Children of yesteryear.

[SteveO1965]

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1950's, 60's and 70's!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our pushbikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips; no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC or Subway.

Even though the shops closed at 6.00pm, had a half-day closing day nor open on Sundays, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO-ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in them, 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 old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens, and had mud bomb fights.

We didn't have Playstations, Nintendo Wii, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY, no video/DVD films, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms.......... WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

and a world wide web was what you found in the back corner of your father's garage or shed.

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time....

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays..

We rode pushbikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Mum didn't have to go to work to help Dad make ends meet!

RUGBY and CRICKET had trials and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! getting into the team was based on MERIT.
Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and bullies always ruled the playground at school.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora', 'Blade', 'Ridge' or 'Vanilla'

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.

PS -The big type is because your eyes are not too good at your age!

 

[TheCracker]

Amen brother!

 

[Stevisiov]

Its a bit pretentious but I saw the funny side of it

 

[Fastas]

eerie, do I know you SteveO?

Liked the speach though, did you use the soap box from your old go-cart by any chance?

 

[TheCracker]

Looking at the members who've posted, it must be a northern England thing

 

[slowman]

I've often given though to this, and I like to think I'm the last generation of this dying breed. I''m 23 but my childhood was filled with sandboxes, not Xboxes. I played on old fashioned wood and metal playgrounds, not these new soft-impact plastic and rubber playgrounds.

I think kids these days are catered to, and it will create a generation of softies.

 

[Famine]

And yet life expectancy now is 15 years higher than it was in 1950.

 

[wfooshee]

As I sit here munching my powdered-sugar-coated donut(s) I can recall the days of 15-cent hamburgers at McDonald's, in the '60s, so here in the US, we had that much, at least. But your choices were hamburger, cheeseburger, fries, and Coke. No sizes, no fish, chicken, superburgers, ribs, barbecue, or other nonsense.
The TV had no remote, unless you were really well off, but why bother with only 3 channels (4 if there was PBS in your city.) The family watched together, there was no bickering over the schedule, you had Gunsmoke, Bonanza, I Dream of Jeannie, and Star Trek.
One thing you probably missed in England was the race riots.

 

[TheCracker]

One thing you probably missed in England was the race riots.

We had only a few in London and Birmingham in the 80's - but the IRA made up for it with indiscriminate terrorist attacks on the mainland 👍

 

[Omnis]

And yet life expectancy now is 15 years higher than it was in 1950.

That's all hype. In 1950, life didn't have viral videos.

 

[Mark T]

Whenever I read about people growing up in the 1950's (especially Bill Bryson books) I always wish I could could have lived in that era. Everything seemed so perfect and peaceful. That's probably far from the truth but I would have loved to have experienced it.

 

[Sureboss]

Everything seemed so perfect and peaceful because WWII had just finished.

 

[Pupik]

That's all hype. In 1950, life didn't have viral videos.

Nah, they had McCarthyism them.

Two TV sets, one black-and-white 9" set, and a 13" color one for the living room. We got about 6-7 channels (there was something called independent TV stations until the 1990s), depending on which way you moved the rabbit ears.

We had an Atari 2600, but only for rainy and snowy days, and some evenings. We were fortunate to get a personal computer in 1986. No games, you made your own games in BASIC with a manual. We were the only kids on the block with one, and they were amazed by those four-color graphics on a 320x240 pixel monitor.

I did go to a well-funded high school that had some modem-based research abstracts for the public libraries (for books, periodicals, journals and encyclopedias), but it dropped characters in the print-out, oddly. The card catalog and a basic knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System was actually faster, though.

Cell phones and car phones were pipe dreams. We did have rudimentary walkie talkies that worked for about fifteen minutes but produced more noise than signal. You could get away with shouting and yelling, anyhow.

Cassette tapes and record albums were the norm. CDs were for rich people but they only had classical music on them, anyhow. Radios had dials and needles on the fancier ones.

