LOOKING BACK on my childhood - something I need the Hubble space telescope for these days - I'm surprised only that somehow I survived. I didn't know it at the time, but I was living in a veritable war zone.

Christenberry Junior High School, the sidewalk outside the Arlington Drug Store, the woodlands up Sharp's Ridge - all these and other mundane venues in 1950s Knoxville, Tennessee, apparently held dangers that would have had Indiana Jones quaking in his size-12s.

Or so it would seem, viewing backward in time from the admittedly questionable vantage point of the litigious years of the early 21st century.

I thought I was having a lot of fun at games of tag and hide-and-go-seek, at pick-me-up baseball games in the weed-filled field behind the New Testament Baptist Church, even the time I shoved a ketchup sandwich into Sonny Bost's face (I did apologize after he turned my own face into a contour map of Afghanistan).

Little did I realize it, but what I was actually doing was risking injury, the unwanted attentions of the police and the courts, and possibly driving innocent teachers and institutions to the verge of, and possibly into, bankruptcy.

If, that is, I sought to have the same sort of fun in the no-no naughties of the 21st century.

The fact is, here in Britain they have managed to outlaw marbles, tag, hide-and-go-seek, yo-yos, swinging from trees, even just plain old running. The reason: any of these could lead to lawsuits against schools, teachers and anyone else in sight who can be held responsible if kids are injured.

Hide-and-go-seek, for instance, was banned at one school after one child was found hiding in a boiler room. Brats can get bopped on the nose if they throw their taw at the kid who just beat them at marbles, or if they are less than adept at "rock-the-cradle" with a yo-yo.

(I know about these things you see, at least as far as yo-yos go. I won a competition on the sidewalk outside Arlington Drugs through an astute demonstration of "walking the dog," "round the world," "shoot-the-moon" and the aforementioned "rock-the-cradle," which John Newton failed at and had to settle for second place.)

(My reward was a sweater with a big U.S. shield emblem on the front, emblazoned with "Yo-Yo Champion." There was, admittedly, danger involved. The sweater was pink, and if I had worn the thing to Central High in 1951, the contour map that Sonny Bost made of my face would have been as nothing. I had the sweater died black.)

But I digress. What is happening these days is a major symptom of the Age of Litigation, as clearly indicated by an opinion poll in Britain showing 57 percent of parents would seek compensation if their little heathen suffered an injury at school that they felt could have been prevented. Which, of course, is all of them.

Carol Midwood is a teacher, has been one for 25 years, and she's fed up. "The whole situation is wrong," she says. "We are all overshadowed by the compensation culture, and it has worsened in the last five years."

What Carol has done is to compile a list of the innocent pastimes that one school or another, and occasionally the lot of them, have barred because of the fear of lawsuits. She found one school principal who wanted to ban all play recesses "because they are a nightmare."

What these schools are doing, with the connivance of greedy parents, is robbing kids of their childhood. "In addition," Carol Midwood says, "it is stopping them from developing as normally as they should."

Childhood is a learning experience, and left alone it delivers wonderful lessons of its own, even if there is a bit of pain involved. When Mr. Underwood in seventh-grade shop at Christenberry rapped me across the knuckles for shooting paper wads, I learned not to shoot paper wads. At least not in Mr. Underwood's classroom.

Today, Mr. Underwood would probably find himself hauled before a disciplinary committee and possibly spend a few months in the slammer for child abuse.

(My parents also would have collected a sizable pot in compensation, which in turn might have stopped my father's disastrous do-it-yourself projects and gotten someone in who actually knew what they were doing with a hammer and nails. But that's another story.)

Another lesson learned the hard way came the day I pounded my best pal's cousin, Harold Ailor, into the ground for scratching my bike - and then put the boot in while he was on the ground. Another kid, named Robin, promptly and quite properly pounded me into a pulp.

What I learned is that it's not a good idea to hit someone while they are down. Childhood has a way of teaching you lessons that can pay dividends for the rest of your life. If given the chance.

What Carol Midwood is complaining about is that youth is not getting that chance. What they are learning, instead, is that everything has a price, and that the system can, indeed, be milked.

She learned in her own 1960s youngsterhood that "if I sprained my ankle, it wasn't a problem and my parents weren't trying to get money out of the school."

But today, she says, "if a child rips his trousers on a desk now, the school has to pay." And everyone - not just the school - is the poorer for it.

I grew up before television, before Nike designer sneakers, before computer Nintendo games, before alcopops at kids' parties and pot in the schoolyard. In my deprivation, I had to make do with games of rollie-bat and mastering the yo-yo and playing "burn-out" with a baseball and gloves on a street corner with Bryant Metler.

I'm glad I grew up when I did.

Thought for the Week: Bright red meat is good for you. Fuzzy green meat is not good for you.

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