Remember when....

[botanika]

...you could buy guns from K-Mart...

...hanging out in summer evenings waiting for the milkman to drive by and getting chocolate Moove's for 20c

...Tough guys at the beach who drove Sandman 'sin bins'

...you sat down to watch Countdown top ten every sunday evening and the music was good

...chopper bikes with a card in the wheel

...Hanna Barbara cartoons

...a packet of cigerettes was 50c

...TAB cola, KB lager and Sodastream

...thunder firecrackers were 5c

...racing billycarts with no brakes

...when cricketb was about beer, fags and boobs

...Atari

...MAD magazine

(below is copied from another forum)

People over 35 should be dead. Here's why ............

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright coloured lead-based paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets. When we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.)

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

Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors!

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.

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

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode 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.

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

No one was able to reach us all day.

NO CELL PHONES!!!!!

Unthinkable!

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.

We had friends!

We went outside and found them.

We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.

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

They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.

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

Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.

Horrors

Tests were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own.

Consequences were expected.

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

Imagine that!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and 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.

...and yet it's members of that risk-taking generation that've turned into paranoid safety nazis, dragging the rest of us along with them.

What went wrong?

[ThunderIdeal]

until i saw the end i was thinking 'put a bullet in my head if i ever sound like that'

[Chiral]

I can relate to everything you wrote botanika...it's a pussy filled, rule driven, cotton wool world now, to be honest I don't see it ever going back to the way it was back then...I think that is to the determent of future generations.

Collecting tadpoles, setting off firecrackers around the local bonfire, billy carts down steep hills, fishing without licenses...heaven forbid we should eat real butter or a roast chook or potroast and collect the dripping...bah, it's all gone, I also have to ask why...?

[Amazonian]

I remember being a 6 year old getting dragged to the pub with my parents and kept asking "can we go now?' The answer was always..."after this beer" We never left until stumps . I would eventually go to sleep under the table. The only good thing at the time was that I got to have a raspberry lemonade.

[nabraxas]

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms

i doubt if any ov the problem solvers and inventors produced by this generation ever felt the need to eat worms...

[Yawning Man]

Kids can/still do all of these things. All it takes is the parents letting their kids be kids ffs.

cheers

[sapito]

Remember when people were the change they wanted to see in the world. hihihi

[botanika]

Collecting tadpoles, setting off firecrackers around the local bonfire, billy carts down steep hills, fishing without licenses...heaven forbid we should eat real butter or a roast chook or potroast and collect the dripping...bah, it's all gone, I also have to ask why...?

 

I wonder if my son will get out and about or become a digital junkie - I remember catching tadpoles too - my parents garden ended up with lots of frogs eventually. We used to catch them next to a big tree with an aggressive magpie and we'd wear bike helmets and ski goggles for protection, encouraging the bastard to swoop. Also spent a good bit of time exploring stormwater pipes. Bonfire nights use to be huge back in the day - whole suburbs would come out and light towering fires with Guy Fawkes manequins to burn and shooting star wars - fully satanic. I was only a kid but I do have a fondness for the Australian spirit in the 70's. Chiral have you seen the doco 'not quite Hollywood'?

Edited July 13, 2010 by botanika

[FancyPants]

I grew up in the 80's and can relate to the vast majority of the original post. Seems a bit sad, but that's how it goes I guess

I remember being a 6 year old getting dragged to the pub with my parents and kept asking "can we go now?' The answer was always..."after this beer" We never left until stumps . I would eventually go to sleep under the table. The only good thing at the time was that I got to have a raspberry lemonade.

 

Hmm I also spent a fair bit of childhood stuck in beer gardens drinking Shirley Temples/Firetrucks and pleading for us to go home. Some might nowadays say that sort of environment turns kids into boozeheads. But I HATE pubs, despite now being part owner in one with mum and dad.

[Auxin]

...heaven forbid we should eat real butter...

I have a illegal real-butter connection baby, w00t

It amazed me, it doesnt taste anything like the foil wrapped sticks.

I'm starting to feel old too, I can remember when the average american frequently drank water!

Thats history now.. long ago replaced by half gallon buckets of soda, and people wonder why americans look like this:

[Amazonian]

Remember when a cigarette could be smoked anywhere, even in hospitals.

[bℓσωηG]

I have a illegal real-butter connection baby, w00t

It amazed me, it doesnt taste anything like the foil wrapped sticks.

I'm starting to feel old too, I can remember when the average american frequently drank water!