Toys didn't have warning labels, unless you count "Made in U.S.A., Germany, Japan, or China". Many of them didn't have batteries. You could get a basic science kit with toxic chemicals or an electrical wiring kit and nobody feared you were going to destroy the house or stain the carpet.

Abandoned buildings, sandboxes, construction sites, lakes, streams, canals, trees, rooftops, open fields, and other hiding places were generally not off-limits to kids and their imaginations and they did not have warning signs. If you could get there by bicycle, it was never too far away from home.

Whatever you didn't get as a gift, you rigged up or created yourself.

It was okay to collect beer bottle caps, insects, coins, stamps, or any other weird, odd, discarded, and/or disgusting things.

On special occasions, you'd pour all the different sodas together in a large glass, name it something creepy, and drink it on a really harmless dare.

You'd mix up all the crap you could find, and leave it in the freezer or hot sun for a week, just to see what it would do.

Nobody freaked out and called the cops if you wandered around your school yard or playground after school was out (I usually lived near schools).

You earned your scrapes and bruises, and wore them as a badge of honor. Failing that, you'd make your own awards.

You came home when it was dark, and you had dinner as a family.

And you read yourself a book before you went to sleep.

I miss those days.

 

[Wolfe]

I've often given though to this, and I like to think I'm the last generation of this dying breed. I''m 23 but my childhood was filled with sandboxes, not Xboxes. I played on old fashioned wood and metal playgrounds, not these new soft-impact plastic and rubber playgrounds.

I think kids these days are catered to, and it will create a generation of softies.

I'm 22 and was going to say the same thing. Most of these things (apart from obvious exceptions like riding without seatbelts) reminded me of my '80s/'90s childhood.

 

[Dave A]

My childhood was okay, messing around on construction sites, playing football on school fields after school was closed. Obviousely I wasn't born in the 50's, but I have noticed a major shif in my life time. I can't compare my childhood with kids these days, by token I'm sure mine was vastly different to kinds in the 60's and 70's. When I was in school kids did things, things that didn't involve hanging aroundon street corners in large groups. We all played footall all the time, climbed trees, explored building sites. Got cuts, bruieses and grazes almost every time we went out. We loved to explore the surroundings and people in general didn't mind what we weer doing because they just took it that we werrn't robbing, vandalising or breaking anything.

It's hard to put your finger on what has caused the shifts, it's has been big since I was a kid though. Even in the countryside where I spent a lot of summers with my mums side of the family, things have changed. Kids arn't just out playing football, explorings places, messing about. They're hangining around the streets or car parks in groups doing nothing. Fiddling with thier modbile phones non-stop. I think a lot of kids are becoming anti-social, losing the power to communicate effectively and to relate to people who grew up differently. One of my mates has a younger brother and he's got zero personality. It's a shame because underneath the hoody and the inability to string more than a one word answer together he's a decent kid. He's 17 and he doesn't cause trouble, but he doesn't speak to anyone. He just sits in the corner teletexing all night with his head phones on. You try to have a chat to him and it's all one word answers. You crack a joke and you get a grin for 2 seconds then the attention is back to his mobile. I might sound like I'm saying mobile phones are the problem but these are just examples ad things I see and notice. They might be part of the problem they might not be. But I wouldn't like to have grown up any later than I did, earlier maybe but I'm happy with my childhood.

 

[nk4e]

During the 90's and the rise of gangsta rap to today's current top hits. Though most of my childhood was playing with friends on the streets and listening to my parents or my grandmother alot of times. There was no remote for the TV so one of us had to change the channel....ahh...who can remember Gov. Gray Davis of California.

 

[Kneedragger]

who can remember Gov. Gray Davis of California.

No. But heres a quote from gov Ronald Regan during the late sixties, "yes I saw the hippies with their signs saying 'make love not war' ..but by the looks of them I doubt they have the ability to do either one!"

good times.. good times..

 

[YSSMAN]

I'm 22 and was going to say the same thing. Most of these things (apart from obvious exceptions like riding without seatbelts) reminded me of my '80s/'90s childhood.

