CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 7

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses full 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 cots 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 cadging lifts. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
A trip to the coast on a warm day was always a special treat.


We drank water from the stream and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC, Subway or Kebabs.


Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and only opened for a few hours at 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 shop and buy fruit Spangles and some bangers to blow up frogs with.

We ate buns, 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 mobile phones & no one was able to reach us all day. And we were always O.K.


We would spend hours building our trolleys out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in streams with matchbox cars.


We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on ***, no video tape or DVD movies, no surround sound, 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 had air guns and catapults for our birthdays,

We drank milk laced with Strontium 90 from cows that had eaten grass covered in nuclear fallout from the atomic testing.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them from the street!

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!

Mum & dad didn't need Brandy, Whisky whatever when they came in from work!

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 'Kylie' 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!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were. 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

 

Thak you for the congratulations - and the memories.

From a kid that lived in a small village on the Yorkshire Wolds - we also did such things as:-

Walked 3 miles to School each day (sorry 2.9 miles - not eligible for a bus under 3 miles)
Cycled everywhere - day trips for 20-30 miles without any concerns from parents about safety from wierdo's.
Milk straight from the Cow - literally in some cases
Overnight camping ventures with a mate out in the Country
Lunatic Sledging down hills that the H&S Killjoys would have palpitations about.

 

Aaah them were the days just reading this is bringing back so many memories.
I remember climbing trees and making tree houses till I was at least 15, now girls are into make up and fashion before secondary school, falling in the local pond while fishing for stickle backs and having to wait outside all afternoon cos mum was out, my brother being chased by a bull (he thought it was a cow) in the same fishing field, never seen anyone jump a fence so fast:D, conkering, apparently you have to wear helmets for that too now!!!!, no telly till I was 10 and even then only a black and white portable, I'm feeling really old now
Hubby remembers going sticking in the wood for firewood, apparently you can't do that anymore due to health and safety!!!!!!

 

6.00 pm? Luxury, lad. Our shops closed at 5.30 sharp, which in practice meant that if you went in after 5.00 pm (clearing up time) you ran the risk of being huffed at and swept away by a large broom. Wednesday was early closing. If you forgot to get what you needed by about midday, that was that. Sundays were unbelievably dull. I'm sure the huge popularity of the first garden centres was aided by the fact that they were some of the few businesses which were allowed to trade on the dreary Sabbath.

 

We found the only place you could get a beer between 2pm & 7pm on a sunday was at the beer tent if there was a Cricket Match on.

 

Welsh Wales used to be bad for a beer on a Sunday,especially if you were english!

 

i am A PROUD BLACKCOUNTRY MON!!! YOU SUMMED UP MY MOM TO A T!!!! HAD 6 KIDS OF HER OWN AND FOSTERD 6 AS WELL BUSSY AROUND OUR DINNER TERBUL SMOKED MIN 60 A DAY 2/3 GLASSES OF WISKY A NIGHT

 

Absolutely wicked!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God bless yo for this our kid :yess:

 

This was a fantastic memory read.

I do remember loosing most of my finger playing in the woods in the summer school holidays with my cousins.

You would not be allowed on your own now.

 

I am soooooooooooo glad he didn`t try milking it then.:D

 

Yikes! That sounds serious, Scotkat. I was at school with a girl whose dad mowed the end of her finger off by mistake. He stuck it in a bottle of water and rushed daughter and severed body part to the local hospital, where they were successfully reunited.

 

Which is it then? Did they drink or didn't they?

 

1/2 pint mild for mom and a pint of bitter for the old man only a tot of whiskey at christmas!

 

I seem to remember spending most of the school holidays mucking about down by the river in the village where I grew up.
Usually ended up falling in and getting soaked and muddy.

Or we would play football/cricket on the meadows next to the river. The various hazards on the field of play included cow pats, thistles, nettles and huge mole hills.

Harvest time would find us in the corn fields, armed with stout sticks, following the combine round as we waited for the rabbits to come out of hiding.
It was hot, dusty, dangerous....and exhilarating!

On one occasion, I put my foot down a hole as I was walking behind the combine....it had run over a wasps' nest. I tore across the field hotly pursued by a swarm of angry wasps, got seven stings.

How did we survive?

 

That just reminded me of an episode with my last lab Trunky, he decided to have a wee on of all places a wasps nest poor thing was covered in them, I must have looked like a mad women dragging him along trying to outrun the flippin things, not much chance they were pretty angry, he was stung all over his face one narrowly missing his eye, the amazing thing was he was anti inflammatories at the time for athritis and the swelling went down in a couple of hours