The REAL Survivors.....

[Guest]

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 carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested for
Diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were 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 children, we would ride in cars with no 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, bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, 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 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 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell
phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet 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 made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live in us forever.

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!

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.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we 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.

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

 

[lil_elvis]

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the

1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!



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

I've got all thelights in the house on, the refrigerator door is open and I'm waiving a stick about.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

Crossing the half century mark shortly,
l_e

 

[Kassiana]

Actually, as a child of natural foods vegetarians, I never had sugar growing up, only honey. I was very shy and would rather stay inside reading than go out and play with my friends. I hated (and still hate) carbonated beverages.

So a lot of that message you posted had nothing to do with me, but I'll admit I'm an unusual case.

 

[oggbashan]

To which for the UK kids of the 1930s and 1940s should add:

Being bombed and shot at by the Nazis, collecting and swapping explosive ordnance, playing on bombsites with unexploded bombs around, eating Woolton Pie and Dried Eggs...

Watching Hollywood films about the war in which the Americans won everything even in campaigns where no Americans were present and seeing films with actors eating food that we had never seen.

Our first sight of an orange or a banana.

The draft for National Service which no boy could escape no matter how rich his parents were...

And later, enduring the IRA's bombing campaign on the UK mainland and going to work as if nothing had happened, just as our parents and grandparents did throughout WWII.

Og

 

[R. Richard]

Amazing what children can accomplish when they do not have help (?!) from the government.

 

[Goldie Munro]

My God! I cant believe I am still around to read this thread!!

 

[rgraham666]

Oh yeah. I survived those times.

The times when devising games with sticks consisted of me being beaten with them.

The times when not making Little League was a great deal more than a disappointment, but yet another proof to my 'peers' that I was a considerably less human than them.

When a kid who could read better than most of the adults wasn't a mark of intelligence but of weakness and questionable sexuality.

Ptui on the good old days.

 

[oggbashan]

Also a time when women were less equal than men and paid significantly less.

When non-whites and non-English were seen as equal but different until American GIs taught us that non-whites were inferior.

Og

 

[hydrex]

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 carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested for
Diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were 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 children, we would ride in cars with no 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, bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, 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 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 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell
phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet 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 made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live in us forever.

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!

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.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we 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.

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

lets not forget no airbags in cars, cement on the playgrounds and metal slides etc..., very few bikes with gears. no bike helmets. one kind of tennis shoe, ok maybe three kinds.

 

[Guest]

And don't forget, when we misbehaved our parents spanked the snot out of us and we didn't grow up to be violent criminals blaming our faults on them.

When we took a math test, we didn't get to have a calculator on our desk to tell us what the answer is.

When we had an essay due in school we didn't look it up on the internet, we looked it up in books called encyclopedias. Real paper pages. You believe that?

I never heard of taking a bus to school untill I was in 9th grade. Until then I walked the 11 blocks and never got mugged or kidnapped.

When I cried because I didn't get my way, my father told me to shut up and like it. He didn't spend a fortune to send me to a psyco-anylist to find out why I was unhappy. GOD!!! I love him for that. (Honest.)

If I sat down in the middle of the grocery store and started screaming at the top of my lungs because I couldn'thave a candybar, my mother would have made sure my ass had a nice warm glow for a few hours. I would not have thought about doing it again and Child Social Services would not have arrested her for it.

I pity today's children. They will grow up weak, spoiled, defenseless and with no sense of discipline. They will believe that everything in the world should be their just because the want it. And society will coddle them and provvide a shrink who will give them drugs and blame their parents.

I hope I'm dead when they grow up.

 

[The_Fool]

Don't forget those drives at night riding on the ledge of the back seat, looking out the back window at all the stars.....

 

[rgraham666]

I collected my share of spankings as well. Mostly just as a reminder that life is tough. I didn't have to do anything. Breathing wrong was often enough. The best I could hope for growing up was nothing.

