Things We Survived

Someone sent this to me and these are things I think about frequently, and its amusing so worth posting part of it. For those of us born in the 50s and 60s, things we survived:

We survived being born to mothers who smoked and / or drank while pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested for diabetes. (Yup, all true. My mother smoked and drank through five pregnancies)

After that trauma, 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 the risks we took hitchhiking. True again. The whole house was lead paint, I flew down hills with my hands in the air with no helmut and hitchhiked in far too many countries to remember.

As children, we rode in cars without seatbelts or air bags. What was a seatbelt? And we didn't ride in the back of a pick up - we stood and occasionally crawled on the roof.

We drank water form the garden hose and not from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this. True again. Always from the garden hose especially on a hot day. Not only did we share water, but remember the blood sister code of honor in the backyard on a late summer night?

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because we were always outside playing. Okay true again, but I'm all for killing the "soda pop" permanently. Despite the fact that we now 'know better,' soda is not only still part of the diet, but the cups now come in SUPER sizes with free refills.

We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. No cell phones-unthinkable. True that I never had an escort. My grandfather used to whistle for me when dinner was ready and if I was too far away to hear him, I went without. And was spanked for forgetting about the time. (Hmmmm, he might be arrested for that today).

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-boxes, or video games, no 99 channels on cable, videotape movies, surround sound, cell phones, personal computers or Internet chat rooms. We had friends! We went outside and found them. I love this one. A little intuition and human seeking goes a long way.

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. I have scars to prove it.....the girls played with the boys back then and getting knocked around was part of what you signed up for.

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 in us forever. Okay, I never ate worms, but I sadly did pull them apart. Why on earth did we do that?

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house, knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them. Don't you have to schedule a "play date" today?

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.
Sadly, this was also true.

This generation 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. Here here.

--Sent via someone from Children's Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH