Kids Born in the 1930s-1970s

Found this on a Poly reminiscences website...it fits my memories. Contributed by Sherry Newman Mallory.

First we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, 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 died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real 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 okay.

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, Nintendos, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no ninety-nine channels on cable TV, no videotape movies, no Surroundsound, 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 were given BB guns for our tenth birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and although we were warned it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to friends' houses and knocked on the door or rang the bell or just yelled for 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 parents bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors ever! The past fifty 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.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

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

Adios