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 child proof 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 pickup 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 koolaid 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 street lights 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, 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!

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. And 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 withscissors, doesn't it?!

Dude,
I agree with everything you just said.

One invention from the last 30 years that does actually come in handy tho is the spacebar on your keyboard. handy for separating words

you should learn to use it

jus sayin'

Also the proper use of the "enter" key. It's usually used for separating paragraphs, not to split sentences.

So what happened to the good old days? Someone has to take responsibility and I'd like that person to 'fess up right now.

Speaking of responsibility. One phrase really summed it up for me . . .

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

Sure we goofed off but we knew that whatever happened it was our fault and our responsibility.

Nice post.

Jim

One invention from the last 30 years that does actually come in handy tho is the spacebar on your keyboard. handy for separating wordsActually, the standard typewriter keyboard layout has been around for about a hundred and thirty years.

The brouhaha over Britney Spears’ baby-in-her-lap incident got me reminiscing. When I was growing up, no one had ever heard of a child safety seat. Kids rode in cars wherever they could fit. When I went to summer day camp, they packed 8 or 10 kids into the back of a station wagon with the back seat folded down, and we all sat Indian fashion on the bare metal load floor. Seat belts? Hell, no SEATS! That was a 45-minute trip each way, three days a week, for 6 or 8 weeks each year. And, amazingly, I SURVIVED! Try schlepping a load of children like that today and you'll not just get a ticket, you'll probably be arrested and charged with child endangerment!

And, not intending to be "political" here, but most of my friends and I grew up in rooms and buildings that were full of secondhand cigarette smoke. And we're the healthiest, longest-lived generation in American history.

SO THERE!! :tongue:

sorry about the typo. I meant to say 130... yeah that's it... :)

sorry guys, i was in a rush this morning. i guess 50 lashes from the english teacher is whats do.i'll have to stay after school . just make sure she is good looking. :jest: :D :eek:

... but the content of your post is righteous.

I fear for the generations that don't know how to accept responsibility for their actions.

Gee, thanks for the congratulations. I worked hard for it. Now, I've just got to figure out how to inform my 7 year-old daughter that she'll never be as good as me. The lazy, timid, anti-social little brat!

sorry guys, i was in a rush this morning. i guess 50 lashes from the english teacher is whats do.i'll have to stay after school . just make sure she is good looking. :jest: :D :eek:
We don't have a "she" for the lashes. We've got a Reginald who's about 6'8', has an unnaturally hairy back and a prediliction for shorter than average men who need a good lashing - tongue lashing, that is...

Or how 'bout a 30 Day Time Out...? ;)

Sure we goofed off but we knew that whatever happened it was our fault and our responsibility.

I'm hoping you're being facetious, Jim, 'cuz this US society has a propensity of not accepting responsibility as often as it likes to cast blame on others. And even when someone does accept blame, they do so in that annoying half-assed way ("I'm deeply sorry if I offended someone" or "I'm deeply sorry if anyone was hurt").

Regardless, the "it's not really my fault" or the "if only someone had done this instead of that then I wouldn't have done it" habit afflicts people of all ages, not just the youngins.

Heck, when I was growing up we had no such thing as a "time out", and that was mainly in the 60s and 70s.

Oh Boy! Another proud old cockroaches thread! :lol:

We don't have a "she" for the lashes. We've got a Reginald who's about 6'8', has an unnaturally hairy back and a prediliction for shorter than average men who need a good lashing - tongue lashing, that is...

Or how 'bout a 30 Day Time Out...? ;)
with no other choice and no "she" , ill take the 30 days

And I blame you not one bit. :)

tuna from a can,



You left out that this was tuna in OIL! None of that namby-pamby tuna in spring water back then.


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!


Yeah, but we had lawn darts, well, I didn't. Even as a little kid, those death-from-above didn't seem like a good idea to me, but I did have a croquet set with big wooden mallets, and stakes (vampire games sometimes got interesting). Wood burnings sets, a piece of wood with a picture painted on it, and a soldering iron (Can you even imagine some toy company putting 'burning' in a toys name and surviving today?). We had toy guns, and 90 plus percent fired something, caps, darts, water, big plastic grenades, hard , or soft (relatively) plastic bullets. We had the Mattel Thingmakers! A zinc mold, a bottle of liquid latex, and a hot plate. Yeah, that'd sell today. :lol:

David.

