Would selling this trailer be irresponsible?

2lazy4U wrote:
There was an old wagon in a field on the edge of town, so we all got together and "restored" it enough it could be moved. We pushed it up the hill behind our house and all got into it and took off down the road down the hill. Our restoration hadn't included fixing the tongue enough so we could turn the darn thing, which we needed to do when the road curved by a telephone pole. You can guess the ending of the story.

We all managed to jump ship, but the wagon was totaled. No insurance, so we just left the pieces where they landed. It's probably still there, unless other kids tried to restore it again.

I recall another time when a bunch of neighbor kids got into a rock fight. They might've been all of 6 years old. My mom put an end to that one, and I was smart enough to not be involved.

That's how we learned back then. Now days, it's all virtual, so when kids do something stupid, they're usually way beyond the age that most of us all knew better and the damage is worse. We learned from incidents like the wagon that speed can kill you, that rocks can do great damage, and that pain is something to be avoided, as well as the wrath of adults. We learned all this first-hand, not from someone telling us. It's harder to ignore things you learned the hard way.

Our parents didn't coddle us and try to protect us from life. We also learned empathy for others. When your buddy has a broken arm from falling out of a tree, you try to help him out, especially since it was your idea in the first place to climb the darn thing.

I think that by coddling kids today, we make the problem addressed in this thread worse. If people had been allowed to learn the hard way as kids (within limits, of course), they wouldn't be as likely to do stupid things as adults.

Thank you. This is probably one of the best written opinions I've read on here.

I see this every day but not with moral/social evolvement. It is more about the lack of knowledge about how things work. IMO, the disconnect between practical learning and a passing reference that may or may not be retained or is valid, that all started right before the Internet revolution (two generations ago).