[bigrigjoe66]

To all those 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 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 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 ridedown 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 chatrooms.......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 .

The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:
With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another,and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance ?'

For those that prefer to think that God is not watching over us...go ahead and delete this.
For the rest of us...pass this ON! :clap:

[GTR SILVER]

:thumbsup::thumbsup::clap::clap::clap:

so true....and very well put...!!!!!!!!

[Skywalker]

On top of all of that....we survived Polio, Chicken Pox, and a number of other maladies. Whats even more amazing....is how much fun we had as kids.....

And I used to run with sharp pointed objects, and I still have both eyes that work, and while I have few scars....I can get a good laugh out of people telling how I got the scars....:smokin:

I grew up in the Army....and lived all over the world...Army training areas were our playgrounds....and we had some fun....its amazing what you can do with grenade and artillery simulators.....:lol::clap::lol:

[mike3fan]

What's the point? God is gonna save us from ourselves? I grew up doing all those things that you mentioned and you know that when one of us got our first Atari game we were in the damn house for hours playing that thing. Just because life moves on and technolgy advances doesn't mean that we were better just because we played outside and kids today have the internet and video games to play. Just like in years past you have smart kids and you have not so smart kids the smart ones will be the leaders of tomorrow and the not so smart ones will be the workers.

You (I realize this was probably a mass sent e-mail) seem to think just because you or I never got hurt while riding in a car with no seat belt restraint means that no one should wear one now, I wonder how many parents lost kids in traffic accidents in the 70's because their kids weren't in seat belts would have loved to know about the dangers of unseatbelted kids in a moving vehicle, but hey those were the good old days right? I remember riding in the back window on vacation what a blast, thankfully we never hit anything because I would have been through the front window and decapitated anyone sitting in the front seat. See I think it shows how far we have come, would you ever consdider putting your 5 year old kid up in the back window of a car going 70 mph?

Every generation thinks it was so much better back in their time, it wasn't, it is so much better today than it ever was back then and in 10 years that will be the greatest time ever, people are just creatures of habit and whatever you are used to is what you think is best. Do kids have it easier than we did? of course but we also had it easier than our parents and they resented us for it too. Or atleast thought we were slackers and didn't know what hard work meant, and we probably didn't but that was beause technology was better and we worked smarted not harder.

The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:
With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another,and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance ?'

For those that prefer to think that God is not watching over us...go ahead and delete this.
For the rest of us...pass this ON!

See I don't even get why this was tagged onto the end of this? Who made the jump from kids playing until the street lights come on to hurricanes and floods? Religous zealots I suppose...

I don't know I guess I'm in the minority and don't really think that it is so bad with the way things are today. I remember all those days playing baseball with all the neighborhood kids and wonder why I never see that anymore, then I just realize that times change and just like we (most of us) didn't have to get up at 4:30am to do chores like our parents that kids today have just found other things to do with their free time. Doesn't make them any worse than me just different life styles thats all.

[bigrigjoe66]

You must be one of those left wingers from the north. I guess more than 60% of the population is overweight and lazy. I also remember most every boy in my high school had a loaded gun in the truck/car and a knife in their pocket. Never heard of anyone being cut/shot. Why? We had respect not like now. Kids, parents, hell nobody respects anyone or anything. I read about a girl who was 6 yrs old arrested because she kicked her teacher, wtf. In my day call my dad and I would not kick nobody else. Now if you discipline your kids in front of someone the police, defacs and everyone else comes down on you. Yea the worlds better now. Left wing liberals suck..

[Pack_Rat]

You just have to ignore mike3fan He has a hardon for anything and everyone that does not agree with him. And probably had a rough childhood.

JMO

[allan5oh]

"First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant."

That's a pretty absurd statement, since even small amount can cause FAS disorders. FAS is a serious problem, a very large percentage of inmates have FAS. Up here it's way over 50%!

[allan5oh]

Originally Posted by bigrigjoe66

Now if you discipline your kids in front of someone the police, defacs and everyone else comes down on you. Yea the worlds better now. Left wing liberals suck..

There's a huge difference between "discipline" and "rage".

[Ridge Runner]

Well, I have to chime in here too. Life was better back then IMHO. I made the move to the country a few months ago and I can say it is the BEST thing I have ever done for my kids ( son-15.... daughter-12 ). I grew up fixing string beans to get ready to can on many summer nights on the front porch. That was mine and my brothers job.... keep the garden picked.

It does my heart good to see my kids come home from school and drop their book bags and head right back outside rather than plop down in front of the TV.

I hope to pass on the skills I learned growing up to them. My wife and I know how to can and "put-up" our fresh grown food.

Life here is not all work..... they have their friends..... they just have to walk a little further to get there. We also put in a horseshoe pit and have become the "attraction" around here. ( Note to self: Never pitch horseshoes against a 70 year old man across the road. He will make you look bad ).

Ain't nothing wrong with a little sweat. :thumbsup:

[Pack_Rat]

I personally think this sums it up.

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs
and spread mayo on the same cutting board ... with the same knife and no
bleach ... but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. My Mom used to
defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes too,
but I can't remember getting E-coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of
a pristine pool. (Talk about boring!)


The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a
pager was the school PA system.


We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of
high top Ked's. (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training
athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I
can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell
us how much safer we are now.
Flunking gym was not an option ... even for stupid kids! I guess PE
must be much harder than gym. Every year someone taught the whole school
a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and
hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only
knew we could have sued the school system?


Speaking of school ....
we all said prayers and the pledge and staying in detention after school
caught all sorts of negative attention.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches. I can't understand it.
Schools didn't offer 14 year olds
an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway)
but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we
started getting the sniffles. What an archaic health system we had then.
Remember school nurses? Some wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was
allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were
without .... computers, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box
or 270 digital cable stations.

..I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the
denial of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day
about a mile down the ..road to some guy's vacant 20, built forts out of
branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over .who got to
be the Lone Ranger.

What was that property owner thinking ... letting us play on that lot??
He should have been locked up
for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a
self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.
Oh yeah...

and where was the Benadryl and
sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!
We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant
construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48 cent
bottle of mercurochrome and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a
trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of
antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for
leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we
got our butt spanked here too ... (physical abuse) and then we got butt
spanked again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked
down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks
(Remember why Tonka trucks were made tough? It wasn't so that they could
take the rough Berber in the family room!), and Dad drove a car with
leaded gas.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure
that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on
two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger
they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.
Summers were spent behind the push
lawnmower and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until I
was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive.
How sick were my parents?

Of course my parents weren't the only psychos.
I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks
on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that
he could have owned our house. Instead she picked him up and swatted him
for being such a goof.

It was a neighborhood run amuck.
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they
were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?
We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes!
We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even
notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!
How did we ever survive??