This is an intriguing question for me. The straightforward answer would be “no,” but that wouldn’t convey the stories behind my multiple knee replacements, foot surgeries, and other issues. In my case, genetics played a role, especially concerning my feet. Additionally, getting tackled while playing football and participating in various sports throughout my youth and teenage years didn’t help either.
Unlike most people from my generation, who surely experienced their fair share of injuries from sports, crashes, trips, or falls, we had a different kind of playground. The asphalt playgrounds of our day were quite the jungle, where accidents could easily happen. However, I can’t help but notice that not just one, but two of our grandsons broke their wrist after falling from the top of the monkey bars, and they did so a month apart in the same schoolyard. They wonder why we have gray hair. Go figure!
It seems like kids these days are more fragile. Back in our day, the monkey bars, swings, and slides—which were made of metal—had asphalt underneath to break our falls. Ouch! We didn’t wear bike helmets, and we often invented games, often led by the sadistic ones in the group, that could easily lead to broken bones or at least a serious eye injury! Who remembers games like hide-the-belt, knuckles, or buck-buck? And then there was “death hill,” which was aptly named and located right between the mausoleums at Mt. Moriah Cemetery. That hill was so steep that you couldn’t even touch the pedals on your bike.
When it snowed, we enjoyed “The Nutcracker Hill” at Cobbs Creek Parkway, which offered a thrilling ride and was much more exciting than its name suggested!
In the words of my brother-in-law, a phrase likely coined long before us by someone who must have had friends like ours: “That’s just nature’s way of thinning out the herd.” However, the simple answer to that statement would be, “No.”
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