"I Can't Believe You Made It" !

If you lived as a child in the 40's, 50's, 60's or 70's.

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have...

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

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 hitchhiking to town as a young kid!)

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors.

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 streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day.

No cell phones. Unthinkable. We played dodgeball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We got cut and broke bones and broke teeth, and there were no law suits 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 ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda but we were never overweight...we were always outside playing. We shared one grape soda with four friends, from one bottle and no one died from this.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, video games at all, 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, Personal Computers, Internet chat rooms ... we had friends. We went outside and found them. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rung the bell or just walked in and talked to them.

Imagine such a thing. Without asking a parent! By ourselves! Out there in the cold cruel world! Without a guardian. How did we do 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.

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. No one to hide behind. 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 has 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!

Please pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives....for our own good.

Great reading and how true! Thanks for posting this :)

Good piece Pagan. I use to jump from the front seat of the car to the back seat drove my mom nuts.I never ate worms,we would throw them in my buddys garden to use next time we went fishing.

I also remember collecting Coke bottles and returning them for five cents a piece. We would collect enough to buy candy.:)

I lived a couple years of the 70's....close enough :lol: I had it the same way through that whole thing...except maybe the video games thing...had Atari in '81-'82ish, but barely played it...always out! :D

"We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda but we were never overweight...we were always outside playing."

There's one to pass on to the assclown kids with those McD's lawsuits....get off your arse and get out and flucking do something! :lol::p

Remember those days, It was hell when it was raining and you couldn't go out... there was nothing to do in the house. I'd be outside in the summer from 8am- not back home until 12 for lunch and right back out again.

I could be two miles away in the woods and my parents never thought for a minute that I might be abducted. Never wore a helmet while riding a bike .

Geez we never even locked our doors back then and most people didn't unless they were going on an extended trip

we built forts, and tree house's and would destroy the ones of our enemies. Stealing playboy magazines from a bulldozer or construction site was the best bounty we could ask for, and we liked the pictures but didn't know why?

bicycles had sissy bars and monkey seats, and if you were lucky they had 3 gears, but boy could you ever do a catwalk with them, build jumps like think you were Evil Kenivel...

A family trip to the Drive In theatre was a big treat, We usually only got to watch the first movie, and if the second one was racy, my parents would put a blanket upbetween the front and back seat and make us go to sleep


I still remember when we got cable (which was ABC,NBC and PBS from Bangor Maine and getting to see the Jetsons for the first time

The fattest kid in the class was 5 pounds overweight and was tortured unmerciafully cause the rest of us were skinny as rakes

I'm glad I got to have my childhood in the 70's and experience my midteens early twenties in the 80's

:)

Hurrah, great post! :thumb: Brings back a lot of fun and fond memories. :)

*sigh* My generation sucks.

Originally posted by Ted Nugent
*sigh* My generation sucks.

You know what though Ted. You've got a brain in that head of yours. Most kids would read that and think it was stupid.

There's hope for the future after all....

I was a child of the '70's (born in 1971). I remember a plenty of times riding in the back of my dad's Chevy Truck. Ah, those were such simple times compared to today.

One of my favorite things to do when I was a kid was to ride on that little ledge in the back window of my Mom & Dad's cars. Not only do cars no longer have those little ledges anymore, but your folks would probably go to jail for letting their kids do it. Admittedly, it would have been nasty if a wrech had occurred, but it felt so good on a warm Summer day. :)

Who you calling a stuffy old person???:mad: Oh wait I am a stuffy old person :laugh:

Good one Pagan :lol:

Originally posted by Pagan


You know what though Ted. You've got a brain in that head of yours. Most kids would read that and think it was stupid.

There's hope for the future after all....

I think a lot of kids my age feel the same as me about society nowadays. They're just afraid to be open about it because of peir pressure or they feel they're just weird and everyone else is normal. It's not all my generation's fault though, it's the parents of this generation's fault as well. I think parents of this generation don't have any parenting skills. The only ones with parenting skills seems to be the babysitters they hire. Well, I could write a book, so I'll keep it at that. :p Don't wanna start anything.

Originally posted by Iluvthe80s
I was a child of the '70's (born in 1971). I remember a plenty of times riding in the back of my dad's Chevy Truck. Ah, those were such simple times compared to today.

I saw someone with a chair installed in the back of their truck. Now that'd be neat!

I used to set up lemonade stands by the road..imagine...Sitting by the road, strangers coming up to me in cars. Safe nowdays huh? I shudder to think back that any one of them could have just pulled me into the car.

Also...I wouldn't dare let my kids swim in the ponds and lakes we swam in. LOL!

Trick or treating..not staying in our own neighborhoods, no adult supervision once we turned 7 or 8, lots of little kids even stepping into that stranger's house on chilly nights.

.......and to think I didn't live dangerously. :)

That was a great piece, Pagan.....and sooo true!

