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The Slice: Clearly, childhood safety was a different animal

Last Monday The Slice noted that those of us of a certain age sometimes wonder how we survived childhood.

As a follow-up, readers shared stories illustrating the price of a somewhat casual attitude about safety. Here are just a few.

“When I was 11 years old in 1984, I wrecked my bike riding down Altamont hill and had a concussion so bad that I was in the hospital for two weeks, the first week of which is a total black hole in my memory,” wrote Jessica Bowers. “I consider myself darned lucky not to have fractured my skull. When my nieces started riding bikes, I wanted to bolt helmets permanently onto their heads.”

When Jeffrey Neuberger was a kid back in 1964, his family was visiting a ranch family in South Dakota when he wiped out on a bike and was knocked cold. “We had told my parents we were going rabbit hunting. When they saw me they thought I’d been shot.”

Teresa Lowe recalls being bucked off a horse when she was 10. “I hit my bare head on a rock. Luckily, I only blacked out for a couple minutes.”

Others told of grisly sledding accidents, a boy who lost an eye as a result of a dirt-clod fight, a cousin who survived getting shot in the head with an arrow, kids injured while playing at construction sites, et cetera.

Most seemed to approve of 21st century attitudes about safety.

But there was this from Joel Novin. “The law requiring bicycle helmets is a scam foisted on society, backed by dishonest statistics. Remove racing and off-road biking from the equation and my bet is the head injury rate is actually minuscule.”

Slice answers: “I didn’t go over the border in my late teens to marry but to drink,” wrote Janet Culbertson about visting the Gem State to take advantage of its favorable statutory climate back in the day.

In the speculative matter of all the ultra-conservatives in Spokane and Spokane Valley moving to Idaho while all the liberal progressives in the Panhandle relocate to Washington, virtually all respondents guessed it would represent a tremendous population gain for Idaho.

Today’s Slice question: What keeps you from getting enough sleep?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Diana Witherspoon said that Spokane’s HAL 9000 would have refused to open the Parkade doors.

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