vic
by unknown author...
WE WAS BRUNG UP PROPER !
"And we never had a whole Mars bar until 1993"!!!
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's 1940's, 50's,
60's and early 70's !
?
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, raw egg products, loads of bacon and
processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or
cervical cancer.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured 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 we
took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
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 Nandos...
Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on a Sunday,
somehow we didn't starve to death!
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE
actually died from this.
We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and
buy Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.
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 old prams and then ride
down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes We built tree houses
and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all,
no 999 channels on SKY ,no video/dvd films,
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.
Only girls had pierced ears!
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us
forever.
You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time...
We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang
the bell, or just yelled for them!
Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet because we didn't
need to keep up with the Jones's!
Not everyone made the rugby/football/cricket/netball team. Those who didn't
had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the
team was based on MERIT
Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and throw the
blackboard rubber at us if they thought we weren't concentrating .
We can string sentences together and spell and have proper conversations
because of a good, solid three R's education.
Our parents would tell us to ask a stranger to help us cross the road. The
idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!
Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and
'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla' and 'Tiger'
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.
PS -The big type is because your eyes are not too good at your age anymore
?
Squonk
Good Stuff Vic ?
"And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you"
dee
I'm so calling my kid Vanilla Tiger... 8)
aubs1
Good one Vic, ?
Vic wrote
PS -The big type is because your eyes are not too good at your age anymore ?
? ?
Lord-Fraquart
Back in 1970 it was a women's magazine. No starry nippled girls.
An artist impression of what the Holiday Inn at Jan Smuts would look like.
Bloody whites
Obviously Miss Piggy did not become that girl.
Language rules were different back then.
Bikers were so cool back then.
WTF is a gogglebox? TV?
Swinging '70s.
My Datsun was only good enough for a second prize. ☹
Neon-Gecko
Amen to that brother...
I was scrounging through a box at my folks place the other day and found my old Sprite yo-yo! Man I had so much fun with that old thing as a kid, and it didn't even need batteries... ???
Bob-Dubery
I have fairly limited nostalgia actually. I do think a lot about the sixties because it was such a great time musically with so many unploughed fields and unexplored horizons and it must have been exciting to be there and see all that unfold (I caught the tail end of it, and was really too young to really understand the musical amazingness of that age). And I sometimes think about Victorian times, or even Edwardian, when it was probably a whole lot quiter at nights - but there was also far more pestilence than there is now, worse roads, worse sanitation and much worse medicine.
Other than that I tend to think that the current age is the golden age. Life expectancy is better than it's ever been, diseases that were barely identified when I was a kid are now treatable, others that were devastating problems are being vigorously combatted and are far less prevalent than they were (EG polio).
I even think guitars are better made now than they were back then. As a predominantly acoustic player I firmly believe that right now is the golden age in terms of guitar construction and choices.
vic
Come to think of it...there was also much much less choices to be made...... for example:
Your fav singer ? Elvis or Pat Boone or Ricky Nelson...
Your fav actor? Clint Eastwood or Lee Marvin....
Your fav car ? Chev or Ford....
Your fav instrumental band? The Shadows or the Ventures...
Your fav band ? Beatles or Stones....
Your fav motorbike brand? Harley or Truimph....
Your fav guitar brand? Fender or Gibson....
Your fav amp? Vox or Fender
Your fav drum set ? Rogers or Ludwig or Premier....
LOL !
Ray
Best damned things about those days is there were less people = less damage.
Neon-Gecko
Joe Moore wrote
Seeing those two items is a blast from the past...
Warren
You old guys are a real laugh. ?
Lord-Fraquart
I see your 4 track and raise you an 8 track. ? Have this on my desk. Opened it up to see if it is OK to power up. It will go into my 1973 Datsun if it works. I even have a box of old 8Tracks at home.
Bob-Dubery
Vic wrote
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's 1940's, 50's,
60's and early 70's !
Jeez... those okes lived through a lot of wars aqnd unrest. WW2. Korea, then, if you were American, Vietnam. You would have lived through the civil rights internal strife in the USA, or perhaps through the three-day week in Britain. Bangladesh, Biafra, "The Troubles", the Watts riots. Some of our 60s babies would have got their heads bashed in at punk gigs in the UK. The mining strikes. The Bader Meinhoff Gang. The SLA. The meltdown of the 60s with rock becoming a backdrop for Vietnam and the Manson family.
Reminds me of that great Zappa song "There's no way to delay that trouble coming every day."
Funny the things we don't see when we look back.
vic
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flatfourfan
nice thread.........My dad converted the garden shed into a pub for him and his mates in the early 80's and plastered the dart board back (aka an old door) with 60 odd page 3 birds. (google page 3 birds if you don't know what it is). I was the most popular guy in school and after school my mates and I would hang out in the bar, I think I was 8-9 years old. Scope was still showing stars back then, so it was a pretty big deal back then.
Squonk
This is the thing
There might have been wars, protests etc all over the world, but the Quality of family life at home was so much better than it is now.
The world has become too instant, we can access so much in a couple of seconds without even trying.
e.g. Completing a school Task/Project was quite a mission, if you were lucky to have a set of encyclopedias, you would have to use your brain and sift through and collate the information and then design your presentation and then do all the practical bits. You actually learned all these skills, unlike today's generation where everything is on a plate, all the thinking has been taken away, "Cut and Paste" works like a charm.
We didn't have encyclopedias, so it was off to the Library, where you would spend a good couple of hours researching etc. That's if no one else in your class had got there first!
Today's children have too much pressure placed on them, they grow up too fast. My 10 year old knows more than what I did at 18, but I do sense that he is missing out on being a child, as he has these moments where he acts "His Age" and thoroughly enjoys it.
Not all was better as XRB has stated, I would rather be sick now than 40 years ago, medicine has improved hugely.
But I preferred the world where you actually had to put some work in to develop skills and character!
Warren
X-rated Bob wrote
Funny the things we don't see when we look back.
Indeed. For one thing, I never had to waste two years of my life running around shouting stuff like "Ek kan nie meer nie, korporaal!" ?
Neon-Gecko
Well thats the thing about nostalgia, we tend to omit the bad and only remember the good things.
There is no doubt that I prefer living in the here and now, life is far better in this age. But its still pleasant to take a gander down Memory Lane, as weed riddled as it may have been in some aspects
Squonk
Warren wrote
X-rated Bob wrote
Funny the things we don't see when we look back.
Indeed. For one thing, I never had to waste two years of my life running around shouting stuff like "Ek kan nie meer nie, korporaal!" ?
Although that didn't kill me, I think I developed in those two years from a rebellious teenager to rebellious adult ?
Honestly I grew up in those 2 years and when life smacked me with some huge things, I could deal with them with a bit more savvy.
Not that I enjoyed that stint either, I was a bit anti government of the day, so I had huge issues and spent a lot of time with the Military Police :-[
Warren
Squonk wrote
But I preferred the world where you actually had to put some work in to develop skills and character!
I don't think this has changed. If anything, it has become tougher to differentiate yourself in a world where simply being clever is not enough to elevate yourself above your peers.
The landscape is just different: before you would simply accept whatever you read in the library as the truth, whereas researching stuff properly on the web requires some serious critical evaluation and cross-referencing. If you're a sportsman, you need to be stronger, faster and
smarter than ever before. Maybe not in the caber toss...
I feel similarly to you regarding the sense that there is a "loss of innocence", like kids have to learn so much so soon now. However, there are still plenty of opportunities for kids to be kids, it's just no longer as simple as opening the front door and letting them loose on the neighbourhood.
