Jul 31 2007
A Trip Down Memory Lane
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1920’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s !!
- First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.
- They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
- Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.
- We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, 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 Ute on a warm day was always a special treat.
- We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
- Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC, Subway or Red Rooster.
- Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn’t open on the weekends, somehow we didn’t starve to death!
- We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
- We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy fruit tingles and some crackers to blow up frogs with.
- We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren’t 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 streetlights came on.
- No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
- We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and cubby houses and played in creek beds with matchbox cars.
- We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms………. WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
- We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents .
- Only girls had pierced ears!
- We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
- You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross buns at Easter time…….no really!
- We were given BB guns and sling shots for our 10th birthdays,
- We drank milk laced with Strontium 90 from cows that had eaten grass covered in nuclear fallout from the atomic testing at Maralinga in 1956.
- We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
- Mum didn’t have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!
- Footy had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
- Our teachers used to belt us with big sticks and leather straps and bullies always ruled the playground at school.
- The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
- Our parents got married before they had children and didn’t invent stupid names for their kids like “Kiora” and “Blade”
- This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!
- The past 70 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 are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?!
PS -The big type is because your eyes are shot at your age
(Doing the rounds on email – source unknown)
30 Responses to “A Trip Down Memory Lane”
Despite my age, someone’s emailed this to me before :S
Hi Bryce
Yes, I was going to head it in case you haven’t seen this…
I couldn’t agree more.
Aaah! How true! I had quite a chuckle reading this and it brought a smile to my face.
Those were the days. (now I’m sounding like my father!).
Hey Peter
I’m sure many of us can relate
Hi Meg. Just thought I’d let you know that I’ve just launched http://www.sydneystuff.com – it’s a site like digg.com (voting) where you can view/post upcoming events and gigs in Sydney. There’s nothing like this for us Sydney-siders so I’m looking for influential people to help spread the word…
Hi Mitchell
I’ll check it out – thanks for letting me know.
It is amazing how much the world has changed year after year.
hi Meg.
i just wanted to add something to this thread.i’ve realized that all the under-devoloped countries are living the same events nowadays,may be worse.it’s incridible that some people live in deadly places,eating very dangerous food but they survive.and it seems so far away to get any progress in thier everyday life.
Hi Fouad
Thanks for stopping by.
“You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross buns at Easter time…….no really! ”
Exactly, no need to buy hot cross buns the day after Christmas !
Hehe – and I swear the Easter Eggs start in January…
Oh a moderated thread. Only a 60s person would be so lame
Rick
With good reason, obviously.
I wonder if this is why kids these days (god, I sound like my grandpa!) are allergic to just about everything!
and….nobody died from stress
rofl that is so true! Things were different back then
@ Mick – well you’re kind of right, in my opinion.
My theory is that because they don’t do some of these things, and that we wrap them in cotton wool and clean, sterile environments, they don’t have the opportunity to build up a natural resistance to germs etc.
@ Mike
well said
No information overload…
I was born mid seventies and most of this applies… I got a stupid name though. (I didn’t sign with it as it’s even stupider than that one.) I never shared a drink with friends, because one of them didn’t know how to drink without getting pieces of what ever she was eating into the bottle and I was grosed – but others were not. And I did use a phone to check if my friends were home, but rode my bike or walked to their place if they were, 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) sometimes, and a lot of times we changed our minds on who’s place to stay so we would ride back the 5 kilometers, sometimes several times a day. But my mother, born in the 50’s would ski 20 kilometers (12 miles) a day to school, and another 20 back… The truth is, that a lot has changed…
….and now your generations are plagued with cancer. Hmm.
OHHH those where the day’s bring the good old day’s back lol
Thanks for the large type…. it does help…. LOL
This is so true. Now I understand what my elders where talking about, when they would say when I was growing up!
It’s amazing that I had exactly the same experience growing up in Las Vegas, Nevada – Even drinking the nuke laced milk. I even remember my windows shaking when they let one off.
Kmuzu
yes, the large type is nice, the comments are a bit hard to read. Yes, our kids are spoiled little whiny brats, I shake my fist at everyday.
Wow did all that stuff really happen? I should ask my mom if any of it happened to her. Wow. That’s nuts.
Hi Jenny – thanks for stopping by
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Of course, it’s all supposed to be a light-hearted look at days gone by.
But there are very serious underlying issues, which seem to have offended some people.
I don’t advocate that mothers should smoke or drink while they’re pregnant, that we should live in houses made of asbestos or put our children in harm’s way – for starters….
And to the person who said they hope I die from cancer – I think you need to lighten up, and be nice.
It makes me sad to think that I got all that freedom (out all day till the street lights came on) and that my child never got to live that way. It was heaven and I enjoyed my childhood completely.
Very funny!
I grew up in Britain, so no nuclear fallout that I’m aware of, but plenty of asbestos and long days out without grown-ups.
My son reads Enid Blyton and is waiting for his ninth birthday so he, too, can go out and solve mysteries with three friends and a dog.
In our case it’ll have to be three friends and a guinea pig.
Born in the 70’s and remeber my grandfather taking me into is storage shed. All of the frickin walls were made out of asbestos.