I am glad to have grown up in the 60's and 70's. When I was in school, I got my backside warmed, alot of times. When I go to junior high, I got tired of the Board of Education, and behaved. Because of that, and my mother, I have never been in trouble with the law. Not even a traffic ticket.

It's all true what's on that list. But but but guys you're missing one big thing here: WHO's creating all those laws and applying them, all those safety crap, all those anti-eggs-peanuts-paranoia crap, who is running this freaking show today??? KIDS??? Noooooooo. It's OUR GENERATION!!!! THOSE BORN BETWEEN 1930-1979. Not our kids!!!!!

Who is going in line to buy a freaking PS3 or Wii console before XMax or is willing to pay double the price because they need it right now and can't wait an extra month when every store will have pills of them!!! (what is this, nobody realized that Sony and the rest are doing that on purpose to create an happening, people fall in the hole everytime). Or when the next useless gizmo that THOSE BORN BETWEEN 1930-1979 are putting in our minds that WE need to have everything RIGHT NOW and pay later. Not our kids!!! WHO is buying and paying a freaking phone with a built-in camera-mp3 player to a 13 year old? THOSE BORN BETWEEN 1930-1979. Or who's paying 250$ for a mp3 player (hey hey hey 80$ for a 2Gig Sandisk is way to cheap kiddo, daddy will buy you a nice IPOD). Who is paying 50$ for a ''Starter'' baseball cap, 100$ for NIKE running shoes..... 150$ for a hockey, 300$ for hockey skates??? Who's gonna pay 600$ with a 2 year contract of a IPhone? THOSE BORN BETWEEN 1930-1979.

Life is not like it used to be, that's a fact. But our kids are a mirror of us. We, THOSE BORN BETWEEN 1930-1979 , are not helping them at all by giving them everything they want right now. That makes me think that what will happen to our kid's generation when ONE DAY they will have to pay for all those gizmos out there, they will have to WORK (WHAT, NO WAY!!! Daddy can you pay me so I won't have to go to work 'cause I can't accept a NO as an answer. At the same time you could pay for my cellular bills, pay for my car, pay for my 60'' HD TV,......).

Maybe it's time to stop for a minute and honestly take a look at what we are ''really'' teaching our kids. Don't let any freaking marketing gamick control your life, never. That's an everyday fight.

The style of 'parenting' has changed with the BS put into young parents/late teens mostly empty minds by lawyers and social engineers, who told us their opinions as if they were facts. Now you have busy bodies sticking their big noses into everyones business.

Since idiots can get jobs as painters, and electricians the ladders are covered in safety stickers telling those idiots NOT to do certain stuff with ladders. Same for cigarettes, model paints, ovens, and pretty much everything.

I still think that making the losing side pay the court costs would keep a LOT of nonsense out of the courts. I think a revamping of the kind of programming allowed on free TV would slow down the "I need this (insert stupid toy/gadget name here) NOW!!" attitude.

I believe the point here is to say our parents were stupid or ignorant, and raised us to be...I don't know. I'm stumped. Whats the point here? Off topic is putting it mildly. I hope my frank assesment did not offend the original poster. If so, please accept my apology in advance!

Hear, Hear Lloyd!!

Many was the time I suffered the ramifications of having a spontaneous wit. Be it in shop class (where we made the paddles! how masochistic was that?)or just not knowing when to shut up. You know what? I learned not to do that anymore.

I believe that the biggest problem with those darn kids today is their sense of entitlement. Because they are being taught and raised in systems that are more interested in their self esteem than their self reliance.

but that's only the tip of the iceberg

I believe the point here is to say our parents were stupid or ignorant, and raised us to be...I don't know. I'm stumped. Whats the point here? Off topic is putting it mildly. I hope my frank assesment did not offend the original poster. If so, please accept my apology in advance!
Nah, I don't think that's the point at all. Just that there are a lot of things that don't make as much difference as people today want to believe that our folks didn't bother with - and we survived. Pretty straightforward. ;)

I believe the point here is to say our parents were stupid or ignorant, and raised us to be...I don't know. I'm stumped. Whats the point here?

