GasBandit
Staff member
My own variant on a chain letter that's been sent around for a while.
People born before 1970 are awesome. Why?
Their mothers smoked and drank while pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for gestational diabetes. And then their mothers put them to sleep on their tummies in baby cribs absolutely covered by brightly colored lead-based paints. They rode bikes with no helmets or pads, rode in cars with no seat belts, carseats, airbags, ABS, or crumple zones. Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Water was drunk from a garden hose, not a bottle, and an ice cream cone could be shared with the dog. They ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. They drank Kool-Aid with real honest-to-god sugar. And they didn't get fat. Why? Because they played outside. They left home in the morning, stayed out all day with friends (completely out of contact of the adults) and it was all ok so long as they were back before the streetlights turned on.
They built go karts and tree forts out of scrap and rusty metal (hellooooo tetanus!). They crashed and fell down and smashed into things, earning cuts and bumps and bruises and abrasions and broken bones and knocked-out teeth, and when they skinned their knees there were band-aids, not lawsuits. They got beaten with sticks, paddles, belts or just bare hands and it was considered righteous discipline, not child abuse. Teams had tryouts, and not everybody made the cut. Those who didn't had to learn to live with the disappointment. Your self-esteem was not an issue - you were expected to be able to feel good about yourself once you'd done something to merit the feeling, not vice versa. When you got in trouble at school, you got double at home. And if you got arrested, Dad would let you stay the night just so you'd get the message not to screw up like that again.
Now a kid can't play in the padded-plastic playground unless his mother has direct line of sight contact with him at all times. I remember my playgrounds being rusty steel contraptions for climbing. It was considered an innovation when the seats on the swings started being rubber instead of wood. Schools bend over backwards to make sure a kid suffers no growth of character, and if by some accident he does, the parents are there to swoop in and shelter their precious snowflake and sue the school.
No wonder young people suck so much now. Compared with today, upbringings of the past must seem like homicidal rampages. How could anyone raised in the coddled comfort and sheltered safety of the post-70s be anything other than an emasculated, wussified sack of crap with a lack of character and a misplaced sense of entitlement?
People born before 1970 are awesome. Why?
Their mothers smoked and drank while pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for gestational diabetes. And then their mothers put them to sleep on their tummies in baby cribs absolutely covered by brightly colored lead-based paints. They rode bikes with no helmets or pads, rode in cars with no seat belts, carseats, airbags, ABS, or crumple zones. Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Water was drunk from a garden hose, not a bottle, and an ice cream cone could be shared with the dog. They ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. They drank Kool-Aid with real honest-to-god sugar. And they didn't get fat. Why? Because they played outside. They left home in the morning, stayed out all day with friends (completely out of contact of the adults) and it was all ok so long as they were back before the streetlights turned on.
They built go karts and tree forts out of scrap and rusty metal (hellooooo tetanus!). They crashed and fell down and smashed into things, earning cuts and bumps and bruises and abrasions and broken bones and knocked-out teeth, and when they skinned their knees there were band-aids, not lawsuits. They got beaten with sticks, paddles, belts or just bare hands and it was considered righteous discipline, not child abuse. Teams had tryouts, and not everybody made the cut. Those who didn't had to learn to live with the disappointment. Your self-esteem was not an issue - you were expected to be able to feel good about yourself once you'd done something to merit the feeling, not vice versa. When you got in trouble at school, you got double at home. And if you got arrested, Dad would let you stay the night just so you'd get the message not to screw up like that again.
Now a kid can't play in the padded-plastic playground unless his mother has direct line of sight contact with him at all times. I remember my playgrounds being rusty steel contraptions for climbing. It was considered an innovation when the seats on the swings started being rubber instead of wood. Schools bend over backwards to make sure a kid suffers no growth of character, and if by some accident he does, the parents are there to swoop in and shelter their precious snowflake and sue the school.
No wonder young people suck so much now. Compared with today, upbringings of the past must seem like homicidal rampages. How could anyone raised in the coddled comfort and sheltered safety of the post-70s be anything other than an emasculated, wussified sack of crap with a lack of character and a misplaced sense of entitlement?
