‘Be careful' was the mantra of our parents as we set out to roam the neighbourhood as teens. We never were
An enduring memory of being an early teen in the 1970s is the way that I seemed to take ever greater personal risks the more my parents urged my caution.
I'm tempted to say that being a teenager today is less dangerous. But then I look at the planet, its order and future upended by a trolling, extortionate, narcissistic wannabe king and in moral hock to tech bros who build gold castles on our own vanity and our kids' online peril, and I think, well, maybe not.
I've tried not to helicopter over my kids. To let them make their own mistakes while being there as a safety net when they've fallen. It hasn't always worked. Learning the hard way that you can't always protect your kids from profound pain and danger holds no lesson beyond that you can't always protect your kids from profound pain and danger.
But 'be careful' to me was always such a red rag that I've tried hard not to say it to my own kids. Two of the three haven't needed any more encouragement.
'Go out and play but make sure you're home for dinner. And be careful,' was the mantra to most of us on school holidays as we set out to roam neighbourhoods as full of mischievous possibilities as they were with unchipped, unvaccinated dogs.
Taking a small motorboat out in heavy rain and wind at dusk without life jackets when we were 12 and surfing the storm-swell in it seemed like a very good idea at the time. Until we capsized and nearly drowned.
But we didn't. And, so, this left us alive to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night which was never so much a single night but a week or two of wanton destruction and flirtation with danger involving vast quantities of legal explosives otherwise known as fireworks.
The 'penny-bunger' was a 'cracker' (read finger-sized stick of compressed explosive powder in cardboard with a wick) that really packed a punch. From memory they were about five cents each in 1974. And if you taped four of them together, conjoined the wicks (you'd set the thing fizzing with the cigarette in your mouth; we all smoked from the age of perhaps nine), what you actually had was a small, very dangerous stick of sort-of dynamite.
It seemed like a fine idea to covertly place these explosive devices in neighbourhood letterboxes, light them and run. You had to be quick. One kid in the 'hood, Tuddy, had a sort of 'L' symbol semi-seared between his eyes for a while after the red-hot metal '7' of a house number was blown off a letterbox and struck him on the forehead.
Meanwhile, take a piece of metal piping and seal one end with a hammer blow. Bingo – a perfect musket-style weapon. All you had to do was light the penny-bunger, drop it down the tube, insert a marble on top of it and point it at your foe. Boom. Ouch. Hilarious.
We had teams: Goodies and Baddies. Nobody I know actually lost an eye although I did suffer damage to my sight in one when the cracker prematurely exploded in my tube before I'd inserted the marble. Come the end of those cracker weeks we'd be covered in painful blue-black bruises.
I can't for the life of me think why the killjoys eventually banned cracker night!
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Still, there were many other fun ways of flirting with danger. Like riding your bicycle down the very long, steep, straight path in our neighbourhood park … with a metal bucket over your head (it's amazing how little you see beyond the path underneath without peripheral vision; who knew?) while your friends stood at intervals and lobbed stones at your protected head. 'Buckethead' was a blast. If you got to the bottom of the path without crashing you didn't have to do it again. You got to chuck the stones.
At one point just about everyone in my neighbourhood seemed to have a bb rifle. These we did not shoot at birds or neighbourhood cats or dogs. No – we mostly seemed to shoot them at each other. From memory the only rule was you had to aim from the thighs to the ankles only.
The danger seemed to heighten somewhat from the age of about 13 when skateboards and surfing (and surf-camping trips to the coast without adults; what were our parents thinking?) were added.
Drugs, (legal) alcohol consumption, cars and motorcycles, rock'n'roll for some of my friends, intimate relationships and rivalries, journalism, dodgy foreign back streets and bars and trouble spots further challenged one's fight or flight instincts.
I've always thought my parents, alive until I was well into my 40s, didn't know a tenth of the risks I'd taken as an adult let alone as a child. I think my dad didn't want to. My mother always seemed to have an inkling, though. Perhaps that's why, as she often assured me, she was forever praying for me!
Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist
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The Guardian
27-02-2025
- The Guardian
‘Be careful' was the mantra of our parents as we set out to roam the neighbourhood as teens. We never were
An enduring memory of being an early teen in the 1970s is the way that I seemed to take ever greater personal risks the more my parents urged my caution. I'm tempted to say that being a teenager today is less dangerous. But then I look at the planet, its order and future upended by a trolling, extortionate, narcissistic wannabe king and in moral hock to tech bros who build gold castles on our own vanity and our kids' online peril, and I think, well, maybe not. I've tried not to helicopter over my kids. To let them make their own mistakes while being there as a safety net when they've fallen. It hasn't always worked. Learning the hard way that you can't always protect your kids from profound pain and danger holds no lesson beyond that you can't always protect your kids from profound pain and danger. But 'be careful' to me was always such a red rag that I've tried hard not to say it to my own kids. Two of the three haven't needed any more encouragement. 'Go out and play but make sure you're home for dinner. And be careful,' was the mantra to most of us on school holidays as we set out to roam neighbourhoods as full of mischievous possibilities as they were with unchipped, unvaccinated dogs. Taking a small motorboat out in heavy rain and wind at dusk without life jackets when we were 12 and surfing the storm-swell in it seemed like a very good idea at the time. Until we capsized and nearly drowned. But we didn't. And, so, this left us alive to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night which was never so much a single night but a week or two of wanton destruction and flirtation with danger involving vast quantities of legal explosives otherwise known as fireworks. The 'penny-bunger' was a 'cracker' (read finger-sized stick of compressed explosive powder in cardboard with a wick) that really packed a punch. From memory they were about five cents each in 1974. And if you taped four of them together, conjoined the wicks (you'd set the thing fizzing with the cigarette in your mouth; we all smoked from the age of perhaps nine), what you actually had was a small, very dangerous stick of sort-of dynamite. It seemed like a fine idea to covertly place these explosive devices in neighbourhood letterboxes, light them and run. You had to be quick. One kid in the 'hood, Tuddy, had a sort of 'L' symbol semi-seared between his eyes for a while after the red-hot metal '7' of a house number was blown off a letterbox and struck him on the forehead. Meanwhile, take a piece of metal piping and seal one end with a hammer blow. Bingo – a perfect musket-style weapon. All you had to do was light the penny-bunger, drop it down the tube, insert a marble on top of it and point it at your foe. Boom. Ouch. Hilarious. We had teams: Goodies and Baddies. Nobody I know actually lost an eye although I did suffer damage to my sight in one when the cracker prematurely exploded in my tube before I'd inserted the marble. Come the end of those cracker weeks we'd be covered in painful blue-black bruises. I can't for the life of me think why the killjoys eventually banned cracker night! Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Still, there were many other fun ways of flirting with danger. Like riding your bicycle down the very long, steep, straight path in our neighbourhood park … with a metal bucket over your head (it's amazing how little you see beyond the path underneath without peripheral vision; who knew?) while your friends stood at intervals and lobbed stones at your protected head. 'Buckethead' was a blast. If you got to the bottom of the path without crashing you didn't have to do it again. You got to chuck the stones. At one point just about everyone in my neighbourhood seemed to have a bb rifle. These we did not shoot at birds or neighbourhood cats or dogs. No – we mostly seemed to shoot them at each other. From memory the only rule was you had to aim from the thighs to the ankles only. The danger seemed to heighten somewhat from the age of about 13 when skateboards and surfing (and surf-camping trips to the coast without adults; what were our parents thinking?) were added. Drugs, (legal) alcohol consumption, cars and motorcycles, rock'n'roll for some of my friends, intimate relationships and rivalries, journalism, dodgy foreign back streets and bars and trouble spots further challenged one's fight or flight instincts. I've always thought my parents, alive until I was well into my 40s, didn't know a tenth of the risks I'd taken as an adult let alone as a child. I think my dad didn't want to. My mother always seemed to have an inkling, though. Perhaps that's why, as she often assured me, she was forever praying for me! Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist
The Guardian
27-12-2024
- The Guardian
Experience: A firework exploded my groin
I grew up in Hampshire, in the UK, in the 1980s, and still remember the terrifying fireworks safety videos from my childhood. They made dire warnings of death and disaster if you picked up a dropped sparkler or went back to a lit firework. Every Guy Fawkes Night, Dad made sure we watched the action from inside the house. Here in Texas, things are different. I moved to the US in 2007, and each year, as the Fourth of July approached, containers would appear by the road, selling enormous fireworks to anyone, no questions asked. My American wife, Megan, was always safety-conscious. Our son was allowed a sparkler if he was lucky. But for our friends, you couldn't celebrate Independence Day without huge explosions. We knew that the Fourth of July party we were invited to in 2022, on a friend's two acres of land, would have fireworks. It was casual, so I wore a shirt, shorts and a belt that Megan hated. It had a metal buckle that jangled. She found it incredibly annoying. At the party, we