A simpler, better place

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[chance33_98]

A simpler, better place

To hear most modern “authorities” tell it, the human race should not have made it this far. Consider that everything you buy these days — from a jug of bleach to a gun — has warning labels all over it. And yet, people continue to misuse the same said products on a daily basis, much to the threat to their own health.

Consider also that for many years the vast majority of people utilized common sense when dealing with these things and never once endangered their own lives with them. Fact is, if you are over 35:

• Your baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.

• There were no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when you rode a bike it was without a helmet. You probably hitch-hiked at some point in your life, too.

• You rode in cars with no seat belts or air bags, and riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was a treat.

• You ate cupcakes, bread and butter and drank soda pop with refined sugar in it, but chances are you were not overweight because you were always running around playing outdoors.

• You shared one soft drink with four friends, all drinking from one bottle and nobody got sick or died.

• You did not have Playstation, Nintendo 64, X -Box, video games or 99 channels on a satellite dish, or even video tapes, cell phones, chat rooms or the internet. You did not miss them, as you had friends with which to do real world things with.

• You fell out of trees, got cut and broke teeth, even bones sometimes, without any lawsuits being filed. They were considered accidents and nobody was blamed.

• Occasionally, you got into fights and somebody got punched or hit or slapped before being forced to make up. No guns or knives were pulled.

• Little League and other junior sports had tryouts and not everybody made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with the disappointment without filing lawsuits claiming their self esteem was injured.

• When you got into trouble at school, your parents did not bail you out. They sided with the school. If you got into trouble with the law, they sided with the law. There were rules to obey in society and you had to obey them — or suffer the consequences. Yes, if you are over 35, you probably remember when the world was a much simpler place. And, in many ways, you probably recall it as being better, too.

Imagine that.

[SamAdams76]

Good post! The world was very much like that when I was growing up in the late 1960s and 1970s. In particular, I remember trying out for the Little League when I was 12. I struck out and missed most of the grounders and pop-ups that were hit out to me. Walking off the field, I knew I wasn't going to make a team. It was disappointing, but I dealt with it.

I try to make my kids understand that when I was a kid, there was no Internet, no home computers, no cable, no DVD or VCR players, no compact disc players. They look at me in awe, as if I had a "Daniel Boone" existence. Actually, I pretty much did. On a typical summer day, I'd wolf down a bowl of Cheerios and be outside by 7AM. Wouldn't come back in until the streetlights came on. Mothers up and down the street would hand sandwiches and fruit punch (called "bug juice") out the windows so we wouldn't dirty up their houses with our muddy shoes. I grew up in an Italian neighborhood so everybody was always offering us food!

That's another thing. My mother never worried about where we were all day or where we had lunch. If I didn't come home for lunch, she assumed I got it somewhere else. And if I didn't have lunch at all, no big deal. The only rule was that I be home before dark. Things are so much more tightly controlled today. If a child is out of sight for 15 minutes, the mother is usually cruising up and down the streets in the station wagon with a panic-stricken look on her face.

[petuniasevan]

Good find!

• Your baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. YES!

• There were no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when you rode a bike it was without a helmet. You probably hitch-hiked at some point in your life, too. HELMETS? Didn't exist. CHILDPROOFING? The idea barely existed. HITCHHIKE? Not in So Cal even then for this girl (but the neighbor boys did with no problem).

• You rode in cars with no seat belts or air bags, and riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was a treat. SEAT BELTS? Parents squired us around in 1962 red Ramblers. We sat in the back or sat on dad's lap while he drove. Neighbor's pickup was a kid transport to the mountains.

• You ate cupcakes, bread and butter and drank soda pop with refined sugar in it, but chances are you were not overweight because you were always running around playing outdoors. SKINNY KIDS! TV was a weekend treat for me; we all played tag, hide-and-seek, softball, kickball...

• You shared one soft drink with four friends, all drinking from one bottle and nobody got sick or died. WE LIVED! Also drank from the same muddy hose the dog drank from. We somehow survived the onslaught of germs.

• You did not have Playstation, Nintendo 64, X -Box, video games or 99 channels on a satellite dish, or even video tapes, cell phones, chat rooms or the internet. You did not miss them, as you had friends with which to do real world things with. INDOOR GAMES meant Battleship, Monopoly, Clue, Twister. The telephone was on the wall and had a dial face (YOrktown 2-1179)!