I walked everywhere too. Different route to school every time. If I took the same route the bullies would be waiting for me.

I can't remember the last time I saw a child act the way you describe Dran. Is it common behaviour where you live? It isn't here.

I didn't grow up tough. I grew up broken. Still carrying the scars, always will.

Again, ptui on the good old days.

 

[SadieRose]

I live in a town where, because children get their own way and their parents expect everyone else to deal with it, at least three times a week we get a story in the newspaper of how some teenage kids have burned down a school or kicked the crap out of some guy walking home (as happened this week) or nearly killed man by setting fire to him as he dozed in a bus-shelter waiting for the late night bus, or actually killed a man by hitting him over the head as he talked to his girlfriend on his mobile phone, then stole his mobile phone.


All the agitators were under the age of 25.

In most cases they were not out of school.


I'm not allowed, by law, to do to those little fuckers what i really want to do to them.

 

[SeaCat]

Interesting post,

The "Good old days" did have some good points. They also had their bad points. Then again the same can be said for today.

I'll admit that I'm younger than many here. I was born in 1965. I grew up much the way Dran's post stated. I was lucky though. My parents were intelligent enough to teach me their values, while telling me they weren;t the only values in the world. My parents weren't abusive, although I did know parents who were. My siblings and I were raised with even more discipline than most, but that was because we were taught a lot of things the government frowned upon even then. Not to mention my sister and I were hellions . (My little brother on the other hand was the golden child.) Did we have it easier than kids today? In many ways we did. We had a lot more freedom. The streets were safer for us, and there was a lot less stress on us from school. (I can see you sitting in the corner and shaking your head at this. Have you looked at the class schedules and text books of the kids today? Some of the classes they are taking now we weren't offered until we hit college.)

Does this mean the kids today have it easier or harder than we did? In some ways yes, in some ways no. I admit to thinking the bans on a parents disciplining their children has gone way too far. I do understand where this is coming from but I still think it has gone way too far. I also believe the idea of making the kids feel good about themselves has degraded their feelings of personal responsibility. It is now not uncommon to hear someone blame their actions on the way they were raised, or because they were despondend about losing their boy/girlfriend. Do they spend too much time in front of the television or games? Yes they do. Then again it is unsafe for them to be outside in way too many places today. Why this is I'm not sure. I attribute it to the lack of self controll on many peoples parts, but I don't have any facts or figures to back this up.

Kids today are a lot smarter than we were, at least in book learning. We were a lot smarter in other ways. I think our growing up the way we did made us richer and more apreciative of things than kids are today, but again I have no way of proving it.

I do know I wouldn't change much about the way I grew up. ust as I know that even if I were capable of siring a child which wasn't a monster I wouldn't chose to do so in todays society.

Cat

 

[Belegon]

I also was born in 1965. I agree that the good ol' days had bad in them but I still agree with most of Dran's posts. As a parent of two, I am seeing way too much of some behaviors. I like that adults are more vigilant about some things, but kids need to be kids.

I absolutely HATE that when a teacher sends a note home that little Johhny hit little Billy, many of today's parents are so busy being mad about the teacher daring to question their parenting skills that they completely forget to tell Johhny what he did was wrong. Children have minds of their own, and they can be wrong without it being a total failure on the part of the parents. If the parents don't do something about it and the behavior continues unchecked, like is often the case with bullies, then it is the parents fault.

Rob, bullies have not gone away. They are still there and the cruelty of children is still an issue. The things you describe could happen just as easily now. I hate it but it is true. I will only take major issue with one thing you had to say. You say you grew up broken, not tough. Dude, with the shit you're describing and you are still here to talk about it? I think you are plenty tough.

 

[SeaCat]

I will only take major issue with one thing you had to say. You say you grew up broken, not tough. Dude, with the shit you're describing and you are still here to talk about it? I think you are plenty tough.

Rob, I have to agree with Bel here. You are a survivor. Yes you carry the scars, but you are here. That shows strength.

Cat