Some kids jumping out of windows onto mattresses for fun (England, 1980s)

This is why video games are important.

I miss being indestructible.
- I think I just put my back out seeing that jpeg
- I feel like I left it all on the field. I wasn't even a dare devil, but I broke more than a few bones. Ribs, wrist, ankle, several fingers. Tearing ACLs is where I drew the line. Some stuff doesn't heal.
  It's still good to have a sense of what is possible if necessary.

No parents. No Internet. Very limited home entertainment. Full boredom.
Growing up Gen-X was like a perpetual episode of Jackass starring The Goonies.
- libraries, arcades, malls, bowling alleys, pool halls, swimming pools, console game systems, video rental stores, bikes, parks, dungeons and dragons. There was a bit of things to occupy time.
  
  libraries, ~~arcades~~, malls, ~~bowling alleys, pool halls,~~ public swimming pools, ~~console game systems, video rental stores,~~ bikes, parks, ~~dungeons and dragons.~~
  Not every kid had money growing up and most home entertainment was expensive.
  
  The city guy just showed up!
- Elder millennial, youngest sibling here:
  A gen x older brother was a master class in being a crash test dummy

Thatcher was PM, if you were a kid then you’d be throwing yourself off a building too.
- You say that as if it's got any better.
- Now we've got Thatcher wearing a tie and running the labour party...
  
  For a second time…

We jumped off buoys and navigation markers as a kid.
Sure it was water below but under the water … the supports and ladders of the buoys, mangled barnacle mess.
And the ospreys.
Goddamn did an angry osprey make jumping off the buoy that much more exciting, a little bit of “and maybe we’ll get attacked by a raptor” excitement….
- Comrade here jumping into an ocean full of sharks and is worried about being attacked by birds...
  
  Veeeeery few sharks in the bay I was jumping into.
  Osprey on the other hand will actively rip your face off for getting too close to their nest.
  
  Comrade over here forgetting that birds descended from dinosaurs.
- I too was a bay child. We'd use the barnacle covered chains holding the buoys in their place to pull ourselves down to the bottom for whatever reason
  
  I have a scar on my left leg from where I slipped on the ladder abd sliced my calf open on barnacles.
  It bled till it didn’t. And I survived.
  I’m pretty sure I’d die of some terrible infection if it had happened today.
- Completely off-topic, but apparently in UK English they pronounce buoy like "boy", which, like, phonetically is fine but it's definitely wrong. Or feels wrong. "We jumped off boys. " Utter madness
  
  Absolute bastards, idk how the English could ruin English so much….
  
  How the fuck do you say buoy then?

Ah yes, back in the good ol’ days when natural selection was still a thing
- You say that but remarkably few of us died and in retrospect I wonder how.
  
  With the emphasis on ‘few’
- It still is! It's just now those kids also film themselves doing it on YouTube.

This is what happens when you cancel Doctor Who, BBC.

Maybe it is just the angle, but why are the kids jumping out those windows and not the ones that seem to be directly over the mattresses? I guess this shows my age: my first reaction was to ensure these kiddos were safe! It does look wicked fun!!
- They aren't falling straight down.
  Those windows seem easier (even safer) to climb than the others where they would have to support themselves on the frame.
  
  What about the kid who is actively falling straight down?
  
  See? You are the one I want to have around when I'm doing these kind of things. You are completely right, those other windows aren't as easy or safe! I just didn't notice and would have fallen to my death with the sash most likely. Having smart friends who think more clearly than "yes, let me do something dangerous for fun!" is awesome and the reason I have to still alive.
- They might be trying to do a roll on impact, so horizontal momentum might be intended.
  
  Yeah! That's even more fun!
- Maybe it is just the angle,
  I suspect they jumped from one more floor up and pushed off hard toward the landing zone. Ballsy maneuver either way, you slip wrong on that jump probably your last.

Well shit, 80s kid here and we kinda did this. We had a pile of old mattresses and cushions. The mattresses were the super cheap and crappy kind with no springs so were actually really good for landing on. The ground floor of our house was maybe 6ft higher than the back garden and we had a kinda small raised patio at the back door with steps down into the garden. We piled up the mattresses on the lawn, beyond the flower bed. And threw ourselves off the wall at the edge of the patio down onto the mattresses. Lots of fun.
My siblings and I used those same mattresses to slide down our stairs, crashing into them at the bottom. That was fun too.
I also remember finding these long smooth metal sheets somewhere and using them to make a slide down our garden steps. Then using a sledge sliding down it and crashing into the mattresses.
I miss those days.
- Did you ever jump apparently 5+ stories up, trying to hit a 3ft/1m-wide target?
  
  Oh all the time. Sometimes while riding a tiger. It was the style at the time.

slightly (or absolutely) unrelated story, but I remember we built cross tracks in the forest for ourselves and our crappy bikes (I'm talking early-mid 80s on the other side of the Iron Courtain; the best bike I had was a rusty Csepel BMX, then my father's Sputnik race bike). once we decided fuck it why don't we do the same in our own street (a mud/gravel street at that time), and took shovels and stuff and destroyed the street. when the first adult residents got home, they were very pissed for some reason and commandeered us to restore the street. I remember the feeling of betrayal / injustice to this day! :-D

Bless single payer healthcare.
- What’s “single payer healthcare”?
  
  It's a form of socialised healthcare where the government negotiates the prices with medical companies. The government of an entire country negotiating prices carries way more bargaining power than individuals so it means the prices are much lower. Combine that with taxes paying for healthcare and you have a nice healthcare system
  Edit: in some cases it's just one guy paying, in this case it's Alan: https://www.thebeaverton.com/2017/08/poll-canadians-love-single-payer-healthcare-except-alan-single-payer/
  
  Apparently it allows you jump out of windows onto a pile of mattresses.

That would be a hard pass for me.

We used to jump off the roof into a snowbank. Then when the snow got deep enough we would just sled off the roof onto the snowbank.

ah, the British Space Program of the eighties!...
- No wonder they didn't get to the moon, using mattresses instead of trampolines.

Comment from an old reddit post:
Ashfield Valley estate in Rochdale. It was completed in 1969 and while it was initially popular, like many housing estates at the time, it quickly declined and by the 1980s was a haven for drug users, glue sniffers and squatters as well as being home to a large number of families, OAP's and single people. In January 1987, frozen water pipes cracked, flooding 15 of the 26 blocks. Many of the tenants were evacuated, with some having to sleep in a local church. 23 blocks were demolished in 1992.

That's crazy!
But it looks like crazy fun...
1980s England wasn't the most sheltered place I guess
- 1980s everywhere
  
  Really? Given your history, West Germany as well?

And then after playing head inside and watch ma’s Corrie and make her a proper cuppa I remember these days I do

What's the spring situation like here? Did mattresses not have them back then? Have they been removed?
- My mattresses were just stuffing. The spring board under it had the springs. Do you have springs in your mattress now. I went memory foam and air combo decades ago so im not sure what a typical one has now.
  
  Personally mine (which I got from a local mattress manufacturer) has springs in it and sits on a "box spring" which as far as I can tell is just a platform for the mattress to sit upon and contains no actual springs