HOW DID WE SURVIVE?

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[Andy from Beaverton]

HOW DID WE SURVIVE?

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 painted with bright colored lead based paint, we often
chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets,

When we rode our bikes we had no helmets.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride 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.

We played dodgeball and sometimes the ball would really hurt.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never
over weight; we were always outside playing.

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.

That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem
solvers.

We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned
how to deal with it all.

[GivemeaBREAK!]

We also were always playing with toy guns, a real taboo today!

We would play cops and robbers, war games, cowboy and indians, er, native-Americans and surprise: we didn't have these school shootings, these mass murders and all the other violence that today brings.

Those that fear guns most likely never even shot a gun or know how to properly do so.

You respect a gun, you don't fear a gun, but you have to fear a man with a gun because he is the unknown variable in the equation, not the gun!

[spectre]

My poor Mother could never keep a thermometer in the house, that I didn't run it under hot water to retrieve the mercury to play with.

We got plenty of exercise chasing that Good Humor Ice Cream Truck down the street back then..guess it balanced all those fat calories we were consuming :~)

Where are the street kids today? Sitting on their backsides in front of a computer screen?

sw

[varon]

How did we survive? Beats me!

How did we ever survive without all those grief counselors ;-)

[winodog]

I did lots of things I would not want my kids to do. I climbed huge trees and swung around in them one handed oblivious to how dangerous it was.
Ran around in swamps that I was not allowed to go near but went in every chance I got.
I remember the first time I got enough courage to jump off the roof without hanging down so the fall would not be so high.
I did the mercury thing, chased the mosquito spray truck,always walked to school, and left home early in the morning not to return till dark.
My son and his friends think I am crazy when I tell them to get a drink out of the hose instead of coming inside, getting a clean glass and drinking bottled water.

[spodefly]

I have always suspected that many here ate lead as children ... ;)

In a typical day for me (age 6 - 15) I would do any and/or all of the following:

* Spend the entire day riding up and down the creek in a 12' john-boat with my dog Sam and a .22 rifle, and I managed to never shoot Sam, myself, or any other inappropriate thing.

* Walk into the woods for any distance I wanted in any direction I wanted with Sam and the .22.

* Spend the day riding all over the woods on a Yamaha 60 sometimes going many miles from home. I did wear a helmet though.

* Ride unbelted in an old Willy's Jeep pulling a bush-hog up and down rows of planted pines or fire breaks.

* Climb trees, hang a rope, and swing out over the creek and/or any other suitable area.

* poke sticks into yellow jacket's nests.

* put pennies on the railroad track.

* eat fried pork chops.

* carry a pocket knife to school.

I always had good grades, managed to mostly stay out of trouble, did bloody a few noses in school-yard tussles (and get mine bloodied), played dodgeball like a madman, and even played the ever popular 'tackle the man with the ball' and I loved all my little girlfriends and miss them to this day ...

If I were born today, chances are I would be on Ritalin, in special ed, 30 pounds overweight, deathly afraid of guns, watching TV 7 hours a day, and wondering about my sexuality.

[Billthedrill]

I guess it varies from area to area. I vividly recall a skinny little house-mouse riding a scooter (illegally) out to a neighbor's barn clad in cutoffs and a t-shirt, throwing a saddle and a bridle on his horse, and riding out into the high desert unaccompanied. With a gun. Stupid little small-town boy should have been killed. That was me.

If you're a very, very lucky kid you'll live in a place "uncivilized" enough to let that happen today. If you're not you end up playing your gameboy and dodging gang-bangers. "Glories of youth" my @ss, being young these days sucks.

[WhiteGuy]

I've got one.....

In the winter, we'd hang around in the parking lot of the bowling ally......

Then we'd sneek up behind the slowly moving cars and grab the rear bumper and "ski" along.

Too much fun

[Zon]

Congress has created so many laws that virtually every person is assured of breaking more than just traffic laws. Surely with all this supposed lawlessness people and society should have long ago run head long into destruction. But it has not.

Instead, people and society have progressively prospered. Doing so despite the federal government -- politicians and bureaucrats -- creating on average, 3,000 new laws and regulations each year which self-serving alphabet-agency bureaucrats implement/utilize to justify their usurped power and unearned paychecks. They both proclaim from on high -- with complicit endorsement from the media and academia -- that all those laws are "must-have" laws to thwart people and society from running headlong into self-destruction.

