One of my more vivid memories of childhood was woozily walking around the monkey bars one morning, my head stuck with my nose pointing to the sky, perplexed by my inability to yell, or make any noise at all. Just seconds before I had been happily hanging upside down, tooting on my tin whistle.

I pulled the tin whistle out of my throat, and had enough sense to keep quiet about it. My folks had little tolerance for any consequences from acting stupid. By afternoon I was swinging upside down again, this time without my whistle, my voice now raspy.

At this moment, my left thumb has a small (but gaping) laceration from a saw that slipped from the limb I was cutting a few days ago. I was at the top of a ladder at the time.

I thought I liked heights despite my history--turns out my adventures may have contributed to my relative fearlessness.

"Paradoxically, we [Drs. Sanseter and Kennair] posit that our fear of children being harmed by mostly harmless injuries may result in more fearful children  and increased levels of psychopathology."

NY Times, today, D3

"Girls' playground, Harriet Island," circa 1905

We broke a few bones, collected quite a few stitches, scraped off some skin, nearly drowned a few times, chipped (and lost) a few teeth, burned ourselves regularly, and spent part of an afternoon stone deaf after getting a fuseless M80 to demonstrate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics a foot or two away from our faces.

We got chewed, stung, or nipped by skeeters, crabs, bees and wasps, jellyfish, a bluefish or two. I even got a catfish stuck on my leg for hours, refusing to go for help as the critter shuddered away its last few hours, in a worse state than me.

We knew what tendons looked like from direct experience. ("Look, mom...!")

I'm not advocating that we maim our children, and our gang was a little nutty even by the standards of 4 or 5 decades ago. You could reconstruct a fair-sized toddler from all the cells we lost along the way.

We developed fearlessness, and we learned the difference between risk and recklessness. I even learned a bit about the anatomy of the larynx.

Fear can kill life long before a child's last breath. Fear has tempered some of the flash and bang once a staple in science class. Fear of failing has replaced the kinds of fear that shaped the pursuit of happy and fulfilling lives.

Photo from Shorpy, a treasure trove of photos from years ago.

READ MORE - Better safe than sorry?

I fished in thigh deep water today, surrounded by gazillions of horseshoe crab eggs, most of which will be eaten in the next day or two. A small fish, obviously versed in the Curly and the Oyster Stew episode, kept grabbing my lure just as I was pulling it out of the water, then gleefully letting go just as it broke the water's surface.

A rather exuberant male horseshoe crab got flipped in the waves as he tried to mount the love of his life. A small child, no higher than my waist, approached it, and an older, officious looking child warned him to stop, that the tail would sting.

I can hardly bare officiousness at any age, but it's particularly sad to see in a tween, so I broke away from the playful fish, picked up the horseshoe crab, and showed the child that the tail is perfectly safe. (Well, I guess I wouldn't run with a live horseshoe crab--I could trip and accidentally poke my eye out, I suppose.)

Myths matters. Decades ago I slaughtered dozens of horseshoe crabs on a very hot August afternoon, their blue blood covering us in our frenzy. The life guards had told us, a gang of 9 and 10-year-olds, that they were dangerous, and fearless as we were, we attacked the seemingly loathesome critters.

It does no good for me to tell the officious one that he was wrong. He saw what he saw today, and fear's a funny thing.

The younger child, however, gleefully touched the squirming horseshoe crab. He touched the tail, the shell, the tiny claws, the lucky bones, pretty much everything there is to touch on a horseshoe crab. Before the day is done, I bet he shows a few others his size that the critters are harmless.

The officious one stood off to the side. Not my intention to embarrass him. Maybe he will hold a horseshoe crab before his week here is up, maybe he won't, but he will be a little less certain in his fear next time one tumbles up out of the surf.

How many of my fears remain from my ignorance, even now, old as I am? How many do I unwittingly share with others?

Photo by one of my biology students on our annual Sandy Hook Horseshoe Crab trip.

Pssst...don't hold them by their tails.

READ MORE - Another horseshoe crab story