First and foremost, let’s congratulate everyone born in the 1930s, 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and early 80s! You have truly grown up in remarkable times.
You survived being born to mothers who smoked or drank while they were carrying you. They also took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, and enjoyed tuna straight from a tin without testing for diabetes.
And if that wasn’t enough, your baby cots were often painted with bright, lead-based paint.
There were no childproof lids on medicine bottles, no safety locks on doors or cabinets, and when you rode your bikes, helmets were a rarity. Let’s not forget the risks taken hitchhiking!
In cars, there were no seat belts or airbags. Riding in the back of a van without seat belts was an exhilarating adventure. You quenched your thirst with water from the garden hose, not from a bottled source.
You shared a single soft drink with your friends, and amazingly, everyone survived. You indulged in cakes, white bread, real butter, and sugary soda, yet weren’t overweight because…
YOU WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
You would leave home in the morning and play all day long, provided you returned when the streetlights came on. There were no means for anyone to reach you all day, and that was perfectly fine. You spent hours creating go-carts from scraps and then raced down hills, often discovering you forgot the brakes along the way. After crashing into bushes a couple of times, you figured out how to fix it.
There were no Playstations, Nintendos, or Xboxes. No video games at all! No endless channels on cable TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet, and no chat rooms…
YOU HAD FRIENDS and found them outside!
You fell from trees, got cuts, broke bones and teeth, but there were no lawsuits from such incidents. Many of you played with worms and made mud pies, and those worms didn’t live inside you forever.
Inventing games with sticks and tennis balls was the norm, and despite warnings, you rarely poked out an eye.
You rode bikes or walked to your friend’s house, knocked on the door, rang the bell, or simply shouted for them.
Local teams had tryouts, and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to deal with disappointment. Imagine that! Parental intervention for breaking the law was unheard of. Parents sided with the authorities!
This generation has produced incredible risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors. The past 50 years witnessed a burst of innovation and new ideas. You experienced freedom, failure, success, and responsibility, learning to…
ADAPT AND OVERCOME! And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!
What do you think of this email I received? Does it resonate with your experiences? Feel free to share this with others who were fortunate enough to grow up before the era of overregulation. And while you’re at it, pass it along to your kids so they know how brave their parents were.
