The fact that a LAW was required to be passed to prevent parents being taken to court for the likes of taking the school bus, or going to a park, christ on a fucking bike shagging mother mary in the ass!
That is mental, just mental, that it ever had to be done in the first place.
Bloody hell only knows, granted I knew what I was doing with it to begin with (and I wouldn't let a kid of my own, if they weren't responsible with such things, but if/once they were, if thats where their interests lay), I'd spend hours and hours outside, doing all manner of 'stuff', just firing off rockets, or playing in abandoned buildings, looting them for things I couldn't get elsewhere (such as thionyl chloride from large battery cells in specialist use in security systems of abandoned buildings for example, that at the time, was literally harder to get hold of than gold bars, through any other way)
Or going shopping with the money I'd made at the scrap merchants after a successful several hours spent stripping an old building site (places to be torn down, I mean not ones being built, I wasn't going out burgling, that would be different, and I'd not be happy about kids of mine going burgling obviously, but would be happy to take them on their first 'free range DIY ' trips, tote a backpack to carry the heavier stuff like lead/acid batteries before the kid drained the acid and we did the distillation together under vacuum if they took after me as a chemist and biologist) then scrapping in the husks after recovery of useful stuff such as electrode materials, semipermeable membranes and the like)
I didn't have anyone to help me, I just went out with the hacksaw and the pipe cutters, a crowbar etc. and did it, all the pulling up of floorboards (heh where I once even found, of all things, a HUGE stash of old floppy disk videogames, including classic cyberpunk game system shock I in full version back in the day)
Must have been 9-11 or so. And go spend the money from the scrapyard on a burger and a milkshake or coke after washing the lead from my hands if I'd been handling any, to rest and refuel (its pretty heavy going carrying a truck battery on each shoulder, whilst wearing a backpack full of lead pipe and copper pipe and wiring etc. for several miles on foot, having to stop every now and then to put the loot down and massage my shoulders against the nearest tree, lamp post, telephone pole or what have you and rub the ache out of my back, when your that age), and then off to the DIY stores for rubber tubing, weedkillers, fertilizers, ammonium salts, caustic soda and 98% sulfuric acid, and the pharmacies for potassium permanganate, garden centers for sulfur, hydrochloric, formic and phosphoric acid, then spend the time boiling them down, distilling things where needs be, grabbing cans of ether/heptane mixtures from auto-parts stores and distilling to separate them.
But, I was responsible (most of the time, probably excluding things that went 'boom' which were a lot of fun at that age, and I daresay I developed a measure of talent at it too, although again, selftaught through applying book-smarts to 'time delay fuse construction, safe distance, no people about to be injured or see me do it and run like hell at first but then stop running once away from line-of-sight so as not to appear suspicious' smarts.)
I'm still here. Never gave myself lead poisoning. I wasn't stupid and the type to think 'mmm lead paint, yum yum' or anything of the sort. And I'd enjoy the rewards of learning more, from what I could DO with those supplies, bought with money I'd earned both from selling metals and selling bunches of flowers door to door, getting around on a kid's bike. Things like not to store my iodine in a petri dish, after the first time I isolated a gram or two of solid elemental iodine, spent all night distilling tincture of iodine after passing chlorine gas through it, made with HCl (muriatic/hydrochloric acid and permanganate, or permanganate and bleach, or HCl and bleach mixed together for the Cl2) only to be waiting all day in my first spesh school to come back to it and start doing experiments with iodine, but to come back and find, to my infernal frustration, that what I'd spent all night up after lights out, at the lab bench (which I had to make do with a bench in my bedroom at the time and being extra careful) distilling meticulously to retain only the purified, resublimed iodine, it'd all evaporated and vanished into thin air. Or at least into brown stains on the wallpaper. Wasn't right happy about that, but at least it taught me about the volatility of non-gaseous halogens so I could be more careful next time.
It just takes the right kid, the right mindset and ideally someone to teach them (I wasn't getting ANY science education otherwise in school, my first spazz school 'just didn't do that sort of thing', so I realized I'd fall far behind otherwise, and had to provide for (and pay for) my own education. And IMO the burden to actually pay for an education shouldn't fall on the heads of the children themselves, not in 1st world countries. That isn't fair on the child.
Not saying that anyone ought to have stepped in and handed me a briefcase full of banknotes and a computer to get on ebay, not that I'd have turned anyone down if they had of course, but rather that the school should have provided me with the science education, not just hand out 'worksheets' to color in and palm that off as learning, which it blatantly isn't, never has been and never will be.
And most kids either couldn't, wouldn't or both, take up the effort off their own back and out of their own pockets (and pocket money, supplementing it with the entrepreneurial extra-curricular activities mentioned above), going to the library and arguing with the library clerks that I should be allowed to keep renewing certain scientific textbooks indefinitely without any cap on the number of sequential times, as long as nobody else put in a request for the books or sought them out, since if nobody else is using them, why shouldn't I? (if anyone was wondering-i got my own way in the end. I think that the library clerks were bright enough to realize that the kid at the desk wasn't going to go away, or stop sucking those books dry of knowledge and that I'd already decided they were 'my' reference books up untill and unless somebody in need of them came and asked for them, although they probably didn't have a clue WHY a 9-11yo or thereabouts would want to take out a book on advanced inorganic chemistry and keep it like a prize possession.
And I'm definitely sure that they had no idea I was using it as a handbook of interesting experiments to design.
I'd have had a canary fit if I'd been the victim of 'helicopter parenting'. Jesus christ.