• You fell out of trees, got cut and broke teeth, even bones sometimes, without any lawsuits being filed. They were considered accidents and nobody was blamed. EXERCISE! I climbed the Modesto ash tree in the front yard dozens of times. Fell out twice. Got over it.

• Occasionally, you got into fights and somebody got punched or hit or slapped before being forced to make up. No guns or knives were pulled. FIGHTS! Most kids get into one or another turf war or childish dispute. We got a bloody nose or a black eye. We figured out how to work out our differences, even if it took time.

• Little League and other junior sports had tryouts and not everybody made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with the disappointment without filing lawsuits claiming their self esteem was injured. BASKETBALL! I couldn't make the cut; oh well. I went on to softball. Case closed.

• When you got into trouble at school, your parents did not bail you out. They sided with the school. If you got into trouble with the law, they sided with the law. There were rules to obey in society and you had to obey them — or suffer the consequences. ACCOUNTABILITY! Brother, sister and I paid the piper for the music we danced to. It was a learning experience.

Yes, if you are over 35, you probably remember when the world was a much simpler place. And, in many ways, you probably recall it as being better, too.


Though childhood wasn't easy for me in the '60s and '70s, I wouldn't want to go through it NOW for all the tea in China.

[petuniasevan]

"Daniel Boone" existence

LOL!

Isn't it something? The things you didn't have, you didn't miss!

At Halloween I went trick-or-treating with my younger brother after dark, up and down blocks in suburban blue-collar Southern California. Imagine doing that these days.

[Overtaxed]

BASKETBALL! I couldn't make the cut; oh well. I went on to softball. Case closed.

Heheh...my brother missed the cut for the high school baseball team and went on to.....pole vaulting!

[chance33_98]

Ping

[metesky]

I must have gotten this email 20 times or more.

[chance33_98]

The world was very much like that when I was growing up in the late 1960s and 1970s.

I am 37 myself, life seemed simpler in so many ways back then. The biggest change has been the increase in whiners. When I was a kid we used to walk around the neighborhood, as well as ride bikes, and my mom told me to be careful of people backing out of their driveway. If they didn't see me and they ran me over it was my own fault for not being more careful. And that kind of thinking permeated most everything.

[chance33_98]

I must have gotten this email 20 times or more.

Did not know it was an email too. Just found it while reading through all the news sources in WVA.

[toddst]

My mother never worried about where we were all day or where we had lunch. If I didn't come home for lunch, she assumed I got it somewhere else. And if I didn't have lunch at all, no big deal. The only rule was that I be home before dark.

This post plus your comments brings back memories. The entire neighborhood was "family." You could eat lunch in any home and whether I was there or not, friends were probably at my house having lunch provided by my mother. What a different time. Everything wasn't wonderful but much of it was IMO.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Sounds like my childhood. I'd vanish into the woods with a BB gun and knife (no zero tolerance, unless the neighbor caught you trying to cap some of his purple martins) in the morning and return at dusk, muddy, bug bit and sore. We could go down to a creek and play that we were the first folks to ever be there. We caught critters.

I think that parents today do a great disservice to their kids by doing "everything" for them. Kids don't do anything for themselves. The games they play are organized by adults, and the places they play are built by adults. Video games require nothing in the way of imagination, much less any physical activity. Being tied to mommy by a cell phone or pager means a kid never feels independent.

I'd hate to be a kid today.

[muir_redwoods]

I was on a high-school rifle team in the '60's. Three times a week I brought a .22 cal. rifle, (unloaded of course) into the school, walked it up to the coach's algebra classroom and put it in his classroom closet (along with twenty or so other rifles).

No one ever got shot and I was only in trouble if I forgot to bring my gun to school.

[SamAdams76]

The biggest change has been the increase in whiners.

And along with that would be the "hovering" syndrome. As a parent, this really annoys me. Most parents today won't let their kids out of their sight for a minute. I really don't understand the syndrome because while child abductions are something to be concerned about, they really aren't more prevalent then they were when we were growing up. It's just that due to the saturation of our mass media, a child abduction in Wyoming makes national news when 30 years ago, nobody outside of Wyoming would have even heard about it. Remember, all we got 30 years ago for news was 30 minutes of Walter Cronkite or Harry Reasoner (and 15 minutes of that was devoted to the Vietnam War or Watergate).

