See I was raised different.
And I'm sure some of you were.
When I was growing up,
we didn't have playground equipment
at the school made out
of smooth, soft plastic,
(audience laughing)
with chopped foam and wood chips
underneath it, surrounded
by playground supervisors
to encourage you to cooperate
and participate in a positive manner
so we could put gold stickers up
on a calendar to improve
your self-esteem
and enhance your ego.
(audience laughing)
(audience cheering)
What a crock a crap that was, huh?
You know what we had?
Right?
Metal pipes on an asphalt parking
lot--
metal pipes painted
with a lead-based paint.
Remember that?
And there was so much lead in it you
could peel it off
with your fingernail,
and roll it into a ball,
and put it your mouth,
and spit it at other kids
like a bullet.
Until your hair started falling out
and your vision went bad, but other
than that it was a good time!
(audience laughing)
We would climb to the top
of those metal poles, 15,
16 feet in the air,
and we'd hang on rusty rings
and chain.
(audience laughing)
And then we'd see another kid
hanging from a rusty ring,
(audience laughing)
and we'd swing back
and we'd kick him.
(audience laughing)
And we'd start swinging back
and forth, and we'd be kicking
at each other
till we met in the middle,
wrapped our legs around, and started
hitting each other's hands
with that ring.
We looked like a bunch of howler
monkeys on crack fighting up there.
(audience laughing)
Kids would fall.
Kids fell.
I fell, hit the pavement,
broke my leg, bone came ripping
right out of my jeans,
sticking right out like this.
Yeah.
No big deal because my mother ran
to my side like any good mother
would--
ran right up to me.
Came up to me
and said, "Well stupid, now
"next time
"you'll know how stupid should hurt--
"now walk it off!
"Don't scrape the floor
"with that bone-- push it back
"in place!"
(audience laughing)
Because she loved me.
(audience laughing)
Kids nowadays probably had--
I bet you had a playground set
in your own backyard, didn't you?
Aww-- you didn't?
Sue your parents.
(audience laughing)
Kids sue their parents nowadays.
That would have been good.
If I tried that there'd be, "whatever
"happened to Roger?"
Don't know.
(audience laughing)
Roger who?
Never saw him.
(audience laughing)
Plastic guards on the chain
so you don't pinch
your little fingers as you're
swinging back and forth
between the adults who keep you
from going too high because you
might fall, but there's a safety
belt also going around the front,
and you wear a bike helmet
at all times
at all outdoor activities.
(audience laughing)
We didn't have that, did we?
No.
Know what we had?
Old 2x12 of weathered wood,
remember that?
Hooked up to logging chains--
yeah, logging chains that pinched
your finger in between each link.
And we'd get that blood vessel
breaking open there, maybe
get pinched in there, real tight.
You didn't realize it until you went
to jump off the swing set.
(audience laughing)
You went one way, your hand
went the other, peeling skin right
off of it.
Yeah!
Good times!
Am I right?
(audience laughing)
There was always that one kid
in every single recess who thought
he could swing all the way around,
that he could defy
the laws of physics
and get enough speed going so he
would start to get going up
and eventually come all
the way around.
And we'd watch him.
And we'd be out there gathered,
going--
(audience laughing)
here comes the good part!
Because he'll get to that point
where he gets so much momentum,
and he'd be up above the swing set--
remember that?
And he'd freak out as soon as he'd
get slack in the chain.
(audience laughing)
And now it was showtime!
(audience laughing)
Because he'd lose his grip,
and he'd fall, then he'd
hit the pavement like a sack
of potatoes--
just kwhap!
And then he'd stagger to his feet,
dazed and confused,
just in time for the swing to come
back around again.
(audience laughing)
Hey, he didn't have offspring.
We thinned out the herd, didn't we?
(audience laughing)
I think parents now,
they have to have plastic slides
for their kids.
I bet you some of you had it.
Did you have a plastic slide
in your backyard?
Did you?
Of course you did--
(audience laughing)
plastic, with an incline about
like this.
(audience laughing)
Oh don't worry,
there's a protective dome going
over the entire length of it.
And there's a parent waiting
at the bottom as they come down,
like they're coming out of the birth
canal again,
to offer you words of encouragement
and positive reinforcement for using
gravity.
(audience laughing)
We didn't have that when I was
a kid.
Nah, we didn't have that.
We had metal slides, remember those,
with a ladder that went straight up.
Remember that?
A metal ladder!
In fact, it seemed to actually kind of
(audience laughing)
remember that?
And you always wanted to be
the first one up.
So you'd run up those metal steps--
those nice, well-polished, slippery
metal steps--
and your feet would slip out
from underneath you.
But we didn't fall. We didn't fall.
No!
We were slowed down by our shin
catching and getting a nice curlicue
of flesh all the way from ankle
up to knee.
Remember that?
(audience laughing)
Which slowed us down enough
so our chin could ratchet us down
the rest of the way--
(audience laughing)
while another kid behind us
was going, "get your butt up there!"
Shoving you right into the rear end
of a kid ahead of you
who had just gotten done eating egg
salad sandwiches for lunch--
(audience laughing)
Let that one percolate for a while.
(audience laughing)
And when we got up there--
oh-- we all thought we were going
to go-- pfftt--
down like a rocket, didn't we?
Never happened!
Because you could take a metal slide
and set it outdoors on a day
like today, right, or the coldest
day in February, and they would be
the exact same temperature--
hot!
(audience laughing)
Real hot.
Remember?
You'd get up there and you
slap your butt on it--
(scream)
(audience laughing)
Your butt would sear to it
like a burger
on a hot ungreased grill, just
psssst!
And there you stuck.
You couldn't move!
(audience laughing)
And the kids are yelling,
"Get moving!"
(audience laughing)
Eeeek-- eeeek-- eeeek--
finally you'd grab the rails,
went eeeeeeeeeeek--
all the way down with your jeans
riding up your crotch.
(audience laughing)
Because we didn't have jeans
like you have, Sunshine.
We got jeans that are already broken
in for you--
(audience laughing)
jeans with great big holes
and ripped and torn and faded
to make it look like you're working.
(audience laughing)
(audience cheering)
You can't even break
in your own jeans anymore!
You got to have the kid working
in an Asian sweatshop for $0.08
a week rubbing rock
on a piece of denim
going, "lazy American kids!"
(audience laughing)
But it's not your fault,
young people.
It's not.
We let you live.
(audience laughing)
Because things were different
when I was a kid.
I'm not saying better.
They were different.
(audience laughing)
I mean, really, it's true.
Every day we faced possible death
or injury because that's what
our parents wanted to keep us
on our toes.
Everything was designed to hurt
or kill us.
(audience laughing)
I grew up on a farm.
I grew up around heavy equipment,
buzzing and whirring,
huge cattle, angry bulls, mad, mad
boars and sows on our farm.
Every day you would just come home,
and go,
(heavy breathing)
hunks of flesh ripped out of you.
(audience laughing)
We'd have pieces of equipment
running.
They were just roaring away,
and all of a sudden you hear pffft!
And you never saw that brother
again.
(audience laughing)