PEOPLE OVER FORTY SHOULD BE DEAD

EMail | 1/17/2004 | W. Toeppe

[brooklin]

Man, it's a wonder that you're alive... eating tar, birch bark and the really bad one, scrapple.

[livius]

this is so old that my mother emailed it to me from her retirement community

Actually, somebody in Spain e-mailed me a Spanish version of this just about a month ago. It was adapted for all of the wild things Spanish kids used to do 40 years ago (many of them involved taunting bulls). Great read, and it just shows that we're all in the same dull, modern, lawyer-infested boat.

[Gabz]

We love it here - and can target shoot in our yard also because we live out in the country and our nearest neighbors are 60,000 chickens!!!!

[ArneFufkin]

Ah yes, buying those useless baseball and football trading cards JUST to savor that freeze dried, ready to crumble into millions of pieces chewing gum.

Later, we found a treat with the same consistency, taste and longevity as that chewing delight ... carrots.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

And our Social Security programs would have a surplus of cash as most people who paid in would have died before becoming eligible for retirement.
Blame it on Pennicillin.

[ArneFufkin]

Blame it all on the invention of shrinks in the late 50s and early 60s!

Are you sure? I think there were midgets in the Wizard of OZ .

[nutmeg]

read later bump

[mrs tiggywinkle]

**That's another reason why I homeschool. My kids love American History. The real history, not the revisionist crap they are teaching in schools today. **

Big ole bump!

For some wonderful history try Charles Coffin's books. He was a civil war journalist. :o)

[randog]

My remembrance was walking! especially in Junior High it was far. about 1 1/2 hr from my house, and we had to walk, and possibly were given a ride if a bridge was flooded out!

LOL!! Yeah, I did my share of walking, just like you. The closest grocery store was a mile away; I walked to high school (until I got a car)--3 miles away through a drainage tunnel under the highway, through the graveyard with a shortcut across the river if it was low enough.

[exit82]

"Sometimes we'd take our 22's with us."

"Watch it kid--you'll shoot yer eye out!"

Playing stickball in the schoolyard.

Softball at the nearest intersection. Taking a collection to pay for Mr. So and So's resulting broken window.

Playing until dark.

Knowing your father's whistle to come in for dinner. Hey Johnny, yer dad's whistlin' for ya!

Can Billy come out to play?

Playing hide and seek until you couldn't see through the darkness.

Hurrying to eat lunch or dinner, cause you didn't want to miss what was happen' outside with your buddies.

Playing war for hours--in the woods--with realistic looking plastic tommy guns and rifles. Americans won--every time.

Playing with a Johnny Reb cannon.

Making a raft out of a piece of plywood and poling along in the local pond--with no lifejackets or handrails,even.

Ice skating on same pond in the cold winter afternoons and evenings.

Playing dodgeball--for keeps!

My, how did we survive.

[mrs tiggywinkle]

True, healthy pride comes from having to actually work for something. These days kids are encouraged to be proud without having done *anything*.

[Ciexyz]

I always came in when Mister Ed came on TV.

[man of Yosemite]

I can remember leaving home to walk a mile and a half to the foot of the mountains, then hike three miles to the top. My parents never knew what I was doing as long as I made it home for dinner. Looking back now, I wonder how we got away with stuff like that.

[dalereed]

"I think there were midgets in the Wizard of OZ "

Wouldn't know, never saw it.

I never got into that fantasy BS.

[mrs tiggywinkle]

**The most heinous act I can remember was some upperclass guys kidnapped a pig and a sheep from a farm outside town and locked them in the study hall overnight. Rumor had it they were fed a healthy meal of Ex-Lax. **

LOL...that's *so* wrong. :o)

In high school I owned one of the keys to the music rooms. My friends and I counted 91 rolls of toilet paper and had a blast in the band room. The tuba was never the same.

Good clean fun.

[BluH2o]

Recently returned from a trip to Tasmania. While there, my wife and I walked by a children's play yard. The theme of the playyard was a pirate ship, there were rope ladders to climb, the bow pulpit extended up at an angle maybe six feet above the ground (it was designed to climb or slide up or down on). My wife and I both agreed, it was highly unlikely that you would see anything like this in the U.S. (it was well done & looked like fun) for fear of lawsuits if, God forbid, some kid fell off and broke an arm or collar bone. We're raising a generation of coddled wimps here in the U.S., tort reform is sorely needed in this nation.

[arasina]

Ahhh....the memories of real freedom! No locks on doors, outside playing until it got too dark to see, riding bikes with your friends on roads where cars were rare, playing games like tag and "sandwich" and Red Rover, picking up grasshoppers and hoping they'd spit their "tobacco" juice, playing with paper dolls , watching Captain Kangaroo on TV, eating paste/dirt/tar/leaves, covering dimes with mercury, driving a homemade Go-Kart in the back yard, dressing up for church on Sunday---including white cotton gloves in the warmer months---and going for a drive with Mom and Dad afterward...and thousands more.

Those were the BPC days: Before Politically Correct. Does anyone remember exactly when things started taking a turn toward our current emprisoning lifestyle?

[SeeRushToldU_So]

Not of todays kids are wimps. I have a beautiful 14 year old(Cheers compitely) that jumped off a 65 foot bridge this summer.

I didn't know about it until after she had done it, and I didn't know wheather to kick her butt or high five her.

Her mother, and my wife, blamed it all on my genes.

I told my daughter, you lived and you are the only girl to have ever jumped from here, don't do it again. (Amen, thank you Lord she didn't die.)

[ArneFufkin]

PEOPLE OVER 40 SHOULD BE DEAD

Adrienne Barbeau is 59. Raquel Welch is 63. Pam Grier is 55. Tina Louise is 70. There was a summit of the world's leading Paleontoligists gathered just to estimate the age of Cher at somewhere between 459 and 472.

[ArneFufkin]

Wouldn't know, never saw it. I never got into that fantasy BS.

If I ever need advice on the best documentary or newsreel to see on a date, I'll ping you.