Memories - - Stupid Fads

Over the years many fads of come and gone. Some of them were enjoyable and resurface from time to time, such as the hoola-hoop. Skate boarding was popular when I was a real young kid and became popular again some years ago and is still going strong.

Some fads are just plain dangerous. When I was in early high school there was a fad that supposedly killed a few kids in other places and schools acted quickly to end it. You would take a deep breath and hold it while a "friend" squeezed you so that you couldn't breath and you went into kind of a fit for a few seconds. Why did we do it? Cuz we were young and stupid.

Some fads were inexplicable but we all did it. Are you old to enough to remember how cool it was to have a banana seat on your bike. (For those who weren't around then a banana seat was a long narrow bicycle seat with a high bar behind it - - a sissy bar - - and very high steering handles. They were usually placed on smaller bikes. The bikes were designed with high "wheelies" in mind.)

As adults we may wonder what we were thinking but . . . hey . . . we were kids right? And we all survived it.

A little more dangerous fad that we participated in was another toy. A toy that may well have been based on a weapon. It was called A Pair of Clackers. They were a pair of hard plastic or acrylic balls attached to two strings that were attached to small handle. Kids would try to get the balls to bounce off each other as fast as possible for as long as possible. Trouble is that kids got hurt and rumors said that some kids even learned to use them as weapons.



They looked harmless but they weren't. Here is a video of a man using them. Imagine what could happen if a string broke or a ball shattered . . . as they did. I was in 8th grade when they appeared.

Some fads were completely harmless yet completely stupid. Imagine paying good money for cardboard box containing a perfectly ordinary rock with doll eyes glued to it! I didn't but people did. And some guy made a fortune off of the Pet Rock. This was one fad where I just shook my head at as people were lining up at Kmart to buy them. If I was determined to have a pet rock I would go out in the field and find the perfect rock and glue some eyes to it.. I think I was in the Navy at the time.



Some fads I took part in, like the banana seat. Some fads I was forbidden to take part in such as Clackers. Others I saw through and wasn't taken in, like the pet rock.