Its not like I expect all kids to go and build the bloody large hadron collider in their basement, even if that was possible (I wish), but I managed to go outside, and be outside, without getting raped, kidnapped and raped, raped and kidnapped, murdered (someone did TRY to do something once, but they found themselves the recipient of a length of steel rebar rammed into their stomach after being hit with it several times in a number of places that immediately ruled out any continuation of the attempt of what I know now they had in mind. I knew it was no good at the time, hence the length of pointy, rusty iron bar in the guts, probably a good thing I hadn't mentally followed their intent through to their intended conclusion, or I might well have killed them for it, some fucking pervert. (who really should have known better to flash their dick at a fucking kid, and all the more so to advance towards the kid after he pulls out a pointy ended rusty several foot long iron bar when the kid starts coming towards the flashing paedo with not too far from murder in his eyes. :spazz:)
I wish I had done now though, although the cunt didn't get to harm me, bar landing a few punches. Tried to get the drop on me again up the road, and again got punched a few times, knocked to the deck, but had that steel spike up my sleeve still, which was when I actually shoved it (the metal bar) in him. At least if I'd have gutted him, reached inside and pulled his insides to the outside then it would have taken him out of circulation as an attempted child molester for good (if that experience with a victim fighting back a lot harder than he'd bargained for and with a good bit more viciousness than a child often might see to inflicting in such a case. I wanted to make him hurt, because I knew he was a real nasty piece of work [and this individual still is. Although the last time he set eyes on me, he tried to start a fight, as an adult. When I was carrying several bottles of formic and sulfuric acid back home from the store. Didn't end up using them on him, but that combination, aside from corrosive acid, dehydrates formic acid to give off carbon monoxide, and he wasn't SO stupid that he was going to go for a rematch with me as an adult. Fucking psycho little fucking shit he is, with a rather nasty reputation (when your best friend is known as ''brick'ead'' for using the swelling at the top of his shoulders for butting thrown bricks, its a fairly accurate giveaway of the original psycho fuckup's temperament and intellect). But the words '98% concentrated sulfuric acid' and 'carbon monoxide' coupled with 'do you want these in your fucking face', even that vile creature possessed enough nouse to realize that concentrated acid and 'thrown in your face' are things he didn't want. Got home without having to waste any acid on him too thankfully
So there are hazards out there, but kids can be taught to both stick up for themselves (nobody taught me, didn't have anyone to) and there are scum out there, but that doesn't mean a kiddie-fiddler lurks behind the wheel of every white pickup truck with a bag of sweets or a stanley knife to offer little children. [just most white van drivers. Maybe 95% :spazz:]
(its a bit of a sarcastic stereotype, of 'white van man' here) Not sure if its local or not, but definitely the butt of a lot of snarkastic pisstakes and jokes.)
And I never drowned either, even if I did fall into water or get pushed into it. Did manage to have the tip of a finger almost-amputated by a big fucking pike, that had to be sewed back in place in hospital (the finger not the fish. Wasn't feeling like having fish fingers that day
)
Still got the scar from that, where it left a quarter of my finger hanging and having to be held in my other hand after getting home to seek help. But, I'm still here, and don't plan on going anywhere anytime soon. So kids can survive without an overbearing set of parents practically licking the back of their neck.
I think I'd have needed therapy if I'd had helicopter parents. Then again so would they by the time a couple of weeks was out, at most, if they suddenly had changed their parenting style and become surveillance-nazis. There'd have been way too much they wouldn't want to have seen.
I can almost picture it now, them trying to follow me through abandoned houses, old nursing homes, factories and the expression on their faces if they found me, and ended up being told 'well don't just stand there bloody staring, help me rip these copper pipes up if your going to hover over me like a biting gnat waiting to be swatted with a floorboard, and make yourself useful, here, go carry this truck battery, if you insist on following me, its full of acid and lead you know mom/dad and they are *exaggerated dramatic tone* DANGEROUS!!! so you should be the one to carry them then shouldn't you. These big heavy lead-soaked tubs of acid are heavier than they look. And time is money, chop chop, get a move on, I haven't got all day you know. I had to spend most of it in school, and this 'free time' isn't free. Its costing me while your distracting me so pull your buggering weight already and make with the floorboard-ripping)
Or events like the squirting (already dead) rat. Nobody can see something like that and fail to be revolted by the stink, and slick, wet, liquid extended farting noise that comes as a result of the expulsion of a dead sewer rat's intestines out of its arse, like a bloated, pus-filled stream of pallid, blueish veiny white sausages being thrown and landing in a turd-shaped stringy, guts-ey heap. I didn't see it until it was too late, and the first thing I knew was feeling its spike crack and its head burst, then looking down and hearing 'phhhllweergghhhtntschplickschplickschplickshplick' as said rat-contents made their bid for freedom in a slick of pus and necrotized insides-of-rat in smoothie format.
I'm just infinitely grateful that it didn't squeak, first.
I'm definitely of the mind that kids have to be allowed to make SOME of their own mistakes. If they are hovered over and cossetted then they will 'grow up' (or grow bigger at least) to become flabby, mentally and potentially physically wizened little gobbets of flesh. What good is investing the energy into producing a child, if you restrain its development and allow it to become something fit only to be wrapped in cotton wool.
A recipe for an oversized man-child brat and blob of meat that squawks for mommy whenever it needs a fucking band aid. At 40. The cotton wool they are wrapped in ought to be soaked in petrol and used for match-flicking practice.
