Did You Know

Those who were born in the 50s, 60's 70's and early 80's are the last generation who played in the street. During our childhood we walked over a mile a day. We played hide & seek outside at night with no worries or fear of anything bad happening to us.

We are the first generation who played video games and the last to record songs off the radio onto a cassette tape. We learned how to program a VCR before anyone else, we were the first to play from Atari to Nintendo.

We are the generation of Tom & Jerry, Looney Toons and Captain Kangaroo.

We traveled in cars without seat belts or air bags, lived without cell phones and caller ID.

We got through math and accounting class without calculators or computers.

We did not have fax machines, flat screens, surround sound, iPods, Facebook, Twitter, computers or the internet, and through it all we had a great time.

How Did We Survive?

July 2002

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 1940s, 50's 60's and early 70's probably should not have survived.

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have.

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from the can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

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 child proof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets.

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 fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode 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 rode bikes or walked to a friend's house.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We did not have Nintendo's, Play stations, X-boxes, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no cable, no personal computers, no internet. WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We ate cup cakes, bread and real butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never over weight; we were always outside playing.

Little League had try outs 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.

Author unknown