Understandable! To a young set of Parents, kids are like potholes! A minor annoyance when they are small, but when they get big, they will wreck your car!
Similar background as to yours, My Old Man got us kids all sorts of killy weapons for his progeny to play with encouraged and unattended..He seemed intent to base his concepts of 'survival of the fittest' on the study of Darwins Laws... So he got us all sorts of Killy things and turned us lose with them!
Let the chips fall where they may!...Sole Survivor! We had,..Jarts, bows and arrows, Wrist Rockets, explosives, guns, swords, shurikens, axes, Tomahawks,..all sorts of kid killy stuff! Even bicycles that we rode with no helmets if you can believe that!
Bicycle Jousting events right there in the driveway even! One kid down the blocks old man makes him some sort of spear and a shield from a garbage can lid, and enters him into the contest...and you are riding your deceased Sisters girls bike at them full bore with a baseball bat or an axe handle?!
I think back, My old Man simply wanted to knock off some Sat Morning weekend trim, so he came up with wonderful fun kid activities to keep us all occupied and out of doors...Yeah, he surely woulda bought us metal detectors and sent us out into a WW2 minefield with a pickaxe...Huffing pait or Model glue
The damn guy had more kids than to know what to do with!...so yeah...Now that I'm older, looking back, especially with the experience of kids as my own....The trouble and expense! Low payback potential! I can understand My old Mans motivation for trying to kill us all off and get some once per week trim! I supersize!
My Old Man likes me though, as a survivor of his 'Hunger Games'.....He's pretty sure I can at least get something done or am just damn lucky! Thats a good Kid there! Outwit, Outlast!...
Damned Kids have ruined many a good Man! They for sure have wrecked many a good Mans Car! Like a pothole!
Bicycle jousting is pretty cool though!...Me and my Black Schwinn Typhoon my G Paw got for me in 1969? And equipped with that hickory handle off of His daddys mule pulled field plow? Yeah! Fuss you! Bang! Curvity asst piece of wood...but as a 10 yr old boy on a bicycle, it fit me perfect!
Much to my Dads chagrin, I bet I made Gpaw some REAL money! He saw something in me I guess....I'm left handed, super hard frontal boney head, like a prepubescent sperm whale of an ice breaker....so in a bicycle jousting event? against some soft skulled kid from the block over?? Yeah!...fussing BOOM!
Granddaddy gave me a fist full of BF halfs after one glorious East Detroit Bicycle side street Jousting match! Back in 69! ...I will never forget the triumph!...So I am partial to those BF half coins to this day..
In the Guyton street Finals, I got up to speed on my Typhoon.. I ducked under the stab of my opponent, who was riding an AppleKrate, and I then rose up and delivered such a mighty blow...I hit that one kid so hard! Right in the face! ..His Teeth went spraying out like a box of bloody chicklets!
!I doubt he lived..which was the point!...to the cheers of all concerned along the curbstrip, it was one hell of a legendary whallopp!...Like I mentioned, kids were plentiful back then...I dont think Kid jousting goes on now a days though? Unless its on the internet?
Yeah.. gotta be safe nowadays..No 10yr old gonna be slapping the teeth out of some other kid in a bicycle jousting event...not without charges filed...who can afford this?
