I'm a lucky one, are you?

[boxermania]

Life used to be much less simpler and fun..... Makes so much sense!


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 Kool-aid made with sugar, but we wer en'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 OK.

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 computer! s, 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, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not poke 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!


You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good .

While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

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

[iowabeakster]

As one of the Gen-X curmudgeons, before my time, I love this post!!!

As a child, I also survived the seventies riding around in the family VW camper, that smelled like vomit. The DVD-watching, Suburban-riding, children of today would be aghast.

[wncbmw]

Wow, boxermania - that pretty much described my childhood (except my Mom didn't smoke, Dad did!)

[RForestR]

Awesome!
Sounds like my wife and I laughing over our childhood!

Remember the days too when the road trip meant you got to lie on the rear dash of the family cruiser directly in the sunshine?
(either that or on the floor of the pick-up while the old man blasted down the road, smoke in hand and no seatbelt!)

Or how about getting that first dirt bike (mine was a '78 100cc Kawasaki of non-descript nature!) but since there was not much in the way of gear you used an open face helmet and sunglasses! all at the tender age of 11, and then riding down the back roads to show off to friends, or to school every Friday...without ever worrying about getting the law called on you!

Playing road hockey in the street and the...cccaaaaarrrrrrrrr!!!!!!....would actually slow and go around you.

camping out at the community park when the summer heat was at its best and never having to worry about getting kid-napped.

Great start to a great thread.
I agree...now where's those scissors, I could use a run!

Chris

[wncbmw]

It really is amazing to think what we did as kids that would probably get parents locked up today. Summer days we would leave after breakfast, play in the yards, streets and neighborhoods until lunch; go back out and disappear until it was getting dark. As my boys like to say . . . "Back in the day!"

And yes, we had BB guns! Heck, I got a .22 at 15!

[boxermania]

I'm going to share two childhood stories that would probably land me in jail today....

I got the rigour BB rifle for my 10 birthday or thereabouts and after practicing in just about everything I could find, cardboard, empty cans, you name it I had no challenge.....and the gun was 2 days old!!!!! then I discovered the corner spotlights on the building adjacent to my parents home.

The lights were about 35 to 40 feet away and I had a clear shot from my room window.....err..... we didn't have window A/C units....we had what my dad refered to "air on condition that you open your windows" I will never forget that....but I digress and Voila I had another outlet for my target practice....unfortunately after awhile (mind you rain or shine) the aluminum cover looked like sheat and the building owners came to notice....well that was the end of the BIG Game Hunter.

The other one was that I noticed that the German cars had these shinny metal valve stem caps....the other cars had the plastic ones....well since my baseball card collection....including Mickey Mantel and the kind of the era was of no interest to me anymore as I had collected just about everything (do you remeber the credit card size package with the sheet of gum and 4 baseball cards?) and yes, I left them in Cuba when my family left in 1960, I decided to initiate a collection of the metal valve stem caps and my goal was to collect 200.....I kept them in a discarded can of Hershey's powder chocolate in my dresser, until my mother one day came up on them (she didn't know what they were) and made me fess up....I had to promise that I would collect no more...the count stopped at 126.....