TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

POSTED BY: Connorflynn
UPDATED: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 01:26
VIEWED: 5590
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CONNORFLYNN

Friday, May 20, 2005 12:01 PM

I received this in an e-mail from an old friend and really had to share this!!

enjoy and it is very true!!

Connor_flynn
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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
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
actually 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 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 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 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!

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 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? hehehe

DIETCOKE

Friday, May 20, 2005 4:36 PM

Yep, we some how lived through it all! Life was good.

SIGMANUNKI

Friday, May 20, 2005 8:05 PM

Most of this can be applied to those of us that grew up in the 80's as well.

Thanks for sharing

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

SIMONWHO

Friday, May 20, 2005 8:38 PM

US Life Expectancies:

Year All Male Female
2001 77.2 74.4 79.8
2000 77 74.3 79.7
1999 76.7 73.9 79.4
1998 76.7 73.8 79.5
1997 76.5 73.6 79.4
1996 76.1 73.1 79.1
1995 75.8 72.5 78.9
1994 75.7 72.4 79
1993 75.5 72.2 78.8
1992 75.8 72.3 79.1
1991 75.5 72 78.9
1990 75.4 71.8 78.8
1989 75.1 71.7 78.5
1988 74.9 71.4 78.3
1987 74.9 71.4 78.3
1986 74.7 71.2 78.2
1985 74.7 71.1 78.2
1984 74.7 71.1 78.2
1983 74.6 71 78.1
1982 74.5 70.8 78.1
1981 74.1 70.4 77.8
1980 73.7 70 77.4
1979 73.9 70 77.8
1978 73.5 69.6 77.3
1977 73.3 69.5 77.2
1976 72.9 69.1 76.8
1975 72.6 68.8 76.6
1974 72 68.2 75.9
1973 71.4 67.6 75.3
1972 71.2 67.4 75.1
1971 71.1 67.4 75
1970 70.8 67.1 74.7
1960 69.7 66.6 73.1
1950 68.2 65.6 71.1
1940 62.9 60.8 65.2
1935 61.7 59.9 63.9
1930 59.7 58.1 61.6

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics Reports, vol. 52, no. 3, Sept. 18, 2003

And my message to the children of the 80's, 90's and 2000's:

Well done for not starting any World Wars.
Well done for taking positive action against racism, sexism, bigotry and religious hatred.
Well done for being more open minded than any generation in history.
Well done for learning that just because one person is the Mayor's son and another is just a hick, that doesn't mean one is better than another.
And above all, well done for recognising that those who yearn about the good old days where politicians were noble, prices were reasonable and children respected their elders are totally full of crap and never advanced mankind once in their lives.

I've not seen anything more galling since Reagan claimed responsibility on behalf of his generation for inventing rocket science and computers. Ronald Reagan! I mean for pity's sake, the guy could barely remember his name, let alone invent a paper clip.

You want to go back to the past, great. Let's have burning crosses on every black man's lawn. Let's have children dying of malnutrition because their parents can't get jobs and there's no welfare. Let's have anyone who breaks the strict "moral" codes run out of town - unwed mothers, gays, women with short haircuts. Heck, let's have the good old "Great Depression" back again, that was such fun first time round.

I'm guessing whoever wrote that e-mail originally is another old, whining, middle class, white man whose kids don't respect him properly.

Good for them. Keep it up for the extra 18 years our advances in civilisation have given him.

SIGMANUNKI

Friday, May 20, 2005 9:09 PM

@SimonWho:
I don't know why you're ranting here. All generations have made contributions in there own way. Every generation have progressed society.

I must mention as well that every society has also pulled society back. ie The current generation has playstations, etc but lacks proper etiquette b/c of a lack of proper socialization b/c they are only playing on there playstation and not actually talking to people.

My interpretation of this email what that the author is pointing out that even given that they didn't have the safe-guards that we take for granted today, they still pulled through. Why not just leave it at that?

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

CHRISISALL

Friday, May 20, 2005 9:26 PM

In the 60's when I was five, I stuck my hand into one of those old open faced lawnmowers, lots of stitches and blood, but I lived.
Runnin' with scissors was a snap after that, ha ha ha ha!

Don't get me started on playing with matches Chrisisall

CONNORFLYNN

Friday, May 20, 2005 10:08 PM

LOL Simonwho, you need to simma down nah!

There was nothing even remotely bigoted in that post, but somehow you twisted it into a "Angry , Bitter Whiteman" statement. Who's the real racist here?

You act like the 80's, 90's and 2000's (even though they've only just started) solved all those issues you speak of. The fact is the 30's, 40's 50's 60's and 70's to some extent represented simpler times..where technology and big government didn't rule the day, yet we still strove to better our country and our world. Now our world is trapped in Globalism (hmm..sounds like a World War to me, just that noone wins) and consumerism and of course, gigantic government( Alliance anyone? ).

