I Can't Believe We Made It!

[fred950]

Got an e-mail the other day I thought I'd share with you-all


According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 30's,40's,50's, 60's and early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.

Out baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. Wehad no childproof lids or locks on medicine bottles,door or cabinets. And when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or airbags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was a special treat.

We drank water from a hose and not from a bottle. We ate cupcakes,bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but were rarely overweight we were always outside playing.

We shared one soft drink with four friend, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We would biuld go-carts out of scraps and then raced them down the hill, only to find out we forgot about brakes.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64,X-Boxes or Gameboys at all, no 99 channels on cable surround sound, personal computors or cell phones. we had friend! And we went outside to find them.

We played dodge-ball and sometimes the ball really hurt.We fell out of trees, got cut and broke teeth and bones and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents--no one was to blame but us.

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue...and we learned to get over it.

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

We rode bikes or walked over to a friend home, knocked on the door and talked to them.

Little League had try-outs and not everybody made the team.Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Test were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected.The idea of parents bailing us out if we got in trouble at school or with the law was unheard of. They acually sided with the school or the law. Imagine that! If we deliberatly mis-behaved and Pop found out we wouldn't be able to sit down without a pillow for a week.

Those generations produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solverand inventers ever. We had freedom, failure, sucess and reponsibility-- and we learn to deal with it.

To those of us who had the luck to grow up as kids before lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good...CONGRADULATIONS1

[fred950]

Got an e-mail the other day I thought I'd share with you-all


According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 30's,40's,50's, 60's and early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.

Out baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. Wehad no childproof lids or locks on medicine bottles,door or cabinets. And when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or airbags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was a special treat.

We drank water from a hose and not from a bottle. We ate cupcakes,bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but were rarely overweight we were always outside playing.

We shared one soft drink with four friend, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We would biuld go-carts out of scraps and then raced them down the hill, only to find out we forgot about brakes.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64,X-Boxes or Gameboys at all, no 99 channels on cable surround sound, personal computors or cell phones. we had friend! And we went outside to find them.

We played dodge-ball and sometimes the ball really hurt.We fell out of trees, got cut and broke teeth and bones and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents--no one was to blame but us.

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue...and we learned to get over it.

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

We rode bikes or walked over to a friend home, knocked on the door and talked to them.

Little League had try-outs and not everybody made the team.Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Test were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected.The idea of parents bailing us out if we got in trouble at school or with the law was unheard of. They acually sided with the school or the law. Imagine that! If we deliberatly mis-behaved and Pop found out we wouldn't be able to sit down without a pillow for a week.

Those generations produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solverand inventers ever. We had freedom, failure, sucess and reponsibility-- and we learn to deal with it.

To those of us who had the luck to grow up as kids before lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good...CONGRADULATIONS1

[hw]

Right on fred950!!!! So true, so true.....one more thing we did. We ate cookie dough with, (Gasp), [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img] Raw Eggs!!!!! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] Meow

[Prometheus]

They should extend that timeframe a few decades further.

In 1995 at scout camp we played baseball with wood bats and wood BALLS. Hit a homer into the woods? No problem, get the saw and go cut us another ball.

[gamblefish]

Good one fred!!

I was one of those kids who got picked last for all the sports...and forget about ever making the cut on school teams!!! And, hey, I turned out ok.
Didn't I? DIDN'T I!?!?! Well, I did, except for the twitching thing...ok, don't say it hw...

[Guest]

Fred950....Well I was a kid in the 40s and 50s...and did survive..unfortunately a lot of others didn't... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]

[Guest]

Memorial Day is a good day for remembering and saying a prayer of thanks for those who didn't make it ...especially those who gave there lives for our freedom and our very special country ... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[rdgall]

You still had it better than we did in the 20's and 30's.

[S.M.A.]

I'm not even twenty, and even I can remember those days. I, too, was always the last kid chosen to play sports. Then again, I'm nearsighted and ten pounds underweight, so I guess there was logic behind their choices.

One advantage for the present, though- more acceptance of nudity.

[Hooked]

Things change....I don't think we are any worse off today than we were back then...it's different but I don't think you can really say it's better or worse...I think the most dangerous thing about progress has been the atomic bomb. That is one thing I definitly would not miss had I been born before it's conception. Just my opinion

[Guest]

We didn't have computers to spend hours every day in front of, or spend hours every day watching TV. We didn't have all the electronic toys and games that kids are spoiled with these days. We rode bicycles because it was fun and didn't realize that we were getting exercise that way. If I didn't have a bicycle to get to where I wanted to go, I actually WALKED. That's why I was slender and healthy (when I was young). Can you imagine kids walking anywhere these days?

We actually used our minds and imaginations to come up with ways to amuse ourselves. We went skinny dipping at the local swimming hole. We found things to do outside and didn't spend our time indoors with computer games that didn't enable us to use our imaginations. We didn't have electronic games doing our thinking for us.

My grandkids have more games and toys (the oldest one is 8)than I got during my entire childhood. The more you give them, the more they want. My 11-year-old nephew wants every new game or toy he sees on the TV. However, he can't spend more than a few minutes with anything without getting bored. We didn't get bored as kids because there were plenty of sticks lying around to use as guns to play cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers.

[Trailscout]

My parents had a window unit air conditioner in their bedroom, but they didn't like us in there even when they weren't there. So we wore shorts and nothing else in the summer and the whole gang wandered down the creek where it was nice and cool. We dammed up the creek, waded in and caught crawdads.

For fun we would swing from a rope, or play war games. We used trash can lids for shields and pine cones for "hangernades". We would also fight with whatever we could get spitting watermelon seeds or even throwing entire chunks of melon at each other.

We would hitch my neighbor's beagle to a leash and search for rabbits. At night we would catch lightning bugs in jars.

We had an old television and it got three channels, but we were too busy to watch it much.

[Guest]

Trailscout,

By "hangernades", I assume you mean "hand grenades". Of course you did. I'm just being facetious. Or do they call them something different in Georgia? [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[Trailscout]

Yes, hangernades is really a hand grenade, but we were a bunch of ignorant kids and pronounced it the way we heard others say it.

I can't possibly list all the outdoor things we did as children. We lived at the edge of the suburbs and we could walk into the open countryside easily in those days. We would pack a lunch and walk down the trails that led by the creek. We found turtles to play with, a meadow with big gentle horses and giant bamboo jungles. We took my Dad's machete and hacked our way through to create new trails.

This city I'm in has grown much bigger and one day I will leave it. If I raise a family, I would want my kids to have as much opportunity or more to explore the great outdoors.

Television and the Internet are terrible baby sitters. I have a friend who doesn't even own a television and she doesn't miss it. She has a full life.

[Guest]

Too many kids these days are getting fat and lazy from inactivity. Their brains are turning to mush from spending most of their time in front of a TV or computer--not counting those who are destroying their brains with drugs.

When I was in school, I didn't have a calculator to do my math for me. I actually had to think and figure it out for myself. My parents weren't smart enough to do it for me since neither of them graduated from high school, and they wouldn't have done my work for me anyway.

The TV can be good entertainment at times, although I find it mostly boring. The computer is a good tool for learning. Neither of these should be a substitute for families living, loving, and spending time together, and they certainly shouldn't be substitutes for exercise and thinking for one's self.