TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no
surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms..........

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. ... They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

If YOU are one of them . . . CONGRATULATIONS!

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

Oh yes that's great. You hear all these warnings on tv news now, don't do this, don't do that cause it'll kill you! I then think back and wonder how we ever survived...

So... why then did such bold people raise an army of milquetoast kids?

I really wonder about that.

"CONGRATULATIONS! You're now the parents who are so afraid of paedophiles and drug pushers and terrists that you don't let your kids out, drive them everywhere and feed them TV all the time, until they get frustrated and hang out in vacant lots, take cheap acid and have sex with each other!"

HI MOM

Good point! I wonder that as well.

It's all those damn hippies I tell ya.

Yeah! Thank god this never happened when I was a tyke.

No, kids back then were always playing Little League and engaging in other healthy wholesome fun pursuits. None of them would ever have thought about sex or drugs. I blame computer games.

I'm confused, though - are kids today fat lazy pampered couch potatoes, or are they violent gun-toting pregnant drug-taking thugs? I get confused easily.

Great Post, Lecktor --a point of agreement for sure.

yeah that's right, I have bacon for breakfast .

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It's always that way, Desmond. All those 50's to 70's kids were nothing compared to their grandparents. It keeps on that way until something societal happens that causes people to toughen up. We've just all had it too good.

(However, regarding protecting kids from crime, etc. - well, it just isn't the same world it was in our great-grandparents day, so that really isn't coddling.)

coco

Yes, indeed.

I also remember the friendly neighbourhood pedophile; our mothers warned us about him, and told us not to talk to him, but of course we did. We used to play in bomb sites, where tons of masonry tottered. We used to find live ammunition. And if that wasn't enough, when we were a bit older we started making our own bombs.

We were told that the really healthy foods were full cream milk, butter, bread and dripping, and a really healthy treat was sausage, egg and bacon with fried bread.

Our teachers used to beat us around the head.

It didn't seem to do us any harm, for all that.

Well, apart from Jim, who took a bit of a whack one day and was never really right after that. But he's in prison now so he won't be posting.

I survived the 60's and 70's.ut I'm not sure about the 80's, as I have very little recollection of that time...

I'm not exactly sure what you think this means. I was born in 1960. All these things you speak of and more were true when I was growing up. I also hitchhiked to school every day, stayed up late, if there was wine at the table the kids got a glass too and all kinds of other groovy stuffs.

But things are not the same. Children dissapear and are only ever seen on milk cartons. The world is a more crowded place and a more dangerous place. The suns rays -- harmless for the most part when I was a child -- now cause cancer and we smear goop on our bodies to protect it when we leave the house. Yes we drank from the hose -- but that was before the population quintupled and they had to build a wastewater treatement up the street from the house and found lead in the water from rusty old pipes.

And it wasn't all chocolate and roses. When I was in elementary and middle school, girls were not allowed to wear pants to school - and this was in Colorado where the temperature definitely dipped low on the thermometer in the winter. When I was growing up, black people had to give up their seat to a white person, could not go to the same bathroom as a white person and couldn't even sit in the same section of a restaurant as a white person. When I started middle-school, good god-fearing people beat the living shit out of and even killed and gas bombed students going to the south to help black people vote. When I started to work, it was acceptable for men to have the playboy calendar on the wall at work and to make passes at women. When I was growing up, if a woman was raped, it was her fault for wearing provocative clothing. When I was growing up, if a child was beaten, s/he must have done something to deserve it. When I was growing up, smoking was acceptable everywhere -- in the workplace, in the home, everywhere -- you didn't even have to ask before lighting up.

Things change. The world changes. Some of the changes are good and some are bad. I'm not sure what your point was in taking a small list of things you think are good out of context and compare it to today and using that to belittle children growing up today or the parents that raise them. That was then and this is now and things are very very different.

It was supposed to be lighthearted and fun. FFS Why do so many people take shit so damned personal.

Because it is personal, and it does mean something, even if it was meant to be light-hearted. It all comes from somewhere - it's all a part of expressing a particular worldview.

Yeah I guess so. teh intarweb is serious bizness.

and don't you forget it

Ah the glorious 80's. When almost every female would spend hours in the bathroom trying to get their bangs to stand straight up by using a whole can of hairspray. I am having flashbacks to trying to wash the built up hairspray off my poor bangs, lol.

Because the people who read that who are now raising children and protecting against all those things we didn't have to protect against way back in the dark ages are being mocked. Being mocked is neither lighthearted or fun if you are the one being mocked. Sorry Charlie -- we want tunas with good taste.

Yeah including me. Ironic huh?

You too!! I can't even stand to look at a can of aqua-net on the store shelf, it makes me want to run the other way screaming. Although I do miss my LA Gear

MJ

Ah yes, me and my big ass can of Rave hairspray were inseperable, mainly because it ended up sticking to my hand...