I tend to find that those born after the fall of the wall tend to be a bit "soft" in general. Its not a huge difference between them and us (I'm 22 as well), but it just seems like such a strange mentality. Take the difference between myself and my 14 year old half-sister... I don't think she can understand a world where cell phones, the internet and cable (for the most part) didn't exist. Hell, back then, your parents could kick your ass and there wasn't anything people could do about it.

We should bring back the Cold War. I think that's the reason why new kids suck.

 

[Rykon Zero]

I do get the feeling that I've been softened by things like technology, although I will admit, I spent most of my time until about 3rd grade outside. After that, I was an indoors guy, finally realising the impact of my father's death. And I can sure as hell imagine a time where technological accessories did not exist, although I'd have to get used to it by two weeks, or I'd go insane.

 

[niky]

I tend to find that those born after the fall of the wall tend to be a bit "soft" in general. Its not a huge difference between them and us (I'm 22 as well), but it just seems like such a strange mentality. Take the difference between myself and my 14 year old half-sister... I don't think she can understand a world where cell phones, the internet and cable (for the most part) didn't exist. Hell, back then, your parents could kick your ass and there wasn't anything people could do about it.

We should bring back the Cold War. I think that's the reason why new kids suck.

I spent nearly two decades of my life unable to go to sleep at night. I'd rather not have that again, thank you.

But I do miss the days... playing in the rain. Taking long hikes just for the hell of it. Biking to the far end of nowhere... Mixing soft-drinks? GTFOutta here... that's weak stuff... dump a menthos in there and drink it to see if your head will explode. I drew the line at ketchup and Coke, or rootbeer and raw eggs though... that's just... ewww...

Picking wild fruit... walking in the grass... breathing clean air... yup... life when we were kids was great... i wish I could give my kid the same, but that would require moving further away from the city and giving up all my favorite cable shows and free internet.

 

[Small_Fryz]

i grew up in the "bush" with 100 kids at the school, so most of my childhood years 6 - 13 or so was spent doing much of the post at the top because we just didnt have the technology and stuff out in the bush. And being a small town it was much more like the old days i guess, not so if i grew up in the "city". I would of missed out on all of that.

 

[Pupik]

Mixing soft-drinks? GTFOutta here... that's weak stuff...

I have a responsibility as a moderator to not list everything I did/drank as a kid/teenager.

 

[Wolfe]

I tend to find that those born after the fall of the wall tend to be a bit "soft" in general. Its not a huge difference between them and us (I'm 22 as well), but it just seems like such a strange mentality. Take the difference between myself and my 14 year old half-sister... I don't think she can understand a world where cell phones, the internet and cable (for the most part) didn't exist. Hell, back then, your parents could kick your ass and there wasn't anything people could do about it.

We should bring back the Cold War. I think that's the reason why new kids suck.

I'd buy that theory. My sister was born less than a year before the fall of the wall, and she had the same sort of childhood as I did. If she was born a few years later, she might have grown up during the period when my dad started falling into the modern line of overprotective thinking. Stuff like telling us to stop buying soda in cans because the aluminum would give us Alzheimer's, or refusing to let me be put on laughing gas while they removed four of my adult teeth, for fear that I wouldn't wake up again (after watching a TV program about such a case).

 

[OZZYGT]

I think it also depends where you grew up. You come to NYC or any "modern" city and you'll find those anti-social zombie kids with those eye magnets called side-kicks.

But I went back to Italy last December and I was glad to see boys playing football in the streets, riding bikes, and going to rivers, lakes and stuff. I come from a small town, and most of the adults there have almost the same mentality as our grandfathers. I talked top my little cousins and it seems they still know what having fun is.
I've been in Argentina also, and it looks even funnier there. There's technology and what not, but you can clearly see kids still enjoying their lives to the fullest.

I'm sure that in the southern states of the US such as Kentucky, Kansas, Louisiana, etc. this type of upbringing still exists to some extent.

