A Little Reflection

A good friend passed this on to me recently. As our society becomes more litigious and people become more concerned about what might go wrong, I worry about our ability to live a simple joyful life. So for all of you who were born sometime before 1970, enjoy the memories and think about how much life has changed over the years. We survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs 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. We rode in cars with no special seats, seat belts or air bags. And riding in the back of a pick up was just something cool that we did. 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 died. We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter, or margarine loaded with trans fats, and drank Kool-Aid made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because, we spent our days 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 spent hours playing every type of game you could imagine from tag to hopscotch. We built go-carts out of scraps and old lawn mowers and then rode wherever we wanted only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes or the curb a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, or video games. Television consisted of only a few channels and our parents always made the choices. We had no videos, no DVD's, no surround-sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet, no chat rooms and you listened to music on vinyl. What we did have was 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 ate worms, fruit off of trees, mud pies, and God know what else and lived to tell. We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes. 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 and Bobbi-Sox had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, 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. If you are one of them, congratulations, somehow you managed to live through it.