Those were the days!! Are you getting old now??

[doug darter]

Hi,

A friend sent this, and I liked it a lot. Thought you might too.

FOR EVERYONE BORN BEFORE 1980!!!

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who
were kids in the 60's, 70's 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 juice 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 this.

We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went
top speed down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.
After running into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to
solve the problem.

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 surround sound, no
mobile phones,no personal computers, no DVDs, no Internet chat
rooms.

We had friends - we went outside and found them.

We played elastics and 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 fist fights but no prosecution followed from other
parents.

We played chap-the-door-run-away and were actually afraid of the
owners catching us.

We walked to friends' homes.

We also, believe it or not, WALKED to school; we didn't rely on
mummy or daddy to drive us to school, which was just round the
corner.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls.

We rode bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was 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
success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

And you're one of them. Congratulations!

Pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow as real kids,
before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own
good.

For those of you who aren't old enough, thought you might like to
read about us.

This my friends, is surprisingly frightening......and it might put
a smile on your face:

The majority of students in universities today were born in
1986........They are called youth.

They have never heard of We are the World, We are the children, and
the Uptown Girl they know is by Westlife not Billy Joel. They have
never heard of Rick Astley, Bananarama, Nena Cherry or Belinda
Carlisle.

For them, there has always been only one Germany and one Vietnam.

AIDS has existed since they were born. CD's have existed since they
were born.

Michael Jackson has always been white.

To them John Travolta has always been round in shape and they can't
Imagine how this fat guy could be a god of dance.

They believe that Charlie's Angels and Mission Impossible are films
from last year.

They can never imagine life before computers.

They'll never have pretended to be the A Team, RedHand Gang or the
Famous Five.

They'll never have applied to be on Jim'll Fix It or Why Don't You.

They can't believe a black and white television ever existed. And
they will never understand how we could leave the house without a
mobile phone.

Now let's check if we're getting old...

1. You understand what was written above and you smile.

2. You need to sleep more, usually until the afternoon, after a
night out.

3. Your friends are getting married/already married.

4. You are always surprised to see small children playing comfortably with computers.

5. When you see teenagers with mobile phones, you shake your head.

6. You remember watching Dirty Den in EastEnders the first time
around.

7. You meet your friends from time to time, talking about the good
Old days, repeating again all the funny things you have experienced
together.

8. Having read this mail, you are thinking of forwarding it to some
other friends because you think they will like it too...

Yes, you're getting old!!

[Crusader]

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Got me there, Doug! :D

[odklizec]

:lol: Hehe..just today I discussed exactly this topic with my colleagues ;) Maybe we are all zombies? :D

[abraxas]

.
Very good. :lol: :lol: :lol:

john

[Chisholm]

So true.

I was a child in the fifties! I also lived in a rural area

We used to have air pistol battles in the woods where we actually shot each other. The only rules were that you had to aim below the waist and there were rules about how far away you had to be as getting too close would cause serious damage!

We used to make bombs from weedkiller and sugar and use copper pipes to hold the charge.

We used to hold penny bangers in our hands and let them go off.

I always openly carried a large sheath knife on my belt. I never EVER threatened anybody with it or used it for anything other than knifethrowing competitions or bushcraft activities.

We used to catch crabs from a special pool and goad the poor creatures into having life and death fights with one another.

Two of us used to spend the summer holidays having our own "Olympics on the beach. Long jump on & triple jump on the sand. High jump Javelin and hurdles using garden canes or suitable sticks. Shot put and discus usng suitable size and shaped stones.

We all had home made catapults made from ash or hazel. I still have one of mine.

I remember on a couple of occasions at Grammar school boys being caught fighting. Our Maths master would take the class to the gym, make the boys don boxing gloves and we would all cheer while the opponents fought it out under supervision. Can you imagine that happening today. It would be counselling sessions and the opponents would use knives or guns.

None of these activities caused anybody any serious harm.


The one bad aspect of life then was that we almost all had motorcycles. I fell off mine three times unharmed, but I lost several mates in accidents as a teenager.

Martin

[Mike K]

Wow! I thought those things in regards to the young was only happening here in the US. Sad to see it's also happening in Europe too.

One of my favorite summertime activities is we would have squirt guns and ride around on our bikes shooting each other in dogfights. I think this was when we were 8 and 9, or 9 and 10 years old. Fell off the bikes quite often as we would try to jump up a curb to escape an attack, and would sometimes miss and flip or tip over. Of course we'd be right as rain in a day or two. Today I'd be sore and swollen for a week or more, and the bruise would last for two weeks.

We also had cap-pistol fights (couldn't use airguns - suburbs, and too many windows), playing cops and robbers, or cowboys and indians - dying via the honor system. The best guns looked real. Now a days, they have to be clear, or orange, or some safetly color as the cops don't want to have trouble identifying real from toy guns. I never actually heard of a kid being shot by a cop, and besides, we'd never do something that stupid - guns were NEVER pointed at adults.

We had a creek run through our neighborhood. We'd go fishing in it all the time (never actually caught anything), or catch frogs. Every year you'd hear of some kid who fell in when the water was high (usually an immigrant kid in a poor part of town). Then one year one kid of white and rich parents fell in and drowned, and by the next year they had fully concrete piped the creeks in our neighborhood. (The poor part of town still has open creeks to this day - go figure).

My fiancee's nephew (now 14) has never been fishing, never been to a creek (and there is one in his neighborhood), can't ride a bike, and doesn't play ball of any sort anymore (a little bit of pee-wee baseball at 8 ). And he still gets taken to school by his mother. He plays video games all day, must call home all the time when out with friends. Isn't allowed to do much of anything. I think he was 10 before he could go further than a 1 block radius from his house without an adult. I was wandering (or biking) up to 7-8 blocks when I was 6 or 7. When I was 12 I was biking several miles away with friends.

I worry about how protected these kids are now a days. I wonder what they will be like as adults. Will they be ultra-conservative (not politically) and timid? What will western society be like then? How will it affect science and technology? Business? Will all the great entrepaneurs be chinese or indian? Will they want to go to the Moon again, or Mars?

Oh well, enough for now. Good night.