gridlore: Doug looking off camera with a grin (Penguin - Carpe)
Douglas Berry ([personal profile] gridlore) wrote2007-09-21 07:07 pm
Entry tags:

Proud veteran of Cardboard Hill, the Quarry, and the scary mine tunnel way back in the hills.

ganked from [livejournal.com profile] benkenobigal

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930s, 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 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 infants &children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up 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 Kool-aid 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, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell 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 dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

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 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!

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. 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?!

([livejournal.com profile] baka49er is going to ground me for going to the Quarry.)

[identity profile] isomeme.livejournal.com 2007-09-22 07:09 am (UTC)(link)
Hey, I was the good kid in the family, and *I* spent many a horrifyingly dangerous afternoon in the Quarry, running along the edge of crumbling 40-foot cliffs and jumping around on rusting, razor-edged abandoned machinery. Ah, those were the days.

It really has changed now. Until [livejournal.com profile] madelineusher was around 7, I would walk her all the way to school. Once she got that old, I figured it was time to start teaching her to be independent, so I walked her through the busy, dangerous part of the trip, then let her walk the remaining quarter mile up a sidewalk along a much quieter residential street to her school. We'd been doing this for about two weeks when I got a call from her school, informing me that many busybodies along that last quarter mile were aghast that a child was walking by herself.

I always wonder how people expect kids who have been wrapped in cotton wool their whole lives to magically turn into competent, functional adults.

[identity profile] gridlore.livejournal.com 2007-09-23 03:33 am (UTC)(link)
Great. Now we're both grounded.

*sigh*

So, Traveller or C&S?

[identity profile] isomeme.livejournal.com 2007-09-23 03:47 am (UTC)(link)
It's actually a Trav/C&S crossover I'm working on. Oh, and it uses the StarForce map. Again. It's not a Berry house gaming system unless it uses the StarForce map.