I Survived!

FAOL Community Sound Off
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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 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-base paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps not helmets on our heads.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes.

Riding in the back of a pick- up truck 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 made with Lard, white bread, real butter and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And, we weren’t overweight.

WHY? Because we were always outside playing that’s why!

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 OKAY.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them 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 Play stations, Nintendo’s and X-boxes. There were no video games, 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 and no 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 would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, ping pong paddles, or just a bare hand and no one would call child services to report abuse.

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 put 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.

While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave and lucky their parents were.

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

:slight_smile:

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Norm, what a blast from the past and such a flood of memories. We did survive, didn’t we? As for the scissors, dropped mine off of the tying bench last night and stuck them in the top of my foot, does that count?
Thanks for the trip.

Kelly.

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Oh, Norm!! Thank you!

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Norm,

You must have grown up in my neighborhood!:smiley:

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I have read this before but always find it interesting.

Another interesting thing. My oldest son, some time back, thanked me for the way he grew up. The kids grew up working on a horse ranch, picking berries, weeding gardens, mowing lawns, splitting and stacking firewood, riding three or more on a tractor (which is also how they learned to drive) or 2 to a horse, driving horse drawn wagons in the 4th of July parades. They had bicycles, motor bikes, 22s (no one was killed except a bird or squirrel or two), tree forts in the woods (until we cut the tree down for firewood) and they did everything that was mentioned in the above piece, which is how I grew up. Yes, he thanked me for this because he knows it gave him a head start. So there are kids still growing up the same way you and I did and they will become the next generation’s innovators, leaders, and entrepreneurs.

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How true. I can’t tell a kid today one thing he did bad without them either thinking I am a total idiot or starting to cry.

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Thanks. This really reminds me of my childhood. I am from a different country but this list would look almost the same if I had made it. :slight_smile:

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Norm,

Thanks a ton…that describes my childhood perfectly (I’m 55) Imagine, coming home with a bloody lip and not suing someone…

Ken

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Hain’t you got enuff problems with a bum hip? You need a keeper boy?

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Maybe he just needs some of those safety scissor like the kids up now days so they won’t hurt themselves.

When was the last time you saw a boy with a pocket knife in his pocket? I’ve been carrying one and sharpening it since I was 12. They would kick him out of school now.

I moved off the farm when I was 10 and had a bullwhip for 2 or 3 years before that to drive the cows to the barn with at night. Also good for playing with little brothers. I loved Lash LaRue movies.

My late Dad’s razor strap is hanging from my tying table, I considered framing it and hanging it in my office but it sure is handy to finish off my pocket knife when I sharpen it.

That’s for bringing up lot of good memories Norm.

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My son has had knives since he was 8 (he’s 18 Now) I told him early and often that if he messed up and took a pocket knife to school he was to keep it in his pocket and not tell anyone about it. It has worked for him the few times he forgot that it was in his pocket.

Oh he also shaves with a straight razor and we have two or three strops around the house to touch up blades on.:smiley:

Eric

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You should also remember “School Bus Stops”. When all the kids in the neigborhood gathered at the corner to catch the bus. Now it’s drop them off at the front door. :frowning:

Do they still make “Cap Guns”? :confused:

And what about “Mumbly Peg”? Another use for that pocket knife you always carried. :smiley:

Yep, I’m a survivor!!

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I have received this in my email no less than 3 times. Most of the list makes sense and is good for kids. However some things in the list are flat out dangerous. There is a reason Child mortality rates have been cut by 90% over the last century(that number is from wiki).

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-base paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps not helmets on our heads.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes.

Does anyone think that anything on the above list is good for a child?

It should be noted that i am contrarian, and i have 4 beers in me. Sorry if i offend anyone.

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You know, I wonder what this list would look like if our kids wrote it, 30 some odd years from now.

Kirk

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Okay now I am homesick and they say you can’t go home again.

Waking up Saturday mornings with the smell of fresh sticky buns wafting up the stairs.

Slamming doors and kids laughing back and forth as we raced each other down the stairs to be the first one at the table.

Mom and Dad grinning as we tripped over each other till we all got settled.

Setting off on a a days adventure in the woods, were we always ended up playing Army , or cowboys and Indians.

Dad getting up at the crack of dawn to take us fishing, even though he had quit years before, but started up again because we asked him to take us.

All of us lined up in a row while Mom made her final inspection before we left for church.

No, you can’t go home again but, thank god for the memories and our parents who made them possible.

Chris

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I’ve seen that before, but always appreciate it. We also went trick or treating without our parents. We bought fireworks. We swam in places that had no lifeguards and no parents around. We lived in houses with doors that were unlocked at night. We learned to do the math in our head and couldn’t even imagine a calculator. We read a lot of books. We heard so little profanity that it shocked us when we did hear a bad word.

The thing that bothers me the most is that we boomers and later generations were the ones who generally stopped raising kids that way.

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Thank you Normand. I greatly enjoyed your post and I am definitely a member of that elite survivor’s club. In fact, I grew up only 25 miles from you in Windham Center, Connecticut. 8T :slight_smile:

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We survivors say it’s a wild world today, but does this generation think so? When boomers were kids, parents said things were wild and crazy compared to when they were kids…their parents said the same thing.

Boomers parents lived through some crazy times and their parents lived through WW1 and the 1918 (hope i got that right) influenza or guess what, we wouldn’t be here.

This generation will become 60 years old one day and they’ll say things were so much better in the 20 oughts. Guaranteed.

Cheers,

MontanaMoose

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MTSkibum-- you’re right in that it’s good that a few of those things have gone away, but the point is that parents today look at almost all of those things as if they were the equivalent of pouring nuclear waste on their children’s cereal. So much of modern parenting seems to consist of sticking their kids in front of some electronic entertainment device (TV, computer, video games, etc) and calling it good. I grew up on the cusp of that list (mid 70’s-early 80’s), we had video games and TV, but they were for days when you couldn’t go out, and even then Mom would chase us off of them to go do something else after an hour. If the weather would let us, and it took some nasty stuff to keep us inside, we’d be outside playing, fishing, communicating with our friends and learning about the world by actually being a part of it.

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We rode bikes with no helmets, wandered the neighborhood making sure that we were still in close enough to to hear our parents shout for us. Made do without computers or video games… anybody ever spend a day in front of steps or a wall with a tennis ball? Just make up some simple rules and do it. If it rained, we found a porch somewhere to play checkers or cards. I never got into little league, we had a flat vacant lot that we’d mow an infield into. Every summer night after dinner. Little kids got 6 strikes, if the ball got lost in the tall grass of the outfield, well that was either a double or a “do over”. Those were the days… as kids, we just had to work it out. I think that’s the one thing that kids now have never learned. Everything now is just way too organized and has too many rules.

But that’s just me. Grumble grumble, but wow! A lot of happy memories.