Without military safety briefings, are you surprised you survived childhood?

Ok, SFC Merino, I'll bite. Try chasing newspaper, blowing in the wind, in two feet of snow with no gloves on. When I caught a page, my hand went into the snow and instantly flash froze (it was 10 below zero outside!) I could not feel a thing in my left hand and couldn't move my fingers. I showed my mother (hold on, it gets worse) and she warms my hand, with HOT WATER! Now my fingers are blistered and I couldn't move them. So the next day, I go to the doctor. He gave me some solution (I don't remember what it was called) to soak my hand in for two weeks (which kept me out of school, since I couldn't write with the hand the way it was). Now my fingers got waterlogged and changed color. Hold on, it gets worse still! When my skin started cracking, my OCD kicked in. I went ahead and broke the skin, peeled off both skin and nails until I was satisfied. Now I have fingers that deformed and shorter than my other hand. To this day, I still want to cut off my left pinky because it is bent at the tip, very short and almost useless. The rest are slightly bent and a little short compared to my right hand. The moral of the story, boys and girls, don't run around in below zero temperatures without gloves!

I used to spend countless hours at a time in the woods exploring all by my lonesome, roamed my neighborhood and city bound to happen upon some type of mischief, I trapped a rattlesnake in a mason jar in the georgia mountains when I was a webelo, swam with sharks (they were small) while collecting conch off the coast of fajardo, I never wore insect repellent even with the threat of dengue and I am still alive. Im pretty sure there are moments I am not remembering of things that children these days should be strongly advised against trying.

I don't know so much about childhood, but just about every one that knows me is a bit amazed that I am still alive. In fact I heard it today in casual conversation. Thank god I haven't lost my hair. Bald I'd look like a bowling test hole ball. At about 16 some friends and I had a fire fight in the everglades with some of the very first AR15s while testing them for one of those friends dads gun store Jumping freights, riding hoods towed behind beach buggies, more crazy shit than I can remember. I've thought of writing a book about it, but it's probably not PC enough to get published. Kids don't try this at home!

Actually, no, I am surprised children today survive adulthood....what I mean by that is for the last decade or two, we have been raising the "everyone gets a trophy" generation and have been safeguarding children so they can't learn from failure or mistakes. Now (as I have experienced recently) we are seeing Soldiers who expect to receive something for everything they do, rather than working to earn what the get.

Growing up, we learned to work harder if we didn't win, we learned to work for what we had. I think our generation was better than the generation we are raising now. I am sure our earlier generations are saying the same thing about us too!

I suppose my childhood had a lot to do with choosing to serve in the military. The 11+ years of childhood sexual abuse from a family member had a profound affect on me that I was sure would end my life. It wasn't until 7 years into my marriage that I realized that it was affecting my relationships in ways I could no longer tolerate and sought the help I needed. My biggest take - away from all of that was that there is a HUGE difference between remembering tragedy and reliving it. I first had to acknowledge that it happened and that none of it was my doing. Those memories are hard and I have live with them the rest of my life. But while I will always remember what happened, I can also chose how to respond to the memories rather than keeping it bottled up and allowing them to affect me in negative ways. I suppose coming to that realization is what allowed me to serve for more than 29 years and remain married to the same lady for more than 27 years, now.

Absolutely! Looking back, I'm surprised I survived a lot of my life. And...had I known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself

I am somewhat seeing a trend on here on being accident prone. Hmmmmmmmm!

OMG, yes!!! I made so many stupid decisions and bad choices; I can’t believe I’m still alive today. When I was 2, my mom had a group of ladies over to the house. It was a warm day, and therefore a regular pool party kind of day. My mom went into the house to get something, and when she came back out, asked her friends where I was. No one knew; no one had seen me. As my mom walks out to join her friends, poolside, there I am at the bottom of the pool. It’s 1972, mom has a beehive hairdo, thank God I was in the shallow end, and she could just walk in and reach down with her toes to pick me up so she didn’t have to mess up her hair.
I met my best friend when we were 4. I can’t say one or the other of us was the instigator of all the trouble because we were equally partners in stupidity. We always played outside, in the front yard, in the back yard (her backyard was a creek, ours was the pool). No supervision, no babysitter or anyone but us to determine what we were up to…..lots!
When we got older, we would ride our bikes all over town. Not a small, one stop sign town, a town of about 25,000-30,000, suburb of St. Louis, MO. We rode everywhere, and then we often called for a ride home. We rode downtown, to the park, to the woods, just all over, everywhere we could pedal.
In my neighborhood, after dark, we played a game called Manhunt. We had set boundaries, but it was a gigantic game of hide and seek. We’d hid in the neighbor’s yards, especially if they didn’t know we were there. There was one house known to shoot salt pellets if caught on his property.
We moved to a different house, all of about 3 blocks away when I was 10. Again, we had a pool, and a 6 foot brick privacy fence to jump off of into the pool. Thank God it was ten foot deep and no one was ever paralyzed by doing this.
When myself and my peers finally started driving, we used to play a type of chicken, where we’d slowly, ever so slowly creep over into the oncoming car’s lane until they’d jerk out of the way. In a rural area, not too far away, we’d drive as fast as we could to see who was fastest. We’d held races in reverse gear to see who would win. We raced everywhere, to see who knew the best shortcuts to the destination.
This is just a glimpse, but yes, I’m shocked I’m in one piece. I have never had any major injury or surgery at all in my life. I broke a bone in my pinkie finger playing dodgeball with hard volleyballs in high school. I twisted my ankle, severely, playing softball; a fender bender in my car, but nothing ever serious enough to put me in the hospital. I’m amazed and consider myself very lucky!

Surprised I can still walk and run. I had bed posts at the end of my bed that were about a foot tall and always covered with my bed cover. I never failed to hit it no matter what. My parents couldn't figure out why my shins were black and blue but only in one spot.

OK, so for real...here's my childhood story. My first Military injury came about 10 years before I was old enough to join the Military. Playing war...we all did that, right? Well, we were all fighting house-to-house and I climbed up on a neighbor kid's flat garage roof and sneaked over to an edge, all tactical-like. Sure enough, another little warrior came into view, so I sprung to my feet to make the shot and mattel gunfire erupted behind me "BUHUHUHUHUT", and like a good soldier, I grabbed my chest and fell....right off the garage roof, my un-helmeted head making direct contact with the concrete drive below.

And THAT, kids, is how it's done.