Despite not having this year's 3,000 must-have laws people and society increased prosperity for years and decades prior. How can it be that suddenly the people and the society they form has managed to be so prosperous for so long but suddenly they will run such great risk of destroying their self-created prosperity? Three hundred new laws each year is overkill, but 3,000 is, well, it's insane. Insane that the people allow their well being and prosperity be sacrificed so that politicians and bureaucrats can "justify" their unearned paychecks.

How it works. Politicians and bureaucrats, aided by a complicit media and academics -- create a boogieman to scare people. Having foisted the illusion on the people, politicians and bureaucrats sweep in to save the day. Politicians thrive on saying, "I'm going to use government to help the little guy". With the boogieman in place they can justify creating more new laws and regulations.

That's how we get 3,000 new laws and regulations each year. And that's just from the federal government. State governments use the same ploy as do county and city governments.

Again, how is it that people's well being and prosperity has faired so well last year and the decades prior without having this year's 3,000 new federal government laws as well as a hundred new State laws? When I say "faired so well", that is in light of the fact that each year the people are burdened with sacrificing more of their hard earned paycheck and freedom to government just so politicians and bureaucrats can "justify" their unearned paychecks.

Day-after-day they're selling you the Brooklyn Bridge. Wake Up!

"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind.

"They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority." -- Frederick Bastiat, The Law (1850)

[goodieD]

Great post! I remember jumping off our shed with an umbrella imitating Mary Poppins. I remember eating raw bacon and sneaking my uncle's liquid sacharine. I remember the brakes failing on my bike and ending up in the juniper bushes (ouch). I remember trying to pop a wheelie on my bike and ending up on my rear end. I remember my dad racing up and down rural hills in his 442 and yelling "faster daddy!" I remember popping baby aspirin when my mother wasn't looking.

[goodieD]

I know you must have some stories to add here!

[El Gato]

Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race?

Now that is a good question!

[Maceman]

When we were six or seven, we all carried pocket knoves and amused ourselves for hours playing unsupervised games of mumblety-peg.

[Maceman]

knoves=knives

[Paradox]

More good danger from my youth. There was a field behind my house, that had a creek. There were these huge trees, where we built "tree houses" (basically, wooden platforms), 50-60 feet up in the air. Luckily whenever we fell, we would land on other branches and/or they would break our falls. We'd string a cable from tree to tree, then used a pulley tied to a stick of wood, and hang from that as we traversed a good 25-30 feet through the air. At that same creek, when it froze over, we'd walk over the thin ice and we would OFTEN break through and get completely submerged. I recall one mad scramble to find the break through hole as I came back up.. very scary.

Then there was the ground level fort we had built, 12 feet high, close to a wooden fence. Eventually we all got up the courage to jump off the fort, over the fence, and onto the ground. You learned to roll with the fall, and didnt get hurt (not too badly anyways, we did have one broken ankle).

Ohh! I remember hanging on to the "Popsicle Man's" truck, while we road skate boards down the street, and he would jiggle the truck to and fro to get us to let go. One of our guys fell off at about 30 mph and became a walking scab for a week or so, that ended that bit of fun...

Don't know how we survived it all, sometimes I think some of those episodes were evidence of divine intervention..

[jjm2111]

"...played dodgeball like a madman...."

Now dodge ball is bad.

[DeFault User]

Dittos on all the memories posted.

One more: I never recall seeing a policeman in any school I attended unless there was a special program on safety, fire prevention, etc. There was no need for them.

[The Toll]

Our parents never suffered under the dilusion that disputes were never to be solved with violence. My parents knew that was not the case and my father prepared me for that reality. Every kid I ever met knew what a fight was and more importantly knew when it was over. If you got licked you got licked, pride was something you learned to swallow along with blood from your lip.

[gcruse]

We drew war pictures in grade school and played Cowboys and Indians,
                      yet were the active generation protesting Vietnam.

We bore the undiluted brunt of nuclear war scenarios with only the
                      palliative of 'duck and cover' for our fears.

There were no 'grief counselors' at our schools as polio raced through
                      the nation.

The medium of our destruction was comic books not videogames,
                      the only one of which was 'Winky Dink and You.'

                                 

Abortion was illegal, so girls who didn't go to homes for unwed mothers
                      met up with coat hangers and death at back alley providers.

We made it in spite of iron lungs, mumps, unchecked air pollution, muscle cars,
                     swamp coolers, faith healers, dry counties, and orphanages.

"I'm still here, you bastards!"
                            ---Steve McQueen, Papillion

[thrcanbonly1]

C.S. Lewis made an observation applicable to do-gooders everywhere: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."