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Back When We Grew Up........

Joined
Aug 26, 2010
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Old bag lady with a laptop
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL BORN IN 1930's, 1940's, 50's, 60's, 70's and Early 80's !!!

First, you survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, your baby cots were covered with bright colored lead-based paints. You had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when you rode your bikes, you had no helmets, not to mention, the risks you took hitchhiking ..

As children, you would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun. You drank water from the garden hosepipe and NOT from a bottle. You shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

You ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but you weren't overweight because...... YOU WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!! You 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 you all day. And you were OK.

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

You did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........YOU HAD FRIENDS and you went outside and found them!

You fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents you played with worms(well most boys did) and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although you were told it would happen, you did not poke out any eyes. You rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Local teams 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 you out if you broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has 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. You had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and you learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And 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 our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.
 
wellll, let me tell ya, I wish I had still had the original teeth I smashed out on the monkey bars (thousands of dollars we didn't have, fake front teeth today, and bad caps all through childhood), listened about drinking out of bottles and not the tap (trust me, 3 weeks in the hospital with dysentery wasnt fun), and know far too many people wished they wore belts (I broke my back in 4 spots and know a few people who arent around today).
Risk taking might have been fun in my youth, but these broken bones at my age today weren't worth it.
But yes, generally, today's society is overly cautious - there's been changes though for the better - without playing on the computer, I wouldn't be online here, kids learn valuable skills and early hand-to-eye coordination and problem solving, people know the risks of fetal-alcohol syndrome, and less people end up through windshields

funny though :D
 
That post actually could have been my childhood. I don't think I had a painted cot but a pine one though. Apart from that...

OK we know about foetal syndrome. We no longer have Thalidomide. We know about smoking in front of kids in the house.

But the reality is that despite improved healthcare, the chronic levels of obesity and sedentary lifestyles are passing an early death warrant on millions of kids. The generation that will die younger than their parents. In years to come when the figures are collated, we may find that weesies period was indeed the 'good ol' days'.
 
wellll, let me tell ya, I wish I had still had the original teeth I smashed out on the monkey bars (thousands of dollars we didn't have, fake front teeth today, and bad caps all through childhood), listened about drinking out of bottles and not the tap (trust me, 3 weeks in the hospital with dysentery wasnt fun), and know far too many people wished they wore belts (I broke my back in 4 spots and know a few people who arent around today).
Risk taking might have been fun in my youth, but these broken bones at my age today weren't worth it.
But yes, generally, today's society is overly cautious - there's been changes though for the better - without playing on the computer, I wouldn't be online here, kids learn valuable skills and early hand-to-eye coordination and problem solving, people know the risks of fetal-alcohol syndrome, and less people end up through windshields

funny though :D

Wow, lots of damage there.

I had the brilliance of mind to climb the "ladder" type monkey bars with roller skates on. Age 9-10. I was convinced I could lay across them, grab the bars from the underside and flip myself over and land and roll away on my skates. Yeah...... didn't happen.

I landed alright, full front flat, twisted both arms (ended up in slings) and got 8 stitches across my chin.

Never tried that again though!

I do like my original post though. Sounds just like my childhood.
 
Wow, lots of damage there.

.

ha..total: one broken wrist, 4 surgeries on the other, 9 broken toes, couple broken fingers, fake front teeth, 4 broken lumbar vertebrae, sprained ankle, other broke with chipped bone, blown eardrum, chest scar from stealing crab apples, and a torn rotator cuff
(lets not mention 3x mono bouts, multiple tonsilitis, measles, chicken pox, e coli and dysentery, emergency appendectomy, and an emergency cracked wisdom tooth removal from Hell)

Good thing I'm handsome on the outside :D Good news, I don't EVER get sick - I think I got so much as a kid, regular stuff can't survive in my system lol
 
How funny..reading this just made me remember my own childhood. It was pretty great growing up with my 2 cousins and my brother. We were like the fantastic four...although my cousin and I were never up for all the naughty stuff. We were pretty scared of our parents. But amazingly so we were allowed to play in the streets, walk on our own to the park were we would spend hours literally until one parent had to physically come get us. We were up all night during weekends as all 4 of us shared a room for a while. We had to eat what was in our plate and if we refused, it will still have to go down somehow. NO was not an option. Those were great days and I miss them.

Nowadays, playing in the streets is a BIG NO NO and totally unsafe. Our children know how to work a computer from the age of 1yr and know how to work a mouse before they learn how to hold a pencil. There is no way, I will even consider allowing my child to run freely even if its in a play ground. The thought of her falling or hurting badly does not go down too well with me. I often wonder how our grandparents managed with so many children back then. My father in law is one of 13 siblings and my mum is one of 6. They surely did not have the time to watch each one like a hawk.

I wonder if life really is easier nowadays???

Regards,
Rebecca.
 
I was born in the late 60s but basically grew up in the 70s and 80s. We didn't have home computers and Facebook. When we unfriended someone it was done in the schoolyard at recess and one of us usually ended up with a bloody nose. Of course back then you could punch someone in the nose and be hanging out with them again by the weekend.

Our cartoons were meant to be funny not educational. There were no morals to the stories about hygiene how nice we should be to each other. We just cheered on the coyote because he had the good sense to attach a rocket to a skateboard and cursed the little bird who was fast enough to eat a whole bowl of bird seed in less than the 3 seconds it took for an anvil to fall from the sky. Give me one day with that Acme catalogue and I'd be having that bird for dinner.

There were no video games. We had bikes and ramps. If we weren't happy with the height we were getting we'd put the ramp at the top of the stairs. I bent the forks back on my bike so far the front wheel almost hit the pedals and broke my sister's bike in half and neither time did the entire world pixelate with the words appearing above me "round two."

The only porn I saw growing up was in National Geographic. I was probably 13 years old before I found out that women's boobs didn't all just turn into bananas as soon as they took their bras off and that was only because I found an old Playboy book in a friend's house. I was probably 15 when I realized she wasn't wearing furry underwear.

We watched Gunsmoke and the Lone Ranger before school and never once thought about shooting anyone. We walked to school in the rain and the sleet and the snow. We broke bones and got stitches. We went outside for the sake of being outside with no idea what we were going to do when we got there. You could knock on a friend's door and just say "are ya comin' out?" and he wouldn't ask why. He would just throw some shoes on and we'd wander off. Maybe we'd find a bee's nest to torment or see who could get across the creek where the water's running too fast just to see who gets knocked in and we survived.

I remember years later when my kids were outside playing with a baseball bat and a rock. A line drive right into the pitcher's head. Not much blood. Nice goose egg though. My exwife almost had a coronary. I went out and surveyed the damage. She yelled at me "why are you smiling?" I said "I did the same thing once except I almost knocked him out." :p
 

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