Yeah, but...

People keep sending this to me, and I hate it.

To All The Kids Who Were Born in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s!!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

Yeah, if you consider birth defects and mental retardation “survival.” How can anyone encourage a return to ignorance?

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

People still take aspirin for things it won’t harm you for, eat blue cheese dressing and tuna from a can (I really don’t get those mentions), and get tested for diabetes because maybe there wasn’t an epidemic, but there is now.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

Yep, and they stopped doing that because of the BRAIN DAMAGE.

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.

Do you not realize all those things stopped because PEOPLE DIED?

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

I had no seatbelt once when someone rear-ended my mother’s car, and I smashed my face into the seat in front of me. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

Ah, yes, the good old days when people drove 25 miles an hour and there were only two cars on the road at any given time.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Yuck, I never drank water from the garden hose. And any time you taste something better, it’s hard to go back to the yucky stuff. I almost never drink tap water, and there’s a REASON for that.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

Another one I don’t get. Who died from sharing a soft drink with four friends?

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

I didn’t eat much of those things as a kid, and I wasn't overweight. I do now, and I'm fat. What’s your point?

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

And now, if you cut through a car wash lot on the way home from a friend’s house, you may get kidnapped, raped, and murdered.

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

I would bet my house that 90% of those parents would take a cell phone if it were an option for them.

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.

A boy in my kids’ day care a few years ago sledded down a hill and hit a light pole. Shattered his leg in six places and he was in a full-leg cast for several months. Not getting hurt doing something 10 times doesn't cancel out the one time you do.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

I have more friends now than I did then, AND I have Playstation, 500 channels on my satellite dish, DVDs, surround sound, cell phones, several household computers, and high-speed Internet access. And you know what? My kids have all those things, too, and MORE friends than I had at their age.

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

Wow, something I actually agree with. {g} I put the blame on a lot of today’s societal ills on too-many-lawyers syndrome.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

How do you know? Has someone cut you open to check?

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.

I never had guns, but yes, was told I’d put an eye out—usually with rubber bands flying around the room—and never met anyone it happened to. Which is why saying "someone's going to put out an eye" is a joke nowadays.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

We had sidewalks. My neighborhood has no sidewalks, and my kids would have to cross two major roads to get to friends’ houses. Not gonna happen.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

This is another sentiment I agree with in principle, except that it’s wrong. Anyone who wanted to play in Little League played, and it wasn’t until school teams that tryouts occurred. Also, tryouts happen now, and disappointment is part of life, and in my part of the world, anyway, that’s still a reality.

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

Yeah, right.*I* never broke the law, nor did my friends, but those who did quite often got bailed out and covered up by their parents. I know someone who went “shopping” in parked cars a few years ago, and not only did he have to do community service, so did his parents, and they didn’t break the law.

This generation has 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!

This is not the only circulating e-mail with this attitude. Every generation feels that the way things were done “back then” was superior to the way things are done now. But we can’t apply the circumstances of the past to the actions of the present, and as soon as you do and something bad happens, you get castigated.

And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!

I deserve no credit or accolades for growing up. It’s just what we’re supposed to do, the best we can, with what we’re given.

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 our lives for our own good.

This is really the stupidest part. Lawyers and government are preventing my kids from eating white bread and playing with a stick and tennis ball?

and while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

You can’t be brave if you don’t know what there is to be afraid of. Also, whoever wrote this OBVIOUSLY isn’t a parent. You don’t tell your kids what an idiot you used to be. That just encourages THEM to be idiots!

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

I take it back. THIS is the stupidest part.