Looking back and realizing if I had a go-pro in the 1980's, I could have had today a money-making youtube channel by sheer virtue of being a Gen-X adolescent

Topics on my channel:

• Things I climbed, ages 11-13: Water towers, grain silos, railroad bridges, radio towers, 75' pine trees, old windmills, literally everything tall within miles of my house and usually clandestine

• In general job experience I had before 18: Could drive a tractor at 10, by the time I was 12 I could drive a boat, I could sail a small craft, I could drive any kind of ATV, I had done most jobs on a farm and would make a passable farm hand. I had my own spending money and started my vast music collection and purchased high end stereo equipment at a young age. Groundskeeper, butcher, I could fillet a fish, gut a hog, clean a deer, etc, I'd make a passable mechanic by 16 but would need training re transmissions

• Tricks performed successfully behind the wheel while drunk. Learning to drift, Batmans/Jake brake turns, etc. Tricks performed unsuccessfully behind the wheel while drunk.

• Car culture. Every kid in my class received and digested Dukes of Hazard in their formative years, and we were all surrounded by farm country and steeped in motor oil, old gravel roads and two-lane blacktops to practice on, places that wouldn't see state patrol for months at a time. People in farm country just regard vehicles differently. My class was a miasma of rebuilt mustangs and bored-out 350's in 70's cutlasses and the like, where "71 Cuda" was whispered in hushed tones and we all knew which years the General Lee and KITT were built out of. A farmer back then wasn't a corporatized operation, many had the tools and the workspace on hand to work on motors as a matter of course.

• Things I've built in trees, I had a whole treehouse construction year, also wooden forts and for-the-hell-of-it damming of creeks

• the time we put a pony keg/CO2 tank in a 78 thunderbird and ran the tap to the steering column. In general, the absurd degeneracy of our youth drinking culture. By the time I was sixteen, I had a tolerance to alcohol such that we were drunk 3-4 nights a week, binge drinking every weekend day, we'd take road trips up to Madison (State Street!) or U of Iowa and party with older brothers and so forth whenever we got the chance. I was drunk on school field trips, drunk at school sporting events both home and away, a lot of my formative experiences I was drunk for, that's a regret I have.

• shooting things at the dump, shooting things in the woods, shooting things in my back yard

• Camping and fishing, things we got up to on the Mississippi with boats, ages 15-18.

• many concerts by acts in their pinnacle heyday: Motley Crue (Girls tour and Dr Feelgood), Megadeth (Rust tour), Pearl Jam (Ten tour), Jane's Addiction (Ritual tour), RHCP (BSSM tour), Alice In Chains (touring Facelift), Chicago shows for acts like Fugazi (I do not wear a Fugazi t-shirt)

• my father's ongoing war with ground squirrels and his ill-advised uses of fire and electricity

In general, I think there's something to this veneration of Gen-X for being risk-taking, fearless kids. But it was childish, and a lot of it I sure didn't need growing up. And I like to point out to Gen-Xers all the time, it's your kids who are the problem, apparently we're great at being kids, in fact I think I'm in an elite class so far as childhood experience goes, but my gen can't claim anything special about being parents, even if I personally can.

Tri-State raceway, built across the highway from my house just after I left for the Navy