In searching for the original author, the oldest date I could find this published was from 2006. The URL I used is from that site which claims to have gotten it from a Doc Searl but I was unable to trace back who he was as that link is broken.
This site
https://pad39a.com/gene/survival.html
Also had some pics with the same poem and notes at the bottom that were fun.
Have a great day my older FRiends, even you grumpy types. J
Well, we did lose a couple of kids in elementary and high school. That’s why people had three or four, just in case!
Check, check, check for all of it. :O)
My father was a house painter. Back in the 1940’s, he mixed lead into his paint by hand. For about 5 years, we lived less than a mile from a coal fired power plant. The crap in the air was so bad from the plant that my mother could not open our windows.
My Mother made it to 92 and my Dad to 95.
“First, we survived “
Many didn’t.
Add:
1. Watched Mickey Mouse Club on B&W TV
2. Used wax paper on the slide at the park to make us go down faster
3. Had a newspaper route to earn a few dollars (and my father taught me to drive a stick shift at 12, when he helped me deliver the Sunday Papers)
Man, this brought back memories! Everything is right on in this article. One thing I would add is that our parents cared. They cared about us and were willing to let us learn lessons the hard way. My mom used a ping pong paddle and man it hurt!
M-80’s and Cherry Bombs on the 4th of July.
We had such fun!
I remember all that. It’s a miracle we even survived.
Thank god we have big government to look after us now. /s
More importantly, we had GOD in our lives and in our culture.
We mixed chemicals in a real chemistry set and got satisfying smoke clouds, set off M80s and cherry bombs, started model airplane engines with wood props by hand, and went on boy scout campouts where we fired .22 rifles for hours.
We built plastic model kits using real nasty toluene based glue - and peeled it off our fingers afterward.
We carried our share of the family chores, including cooking, cleaning and ironing and when we bought our first car, we paid for it with our paper route money.
Then, when the next war came into view, we volunteered to go and fight because our dads and our uncles had done it before.
Remember iron lungs, measles and mumps? Those were good times
.
Yup! Thems was duh ‘50’s leading to the ‘y0’s with all those Mattel items that used those “greenie stick em caps”. All those G.I.Joe, Major Steve Canyon jet fighter goodies, and REMCO helicopters and tanks that shot bullets.
We didn’t have signs warning us not to dive off a bride into a stream 5 inches deep either...
...I can't figure out why my grandkids are such mutants."
hubby and i just shake our heads at the bubble wrapped kids in our neighborhood. There’s a family with 3 boys who don’t have bike helmets- gasp! I always think “Good for them”
we have a yoga -latte mommy who has asked the neighbors to drive slower than the speed limit so she does not have to watch her kids- her words not mine.
My two brothers and I got MERCURY out of a broken thermometer and actually played with it in the palms of our hands! None of us died from it.
However, my daughters have always said I was weird. Come to think of it, my younger brother is weird too. Hummmmm . . .