The Good Old Days

A friend emailed this to me recently and it gave me a laugh (cause it's true!)...

"First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were 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 or shoes, not to mention, the risks some of us took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a Ute on a warm day was always a special treat.

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

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC, Subway or Red Rooster.

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 soft drinks with sugar in it, 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. We built tree houses and cubby houses and played in creek beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape or DVD movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet 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 rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

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

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all!

And 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 our lives for our own good.

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

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

It's kind of funny thinking about how we try desperately to shelter our kids from life's hard knocks, as if it were possible.

A pastor I respect immensely because he is a fantastic dad, once said, "Better broken bones than a broken spirit".

In other words, our bones will heal if we fall off the roof of that playhouse (Abby), but it may be a whole lot harder to regain confidence, if our mums are forever saying, "Don't do that, you might fall" or "you'll get dirty!"

What's that old saying, "Better to try and fail than never try at all?"

Sometimes I have to literally swallow my words when I see my kids doing crazy things like climbing trees, stamping in puddles, making mud pies, building tents in the back yard with all my sheets.... Because that's what kiwi kids do, don't we??!!