough information on the image to tell if he’s doing the things people do most of the time or if he’s laughing after jumping to his death in a very unusual position.
I don’t know what’s going on haha but it looks to me like the kid is jumping beside the mattresses which is kinda funny.
They might be trying to do a roll on impact, so horizontal momentum might be intended.
Yeah! That’s even more fun!
What’s the spring situation like here? Did mattresses not have them back then? Have they been removed?
My mattresses were just stuffing. The spring board under it had the springs. Do you have springs in your mattress now. I went memory foam and air combo decades ago so im not sure what a typical one has now.
That’s crazy!
But it looks like crazy fun…
1980s England wasn’t the most sheltered place I guess
1980s everywhere
Really? Given your history, West Germany as well?
Everywhere, really.
Well at least the places i went to school. Germany ( It was West Germany back then ), Brazil, USA and Colombia.
I feel like all the sheltering came around in the 90s.
I mean, I’m guessing some of the 90s sheltering was maybe in response to the crazy 80s
