Older Adults Are Sharing The Common But Dangerous Practices From “Back In The Day” That They Can’t Believe Their Generation Survived

Recently, I asked the older adults of the BuzzFeed Community to share the common but dangerous practices from “back in the day” that, looking back on it, they can’t believe their generation survived. Here are some of the wildest things that, depending on your age, will have you feeling super nostalgic or really, really confused:

1.“There was a lack of car seats for infants and toddlers. Even after laws were in place, there was a definite lack of car safety.”

—Anonymous

2.“The belief that you would get over anything with the ‘resilience of youth.’ Things that are now recognized as core trauma memories or adverse childhood experiences were just brushed off back then. Divorces, death, and other painful things — people thought kids would just get over it.”

—grouchysword64

3.“Hitchhiking. I did it all the time.”

—shinyknight37

4.“Letting young children babysit each other. When I was 7, I remember my parents letting my 9-year-old brother babysit my younger sister and me. I remember one evening, while he was babysitting us, he let our younger sister make herself some noodles that came in a Styrofoam cup. Well, she stuck it in the microwave with no water, and we almost burned the house down.”

—Anonymous, 31, Oregon

5.“Plenty of dogs would just roam the neighborhood when I was a kid without leashes or anything, and sometimes they’d chase cars.”

—cutevampire344

6.“In the ’70s and ’80s, we’d climb on metal jungle gyms and go on monkey bars that were built on blacktop. So, if you fell down, there was no cushion. And you wouldn’t go to the doctor unless something was broken — no one thought about a potential concussion or anything. Unless there was blood, we didn’t even tell an adult if we hit our heads. I’m certain that Gen X is a treasure trove of untreated childhood head injuries.”

—Anonymous

7.“Everybody’s real name, address, and phone number were listed in the yellow pages, and no one thought it was dangerous. You actually had to pay extra to be unlisted. There was no such thing as doxxing back then.”

—smartglue271

8.“While playing in the street, if enough water was running down the gutter, we would just bend over and have a drink.”

—quizzyoctopus128

9.“Being outside and not coming home or checking in until the streetlights came on. We ate at whoever’s house we were at. This was all considered normal.”

—Anonymous

10.“There were outrageously dangerous toys like lawn darts and creepy crawlers. Also, every trip to the beach (with little or no sunscreen, mind you) involved someone getting their foot cut due to the omnipresent pop tops and broken glass from soda bottles just lying around.”

—Elle, 62

11.“The ubiquitousness of smoking always gets me. It was no big thing for my cigarette-smoking mom to light up while driving my brother and me around, especially since our destination was likely going to be a haze of secondhand smoke anyway. Smoking in restaurants, bars, even AIRPLANES — it was everywhere. It wasn’t until the ’90s that we knew secondhand smoke was bad for you. God, everything reeked back then. It was absolutely wild.”

—Anonymous

12.“Window guards only became really popular after 1976 and were still far from ubiquitous for a long time.”

—idreamtofpierogis

13.“My uncle had a pickup truck. We’d throw a mattress in the back and ride there untethered. We’d even jump when he hit a pothole. Even if we did ride in the cab of his truck, it didn’t have any seatbelts!”

—goldenpear9411

14.“My mom used to give me several drops of turpentine on a spoonful of sugar. I don’t know why.”

—magicalshark991

15.“We rode our bikes behind a truck that sprayed chemicals to kill mosquitoes. We’d let the truck spray us like it was a shower. We’d come home soaking wet and proud of ourselves, then later wondered why so many people in our area had cancer. The exposure to dangerous chemicals in rural communities wasn’t something people worried about. It was considered totally normal back then.”

—Anonymous, North Dakota

16.“In Massachusetts, our driver’s license numbers were our social security numbers for a long time.”

I—cutevampire344

17.“When I was a wee tot, my grandfather let me sit in his lap and steer the truck (with no power steering, by the way) while he smoked cigarettes directly over my head.”

—certified_drapetomaniac

18.“We played in the houses that were under construction in our neighborhood. There were dozens of them. One time, one large framing nail went through the palm of my hand.”

—bougiecookie77

19.“My grandma used to treat our cuts and scrapes with mercurochrome, which was a mercury solution that was painted right onto our open wounds. The FDA declared it unsafe in the ’90s. I mean, it did kill germs, though.”

—Cassandra, 47, Michigan

20.“In the 1980s, I would see drunk drivers weaving around weekly. Penalties were just a slap on the wrist at the time. When they introduced real penalties, a police officer my family knew said that most officers just looked the other way, using the excuse that drunk drivers were just ‘good people’ who made a mistake and didn’t deserve to lose their license.”

—ehcanadian7

21.Lastly: “Block parents. If there was an emergency and we had to go to a stranger’s house, if it were safe, they’d have a ‘block parent’ sign in their living room window. Not sure they even did background checks in the ’80s.”

—Angela, 46, Canada

Did you guys really run through clouds of insecticide for fun?!?! Wild. If you’re an older adult, what were some common practices from the past that were actually super dangerous? Let us know in the comments, or you can anonymously submit your story using the form below!

Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.