Jana, If your kids set up a lemonade stand nowadays, the police would probably be at your door wanting to see if you had a license for them to operate it. :lol:

Our generation does suck, but it's hard to think of life without Teddie. There might not be a life without Teddie for me. :(

Heheh, this has been sitting in my inbox and I had planned to post it. Pagan, you always beat me to the punch. LOL :*

I came across a lemonade stand here last summer. I made sure to buy a cup. $.25 didn't seem to much for a small dixie cup full of lemonade. :lol: Too much lemon, not enough sugar. Just like I like it. ;)

That brought back a lot of good memories! We did have a video game though.... Does anyone else remember Blip? Talk about high-tech:lol:

For anyone who doesn't remember Blip, it was a metal box about the size of a shoebox. It wired up to the TV and had 2 dials, one for each player. The game was in black & white, and the dials moved vertical lines on the left and right sides of the TV screen. A small dot moved back & forth across the screen, the object was to move your line and hit the dot back over to the other side. When the dot hit the lines, it made a "blip" sound. No scores were kept, you just played til you were bored with it....

Awesome, Pagan!! I LOVED riding in the back of a pick up truck!
Lemonade stands were the best..

Ahhh.. those were the days!

Welll... I had cable... and computers... and um... um... other stuff that you didn't have

You people suck! :lol: :laugh:
But I did all that stuff as I kid :p Hell I climb coconut and mango trees :D

I remember blip! My dad had it. It was in the same room with his Farah Poster.. Is it me or is everything way too PC these days?

Originally posted by Ted Nugent


I think a lot of kids my age feel the same as me about society nowadays. They're just afraid to be open about it because of peir pressure or they feel they're just weird and everyone else is normal. It's not all my generation's fault though, it's the parents of this generation's fault as well. I think parents of this generation don't have any parenting skills. The only ones with parenting skills seems to be the babysitters they hire. Well, I could write a book, so I'll keep it at that. :p Don't wanna start anything.

I agree with you 50-50. My parents are old... old enough that some people think that they are my grandparents, (they're 63 and soon to be 75... antiques!!) so I was raised morals and values wise the same way the older people here were raised.

But we can't blame our 'rents. Like I said a while back elsewhere, at some point we have to stop blaming our 'rents and take responsibilty for who we are.

Its our fault. We grew up with everything supplied, we never had to imagine or invent things ourselves. Our toys weren't fun, they were educational. We were fed way too much info and shot doses of reality before we grew up.

Generations before us had to fight for their goals, for their dreams, we don't. Everything we need is easily supplied, we are freaking lazy and medicore. We bitch about not having stuff given to us, when we're young and healthy enough to get it and do it on our own.

The few and rare of us with brains, with theories and plans are mocked and ridiculed that we (for a period of time) hid away and try to be like them. When we break out of that shell, we end up with few friends in our age group for those reasons.

We're a generation of posers and cattle. We do what we're told to do, and do what we see cause we try too flucking hard to fit in.

I agree with you TY, but I also believe it's the yuppie generation's fault (my parents generation) that we're so lazy and all that. It's a little of both. Parents are responsible for who there kids are and the kids are responsible after they get a mind of their own. At least that's the way I see it. But I don't think I should be blaming just one generation, it's really a combination of alot of things. There's always been shit in the world, the shit just changes form every so many years. :lol:

Shit hasn't changed it...

The difference between the others generations and ours that they made it, rolled in it and left it...

We just look at it and do nothing

Love that one! I remember we had a creek running thru our back yard. Me and my friends would get rafts and play in it all day. You couldn't have dragged us back into that house for anything. We always found fun stuff to do outdoors. It seems like I hardley ever see kids playing outdoors now. It really is sad.

Gosh, that brings back so many memories! Good post, Pagan! :thumb:

When I was a kid, I would have killed/maimed to have the stuff, live in the house, etc., that my kids do. They have a sport for every season, they play baseball, football, soccer, basketball. Until I was in Jr. High, summer baseball was it! They each have their own TV with cable and a VCR/DVD. We had one TV that got 4 channels. And when we got a 2nd hand VCR (around '81), it had dials and fake leather trim. No kidding. I could go on, but you get the picture. The point is, I never knew how "bad" I had it.

But once thing that is different: due to the way the world is today, my kids can't roam far and wide like I did. I rode my bike for miles when I was a kid, my kids get one street, that's all. My mother actually used to lock the doors to keep us from coming in-and-out of doors all day in the summer. Now that would be child abuse. :rolleyes: I really don't envy my kids, despite their cool "stuff". :(

Ahhh... the memories!

Great post Pal! :thumb:

That was great... and so very true!!! :thumb:

This was great Pagan!:D

Originally posted by Pagan

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


I would ride up front, sitting on the armrest between my parents.

and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets.

I still can't stand to wear a helmet when I ride my bike!

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.


This was my life! Especially in the summer.

I agree with what Nolanbuc said about having to keep a tighter rein on our kids today. The world just isn't what it was.:(

Great post Pagan! :thumb: My friends and I would use metal pipes to aim bottle rockets at each other... and well if you were hit with one, you just didn't duck fast enough. Oh... and does anyone remember those handheld football games that were nothing more than red lights flashing across the screen? I found one a few months back at a thrift store... still works.