genx: no seatbelt, no helmet, no problem.

Get ready for a rope burn!

Next week, we’ll discuss what it took for GenX teenagers to look good: a suntan, some Sun-In, Stridex, and lip smackers. Today, let’s talk about how GenXers lived to adulthood: no helmets, no seatbelts, no problem.

Next week, we’ll discuss what it took for GenX teenagers to look good: a suntan, some Sun-In, Stridex, and lip smackers. Today, let’s talk about how GenXers lived to adulthood: no helmets, no seatbelts, no problem.

I distinctly remember standing on the car’s bench seat between my mom and dad as we drove down the hill from our house. I couldn’t have been older than four. Dad hit the brakes and I hit the dashboard. When I was ten and Jamie was six, we rode from Richmond, Virginia, to Wise County in the back of our pickup truck. That’s about six hours on the interstate with 18-wheelers blasting past us while we hung our arms off the sides of the truck and tried to keep the bugs out of our teeth. My husband has been told that he was put (as an infant) in a basket in the floorboard of the car to go to the drive-in movie. How did we make it to adulthood?

The sad fact is that some of us didn’t.

The law, and sometimes the adults, weren’t always on our side. In Virginia, the law prohibiting kids from sitting in the bed of pickup trucks wasn’t passed until the year 2000. Although car seatbelts had existed since the 1940s, mandatory laws requiring them weren’t introduced until the 1980s. Even then, some drivers challenged the requirement. I remember my dad cutting the seatbelts out of his Volkswagen. Can you imagine?

What about helmets for kids riding bicycles and skateboards? I don’t remember a single kid wearing a helmet for those activities back in the seventies. I certainly didn’t. I found that the bigger danger for me was getting my bell-bottom jeans tangled up in the bicycle. I recall being trapped for several minutes under my bike as I tried to extricate my pants from the chain and spokes. And we rode our bikes in the middle of the road where coal trucks rolled along at top speed.

When we weren’t on two wheels or four wheels, we risked our skin, bones, and lives at the playground or on our own play equipment. Most of these items were metal, sometimes rusty or missing important screws and bolts. How many GenXers burnt the back of their legs going down metal slides that were just two degrees cooler than the center of the sun? And there was no shredded rubber or mulch at the bottom of the slide, just dirt or concrete.

The playground behind our elementary school had seesaws. One morning, four of us climbed onto the two-person seesaw. We bounced up and down, giggling and then screaming, when one of my friends fell backward. The balance shifted, gravity took over, and the side that still held two people slammed down to earth. The side with one remaining person shot up, launching her into the air. She hit the middle of the seesaw. I can still hear the “ding” sound her head made when it connected with metal.

Even my home swing set was dangerous. It had a climbing rope on it. We thought it would be cool to go high up in the air in the swing and try to catch the rope between our legs. That was cool until the swing went back down, and you had a six-inch rope rash on your calves.

We had little adult supervision. It wasn’t that they didn’t care about us; they were just really busy. My parents and grandparents either worked outside the home or grew gardens, raised pigs, canned food, cooked, quilted, cleaned, and took care of other chores. They couldn’t watch us every second of the day, so we entertained ourselves.

We spent hours alone, exploring the woods, rusty abandoned cars, and storage sheds piled high with junk. We walked along railroad tracks, took aim at each other with BB guns, and climbed trees. Once, I slipped from a tree branch in my granddad’s pasture. Instead of falling to the ground, I ended up hanging upside down with my leg caught between the tree trunk and the branch. I stopped screaming after blood rushed to my head, and I got woozy. Another time, I tried to jump from our apple tree to the rocky bank next to my house. I didn’t quite make it and slid down the bank on my stomach. I had to pick gravel out of my belly button.

One of my most vivid memories is playing in the corncrib on my grandad’s farm. If you’re not familiar with corncribs, they are buildings designed to dry and store corn. This one was old, wooden, and high off the ground. I would climb up into it and jump down into the corncobs. I would always come out with scratches on my arms and legs from husks and cobs. It was great fun until I encountered a black snake that was hunting mice in the corn.

Another strong memory is that of walking through a pasture with my cousins and accidentally stepping into a nest of yellow jackets. The angry insects swarmed around us to sting our bare legs and arms and even flew down our shirts and crawled up our shorts to deliver their poison. They chased us all the way across the pasture to my grandfather’s house.

How did GenXers make it to adulthood? Some of us were tough, some were persistent, and others were lucky.

If you enjoyed this article, tell your friends!