I grew up on a military base. . .there are only so many things you can get away with there! We would throw our ball over the fence and go after it, if there was something on the other side we wanted to get to. I'm not sure how we managed to get over 8-foot fences with barbed wire, but we were small. We figured the patrol guys would see we were just kids going after our toys so we wouldn't get in trouble. But we never did get caught. I'm sure they knew we were there, but just didn't bother to get us. Or else it was a terrible failure of military security!
We used to climb the huge camphor tree in the park, like all the way out to the outer limbs. Just thinking about it scares me now! We played absolutely killer guerrilla dodge ball in the school yard, but only after school because the teachers wouldn't allow it at recess (OK, I didn't go to school but most of my friends did). We threw persimmons at each other. There were these sparkly plastic things in the dirt on a hill (soil stabilizers? I have no idea), and we excavated nearly the entire hill digging them out before someone figured it out and put barriers up. There was a wooded area we weren't allowed in, but of course we went in there every chance we got.
We'd go down to the barracks and play with the homesick young Marines (17-19 year old boys) who missed their younger siblings. We'd take my cat for a walk and "accidentally" let her escape into the base Captain's yard (which was set up like a beautiful Japanese garden with pagodas and koi ponds and everything), and then go knock on the door and ask to be allowed in to catch her. They were always so nice to us and always let us in. We'd knock on peoples' doors and ask to walk their dogs.
My brother's friend once put ski wax on his sled and nearly killed himself, LOL. We found a half-pipe at a construction site and tried to use that as a sled, but it went end-first, caught in the snow, and sent us all flying. It must have looked funny to everybody watching, but it was scary!
This^^ was all before I was 12, because that's when we moved (to somewhere decidedly less fun). What strikes me is how little direct adult supervision (although, on a military base, I'm sure someone was always watching out for us) we had, even though my mom was a real Nervous Nelly and supervised a lot more than the other parents did. I see the kids nowadays who are pretty much supervised every second, and I'm not sure if they can grow up properly that way. I guess we'll see how they turn out. . .
