| Author | Message | ||
     Mr_grumpy |
This is so true! Enjoy..... According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 60's, 70's and early 80's probably shouldn't have survived, because our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint which was promptly chewed and licked. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors or cabinets and it was fine to play with pans. When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip-flops and fluorescent 'spokey dokey's' on our wheels. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags and riding in the passenger seat was a treat. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle and it tasted the same. We ate chips, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy juice with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can and no-one actually died from this. We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went top speed down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded. We did not have Play stations or X-Boxes, no video games at all. No 99 channels on TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no DVDs, no Internet chat rooms. We had friends - we went outside and found them. We played elastics and rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt!&n bsp; We fell out of trees, got cut, and broke bones but there were no law suits. We had full on fist fights but no prosecution followed from other parents. We played knock-the-door-run-away and were actually afraid of the owners catching us. We walked to friends' homes. We also, believe it or not, WALKED to school; we didn't rely on mummy or daddy to drive us to school, which was just round the corner. We made up games with sticks and tennis balls. We rode bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of...they actually sided with the law. 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! Pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow as real kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good. For those of you who aren't old enough, thought you might like to read about us. This my friends, is surprisingly frightening......and it might put a smile on your face: The majority of students in universities today were born in 1986........they are called youth. They have never heard of We are the World, We are the children, and the Uptown Girl they know is by Westlife not Billy Joel. They have never heard of Rick Astley, Bananarama, Nena Cherry or Belinda Carlisle. For them, there has always been only one Germany and one Vietnam. AIDS has existed since they were born. CD's have existed since they were born. Michael Jackson has always been white. To them John Travolta has always been round in shape and they can't imagine how this fat guy could be a god of dance. They believe that Charlie's Angels and Mission Impossible are films from last year. They can never imagine life before computers. They'll never have pretended to be the A-Team, the Dukes of Hazard or the Famous Five. They can't believe a black and white television ever existed. And they will never understand how we could leave the house without a mobile phone. Now let's check if we're getting old... 1. You understand what was written above and you smile. 2. You need to sleep more, usually until the afternoon, after a night out. 3. Your friends are getting married/already married 4. You are always surprised to see small children playing comfortably with computers. 5. When you see children with mobile phones, you shake your head. Having read this mail, you are thinking of forwarding it to some Other friends because you think they will like it too... Yes, you're Getting old!! | ||
| Voltage_vector |
Boy is that so true...how did we ever make it!  | ||
| Chasespeed |
Man, were was this email before my daughter was born..oh wait, I disnt have a computer..only had one of these the alst 2 years... Yeah...I was born in 80...but the sad thing is, its all true.... I heard this somewhere.."he who swallows the most marbles as a kid, doesnt grow up to have kids of his own" Chase | ||
| Spiderman |
Cause we are impervious due to our lead filled insides yum!! | ||
| Kandie |
I'm old. I remember when it was cool to use clothes pins to hold playing cards to your bike so they would make noise on the spokes. That was fun! | ||
| Jugallo94 |
I remember when atari first came out. come to think of it that is when I started getting fat.hmmmm. | ||
| Djkaplan |
"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." Apparently the one thing "our generation" couldn't do was raise kids that were worth a crap in the new world we created for them. I'm sure the generations before us thought the very same thing. | ||
| Buellfighter |
Stand up wheelies on Schwinn Stingrays!!! | ||
| Djkaplan |
I know one thing kids today will never do... they'll never spend an hour staring at this image waiting for Saturday morning cartoons to come on...  | ||
| Buellfighter |
Good one Dj, man that brings back memories. | ||
| Iamike |
Innes, You are so right. I'm amazed that I survived childhood intact... Oh, that's right, I haven't grown up yet. | ||
| Swampy |
My friend just emailed me a link to a cop shooting himself in the leg at a school demonstration about Gun Violence! His point was we were alot safer in the old days when we carried our guns on the bus uncased and stored them in our lockers to take them to shop class to work on them: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/deaclass.html You have to remember "He is the expert" and the only one qualified to handle the weapon. And when we took them to school, we had no intentions of hurting anybody with them! | ||
| Ghostrider |
Saturday morning cartoons What was your favorite cartoon back then? Mine was:  Blue Falcon and the Wonder Mutt. | ||
| Diablobrian |
hey ghostrider, isn't that "dyno-mutt" (a Jimmy Walker tribute) | ||
| Ceejay |
bugs bunny and loonie toons. I pulled out a pete the puma quote at a meeting at work and was looked at with much disdain. "Give me a whole lotta lumps!" | ||
| Djkaplan |
I watched all the cartoons, but I would have to say Johnny Quest was my favorite, as far as serious drama... ahem. | ||
| Firemanjim |
Penny,you--old?Yeah,right!! Favorite cartoons,Crusader Rabbit,Bugs Bunny(of course)Underdog,Rocky and Bullwinkle,lots more. I can remember my dad was constantly having to fiddle with the tubes in our TV,Seven Eleven had a tube tester with a selection of tubes to buy. My mom would throw us out of the house in the morning and we would be gone the entire day until the dinner bell rang.It was normal and expected. | ||
| Djkaplan |
"Seven Eleven had a tube tester with a selection of tubes to buy." I remember the tube tester at the 7/11! My dad always made me stay the hell away from it. To this day I'm afraid to touch one, just like the way I'm afraid to touch the thermostat. He never had any qualms about sending my outside to spin the huge TV antenna around until the reception was good, though. | ||
| Sleez |
speedracer!!! | ||
| Ted |
I find Bugs Bunny / roadrunner funnier now than when i was a kid. | ||
| Diablobrian |
speedracer rules! My son has a framed poster signed by the guy that did the voice of speed and racer-X hanging on the wall of his room. How cool is that? The poster is of the mach-5 car that they were actually building for a while. It says 385+hp depending upon options. If I had the cash that would be better than owning the original Barris batmobile. | ||
| Diablobrian |
I also remember watching the lone ranger early in the morning on our black and white TV. The Christmas that my brother and I got the Lone Ranger and Tonto "action figures" still stands out in my otherwise poor memory. These were the full 11inch tall(?) fully articulated figures. Like the original GI Joe. Some years later my Brother got a similar Gene Simmons action figure. This was before the make-up went away, and then came back. | ||
| Slaughter |
"It's ten o'clock, parents, do you know where your children are?" When was the last time a curfew announcement was aired? |