Thats history now.. long ago replaced by half gallon buckets of soda, and people wonder why americans look like this:

 

MOAR! number 3 pleeze,lol.... bring back the hairy bush i say!

[dworx]

Those things have gotta be the uuuugliest women I've ever seen.. How does one let them self go - to that extreme?

Edited July 13, 2010 by dworx

[Rabaelthazar]

I'll take the skinny one on the right!

[mutant]

Greece is always several decades back in every single -cultural- thing. I too feel lucky I used to play outside with friends, with mechanical toys, bicycles, skates and all that shit, we didn't have video games with amazing gfx - if we had, for me it was just cga graphics at a 4,77 Mhz ancient PC with 20MB hard disk, or for friends was amiga 500 , an great computer or the lesser amstrad 6128. We didn't have lots of tv channels and internet connection, not like nowdays with playstation and all that.

Of course we are americanised in greece, even though the antiamerican movement is pretty strong here, and we gradually get 'better' at imitating the worse of capitalist motifs of usa and eu, but smaller places, smaller towns, especially villages in certain places, even particular neighbourhoods in bigger cities still keep that character or elements of which makes all us a bit nostalgic. People sit outside their houses, in roads that are still not crowded with traffic, they chat with their neighbours , they help each other and know each other by the small name...

I suppose the warm weather plays a role for this thing...

and oh, what's with that soda thing? I was amazed that when in Berlin the soda was like 1/3 the price of regular water, which we drink from the tap here in greece... Even juices and stuff like that was cheaper than plain water in berlin!

drinking bubble water all the time must be destructive for stomach and digestion

====

but I am not really in accordance with the melancholy of all this. That's what we are, look at how WE use computers, how could the new generations ignore the possibilities?

villagers would love to become city dwellers and city dwellers are begining to long for the more natural surroundings of the village / smaller town. That's the ingratitude, inconsistence, unsatisfied nature of the human beast: we like what we don't/can't have and quite often we stop needing it as soon as we get it...

[Evil Genius]

yeah those were the times, when tampons were still made of moss n stuff.

[Auxin]

...what's with that soda thing? I was amazed that when in Berlin the soda was like 1/3 the price of regular water, which we drink from the tap here in greece... Even juices and stuff like that was cheaper than plain water in berlin!...

Thats because in westernized culture soda is what ordinary people drink when they are thirsty and water is a trendy luxury the middle and upper class sip on to look cool.

Healthy stuff that used to be ordinary has become queer trends and luxuries. Spices and grains are a good example. In my town we have 'american stores' and 'foreigner stores', in american stores a pound of grains can cost $4 USD, in stores that supply first generation immagrants who actually cook their own food more than twice a month its $0.80 per pound. In american stores turmeric comes in a fancy glass bottle and is $7 USD for 2.5 oz, in the asian store its in a plastic bag and $0.95 for 4 oz. The potential examples go on and on but it all comes down to the principal that the default foods of a group tend to be cheap and the luxury foods tend to be overpriced.

I mainly shop at a mexican market and a southeast asian shop so I can afford to eat stuff thats not dripping with cholesterol and corn syrup.

[FancyPants]

^^^ I buy Evian water because I prefer the softer taste and find it easier to drink a lot more of at a time than tap or most other bottled waters; not to look cool

Jeez I remember flavoured milk used to be a lot more popular here than it is now. Now soda's the thang, but I can't drink more than around 100ml of the stuff at a time.

[Chiral]

...you could buy guns from K-Mart...

...hanging out in summer evenings waiting for the milkman to drive by and getting chocolate Moove's for 20c

...Tough guys at the beach who drove Sandman 'sin bins'

...you sat down to watch Countdown top ten every sunday evening and the music was good

...chopper bikes with a card in the wheel

...Hanna Barbara cartoons

...a packet of cigerettes was 50c

...TAB cola, KB lager and Sodastream

...thunder firecrackers were 5c

...racing billycarts with no brakes

...when cricketb was about beer, fags and boobs

...Atari

...MAD magazine

 

Incredible times when I think back to them, perhaps it's these childhood memories that stick solid the most, why..because life was so simple, wake eat cereal and play all day..outside, breathing so much fresh air and running around or riding bikes all day...this is why we are still alive and kicking on strongly, we had so much damn exercise, we ate real food and drank from bubblers.

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

No one was able to reach us all day.

NO CELL PHONES!!!!!

Unthinkable!

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.

Horrors

 

Hard to imagine isn't it...to think this is not so long ago, people barricade themselves in now, security and fear are big business, and 8-9 year olds are carrying cell phones around with gps enabling so parents know where they are.