A colleague arrived at the office 20 minutes late the other day because an oversight had forced her to make two trips to her kids school. It turns out there was a field trip that day and the booster seat she provided for her youngster was not up to specs. So she had to return home to get an acceptable piece of moulded plastic.

Excuse me, booster seats for school trips? When I was in elementary school we all just piled on the school bus - which had no seat belts of course - and headed on our way. If the bus ever became involved in an accident, I'm sure we would have been bouncing around inside like BBs in a boxcar, but we never gave it a thought. We were too busy yukking it up and drawing pictures on the steamy windows.

This hyper-sensitive vigilance to all possible negative eventualities in a given situation prompted me to think back to some of the things we did as kids that would cause modern parents to shrink in horror.

We skated helmetless on outdoor rinks in the winter, practised Stampede Wrestling moves on trampolines in the summer, fired roman candles at each other in the fall and waterskied on lakes that were still half frozen in the spring (Quick tip: hypothermia is not fun).

We lived by the unerring truism that it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Then it's hilarious.

A couple of favourite activities that stand out involved fishing and tobogganing. Our fishing adventures involved two dads and three boys and, because we were using an aluminum boat, the obvious choice of transportation was a pick-up truck. Modern parents would cringe at the resulting math but the adults rode in the cab while the boys rode on life jackets under the boat in the back of the truck.

It was unsafe, it was dangerous and it was awesome. With all forms of parental supervision safely out of sight we were free to exchange naughty jokes, make faces at drivers in trailing vehicles and beat out awesome drum solos on the resonant hull of the boat.

Another favourite activity was tubing in the winter. When I was just a little bugger, we would go to the railway tracks and toboggan down the adjacent road grade (Quick tip: sit upright on a candy-cane shaped toboggan. Do not hit the slopes face-first while peeking over the front lip of the sled. Stitches aren't fun).

As I got older, the sledding was still fun, but climbing back up the hill after the ride quickly lost its charm. So we would take inner tubes and coat them liberally with Amor All and then leave them outside overnight to freeze. The next afternoon, when the tubes were put to use, they were slicker than boogers on a banister. (I guess this is another helpful tip given the current weather conditions. You're welcome).

Of course mere hillsides were not enough to sufficiently test the capabilities of our ampedup rubber doughnuts. So we would tie the tubes to the back of a snowmobile and then head out on a frozen lake. When the driver turned sharply, the tube riders generated enough momentum that they would pass the Ski-doo that was pulling them.

None of these activities were considered aberrant behaviour worthy of a reality television show. It was just what we did when we were growing up. You know - real life.

Not anymore. There's numerous laws in place now that make many of these activities illegal and even if they weren't, modern helicopter parents would never let it happen on their watch - which I find doubly amusing because many of today's parents were doing the same stupid things, or worse, when they were kids.

And as bad as the coddled kids have it today, I cringe at the thought of what is to come. My parents' generation was more vigilant than the adults that preceded them, yet they produced the current crop of paranoid minivan-driving safety freaks.

What's next? Projecting an increased level of vigilance onto the next generation of parents will leave us with a future populated by children who walk around in those ultra-padded sumo suits to keep them from getting hurt.

Of course the next logical step is those hyper-sterile bubbles the kids who are allergic to everything currently move around in.

Fortunately, I won't be around to see that after my untimely demise at age 85 while trying to jump my electric scooter over a swimming pool. (Quick tip: unplug the scooter first. Electrocution is not fun).

Michael Booth can be reached at mbooth@ thenownewspaper.com