TO THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 30's 40's, 50's, 60's:
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints. 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 seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING! 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. And we were O.K.
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 did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms....WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
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 in us forever.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house 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. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!
The past 50 years have bee 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 are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS! Please pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with a pair of scissors, doesn't it?!
__________________
"Bitte, trinks du das Wasser nicht. Dahin haben die Kuhen gesheissen."
The population is increasing and our way of life is speeding up, including bacteria. Just a little reason why times have changed. Don't forget about the viruses...
And shove them right into the wall outlet! That was always an interesting feeling....in the days before outlet covers!
Hey i did that a bit myself!
[&:]pretty sparks& odd sensations.
__________________
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.-- Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18)
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~Will Rogers
Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday.
"Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's 'bold new imaginative program' with its proper age?" "Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marxfirst launched a century ago.
There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all. R.Reagan-1960
War Against Christmas 2004 Competition [IX]: An Orwellian Christmas
By Tom Piatak
[Also by Tom Piatak: Take Back Christmas! and Happy Holidays? Bah! Humbug!]
Traditionally, the writer most associated with Christmas was Charles Dickens. But today, Christmas in America is far more likely to be Orwellian than Dickensian.
Long before the advent of political correctness, Orwell wrote, "Freedom is the freedom to say 2 + 2 = 4. If that is granted, all else follows."
I was reminded of Orwell"s great insight by a recent skirmish in the War against Christmas at a private school east of my hometown, Cleveland.
A seventh grader there made the mistake of saying that two plus two equals four. He called the decorated tree in his homeroom a "Christmas tree."
When I was in seventh grade, such a statement would have been as controversial as saying the sky is blue. After all, Christmas is the holiday that causes tens of millions of Americans to celebrate by putting up decorated trees.
But, at this school, students are required to say that two plus two equals five: the decorated tree must be referred to as a "holiday tree."
Because of his insistence on speaking the truth, this seventh grader was labeled an "anti-Semite" and a "Nazi" by classmates
__________________
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.-- Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18)
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~Will Rogers
Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday.
"Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's 'bold new imaginative program' with its proper age?" "Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marxfirst launched a century ago.
There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all. R.Reagan-1960
Far from reprimanding the students who absurdly equated Christmas with Nazism, his teacher threatened to discipline the seventh grader if he persisted in calling the decorated tree by its actual name. He was also warned that he must not wish anyone a "Merry Christmas."
Needless to say, this bit of nastiness was justified on the Orwellian grounds of "diversity" and "tolerance."
Interestingly, even though Jewish students are a minority, the school also displays menorahs and dreidels (but no nativity scenes) and puts up lights in blue and white, the Hanukkah colors. No one is threatened with discipline for mentioning that holiday.
I was also reminded of Orwell when I was preparing for a recent talk to the Cleveland chapter of the Federalist Society on the legal aspects of the War Against Christmas. At least some federal courts harbor a thinly-disguised hostility toward Christianity, justified in Orwellian terms.
__________________
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.-- Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18)
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~Will Rogers
Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday.
"Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's 'bold new imaginative program' with its proper age?" "Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marxfirst launched a century ago.
There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all. R.Reagan-1960
NOW vs THEN....
