I love to laugh

I love to laugh and this did it for me, perhaps because it's late and I'm tired.

"When I was a kid, we didn't have padding under our jungle gyms. We had rocks.

We didn't have safety belts on our swing sets. The whole goal was to get as high as you could, then launch yourself into the stratosphere.

We rode our bikes without helmets. Without shoes. Sometimes without clothes.

We played in creeks, ran through abandoned houses, went dam sliding, jumped on trampolines, ran our go-karts straight into oncoming traffic, and played with BB guns, with half the time spent pumping them up 'cause we'd heard you could take out an eye.

We parachuted out of trees with bedsheets, threw lawn darts at each other, and had no sunblock, so we got burned to a crisp. Summer officially started when the first kid turned as red as a thermometer. Then we had peeling parties.

We blew up Barbie dolls with M-80s, we ran with scissors, and our Halloween costumes were made of asbestos.

But for safety, our moms made us wait an hour after we ate before we went swimming."

by Humorist Robert G. Lee. Reader's Digest September 2010