Surviving Childhood

[theFrey]

This is something that was recently sent to me. While I disagree with some of it, I have to admit that the current practice of wrapping children in cotton wool can go a bit far. 😛

Surviving Childhood – To all the kids growing up between 1930 to 1979

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 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 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 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 !

I actually remember doing the gokart with no brakes thing. 😀 Yes, a nice soft hedge was your best friend then. 😀

And the one soda, four friends…. ewwwwww As germaphobic as I am now, I cannot believe I also did that. 😆

[alnexi]

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.

True. It looks like these days poor little creatures are not allowed to EXIST without a chaperone. I wouldn’t have traded all playstations in the world for my latchkey and all the fun you can have in a big city with practically no crime (one of a very few good things about living in a totalitarian regime). On the other hand, the dental care really sucked, and our parents definitely didn’t let us think we were a center of the universe. AND we had to put on gas masks once in a while and march to a basement as a special training in case the evil Americans would attack us. Needless to say, it convinced us from the early on that practically all adults were a bit insane/liars/stupid – which made “surviving the childhood” both easier and more difficult .

[mandara k]

Yeesh, alnexi, you should tell us more about this. What did you do in the city?

This list is hilarious, Frey you’re 2 for 2. i mean yeah, we did all of this and more and we’re still kicking; I’ll never forget how my brother ran me into the bushes with a golf cart; that can hurt. And my Dad saying “You’re all right, go walk it off.” And most of the time he was right, except the one time my brother accidently ❓ stepped on my ankle and broke it and trying to walk that off didn’t help.

I mean short of having the eight kids my Mom was always taking someone to have stitches or to treat all the childhood diseases.

i was too young for the bomb drills but we had fire drills and tornado drills all the time!

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