Got this from a friend:

People over 30should be dead.
(I know that sounds harsh, but read on to understand the basis for this statement)....

To the survivors:
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's probably shouldn't have survived.

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

We had no child proof 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 seat belts 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 shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

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 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 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 did not have Play stations, 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 fell out of trees,got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. 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.

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.

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. Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors ....

By Daddyof3 on Friday, February 20, 2004 - 09:56 pm:

Wow I actually remember and miss those days. I was forever in the woods, by the natural spring building a dam that eventually became Stacy Adams and my swimming pool, after lots of chopped down trees, dirt, and leaves, combined with a few spankings from Stacy's mom for tracking muddy footprints on her floor and lots of blisters from the shovel and hours of manual labor.... imagian that. Those were truly the days.

Thanks for the walk down memory lane Ginny!!!!

By Trina~moderator on Saturday, February 21, 2004 - 08:09 am:

"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."

This one makes me cringe! The kids who lost their lives in a crash aren't here to talk about it.

By Trisa on Saturday, February 21, 2004 - 08:43 am:

I also enjoyed reading that.
I myself used to stand up in the car. I would stand on that little hump right in the middle!
My grandma told me that they had a little crib that fit in the back of the car. Things are soooo different now!

By Sue3 on Saturday, February 21, 2004 - 09:05 am:

I miss those days also. Summers were so fun .
yes , I remember not having to come home until the street light came on.
We would be outside playing all day long , climbing trees , making mud pie`s , playing kick the can.
and yes , for a snack we would have white bread with butter (sometimes with sugar on it also)
and we would wash it down with town club pop.
My parents would buy it by the case and it came in wooden crates with about 2 dozen or so pops in glass bottles * sigh * those were the days
thanks for the memories and I can`t wait till summer !!!!

By Fionadeassis on Saturday, February 21, 2004 - 10:45 am:

After all the dads drove off for work,the moms would come out of their houses with a cup of coffee in their hands(sometimes wearing curlers)and walk over to their neighbours and have coffee together. Everyone knew eachother. No one seemed to be allergic to anything,so moms would feed whatever kid happened to be in their house at lunchtime(it always seemed to be hotdogs,canned soup,kraft dinner etc.)

Me and my sister would get up early in the morning before my mom was up.We would dress ourselves and go out and play for hours. Then the moms would start to call us and throw bread and butter with white sugar over the balconies. It tasted so good when you had been playing for hours on an empty stomach.

I hope that when we buy our first house that it is in a neighbourhood with a few(hope hope)stay at home moms, hopefully I'll make some good friends and we can kind of create that same atmosphere as when I was a kid(minus the white sugar sandwiches though LOL!).

Of course, in the meantime,I get to have my tea every morning with you guys! But I don't have curlers in my hair!

fiona

By Bellajoe on Saturday, February 21, 2004 - 11:29 am:

Ahh the memories. When i was 1 my family traveled from Ohio out west to Yellowstone Nat'l Park. I hear that they had a crib or playpen in the back of the station wagon, and that's where i was most of the trip. 7 of us piled in the old Pontiac station wagon! Those were the days. I used to leave my house in the morning, climb the neighbors fence into the park and get into the public pool. I was there from 1 till 5:00 when the pool closed for and hour and it was dinnertime. Then back at the pool from 6-9:00 when it closed! We rode through the woods on our bikes. Man i was gone all day long! And mom never worried about where i was, she knew i was in the neighbor hood with my friends. And yes, i had to be home "before dark".

Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

By Ginny~moderator on Saturday, February 21, 2004 - 04:41 pm:

Trina, I agree about seat belts and riding in the back of pickup trucks. And clearly, some of this stuff was and is unsafe.

But still, the memories of spending Saturday and Sunday afternoon just playing, and after doing homework, without appointments, classes, rehearsals, sports teams, etc. ... I remember spending significant parts of the day in the large vacant lot at the end of my block, helping the other kids gather firewood - we'd beg baking potatoes from our moms, one of the moms or dads would supervise, and we'd have a fire and bake potatoes.

And I definitely long for the days when any mom who saw a kid misbehaving would (a) step in and (b) tell that kid's mom and that kid's mom would apologize and would discipline the kid. It sure kept me out of trouble.

By Momaroze on Sunday, February 22, 2004 - 06:16 pm:

Wow, thank you and thank your friend for that "walk down memory lane" Oh my....even though some of what we did then was unsafe look at what our children our facing today. Diabetes, boredom, loneliness, etc.....I can't believe it, growing up I was out of the house all day long like one said until the street lights came on...and sometimes beyond that. The freedom was wonderful. I would even play in our garbage dump (I know sounds yucky, but it wasn't)in the old vehicle wrecks and play make believe with my friends....Never got hurt or sick...yeah makes me feel sorry for the kids today....These days you can't even allow your children to run around, they might get stollen!!!or worse!!!What will the world be like in 20 years time?

