Posted on 04/05/2005 2:22:06 AM PDT by ajolympian2004
We licked the beaters and didn't have anyone telling us we were going to become deathly ill from eating batter with raw eggs in it!
At Easter time, we had our dyed Easter eggs in a nest on the counter and they sat out at room temperature for the week after Easter. We would peel one whenever we felt like it. I Can't Believe We Made It"!
If you lived as a child in the 40's, 50's, 60's or 70's. Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have... As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. Not to mention hitchhiking to town as a young kid!
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors.
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 streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. No cell phones. Unthinkable.
We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We got cut, broke bones and broke teeth, and there were no law suits 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 ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were rarely overweight ... we were always outside playing games, we shared grape soda with four friends, from one bottle, and no one died from this. 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, Internet chat rooms ... we had friends. We went outside and found them.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rung the bell and just walked in and talked to them. Imagine such a thing. Without asking a parent! By ourselves! Out there in the cold, cruel world! Without a guardian. How did we do 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.
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. No one to hide behind. 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, problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years has 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're one of them.
Congratulations!
...and I got high all the way through college and still got oustanding grades and a career I love. I listened to 'satanic' rock [well...Led Zep] and never killed a goat. I also had a ton of recreational, 20-something sex and ended up disease free in a loving and committed relationship.
Yeah, I guess we do worry too much about the kids these days.
/some sarcasm off/
We had a similar experience. We would stack 4 metal rimmed pop or beer cans and completely cut out the tops and bottoms of the top three cans. The top of the 4th can on the bottom of the stack would cut out just enough to where a tennis ball would set in place. A small hole was punched with a screw driver into the lowest can right near the surface of the ground. You would then squirt some lighter fluid into the hole and let it sit for about 20 seconds then light a match and place it by the punched hole. The tennis ball would shoot at least a few hundred feet into the air. On each subsequent blast the tennis ball would go higher and higher as the fuzz wore off the ball from the explosions. This was too much fun!!!
LOL - My friends and I used to build rocketships out of (fireworks) rockets. We even tried to launch the doghouse by attaching quite a number of 12 lb. rockets to it. It did, of course, not launch straight up but rather flew into the kids clubhouse my dad built and set it on fire. My grandmother put it out and then promptly gave me a switching. After that we had to limit our gunpowder activities to "creative" uses of cherry bombs and M80s.
A can of ether in a bonfire is really entertaining...
A really cool fire ball that looks like a mini-nuke...
And – we played Cowboy and Indian! And War! With toy guns! And – very few ended up killing for the fun of it.
I don’t remember any cases of students shooting up their school, even though many had ammo, rifles or shotguns in their cars in the school parking lot.
Did you ever use a can of aerosol hair or bug spray as a flamethrower with a match held about 1" from the nozzle?
...then we gave Democrats the House for about 5,000,000 years straight...
One evening we started a burner on my friend's dresser and started to randomly add the different elements/chemicals to see what would happen. We did create a cardboard shield with a plastic wrap covered viewing hole to watch. After a while the brewing mixture finally blew up and caused corrosion of the mirror surface by the dresser. My friend was grounded for two weeks and I had to mow their lawn for a couple of months to help pay for the damage.
We were lucky as kids I'll tell you, but at least we were creative while having way too much fun!
WD40 among others... Made a really nasty black smoke goo that stank...
LOL, probably a good thing we didn't do that or we'd have gotten the razor strap coupled with a fair amount of time being "grounded". :-)
My parents never knew.
I put 5 minute epoxy in my physic teacher's classroom door locks... The doors were exterior doors...
For some reason the doors were gone the next day...
I was a bad boy...
I've mellowed ;-)
Whatcha' do is take a piece o' pipe about two or three feet long ... jam it into th' ground 'n drop a marble on top of the lit firecracker you dropped in first.
INCOMING !!!
As we grew 'n became more evil ... we learned to aim th' thing at passing truck bodies ... until we broke a windsheild 'n the guy jumped out 'n started to chase us ... but we went back into the woods and we never did that again ... no sir.
That's amazing!
One of our favorite balloon creations was to take a small cardboard container, like 3 by 3 inches, and fill it with model airplane glue. We would take a plastic bag from the local dry cleaners and attach kite string to the cardboard container much like any balloon would be attached to the basket that people ride in. We would hold the plastic bag open and someone would light the glue. The 'balloon' would soar high into the air and what was neat is how the fire from the burning glue reflected off the plastic bag. You could see it a mile away. We would 'fly' these balloons near the main interstate highway where we grew up and many people would stop on the side of the road, get out and be pointing up in the air wondering what the heck is that??? This always worked best on a clear cold evening in winter with very light to no winds.
That's pretty cool. Never did that.
There's probably a few UFO sites with blurry night pictures of your creations ;-)
2" iron pipe threaded on both ends, iron pipe caps and black powder...
In truth, I'm lucky to still be around.
Hey, what is this, confession night...
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