I'm in my 30's now. I remember looking forward to the Spring through Fall months. Cold Lemonade on a Summer day. The Ice Cream truck, where I could get an ice cream cone (with real ice cream, not this fake crap) for 25 cents or less. I miss the sound of dogs barking and us kids ramming about town making innocent trouble, No drivebys, shootings or high cost property damage. The occasional broken window from a baseball, maybe. The only thing I'm bitter about today is that in a world where there are things we can look back on or look forward to, all most people do is choose to look at the bad things in life ALL THE !@#$@% TIME!!!, instead of enjoying the good things in life, once in awhile (While we still can).

Live in your jaded world if you choose. At least when I was growing up, the government didn't mandate every last little detail of my life..and us kids lived life, rather then wasted away in front of the boob tube or video games and blame the state of the world on someone else. We also didn't sit idly by and proclaim how the world owed us something. Our parents taught us better and when we misbehaved we got disciplined without some bleeding heart crying in their lattes about the travesties of parental rights.

Forgive me for reminiscing on how simple life was back then. Strangely enough, when I look at your fancy lifespan statistics, we really haven't extended the average lifespan much in 50+ years have we? And of those extended years that we gained..what is the quality of life like?

SIMONWHO

Friday, May 20, 2005 10:28 PM

He's talking about mothers drinking and smoking during pregnancy as though it was a quaint old custom that had been ruled out by killjoys. That's why I can't just "leave it as that". At best, it's facetious, at worst, it's encouraging pregnant women to drink and smoke because "my parents used and it didn't affect me". The ones that survived, survived. Unfortunately innumerate ones didn't and yes, it was the fault of choking on buttons from badly produced toys or birth defects caused by smoking. It's like the 80 year old who boasts about how he drinks five pints every evening and smokes a pipe and it never harmed him. Well, sure, but it killed every single other person who could have reached 80 had they taken better care of themselves.

>> The current generation has playstations, etc but lacks proper etiquette b/c of a lack of proper socialization b/c they are only playing on there playstation and not actually talking to people.

Substitute "comic books" or "Dungeons and Dragons" or "rock and roll" or "dance music" (as in jive) or "cinemaphiles" or "bicycle riders" or indeed pretty much any technological advancement in entertainment and you'd have the same argument of the generation 10, 20, 50, 100 years past.

It's not just the philistinical argument that bothers me. It's the accusation seemingly aimed at us about our "lawsuit happy, overprotective society" when they are the generation that created it.

Not every generation has progressed society. Some have taken it down horrific corridors. Could you really argue the generation of the "cultural revolution" in China advanced their society? Of course not, they set it back decades, as well as destroying irreplacable pieces of their heritage.

Edit- just to catch up with the posts since the one I was replying to: our average lifespan has jumped 18 years since 1930. And if you like looking on the positive side of life so much, you should hate that negative "glass used to be half full, now it's half empty" original e-mail. Life was simpler then, sure. But that's because everything was over-simplified.

I love this brave new world. I can't imagine a world where I can't send a text message to my brother in Australia while reading e-mails from people in America. Heck, I can't imagine a world without the Internet and I got through the first 19 years of my life without it.

What I hate is this awful "life used to be great" rubbish which was true if, like me, you grew up in a nice, rich, middle class, white family. Unfortunately most people were in the mud and stayed that way.

But you're doubtlessly right, this was just a jolly e-mail poking fun at the modern world. I should really not analyse this sort of stuff.

RUE

Saturday, May 21, 2005 2:23 AM

I agree with you - it is faux-quaint faux-folksy tripe that we are all supposed to just go along with. Regulation BAD, government BAD.

I grew up as one of the 'last generation of free-range children.'

Was life so good?

Neighborhood children had lead poisoning - ha ha ha it's so funny - not. I wish you could have seen their faces as they tried to comprehend everyday life. They were sweet kids, but struggling every minute and doomed for life.

Both parents smoked - and my lungs are a good 15% less effective than normal, not to mention the asthma acquired early. They are enough to disqualify me from SCBA (air-pak) safety and rescue work.

We had an idyllic family life, factoring-out one alcoholic parent and the other with PTSD from 'the war'. And one studiously didn't notice the neighbor lady screaming at the top of her lungs at the kids day after day as the Valium wore off, or the neighbor guy on the other side plowed and drunk on the chaise all weekend, every weekend, until fall weather closed the show.

Asbestos was good and was used everywhere, though the medical profession knew it was a killer in 1920.

It's true that when I grew up, ALL foods were organic b/c the multinational agro-corps hadn't yet figured out how to manufacture synthetic food. But is our industrial diet today something we can blame on government interference?

I lived in a nice, secure lower-middle-class suburb, where everybody knew everybody; and I was just a half mile from farmland, creeks and wild fields. Some things were good, some bad. But decades beyond childhood, having come to terms with troubles far past, it's easy to recast growing up into a carefree-rosy nostalgia.

It's just that it really wasn't so.

And the ideology that depends on that quaint lie is just as bogus.

SIGNYM

Saturday, May 21, 2005 4:16 AM

Yeah, fetal alcohol syndrome is really quaint. I remember a lot of GOOD things from my childhood- duck and cover, the Cuban Missile crisis, white flight, nuns banging kids' heads on blackboards until their noses bled, bullies... ah... life was sweet!

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