November 02, 2007, 7:59 p.m.
From the Facebook group called "Being born in the 60s, 70s and 80s was Awesome!"
Congratulations to everyone who was born in the Sixties, Seventies, and the Eighties !!
This a group for all the people who remember the good old times... and this is why it was Awesome!
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 tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured 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 van - loose - was always great fun.
We drank water from the garden hosepipe 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 cakes, white bread and real butter and drank 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 text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We played with worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
Made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out any eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
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 group 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?!
Heck yeah, I'm sick of that other list that is constantly floating around...this is a good list.
- Actually playing outside all day...hardly any electronic toys (I say hardly any, since I did have an ancient old keyboard)
- Making mud pies (YES, I used to make mud brownies with the old measuring cups from the laundry detergent boxes and then I'd decorate them with "seasonings" which were basically things from our pine tree in the backyard)
- Playing House in the backyard, riding my bike up and down my street for literally hours at a time
- A good family outing was going through the drive-thru at McDonald's (because no one really thought about the negative effects on health) and taking the food to the waterfront or the park and hanging out there for the afternoon...
- Fighting over who got to sit in the front seat...kids today don't get that pleasure.
- Playing outside even on cold days...when you came inside finally and washed your hands, the water felt hot to your freezing hands.
- No cell phones...it was kind of nice to be able to be in class or go to a concert/play and not have a cell phone go off every 5 minutes.
That's all I have right now. I really need to come up with a good way of compiling my nostalgic memories and stuff. For now, I think I'll just keep things here, and label them as NOSTALGIA ENTRIES.