Those days, in just about every piece of media, whether it was in film, TV, billboards, magazine ads, not to mention, just on the street, you would see a cigarette in everyone’s lips. Even ads featuring babies would be seen alongside a smoking mother and father at the dinner table
When it came to the older kids, the depiction of teens smoking cigarettes was seen as a sign of growing up. Just ask anyone from that generation. It’s highly likely that they were sent to the corner store to buy smokes for their folks.
Chasing Trucks with Toxic Fumes
Poisonous pesticides were the last thing on anybody's minds back then. To the point that kids in the neighborhood would run after them as if it was a game. Little did they know that these were the very trucks spraying poisons and other chemicals to kill pests and mosquitos.
This seems a little too crazy and we hope that parents caught onto this very quickly.
Kids Using the Oven and Stove
Being alone in the house for long hours while their folks were away at work, these kids had to cook their own dinners. If you didn't stock up on simple microwavable dinners, little children had no choice but to light up those stoves and ovens themselves.
Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn't. We are sure that local fire departments were alert and ready for action.
Swirlies
Another thing that has evolved, is the bullying culture. Not that kids have gotten kinder, we all know that kids can be pretty cruel, but their methods have certainly changed over the years.
It wasn't uncommon for kids to take the school's biggest nerd and dunk him in the toilet. Thankfully, that is safely in the past and in some outdated teen films.
Playing in the Streets
If you lived in an area where there were no parks nearby, or your backyard wasn't big enough for games like hide-and-seek, hockey, stickball, and Marco Polo, then the streets were your only choice.
Kids would also play with marbles, aiming them at small street manhole covers. Many little girls would also make hop-scotch boards on the streets with chalk. Miraculously, all kids were safe from oncoming cars.