Looking back with a smile

Megatron

Do you feel old?

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 50's, 60's, 70's and even early 80's probably shouldn't have survived, because our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint which was promptly chewed and licked. We had no child-proof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors or cabinets and it was fine to play with pots and pans.

When we rode our bikes we wore no helmets, just flip-flops and fluorescent 'spokey dokey's' on our wheels As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags - riding in the passenger seat was a treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle and it tasted the same... strange how water tastes just like ....well ...water!

We ate chips, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy juice with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.

Your mother MADE ice pops out of dilutable orange drinks.

We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can and no one actually died from this..

We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went top speed down the hill, only to find out we had forgotton the brakes.

After running into stinging nettles a few times we learned to solve the problem (dock leaves).

We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded.

We did not have Play stations or X-Boxes, no video games at all.
No 99 channels on TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no DVDs and no Internet chat rooms.

We had friends - we went outside and found them.

We played football and rounders every summer, and sometimes that ball really hurt!

We fell out of trees, got cut, and broke bones but there were no lawsuits.

We had full on fistfights but no prosecution followed from other parents.

We played knock-on-the-door-and-run-away and were actually afraid of the owners catching us.

We WALKED, yes walked to friends' homes.

We also believe it or not, WALKED to school; we didn't rely on mummy or daddy to drive us to school - which was just round the corner

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls

We rode bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood (kinda like a cape, looked cool when you went really fast).

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of.
They
actually sided with the law.

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and 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.

And you're one of them Congratulations! (Well done living this long).

Pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow as real kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good.

For those of you who aren't old enough thought you might like to read about us.

This, my friends, is surprisingly frightening and it might put a smile on your face: The majority of students in universities today were born in 1986.
They are called youth.

Check this out!
They have never heard of "We are the World", "We are the children", and the Uptown Girl they know is by West life not Billy Joel.

They have never heard of Rick Astley, Bananarama, Nena Cherry or Belinda Carlisle (..."ooo Heaven is a place on Earth, you make Heaven a place on
Earth"...) The Undertones, The Kinks or Elsie Brooks.

For them, there has always been only one Germany and one Vietnam.

AIDS has existed since they were born.

CD's have existed since they were born.

Michael Jackson has always been white.

To them John Travolta has always been round in shape and they can't imagine how this fat guy could be a god of dance.

They believe that Charlie's Angels and Mission Impossible are only movies.

They can never imagine life before computers.

They'll never have pretended to be the A Team, or the Famous Five

They'll never have applied to be on "Jim'll Fix It" .

They can't believe a black and white television ever existed And they will never understand how we could leave the house without a mobile phone.

Now let's check if we're getting old.

1 You understand what was written above and you smile.
2 You need to sleep more, usually until the afternoon, after a night out.
3 You are always surprised to see small children playing comfortably with computers.
4 When you see teenagers with mobile phones, you shake your head.
5 You remember watching Dirty Den in East-Enders the first time round.
6 You meet your friends from time to time, talking about the good old days, repeating again all the funny things you have experienced together.

7 Having read this mail, you are thinking of forwarding it to some other friends because you think they will like it too.

And finally, remember - you are not old - just fortunate!

dearg_doom

Megatron wrote:

you are not old

Yes you are.

*Page*

wu hu i'm old!!!

byte

Aaaahh, memories!

After all that reading, I need to a wee nap

solice

byte wrote:

Aaaahh, memories!

After all that reading, I need to a wee nap

Im only 20 and i did most of the things taht ye oldies did!

Ruu_Old

excellent thread lots of memories there.

StupidLikeAFox

They have never heard of "We are the World", "We are the children", and the Uptown Girl they know is by West life not Billy Joel.

They have never heard of Rick Astley, Bananarama, Nena Cherry or Belinda Carlisle (..."ooo Heaven is a place on Earth, you make Heaven a place on
Earth"...) The Undertones, The Kinks or Elsie Brooks.

For them, there has always been only one Germany and one Vietnam.


Michael Jackson has always been white.

To them John Travolta has always been round in shape and they can't imagine how this fat guy could be a god of dance.

They believe that Charlie's Angels and Mission Impossible are only movies.

