Just been sent this by my brother - don't know the source... and yes, I now feel OLD!!
Born before 1986??
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us Who were
kids in the 60's, 70's and early 80's probably shouldn't have survived
because first, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank
while they carried us.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested for
diabetes, 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 lawsuits.
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 explosion of innovation and new ideas We had freedom,
failure, 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 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.
(possibly not a bad thing of course....) 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 Red Hand 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 smiled.
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!
HaHaHa. Too very true.
Last summer I took my kids camping and fish and feathers sent them back to our campsite for riding their bikes around with no helmets. It was a bloody campsite, not a freeway!
And road trips are now a nightmare for kids all buckled in the back and strapped into car seats. Nothing like escaping sibling bite marks by jumping into the front seat with mom and dad. Not to mention being able to stretch out across the back seat for a snooze and "accidentally" kicking your little brother a few times while trying to get comfortable.
Ahhhh, the good old days. 😀
In the early 50's we didn't have a TV....listened to the radio in the evening (sit-coms, detectives & westerns), and sometimes put together puzzles on the dining room table. As kids we went to the appliance store & got big cardboard boxes and fixed them up inside to look like airplanes that we pretended to fly. We must have really been bored but didn't know it!
Originally posted by Moldy Crow1971- the year of decimalisation, i had a grifter push bike in the eighties, evey body else had the bmx, i tried to jump ramps on my grifter, but the bloody thing was too damn heavy.
Born in 1983 , old ? I've got hemorrhoids older than you , kid .