Survivors In A Brave World

[peter991]

Survivors in a Brave World

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 1960s, 1970s 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 - 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 pop 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 it.

• We spent hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went top speed down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.

• 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 mobile phones, no personal computers, and no Internet chat rooms. We had friends and we played elastics and street rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt. We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones but there were no law suits. We had full on fistfights but no prosecution followed from other parents. We played knock-and-run and were actually afraid of the owners catching us. We walked to friend's homes. We also, believe it or not, WALKED to school. We made up games with sticks and tennis balls. We rode bikes in packs of 7 and the idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law 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.

If you are one of us - Congratulations! If you’re not – don’t you wish you were!

We had the luck to grow up as real kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives ………..for our own good.

[suegha]

This is deeply profound - and I was born in 1962!