I've always said that when I have my own children, I'd certainly take them for a couple of years to these places where real important values are still kept.

 

[niky]

I have a responsibility as a moderator to not list everything I did/drank as a kid/teenager.

Teenager... maybe (snot in beer? That can't be a bannable offense... ) but as a kid? You're putting me on...

 

[Thiele]

i grew up in the "bush" with 100 kids at the school, so most of my childhood years 6 - 13 or so was spent doing much of the post at the top because we just didnt have the technology and stuff out in the bush. And being a small town it was much more like the old days i guess, not so if i grew up in the "city". I would of missed out on all of that.

I live in the "bush" 250km from the city and 80km from even a half-large town. (4,000 people) even there there's not a lot... I might go to Adelaide once every 6 months if i'm lucky. There's about 150 people at our school and at this stage there's only going to be 3 year 12's or something. So there's not a lot of funding for education down here. Another problem out here is phone reception, internet, etc. I'm on the fastest available plan here (512kbps) and barely have mobile reception at home.

Like Small Fryz said, it is a bit like the old days, very little traffic goes around here and there is lots of things to do you can't do in the city, such as drive a car around without a license (on private property and dirt roads) and motorbike... Out in the country since there are such small communities everyone knows each other and everyone is very "friendly" to each other.

 

[SteveO1965]

I live in the "bush" 250km from the city and 80km from even a half-large town. (4,000 people) even there there's not a lot... I might go to Adelaide once every 6 months if i'm lucky. There's about 150 people at our school and at this stage there's only going to be 3 year 12's or something. So there's not a lot of funding for education down here. Another problem out here is phone reception, internet, etc. I'm on the fastest available plan here (512kbps) and barely have mobile reception at home.

Like Small Fryz said, it is a bit like the old days, very little traffic goes around here and there is lots of things to do you can't do in the city, such as drive a car around without a license (on private property and dirt roads) and motorbike... Out in the country since there are such small communities everyone knows each other and everyone is very "friendly" to each other.

Sounds like heaven to me 👍

 

[Thiele]

Sounds like heaven to me 👍

It has it's Ups and downs. I like it, a lot kids my age want to move to the city as soon as they leave school though, some of them are already boarding in Adelaide.

That reminds me, the other problem down here is jobs. There is not a lot a lot of jobs available down here and a lot of people have to move to the city to get a good job... I like visiting the city, but i would like to stay out here if i can, there are a few smaqll buisnesses down here with intrest in what i'm doing.

There are a lot of older retired people down here too, a lot of them are from the city and not there is a lot of development around these parts with million dollar homes on the sea-front and most of them just look ... that kind of spoils the heritage of some of the small towns too...

 

[Barracuda]

I don't really know if I'm a softy or what. As a kid I spent most of my extra time playing soccer, but then again I would also play PS1 and sega from time to time. I spent a lot of time with my cousin actually, but I never really went outside. I always wanted to go outside and play with my friends but my parents were very strict so I just stayed inside or played in the yard. I guess it was a good thing though because I can guarantee if I hung out at my friends house I would have taken part in many an illegal activity. I'm 17 by the way.

I would definately trade all the technology of today for the ability to have grown up in the 50s and 60s though.

 

[T-Squared]

I'm 14 and growing up now sucks. Almost everyone my age are softies, ex. I called someone "Charlie" because it was their middle name, and I got turned in for harasment and almost got a 3 day suspention. (I'm a kid who hardly ever gets in trouble.) My Parents are worry-warriors, they don't let me do anything, ride my bike a mile away and I have to talk to my parents for a hour to connvice them that I'll be safe. I wanted to make a go kart and the answar was "No, you could fall of." Anything more dangerous than a bowl of oatmeal is a big N-O! They don't even let me spend money that I make on something more than $50. Parents just need to let their kids have more freedom and some kids need less freedom. ex. Kids who walk around town all day doing drugs. Rant over/