They can never imagine life before computers.

They'll never have pretended to be the A Team, or the Famous Five

They can't believe a black and white television ever existed And they will never understand how we could leave the house without a mobile phone.

This is plain not true, pretty arrogant and sorta condescending

AIDS has existed since they were born.


CD's have existed since they were born.


They'll never have applied to be on "Jim'll Fix It" .

This is true though. Should young people be ashamed or something?

optikus-prime

Well said Megatron, I was there too

@ colhol One day you will look back with a different viewpoint

StupidLikeAFox

AAAGHH! Even more condescending :eek:

Ah im just buzzing, im pretty used to it now, but in fairness i used also be out all day long playing and stuff and kids nowadays around the place always seem to be out playing football and tig and sticky toffee and stuff.

Ah, to have one more game of sticky toffee......

Naos

I totallyagree with colhol. was gonna quote that stuff myself. total boll0x that condescending list of "Check this! , Kids of today never knew Michael Jackson was black !!!11"

..idiot. list was good til that. he forget infamous weapons of war such as stick fights, cherry poppers peg guns etc.

Blisterman

I was born in 1986 and I know all those things. Except that there were 2 vietnams.

Megatron

Mear wrote:

I totallyagree with colhol. was gonna quote that stuff myself. total boll0x

using that sort of language to a "Elder" ( i haven't a clue how old you are , sorry ) would get you a right smack across the head.

So behave or it's to your room (Where under strcik groundings in my own house , mean the removal of a Radio if you where lucky (Oldest) to have one). never had a tv in my own room for years).


/skolds Mear

dearg_doom

Blisterman wrote:

I was born in 1986 and I know all those things. Except that there were 2 vietnams.

That's a good point, wasn't there always one vietnam, it was a civil war no?

/pedantry

Blisterman

To be fair I didn't do leaving cert history.

pork99

dearg_doom wrote:

That's a good point, wasn't there always one vietnam, it was a civil war no?

/pedantry

I was in primary school at the time (1975). The Vietnam War came to a end when the North Vietnamese Regular Army with it's Soviet/Communist Chinese supplied tanks, artillery, helicopters, MIG fighters etc invaded the Republic of South Vietnam. I remember watching it on TV news, the iconic image of North Vietnamese T-55 tanks (made in Russia) driving into the grounds of the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace in Saigon.

http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/Vietimages/nva-tank.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/30/newsid_2498000/2498441.stm

The United States military had withdrawn in 1973, otherwise it would have been impossible for the NVA to launch a big invasion of South Vietnam. They'd been trying to do that for over 10 years previously but 500,000 US troops held them off.

Of course most people under 30 get their knowledge of the Vietnam war from films like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Born on the 4th of July etc which is OK but a bit distorted.

Raz

dearg_doom wrote:

That's a good point, wasn't there always one vietnam, it was a civil war no?

/pedantry

I think the point is that there used to be a North and South Vietnam, now there's only the Socialist Republic of Vietnam

http://servercc.oakton.edu/~wittman/chronol.htm (interesting read)
April 30, 1975
North Vietnamese forces take over Saigon; South Vietnam surrenders to North Vietnam, ending the war and reunifying the country under communist control, forming the Independent Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Washington extends embargo to all of Vietnam.

dearg_doom

Actually my point was more that they were two sides, with differing ideoligies, of a civil war in the one country, lazily labeled North Vietnam and South Vietnam by the western media, like the Pro-Treaty and Anti-Treaty sides in the Irish Civil War.

I didn't think that there Vietnam had officially split though.

pork99

dearg_doom wrote:

I didn't think that there Vietnam had officially split though.

I think the model the Geneva Conference agreement which partitioned the country in 1954 had for Vietnam was North and South Korea. But of course it was a very different situation from Korea.

is_that_so

pork99 wrote:

I think the model the Geneva Conference agreement which partitioned the country in 1954 had for Vietnam was North and South Korea. But of course it was a very different situation from Korea.

France pulled out of what was known as Indochine in 1954. Ho Chi Minh was influenced by Mao and wanted a Marxist republic. There was already a war of sorts going on anyway which is why the Conference split them. Think it's known as the 10,000 days war, including of course the ignominous US part in it.

