I’m glad I grew up when I did, rather than in these ridiculously ‘sensitive’ times. Does anyone else get as hacked off as me when you hear about pathetic standards that we sensible adults have to adhere to, such as ‘Health & Safety’… urgh
When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip flops and fluorescent ‘clackers’ on our wheels.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the passenger seat was a treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle – tasted the same.
We ate dripping sandwiches, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.
We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went top speed down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us all day and no-one minded.
We did not have Playstations or X-Boxes, no video games at all. No 99channels on TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet chat rooms. We had friends, we went outside and found them.
We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits. They were accidents. We learnt not to do the same thing again.
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate live stuff, and although we were told it would happen, we did not have very many eyes out, nor did the live stuff live inside us forever.
We rode bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood (stu: this was the BEST!)
16-May-03 at 11:58 am | Permalink
It’s more about the ‘litigation culture’ influence of the US though isn’t it?
We are nails though.
16-May-03 at 11:58 am | Permalink
Am wary of glorifying the past relative to today but there was an interesting report from the House of lords the other day on a slightly related note. It concerned the daft injuries that people do to themselves and you wouldn’t believe some of it: thousands slashed by corn beef tins, about eight hundred cut by envelopes and paper and 30 people injured by putty!? And these were the ones that were deemed serious enough to report and record.
19-May-03 at 11:59 am | Permalink
That particular report was doing the rounds here, too. Read like a chapter from the Darwin Awards..
Its not until you read exerpts from suchlike that you realise how stupid some people really are. What can you possibly do with putty to injure yourself?
(cue something sick, twisted and invariably sexually orientated from Mssrs Bell and Low..)