PEOPLE OVER FORTY SHOULD BE DEAD

EMail | 1/17/2004 | W. Toeppe

[JesseHousman]

People Over 40 Should Be Dead

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. 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 seatbelts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors! We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode 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 would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us all day.

NO CELL PHONES!!!!! Unthinkable!

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms! . We had friends! We went outside and found them. We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt. We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it. We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home 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. Some students weren't! as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors! Tests were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law. Imagine that!

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.

How fortunate we were to grow up as kids before lawyers and burgeoning government regulated our lives, for our own good. How sorry I am for what those years of meddling have done to our children and grandchildren and even sorrier that we all allowed the government and politicians to get away with it!

[BSunday]

14 years old? Darn, my oldest son is only 9, but I want him to marry someone brave like your daugher. I mean perhaps it was a dumb stunt but the point is - she was not afraid to do it. I want all my boys to marry girls who have the wherewithal to stand up and be counted when things get tough. But hey, when he is 20 she will be 26...

[Mustang]

"Hey--I resemble those kids!"

Me too. Everything in the above article reminds me of those good'ole days. I'm glad I was born in 1948!

Mustang sends from "Malpaso News"

[knak]

We used to run in the fog behind the mosquito trucks that would cruise the neighborhood at dusk. We're still alive!

[woofie]

How about if we just feel dead?

[ArneFufkin]

The thing that strikes me is that most all suburban kids today are absolutely incapable of organizing their own pick up games. The old days of the two "understood" best player/captains stepping out from the group, and picking from the crowd in talent/capability order ... like happened every damn day in my childhood ... are prohibited by the touchy feely Social Worker types. Somebody's self esteem may be hurt.

If you took ten kids today, and asked to form two five player Basketball teams, they'd look like the extras from "Night of the Living Dead."

But, as boys growing to men, that was a useful exercise. You knew where you stood. If you were one of the last two or three guys picked from 14 of your buddies in pickup baseball or basketball EVERY DAMN TIME ... you had one of two choices 1.) you could work night and day to get your skill to the sports level where you earned your pals respect and maybe play high school sports or 2.) you'd say **** baseball, work day and night to learn to play rock guitar, where you'd sleep with beautiful 25 year old women from age 17 to 60.

A very valuable life lesson.

[Consort]

They used to play:

Stick Ball Ring-O-Levio Kick the Can Street Hockey Skelly Off the Wall Jacks

Pitching Pennies Marbles Spin the Top Punch Ball Stoop Ball Curb Ball Johnny Ride the Pony

Diamond Ball Slug Simon Says Knuck War Old Maid Spud

Go Fish Running Bases Flipping Cards Jump Rope Double Dutch May I Spin the Bottle

Red Light - Green Light Follow the Leader Hop Scotch Monkey in the Middle Box Ball Hit the Penny Slap Ball

[HighWheeler]

In my mid-teens, my buddies and I used to spend entire nights each summer hitchhiking from 11 pm to 7 am, just to see where we could go around the city. I would even hitch a ride to school when my car was in repair, and I would get picked up within a minute every time.

This, of course, was back when all the criminals and nutjobs were either in prison or in a Cuckoo Nest hospital, of course.

Today, the libs are letting the patients run the assylum. The innocent life I grew up in is virtually gone, the in-your-face teachings of MTV, and the shame and embarrassment people would feel after saying something stupid has been replaced by the liberal ranting idiots who are "Proud 2B Stupid". Even women who have been taught that road rage is justified if you've been dissed don't mind running a pregnant woman off the road to kill both of them. All you need to do -IF- you get caught is to cry and plead that it was a mistake and you are off the hook.

Defense lawyers used to only determine that the defendant's rights were not violated, and that the evidence against them was accurate and collected within the bounds of the law. Now these lawyers come up with wild tales from an alternate universe to explain to the jury that it is "possible" that someone else could have done this, or that the 17 y.o. boy who killed the little girl did so only after he learned the 23 bone crushing moves he used on her from watching World Wrestling, proof that it's not his fault. And the idiots on the jury buy the story as something reasonable, and give him 2 years probation.

Mass intelligence is on the wane, and people wonder why so many high paying jobs go overseas. Parents are more concerned with their career and money than the welfare and education of their kids.

[jaugust]

The biggest problem with us boomers is that we grew up when our parents were reading Dr Spock and how the parent had to be a friend to the child instead of a parent. Although my parents weren't that way I can see how parents in the less rural parts of the country(urban, suburban)might get caught up in pop psychology. After 6th grade I don't ever recall any kid being spanked in school. For that matter I don't ever recall any kid being spanked anywhere. Up until that time we were still learning good manners and good citizenship.

[FreepLady]

We live on a quiet street. The reason it is so quiet is that the 20 or so kids on the street NEVER come outside! We try to push our kids out the door and go to the other kids houses, but we literally have to push! My husband even bought a bike so that he could ride with them up and down the street. It's so sad...

[knak]

Did anybody have "block parties"?

[navygal]

I remember playing kick the can with all of the neighborhood kids, sometimes playing dodge ball all day until the street lights came on. If we did not pay attention to the street lights we would get spanked.

[Halls]

Yes, I remember when my family would take trips to Colorodo all the time and we would get to spread out in the back of our Suburban and didn't have to wear seatbelts the whole way there. We could lay down and take naps, we could play games our sister or brother while facing them, and had no cares. No, my kids have to endure car rides sitting in seats facing front of seatbelts on the whole time w/are heading to wherever we are going. My how things have changed.

[Petronski]

It must have been about 1977, when I was 10, when me and my neighborhood buddies got some old scrap wood, wagon wheels and so forth all together and built a great go-cart. We triumphantly towed it to the top of a very big hill and as the winner of the right to ride it first prepared to launch, we realized we had no brakes.

No brakes? You ride it! No, you ride it!

As it was a very big hill, we dejectedly towed it back to the empty field where we'd built it and began to devise some kind of braking system.

[navygal]

we would also play ghost in the grave yard (that was my favorite one)

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

My kids are pretty much wimps like me......lol........ except that my son keeps talking about wanting to sky dive with his Dad.......

[BSunday]

Call me a rebel, but on long trips I let my kids take off their seatbelts....and don't be shocked, but if the baby gets REALLY fussy, she comes up front with Mom ( just for a few minutes)

[BSunday]

LMBO love that tag line!!

[Cvengr]

Sometimes I feel like I'm Ensign Gay, just sitting back and watching history taking place.

IMHO, they debauchery we witness today makes manifest that any and all efforts to produce good, independent of God, are simply good for nothing.

We live in an off-the-shelf society, where even those who understand how to make the products people consume are considered too cumbersome. Patience is considered inefficient, while a rush to blunders is considered better than nothing.

When the resources dry up, those in control will then blame those who were producing them for their existence and relative demand.

Such is a consequence of the soulish carnal person.

[ArneFufkin]

Oh yea, I forgot to mention, we worked our little butts off during the spring,summer and fall. From early morning until late evening. One last thing, I remember one of the happiest days of my life, one day when we got off of the school bus, the DeLavel milk machine man was installing a milking machine in the barn. No more hand milking at our place. whoopee!

FReegards! I grew up in Wisconsin in the 60s, and many of my future friends and their folks and older siblings lived a similar, dairy farming life. I go to Wisconsin a lot, and I always buy beers (those weird 7 oz. rural glass mugs) for the good men sitting around at the taverns during the Winter months. I'll yak with them forever.

I'm hoping your kids, or grandkids can sit on their asses or move around freely to make lots of money with the skills, education and opportunities you provided them through your work ethic! You need to be supported in a style you deserve come retirement!

[Cvengr]

"Did anybody have "block parties"?"

Careful,...the enterprising inner city disadvantaged youth of today might interpret this as a method of redistributing your income on your auto body when they haul a cinder block to a nearby expressway overpass.