Capt'n Midnight

is_that_so wrote:

France pulled out of what was known as Indochine in 1954. Ho Chi Minh was influenced by Mao and wanted a Marxist republic. There was already a war of sorts going on anyway which is why the Conference split them. Think it's known as the 10,000 days war, including of course the ignominous US part in it.

For the vietnamese the fighting started back when the Japanese invaded, there was a lul before the French came back. After the "Vietnam war" there was the fighting with the Kymer Rouge and then there was a six week gap before China invaded in the north..

R33F

thanx Megatron !!

good smiles here, and plenty of memories....

funny how growing up on the other side of the world

in the seventies was so similar.

i passed it on as you suggested, and have had plenty of laffs.

cheers

Inspector Gadget

Interesting thread... I think the original post is tinged with more than a little nostalgia, with a little hindsight stirred in for good measure, but it's good - brought back a few memories.

(Like: Why is it that in the "A Team", no-one ever seemed to get killed? Thousands of rounds were fired, cars, vans, boats and buildings were frequently destroyed, there were lots of cars, people etc. flying through the air as things blew up, but apart from a rare arm or leg wound, everyone seemed to be able to dust themselves off afterwards and walk away? Anyway, I digress)

I reckon the bits that say "well it didn't hurt us, did it?" about lead paint in cots, sharing drinks, the occasional fistfight , etc. is probably firmly dependent on your experience. The odds of any of these things actually doing you damage are (or at least were, I think - there's rose-tinted hindsight sticking it's nose in again...) quite low, so even if you ignore (or are unaware of) the risk, the odds of you getting nailed by any of these things are still quite low, though there'll be victims of all of these things "out there" if we look, which is why the tighter regulatory grip is there in the first place - because angry/grieving relatives petitioned companies/governments/courts to fix the problems.

Of course, there's the small matter of many of us of that "generation" not being fully aware of what damage may have been done to us by those things - for example, eating a fry every morning for breakfast (though I'm sure many still do, it's reckoned to be a lot less commonplace now than it was, unless you're on the Atkins diet) - that were done differently *yet* - give many of us another five to ten years, though, and things may start to surface.

@ ColHol, Mear: To be fair, it's not as if there's some "magic cutoff point" where everyone born before a certain date belongs to one group, and everyone born after it belongs to another; it's reasonable to assume that there will be people out there (such as yourselves) who can remember some (but not all) of the date-specific events Megatron mentioned, as well as having some of the associated facts to hand - anyway, I'm reasonably sure it wasn't meant to appear condescending or pity-laden or any such thing. All I think it means is that the people who "came later" saw life from a different (less innocent) perspective - whether it's better or worse on the whole (or whether that can even be meaningfully determined) is impossible to say. All I'm saying is, try not to get upset when something like this doesn't fit exactly with your personal recollections - it's impossible to draw up any list of this type that _someone_ won't find some fault with...

@ R33f: Out of curiosity, what's "Wonderland" (Sydney) and why do you say you're in it??? (in case you're wondering what I mean, I checked the coordinates you posted - sorry, I'm a bit bored right now )

I think I'd better take a rest now - typing this while balancing the keyboard on the edge of my Zimmer frame really took it out of me

Gadget

R33F

Inspector Gadget wrote:

@ R33f: Out of curiosity, what's "Wonderland" (Sydney) and why do you say you're in it??? (in case you're wondering what I mean, I checked the coordinates you posted - sorry, I'm a bit bored right now
Gadget

Wonderland is / was a huge theme park heading west out of Sydney.

Has been closed down now by a new motorway.

Use to have serioulsy corny lyrics to its jingle "wouldnt it be wonderful if the world was wonderland"

Inspector Gadget

R33F wrote:

Wonderland is / was a huge theme park heading west out of Sydney.

Has been closed down now by a new motorway.

Use to have serioulsy corny lyrics to its jingle "wouldnt it be wonderful if the world was wonderland"

Oh dear - 'nuff said :eek:

(Was having Beverly Hills Cop III flashbacks there for a minute - oops, that was Wonder_world_ )

Gadget