Yeah, I'm also a little stumped by the overall gist of this thread. With regard to parenting philosophies, we've been down this road before on other threads, and the trip has seldom been a pleasant one. :o

I think we can all agree that over the course of the last fifty years we've lost some good stuff (drive-ins) and gained some good stuff (the internet).

Likewise, we've lost some bad stuff (the Cold War) and gained some bad stuff (Al Qaeda).

What else is new.

I'm hoping you're being facetious, Jim, 'cuz this US society has a propensity of not accepting responsibility as often as it likes to cast blame on others. And even when someone does accept blame, they do so in that annoying half-assed way ("I'm deeply sorry if I offended someone" or "I'm deeply sorry if anyone was hurt").

Regardless, the "it's not really my fault" or the "if only someone had done this instead of that then I wouldn't have done it" habit afflicts people of all ages, not just the youngins.

Actually, I wasn't. When I was a kid (in the 50's), we went off for the day with friends and our parents had a reasonable idea where we were because a) we told them where we were going and b) they knew who we were with. Whatever we did, we knew it was our responsibility and we'd get blamed for it. And we knew we needed to be home at the appointed time we told our parents.

These days kids don't bother communicating with their parents because they are nearly always reachable by cell phone.

Life was simpler then and, for the life of me, I don't understand why a few of us are just making life more complicated for kids these days.

Jim

This is one of the more non-sensical threads I've read lately. 95% of the changes that are being lamented here are directly related to technology - and to a denser and more mobile population. Both of those factors were and are an historical inevitability. That's nothing to be self-congratulatory about and it's nothing to condemn "kids" for. Give me a break.

You know what Americans feared most in 1955? According to Gallup Polls it wasn't Reds, The Bomb, or "Negroes." No, in that most fearful of decades the greatest fear of all was the sinister menace known as "The Teenager."

The more things change...

:rolleyes:

hi guys
i didnt write the original , i just copied and pasted from an email i got . i thought it was interesting . i posted to all to enjoy.
i certaily didnt mean to insult anyone, i apologize if i did . it was in the spirit of good fun. im sure 30 years from now we will laugh at things we do today
the more things change the more they stay the same.
i didnt realize i was going to be critized from the spelling to the context.
come on guys lighten up a bit. the board supposed to fun and not everything being so PC today. it feels like the world is becoming more like the book "1984" every day. i was just poking fun at the world today compared to then when life seemed simpler and safer to a degree.

I can only speak for myself, but no offense taken lisfan. :)

...i didnt write the original...
Good. The guy who did, can drink some McDonald's coffee and die.

Wouldn't that coffee be more effective if he spilled it in his lap...?

It's all true what's on that list. But but but guys you're missing one big thing here: WHO's creating all those laws and applying them, all those safety crap, all those anti-eggs-peanuts-paranoia crap, who is running this freaking show today??? KIDS??? Noooooooo. It's OUR GENERATION!!!! THOSE BORN BETWEEN 1930-1979. Not our kids!!!!!

Good point but...who you need to blame is actually that tiny segment of "our generation" who "came of age" in the late '60s, as well as those who have been influenced ('contaminated' might be a better word) by them. The rest of us - far less vocal and activistic but still in the majority, for all the good it does us - appear terminally infected with the common sense to which they've long since developed immunity. If this country ever has a Most Embarrassing Generation Award, hands down it'll be them.

i didnt realize i was going to be critized from the spelling to the context.
come on guys lighten up a bit. the board supposed to fun and not everything being so PC today.

Thought it was copy/paste. I've seen similar e-mails circulating. I thought it was a humorous comparison between the decades. Can't really see why it would offend anyone, but there you go.

What troll came up with this 1930-1979 nonsense? Heck, five years can make a lot of difference, in what folks have lived through.

time to close the thread

As you wish, Jon.