Survival in the Past
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were
kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's or even the early 80's, probably
shouldn't have survived.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.
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 pickup truck on a warm day was always a
Special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors!
We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it
but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one
Actually died from this.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then
Rode 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 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.
No cell phones. Unthinkable!

We did not have Play stations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at
all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound,
personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms. We
had friends! We went outside and found them.

We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.
We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there
Were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to
blame but us. Remember accidents?
We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and
learned to get over it.

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 inside us forever.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home 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. Some students
weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat
the same grade. Horrors! Tests were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected, one to hide
behind. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was
unheard of. They actually sided with the law. Imagine that

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and 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're one of them. Congratulations!
Please pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as
kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good.
Live and Love  today ... Like there is no Tomorrow

 
 

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 usa couple
of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting
the sniffles. What an archaic health system we had
then. Remember school nurses? Ours 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, Play
Station, 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 (physical
abuse) here too ...and then we got our 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 she 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 survive?
Both Copied from email, authors unknown.
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