Friday, April 07, 2006

NOT a Friday Feast

Unlike a lot of bloggers, I don't do Friday Feasts.

From now on the Palace will be having Frolicking Fridays - when I post the best/funniest emails received in the Royal inbox - like this!


This is for those born 1920-1979! (ps - yes, the little 'angel' in the picture is me!)

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, 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 coloured 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 infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, 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, white bread and real butter and drank lemonade made with sugar, 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 150 channels on cable or satellite , no video films or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or 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 ate worms and mud pies made from soil, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given pop 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!

We had football and cricket trials and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to cope 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!

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!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?! [snigger]

cq

23 comments:

Jean-Luc Picard said...

It makes you wonder how we survived!

keda said...

fabulous!

i recently read a great autobiography by andrew collins called where did it all go right?

its about growing up normal in the 70's. its excellent. this brought back such brilliant memories.... damn where are those scissors?

keda said...

oops here via michele today*

Le laquet said...

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!

I just walked in through the back door and if they were eating their mum fed you too! I'm going to jog with my scissors now!

OldLady Of The Hills said...

Hello, Dear CQ! I'm back among the living...sort of...(Still not 100% but hoping to get there in the next few days..)
How did we survive all this? Walking to school every day...Playing in the woods...Front Door Unlocked!!! And yet, it was great fun and we certainly amused ourselves in very wonderful ways without all those tech toys...! Amazing! Bike riding, Sleding down the nearest hill in winter, playing with marbles and jacks and the like...Doing Jigsaw Puzzles on Rainy Days....Ahhhh the sweet memories.

Love that photo of you, my dear...just adorable. How old might you be there?

OldLady Of The Hills said...

OOOOPPPS! Of course I forgot to say that Michele sent me tonight..(Well, here in L.A. it's night/early a.m.)

Jean-Luc Picard said...

Hi visited here yesterday; it was a great post. Michele sent me.

Diamond said...

Hell not only did we run with scissors, I recall eating paste too!!

Absolutely wonderful post!!!!!!

Lazy Daisy said...

Awww....look at you My Queen...such a cutie even back then...btw (got any hot tips on your Olympians? always in the mood for a good story?)

Fizzy said...

MORNING :):):)
I loved this post. I remember when in the holidays my Mum did not work so all those parents that did work gave my Mum thier house keys and the children all played in our garden and if they needed something Mum gave them the key to go and get it!!!
A different lifestyle!
HAve a good Saturday
(can I do a littl boinnnnng!!!!????)

Linda said...

Yup - alive and kicking, as a child of the 70's!

Michele sent me!

Lisa said...

that is awesome! I could relate to almost all of those. Michele sent me today.

Anonymous said...

I get a kick out of things like that that debunk the whole world is a place you have to walk on (federally tested and approved) eggshells or else, disaster.

Thanks for stopping by.

So that what weather are you quiz gives random results. Too bad. Although it's cool you are a whole weather system. :-)

Bud said...

Hello, Michele sent me.

WendyWings said...

Michele didn't send me and I would have been the second comment here yesterday only my phone rang and I clicked off and forgot to come back.
It is amazing any of us made it past childhood huh ;)

The Gnat's Trumpet said...

So true. It seems that when we become adults we forget just how resourceful we were as children and treat our own chidren as if they are china dolls. Great post.

Juggling Mother said...

I refer you to the comment I made when dave posted this:

"hmmmm, but in 1970 there were 21,118 deaths of children aged 0-19 years. In 2001 there were 2,773 deaths of the same age-group!

Stats according to the Office for national Statistics.

I know some it will be attributable to better medical techniques but 18,350?

Maybe all these stupid H&S laws aren't quite so stupid?

BTW, my kids still drink water from the hose, share cups and will build go-karts. They play outside all day, and explore forests, beaches and grassy plains. They ride bikes and scooters, roller skate and fall over. Their favourite toys are still the bits of rubbish they find lying around in the yard, and they still pop round to friends houses "on the off chance" that they are in. They go on school trips, and attempt "dangerous" sports while on them.

They also wear seatbelts, bike helmets and play on the nintendo and watch TV. Welcome to the 21st century. Kids today have to do all of that, and more. Life gets harder for each generation, but hopefully safer."


It may be funny, but it's not true that we all survived that lifestyle. 18,000 children each year didn't!

Magoo, Smudge, Bella & Dolce said...

There are Lies, Damn Lies, and Damn Statistics...

Although kids today maybe safer according to your statistics, I don't feel that their qaulity of life is better. I got into fights as a kid, but I never had a knife pulled on me. At least not until I was 25 and it was a 18 yr old.

The good old days are gone and the sad state of affairs lies strictly with us. We sued schools when our child was cut from the football team. We had the teacher fired because he challenged our kids' value systems. We sat back and let special interest groups take over and dumb down the school cirriculum. If our kids are flawed or less than what we thought we were at their age; it is our fault.

Juggling Mother said...

Magoo - really? lucky you. i had my first knife pulled on me when I was 7. At school. Soon after that, the school started doing regular searches & confiscating anything that could be a weapon, including knives, scissors, bike chains (wow, that made a mess of someone!), and pencil sharpeners (you can take the blade out & it's very sharp!). OTT? yes, but necessary. Did parents complain? Yes. One teacher ended up with a broken nose from a parent, another with a serios flesh wound from a student. Kids today are so much worse than that? It's just we didn't make the national news (for those incidents - we did on a couple of occasions. (one when 200 students were hospitalised. One when a teacher was set on fire, one when we had a racist atteempted murder).

There was a big hoo hah this week that kids today don't know how to wire a plug. Thats because you can only buy moulded plugs now & that has been law for at least 20 years!

As I said, my kids play outside, walk to school, drink from the hose, go off all day on their own, will ride bikes in the forest, play fight with wooden sticks, pop round to friends houses etc etc.

If your kids don't it's your fault, not societies!

craziequeen said...

Wow - I missed so much growing up in villages and small towns....

But even in Cheltneham we had our problems........rebellious children, over-zealous and violent adults, and rather strange stangers.....

cq

Unknown said...

I survived, but I'm a little neurotic.

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