Being old in America

[Faid]

I thought this was funny. But so true

Being Old in America
ALL ABOUT BEING BORN BETWEEN 1930 and 1980....

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank
while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue-cheese
dressing, and tuna from a can. They didn't get tested for Diabetes
and there are no Ultrasound photos of us in the womb.

We slept on our tummies, in baby cribs layered with lead-paint. We
had no child-proof medicine bottles, doors or cabinets.

We rode in cars as infants and children with no car-seats,
booster-seats, seat-belts or air-bags. We got older and rode our
bikes without helmets. We even...hitch-hiked! No one drove us to
school in an SUV. A special treat on a warm, summer day was to ride
in the back of a pick-up truck. We never fell out.

We drank water from the garden hose, not a plastic bottle. We
hared one soft-drink with four friends, and we all drank from the
ame bottle. No one actually died from this.

We ate white bread and real butter. We drank whole-milk and Koolade
made with 'too much sugar.' But we weren't overweight because we got
plenty of exercise playing outside. School recess was mandatory,
twice a day, and always outdoors.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day -- as long as we
were home before dark.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We spent hours building our go-carts out of scraps. We'd drive down
a hill, and would be surprised to find there were no brakes. We ran
into the bushes, and learned how to solve the problem...by
ourselves.

We fell out of trees, got bruises and cuts and broken bones...and we
lost teeth. There were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate mud-pies and worms. The worms did not live inside us forever.
We kicked-the-can, made up games with an old tennis-ball and a
stick. Contrary to what we were told, we never put out someone's
eye.

We had Little League tryouts, and not everyone made the team. Those
who weren't picked, and their parents, learned to ''deal with'' the
disappointment....And it was unheard of for a parent to bail us out
of jail. If we broke the law, they actually sided with the law.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendos, or X-Boxes. We did not have
150 cable-channels, or color-TVs, or VHS, or DVDs. Nor did we have
CDs, Walkmans, surround-sound, personal computers, Internet,
chat-rooms or...cell-phones. Instead, we went outdoors. We rode our
bikes, or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door,
sometimes just to talk.

There are more ''things'' for children today. But we had the most
important thing a child can have. We had the freedom to fail....We
are generations of risk-takers, problem-solvers and independent
thinkers. We have created an explosion of ideas and innovation. We
learned "to deal with it all," perhaps because as children we didn't
"have it all."

Thanks and a hat tip to my friend in Hammond, Indiana

Also, I would add, that I survived having my feet xrayed in the shoe store, even thought it was fun!

[Pantho]

Firstly: OMFG! i managed to login....

And rofl

pretty funny, and mostly true, altho to not,

(And i know its a joke text, but to note)

They stopped Xraying ppl because the poor men that worked there eventually fried there giblets...

[raykor]

I like it.