PEOPLE OVER FORTY SHOULD BE DEAD

EMail | 1/17/2004 | W. Toeppe

[JesseHousman]

People Over 40 Should Be Dead

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.

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.) As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts 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 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 shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

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 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 did not have Playstations, 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 played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt. We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it. 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. Some students weren't! as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors! Tests were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. 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.

How fortunate we were to grow up as kids before lawyers and burgeoning government regulated our lives, for our own good. How sorry I am for what those years of meddling have done to our children and grandchildren and even sorrier that we all allowed the government and politicians to get away with it!

[Taxman]

When I was a kid, America was a FRee country.

Keep pushing, nanny-state. You will not like the result when we get fed up and push back!

[Taxman]

The other thought that has been resonating through my mind for the past couple of years is that we, the citizens, are supposed to keep our government in check.

We have failed.

[Taxman]

So, what is your problem?

A good read a year ago is probably a good read today, and it may be a good read next year, to boot.

Judging FRom the number and quality of responses (yours excepted), this is a good thread.

Kwitcherbitchin!

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

How fortunate we were to grow up as kids before lawyers and burgeoning government regulated our lives, for our own good. How sorry I am for what those years of meddling have done to our children and grandchildren and even sorrier that we all allowed the government and politicians to get away with it!

The only problem with this part of the article is its an untruth government does not regulate what our kids watch play or do thats the parents job if the parents are sheep then the government does regulate it !

Personal responsibility to a grown up kicks in when the parent feels guilty for what they have not made sure has been done for their child when their child looks at them and there is no guilt you've done one of two things ......you've done your job as a parent or your oblivious of your own child and the needs they have that need to be filled

loving your child is simple discipline an parenting is hard the author needs to get a life and quit living in the past !

I think that most people forget on fundamental thing about government WE are the government The people we ELECT are the Representatives . So if your being regulated your letting it happen !

[The Coopster]

People Over 40 Should Be Dead

Carousel......

[sonofatpatcher2]

Yep,

Me and Wick are way over 40...

[Nebr FAL owner]

I agree with you I just turned 40 & as a kid we would play army when we weren't scrounging aluminum conduit,match heads,shotgun powder,cans of sterno to make things that could go BOOOM!!!! Yet by the grace of God I still have both eyes & all 10 fingers & toes& everything still works. 8^)

[macrahanish #1]

What really bothers me in our local tee ball is that nobody
is ever out. The kids don't learn about the rules of the
game.

[Nebr FAL owner]

As a child I & my friends would sleep outdoors in the summer time & the folks would leave the backdoor unlocked in case we had to go to the can in the middle of the night. No one even considered that a pervert might try to harm us, now if my nieces ages 7 & 11 were to ask to sleep out at night during the summer here in Omaha Ne. Yours truly would also be out in the backyard with a thermos of coffee, a starlight scope,a KABAR fighting knife & a Colt .45 auto loaded with jacketed hollow points.A truly sad development if you ask me.8^(

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

Yea, good thing....lol

[missyme]

Correct!
That's right they did have a strange name but when my folks had bought me my first record player proably around the age I was between 6 and 8 that song is the first one I bought. Oh and another one if you remember was "Blue Velvet" my mom loved that song so that was the second record we bought.

[LisaMalia]

I coached my daughters co-ed YMCA basketball team, years ago. The rule was, the younger age group league (5-7, I think it was) did not keep score. It never failed, at every time-out they'd say.."are we winning", and after the game it was "did we win???!!!".
How can kids learn about losing in that kind of situation? Learning to lose graciously is one of the most important life lessons, IMO.

[LisaMalia]

I was very fortunate, as I was the 4th in a family of 5 kids. My older siblings and parents were very much into music. I think that's why I have such an appreciation and love for almost all types of music now.

My big brother was into the sixties pop stuff (Red Rubber Ball, Wooly Bully, Come on Down To My Boat, Baby etc.), my oldest sister was into Elvis, my OTHER older sister was into Gene Pitney, James Brown, and the Stones.

My daddy loved listening to Hank Sr. and Patsy Cline wail the blues, and my mom loved Judy Garland, Babs (before she got into all the politial stuff), and Ray Price. So I pretty much got exposed it all.

[missyme]

That is so great my family too was in to all kinds of music:
we had one of those OVERSIZED stereo peices of furniture
any my brothers were definetly Rockers: Groups like Vanilla Fudge, Iron Butterfly, Cream, and I like alot of the Old Motown songs as well as some of the early 70's songs "Benny and the Jets"-Elton John, "Mr Big Stuff"
"Killing me softly with his song"-Roberta Flack, Great Song! and a fan of the early "Doobie Brothers"

Mt Dad loved Carole King and Frank Sinatra
and my mother was a devoted fan of Tom Jones, I think she loved the way he danced! LOL

[winodog]

I remember all the stuff everyone has mentioned. The tall diving board with two small ones on each side was quite a challenge. Just climbing up the ladder the first time was scary and then getting up there and looking down (it looked a lot higher from up there then it did on the ground) knowing that only sissies climbed back down so you had to get up the nerve to to make the plunge.
I would not want my kid to do half the things I did untill I think about it and say go ahead because I remember when I ws a kid and did it.
Someone mentioned on another post like this one about how the generations of people like became the greatest risk takers and produced some of the most amazing things the world has ever seen.
It looks like its all over now and the world will become a one world everything. Socialism, the third way , whatever they want to call it but the freedom we had as kids to do what we wanted made us a different breed and chances are society is all downhill from here on out.
Many people blame the baby boomers for the demise but its the fault of the lawyers, the judges and gov.org. Common sense has disappeared and the nanny state has taken over. It will be very hard if not impossible to take america back to what it once was.

[missyme]

If people looked out for others, family, friends, people in there neighborhoods and there communities like FREEPERS seem to do on this conservative Internet Chat Site, we might be able to have a society all of us once remembered in reference to this Topic.

[theFIRMbss]

>So, what is your problem? ... Kwitcherbitchin!

No. My problem is,
I pointed out that this stuff
is badly thought out

in earlier threads,
but the same bad thinking keeps
popping right back up.

The obvious point
is that vast numbers of folk
have died pointless deaths,

have suffered deadly
results, have sickened and died
from the kinds of things

that have since acquired
regulations. Survivors,
that is, all of us,

just see around us
other survivors. The dead
don't participate

in these "round tables,"
lamenting how happier
they would have been if

they'd benefited
from the "regulations" we
whine and moan about...

[risk]

Soylent Green is made from people!

[mean lunch lady]

You think Scrapple is dangerous? Have you ever had shoo-fly pie? It's Pennsylvania Dutch for "every kind of sugar known to Man" I love sweets and even I couldn't eat it!