Posted on 08/05/2013 4:40:05 AM PDT by Kaslin
Lol - the dog obsession is nuts up here, too. When we have a gathering of several couples, all of the talk is about pets! Cats, dogs....it’s nuts. Hardly any mention of their children. All about the various moods and cute little antics of the stupid pets! It really isn’t healthy, and it’s turned me anti-pet.
Exactly. There are so few moms at home any more that most neighborhoods are full of empty houses that are only occupied in the evenings and on weekends.
When neighborhoods were full of moms and kids, it was much safer for kids to be out running around, because the moms knew the people belonged in the neighborhood during the day and could recognize strangers.
And you’re right about how kids’ lives are organized every minute of the day, too. Ever since the “experts” decided they knew how kids learn and what they should know when, kids have lost the freedom to explore, create, and learn on their own. Real learning is largely invisible to the outsider. It irritates me that every toy or game these days has to be educational. Fun is educational, but kids aren’t allowed to have unstructured fun today.
If you want to see that America you have to go to the Mexican neighborhoods, plenty of kids running around and a lot of street vendors and general small scale commerce. Suburbia is much more isolating. Probably not popular to say, but generally true.
My daughter rather play outside. She has a Nintendo DS and a Wii. They might get played with twice a month. Most of the neighborhood kids play outside too. My daughter, who is going into second grade, knows she cannot play in the front though without her friends or myself or my husband out there. Unfortunately, you never know if there’s a Sicko lurking. We tell her we trust her, but we don’t trust others (she knows what we mean).
She also walks to and from school, with me or with other neighborhood kids. I’m sorry if I wont let her walk alone. Again, you hear of too many kids disappearing on their way to school.
There are 2 kids in the neighborhood that rarely play outside. Their parents let them stay inside to be on their video games, ipads, other expensive gadgets instead of encouraging them to play outside. Incidentally, those are the only kids that are FAT.
My brother and his wife lived in Beverly Hills for awhile in the 70’s. I went out there to visit them. The first thing I noticed was that there were no kids outside. I asked him why and he said parents arrange to have kids visit one another. He said that everybody was afraid of kidnapping.
I was born five days before D-Day, on a tiny farm in SC. From the time I was able to carry in one stick of firewood at a time I had chores to do. Right now I am waiting for “Pedro” the tree service operator who lives within shouting distance to come by and give me a price to remove a big RED Oak that is at least four feet thick. It is leaning and I don’t want to take a chance on it falling and doing a lot of damage. I look at that tree and remember when I and my older brother cut one about the same size with a two man crosscut saw. The saw was five and one half feet long and when you hit the center of the log there was only room for a very short stroke. I could not have been more than eleven and he was no more than fourteen. We felled the tree, cut it up in firewood lengths and hauled it back to the house with a groundsled pulled by a mule. We were working unsupervised, the only other person there most of the time was my mother who was in the house two hundred yards from the tree. My father was miles away at work. Of course we didn’t do it in one day. It took many Saturdays and evenings after school to cut up all that and haul it home. That is the kind of work I was involved in from the time my age was two digits and even before. When I allowed my grandson to use my machete at age ten his father freaked out. Things certainly are different now.
“I shared a room with my brother, who I idolized as a kid. He was a great big brother who let me hang around with him and his friends. He was an all-state middle linebacker in high school, but still made time to invest in me. Over 40 years later, we are still best buddies, and I cherish the memories of sharing a room with him. I laugh when I see people with 3 kids think they have to move so each of their kids can have their own room.”
How fortunate you are!
God bless you for your hard work through the years, Rip. I only pray that I can grow to be as strong an American as I do not doubt you were.
Yes I am!
“Things certainly are different now.”
Back in the ‘30s, my grandparents used to visit kinfolks in the countryside beyond Fort Worth. My uncle was ten years old. Someone lent him an ancient blackpowder 12-gauge shotgun and a few precious shells and suggested he go hunt for jackrabbits. “Now, Sammy, go out a-ways and don’t aim that towards the house”. His happiest memories were waiting hours until some curious old jack stood atop his mound for a look around. BOOM!
“When neighborhoods were full of moms and kids...”
Those were the days! Growing up in the 70’s, there was a mom in every house who would either give you something to eat or yell at you if needed. In the evenings, my folks would sit on their front stoop smoking and relaxing with a beer while we played TV Tag or rode our big wheels and bikes. Eventually neighbors would come over to have a smoke with my parents while their kids would join in the games. Only once..in 1971 did our folks call us in on a beautiful summer evening. Apparently a teen girl was found murdered right up the road. They think a neighbor boy did it, but it was never proven and the family moved away. However, things returned to normal and we blithely played and swam the summers away.
Good point....but, as usual, it always come back to GOV’T.
The same group of jack-offs who’ll let brood-mare welfare mommy have 30 kids w/out a 2nd thought.
Though, I think most of those same kids (making the ‘call-ins), couldn’t live the ‘system life’ before asking to be returned to their parents/home.
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