Anyway, the "hoverers" are annoying as hell. You know the type, the "soccer moms" who have to be not only at every single game but every minute of every practice as well, standing there in the rain with their Starbucks cups incessantly screaming "C'mon Johnny, you can do it Johnny, YEAH!" Mind you, this is just practice! Then when practice is over, the hoverers will escort their kids, step-by-step, to the sanctity of the mini-van. These kids never get a chance to breathe!

[metesky]

I know.
:O)

The mind does its best to repress the bad things that happen, so I tend to think that forty years from now today's kids will be looking fondly back on their version of "the way things used to be".

[chance33_98]

These kids never get a chance to breathe!

Given how many people post on DU I can understand parents being worried about their kids, lotta sickos out there ;)

[Tijeras_Slim]

I was on a high-school rifle team in the '60's.

Same here in the early 70's. I think youth shooting sports is the only sport where there have been no serious injuries or incidents of parents/competitors behaving violently.

[AAABEST]

Way back........We’re talking about hide and go seek at dusk. Sitting on the front porch. The Good Humor man. Red light, Green light. Chocolate milk, lunch tickets, penny candy in a brown paper bag.

Hopscotch, butterscotch, double dutch. Jacks, kickball, dodgeball. Giant Step, Mother May I? Red Rover and Roly Poly, and Hula Hoops. Running through the sprinkler.

Wait, there’s more......Watching Saturday morning cartoons, Fat Albert, Road Runner, Speed Racer,The Three Stooges, and Bugs Bunny. Or back further, listening to Superman on the radio.

Catching lightning bugs in a jar. Playing sling shot, climbing a tree. When around the corner seemed far away, and going downtown seemed like going somewhere.

Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, pillow fights. Running till you were out of breath. Laughing so hard that your stomach hurt. Being tired from playing... Remember that? We’re not finished just yet...

Remember when summer seemed endless. When there were two types of sneakers for girls and boys (Keds & PF Flyers) and the only time you wore them at school, was for "gym."

When it took five minutes for the TV to warm up, if you even had one. When nearly everyone’s Mom was at home when the kids got there. When nobody owned a purebred dog.

When a quarter was a decent allowance, and another quarter a miracle. When popcorn popped in a pan with oil, not in a bag in the microwave.

When stepping on a crack in the sidewalk would break your mother’s back. When a large box drawn in the dirt was a fort with walls.

When a dishtowel around your neck gave you the ability to fly. When blankets spread over the dining room table and chairs kept out the most vicious monsters. When you got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, for free, every time. And, you didn’t pay for air.

When any parent could discipline any kid, or feed him, or use him to carry groceries, and nobody, not even the kid, thought a thing of it. When it was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents.

When they threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed...and did!

When being sent to the principal’s office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited a misbehaving student at home. Basically, we were in fear for our lives but it wasn’t because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents were a much bigger threat! And some of us are still afraid of them!!!

[SamAdams76]

I remember the ice cream trucks going around the neighborhoods. Especially the "tinny" music that they used to play. Every now and then, I can still hear that music playing in my head and it brings back memories of those carefree summer days. I can still remember the great feeling of the last day of school when we would turn in our books and clean out our desks. We were allowed to come to school dressed any way we wanted (jeans, shorts and sneakers were normally not allowed in those days) and were out at noontime. What a liberating feeling it was to walk home from school on that last day, with the entire summer stretching seemingly endlessly before me! It's been almost 25 years since my last summer vacation. Sure wish I could have an entire summer off again.

[chance33_98]

Sure wish I could have an entire summer off again.

Imagine how much freeping you could get done! I think one of the wonders of having kids is getting to see life through their eyes again. They do so many things which seem to make no sense, they just want to have fun. My daughter will just pick up dirt and throw it, or take out pots and pans and find something interesting to do with them.

I remember one summer my friend scott (who has since passed on) was over at my house. He was football player, but was out for an injury. He wanted something to do so we went upstairs and I opened the window and threw some star wars toys out onto the ground, I then took a long string with a rope and lowered, seeing how quickly I bring them all up. He thought I was a little goofy, until he started. We did that for hours upon hours, rescuing the hapless storm troopers. He was worried other football players would see him, but admitted it was the most fun he had in some time. The simple things seemed so fun, I guess that is why, perhaps, so many adults I know love to play computer games and tinker on them - they want to have fun and be creative, a little crazy, and for just a moment forget all about the bills and other stresses of life while mowing down some alien freak.

[4mycountry]

>>>Given how many people post on DU

Don't worry. I figure we FReepers outnumber those DemocraticUnderwear-ers at least 3:1.