Editor's Note: This was sent
to us by our dear friends, Dave and Liz Clooney. While they
didn't expect it to be published, we were impressed enough with it to
put it here for others to read.
According to today's
regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's,
50's, 60's and before probably shouldn't have survived....
WHY???????????????
*Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based
paint. The bars were spaced wrong.
*We had no childproof medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets,
and what the heck was a bike helmet?
*We won't even talk about hitchhiking...
*As kids we would be carted around in cars with no seat belts
or air bags and riding in the back of a truck on a warm day was always
a special treat.
*We would spend hours building
scooters...skateboards...go-carts out of old wood, rusty scraps and
then rode down hills, only to find out we forget the brakes...but we
had our feet!
*We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long
as we were back when the street lights came on. (And no one was able
to reach us because cell phones hadn't been invented.)
*We fell out of trees, got cuts, broke bones and teeth, and
there were no law suits from these accidents. They were accidents.
Remember accidents? No one was to blame, but us.
*We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue
and learned to get over it. If we lied we got spanked.
*We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.
We ate cakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar cordials/kool-aid, but
we were hardly overweight because we were always outside playing and
although we shared one soft drink with our four friends, no one ever
actually died.
*We did not have Play Stations, Nintendo 64, X-boxes, 150
channels on cable, videos, surround sound, cell phones, personal
computers, Internet chat rooms...we had FRIENDS. We went outside and
found them.
*We rode bikes, roller skated, or walked to their homes and
stood in front and yelled for them to come out to play, or knocked on
the door, rang the bell or just walked in to visit them. Imagine such
a thing. Without asking a parent! By ourselves! Out there in the cold
cruel world! 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. Dogs licked us on
the lips...dogs and cats chased each other and were content to stay
alone.
*Tests were not adjusted for any reason. Some students
weren't as smart as others so they failed a grade and were held back
to repeat it. And the next time they usually passed.
*Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected and
there was no one to hide behind. The idea of a parent bailing us out
if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.
If you borrowed money from them, you paid it back with interest.
*And despite...or perhaps, because of all this...this
generation has produced some of the most outstanding risk-takers,
problem solvers, innovators and inventors, ever. The past 50 years has
seen an explosion of advancement and new ideas. Why? Because we were
given the freedom and responsibility...the chance to succeed and to
fail. And we learned how to make the most of what we were given.
Now,
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