By Bea on Sunday, February 22, 2004 - 11:50 pm:

I was a city kid. We played on the block and "Up the alley". Our lawns and yards were smaller than most living rooms today. We cut a rubber ball in half and played box ball in the alley, or skated on the sidewalks with our metal skates. We played Red Rover and Stone School and Pony Express with our wagons. On Saturday mornings, we'd be up and out before our parents were awake. We'd get called home for breakfast and chores. I had to scrub the basement steps, and the enclose porch out front. Then, with a quarter in our pockets, we'd walk about a mile to the movies to see about 5 cartoons and a "B" movie. We rode busses and subways without our parents, and walked to school alone from kindergarten on. There were no seat belts and the windshield on our car was in two pieces with a seam in the middle, a pain when you ended up in the middle seat at the drive-in. On a summer evening, before most homes had air conditioning, you could see the entire block on front porches and steps, the kids playing tag in the dusk, parents reading newspapers or talking back and forth. We'd play until the sound of bells called us like a piper's tune, to the side of the ice cream truck, clutching sticky coins that were traded for dripping cones and ices. And then the Mother's calls, gathering their children home, as the street lights started winking to life above us. City life wasn't bad at all.

By Bea on Monday, February 23, 2004 - 12:17 am:

We made our own fun back then. We created a circus, using sheets and old blankets stretched from porches to the concrete. We did tumblesaults and sword fights with trash can lids for shields and broomsticks as weapons. We rigged a swing and hung upside down. We trained our pets to do tricks and charged our peers a nickle to view our talents. We created worlds in a back lot with craters blasted in the dirt to remove trees for a building never rose. Now it was ours to control The craters were fox holes, and we commandos, or brave explorers of a comet pocked planet. We pulled sled to the park in winter, often returning with noses bleeding or teeth missing from another failed attempt on suicide hill. When weather forced us inside we had games like Chinese Checkers War and Fish, comics to read, records to play, and brothers to wrestle. Our bikes were mighty stallions. Our mutts were Rin Tin Tin. Our wagons braved the distant west, and circled to fight the Indians attacking us. We sold Kool Aid on summer days, raked leaves in autumn and shoveled walks in winter to supplement our meager allowances. We pulled orders in our wagons for women buying groceries before a two car home was normal. We jumped higher in our Keds, sweated under coonskin caps, ate Wonder-bread Fluff and Skippy sandwiches, smoked candy cigarettes and said "Yes M'am" and "Yes Sir" when addressed by adults.

By Fionadeassis on Monday, February 23, 2004 - 10:01 am:

Once we were picking through the garbage and a neighbour lady came and smacked us! Then she told our mom and we got smacked again! Now the cops would have been called!

The woman across the street would call us over and give us a glass of 7-up with a marshmallow floating in it! We thought it was the coolest drink ever!

I think things were a lot safer when there were a lot of moms staying at home! To bad that most people can't afford to do it(we couldn't if we didn't have Henrietta living with us)...

I am SO GLAD I get to stay home!

fiona

By Wandilu on Monday, February 23, 2004 - 07:09 pm:

oh,i LOVE this!! somehow,i thought we were the only kids that stayed outside all day.my mother had to work,because we never knew where my daddy was,most of the time.so ,me and my sister and our friends from "up the road" would leave out early in the morning,play all day long,and come in about the time that mama got home.there was a creek ,down the bluff,behind our house.we would play down there for hours and hours !!i think i was around 5 and my sister was 8 when we first started playing there.no kidding!!mama would come to the top of the bluff and holler for us when it was time to eat.we would go "wadeing" in the creek in the spring,swimming in the summer,and play on the ice in the winter.we didn't have real ice skates,so we skated in our shoes.i would probably have heart failure if any of my kids had done that!!we used to leave out before dark on halloween night and come home around 10 pm.we would carry pillow cases instead of sacks,and they would be TOTALLY full.we were very poor,so the only time we got candy was at halloween and christmas.so,i would hide my candy so no one else could eat it .i would usually finish it off just days before christmas !!we also only got fruit at christmas,so i was as excited over getting to over indulge in eating oranges,as i was in getting my new toys !!one of my all time favorite memories is eating popcorn from a brown paper bag.i don't know why,but mama would always put it in a bag.and she always,always,always burnt her popcorn.i was almost a pre-teen before i found out that you're NOT supposed to burn it !!!

By Mommyathome on Monday, February 23, 2004 - 08:06 pm:

I received this in an e-mail awhile back. It really is fun to read and remember how things were when we were little. I'm 26, but when I was a little kid we always played outside ALL day. In mud puddles at the corner.....under a big tree. We rode in the back of my dads truck on the way to the dump (no trash pick-up!).