ate and drank as the kids ran around, and as it got dark, we pulled up some chairs outside. There were sparklers and Roman candles were lit. Our son was playing on the edge of the property, so Megan and I moved our chairs to be closer to him. About 60ft in front of us was a wooden pallet, where two big fireworks were being lit. Then something went wrong. Instead of shooting into the sky, the first firework flew towards the house and exploded on the porch. Then, before I could get up from my chair, I saw the second one flying directly at me. It was a split second before impact. I was thrown back on to the ground. The pain at the top of my legs and in my lap was instant and excruciating, I'd never felt agony like it. I was shouting: 'It burns, it burns.' I was totally disoriented by the pain, the smoke and the ringing in my ears. Faces crowded above me as I lay on the grass, insisting I stay still. I heard Megan screaming hysterically, telling the kids to stay away. As someone called 911, a lady grabbed my hand and began praying. That was the moment I thought I might be dying. It was terrifying. Five minutes later, the paramedics arrived. The impact had blown my shorts and underwear off, and they began doing a tourniquet. But they accidentally caught my testicles in it. I shouted: 'My balls are in there!' After I was given three doses of fentanyl, I finally looked down at my lap. I saw a bloody mess from my lower thighs all the way up to my stomach. I couldn't tell which body parts had been damaged. Had I lost my genitals? I felt sick at the thought. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion It was all still an agonising blur as I was put into an air ambulance. It was only when I was examined at the hospital that the extent of my injuries became clear – 8% of my body had third-degree burns, the skin blown off right down to the muscle. But I wasn't going to lose my dick or balls. The relief was incredible. Then I was taken to surgery. The doctors need to remove the gunpowder in my body and repair my injuries as best they could. The next day I learned something incredible. My belt buckle, the one Megan hated, had protected my major organs from the impact of the blast. It had probably saved my life. There were dark moments in the weeks that followed. Lying in hospital, I had frightening flashbacks. I thought about the children who'd been playing just behind me. What had happened to me was awful, but if I hadn't moved my chair, it could have hit them instead. In the next six months, I had skin grafts, and physiotherapy to learn how to walk again. I also had to recover psychologically. It took time to be intimate with Megan again. I didn't care so much about my scars – I knew I'd certainly never be a swimsuit model. But I struggled with the fear of everything working as it should. Thankfully that wasn't a problem. Megan has been amazing. She's worked through her trauma with EMDR therapy. I still have bad dreams and don't think I'll ever enjoy seeing fireworks again. But I try to find the humour. To remember that on a day celebrating their independence from the British, the Americans got me with a firework. And to remind Megan that my fashion sense is so good it probably saved my life. As told to Kate Graham Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@
NBC News
14-11-2024
- NBC News
Animal charity calls for fireworks ban after baby red panda dies from noise stress
LONDON — Animal campaigners are calling for a ban on the public sale of fireworks after a baby red panda was thought to have died from stress related to the noise. The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), a conservation charity that runs Edinburgh Zoo, said Wednesday that it was likely Roxie, a three-month-old red panda kit, "died due to stress caused by fireworks being let off across the city centre." Fireworks are set off across the United Kingdom on and around Nov. 5, known as Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night, in celebration of the failure of a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament by a group of dissident Catholics in 1605. The tradition is centuries old and unique to the U.K., with some towns creating huge elaborate effigies of Guy Fawkes to be burned — sometimes instead building models of contemporary figures, including former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. But animal rights campaigners and pet owners have long complained that the noise causes extreme distress to animals. RZSS says the red panda's mother also died just five days earlier and that death could also be related to fireworks noise. 'Roxie had recently lost her mum Ginger but was responding well to specialist care from our expert team and was feeding independently," Ben Supple, RZSS deputy chief executive said in a statement. "Very sadly, she choked on her vomit on bonfire night and our vets believe this was probably a reaction to fireworks," Supple said. "Roxie had access to her den but the frightening noises seem to have been too much for her. We know that fireworks can cause stress to other animals in the zoo and we cannot rule out that they may have contributed to the untimely death of Roxie's mother Ginger, just five days' earlier," he continued. A petition with more than 1.1 million signatures calling for tighter rules on the sale of fireworks — including limiting the noise levels and allowing sales only on specific dates — was delivered last week to No. 10 Downing Street, the home and private office of Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Edinburgh City Council this year became t he first Scottish local authority to ban fireworks in some areas, with four districts under a ban on privately-bought fireworks between Nov. 1 and Nov. 11. Others have however gone further and called for the total sale of fireworks nationally, except for large-scale licensed public events. "We support calls from animal welfare charities to ban the sale of fireworks to the public, with only light displays being permitted at organized events," Supple said.
