Things generation x'rs will never know

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donaldb

Well-known member
Joined
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Location
Brandon, MS
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE

1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank

while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and

didn't get tested for diabetes.

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, 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 pick up on a warm day was always a special

treat.

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

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 soda pop 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. After

running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the

problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at

all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround

sound, no cell 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 were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with

sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen,

we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door

or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who

didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard

of.

They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, 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 YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

There you go slapdaddy!! (edited 2/21/06)

 
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Are we going to break out into the national anthem now? I feel so patriotic right now. bom bom bom boooooooom boooooooooooooom............. :lol:

 
>> We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at

>> all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround

>> sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or

>> Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and

found them!

It shows!

You still haven't learned to re-format the email you recieved , and now it's taking up 5x the space it needs to in the system.

Please edit your post to format it correctly, and please don't post any more ill-formated messages, they will be deleted. After all, I'm a lazy 80's baby who isn't going to take his time fixing your mistakes!

 
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Yup. We got BB guns. Neil Downey's little brother got his eye shot out with one. They were dubbed stupid and we continued to have our BB gun wars down at the creek. Admittedly, we were smart enough to use the safety goggles that we ripped off from science class.

We didn't get spanked for that because we didn't get caught. :lol:

 
Orangevale we did much the same thing here minus the safety glasses, replaced by a strict rule.

Anyone who shot anyone else above the neck had to face the firing squad up against the back of Kieth Robinson's house. It was all brick, no windows and a short but worrisome walk for the perp immediately off the tree nursery where we warred.

No defense was allowed by the perp, had to stand there and take it. We could shoot them anywhere we pleased as long as it was below the neck. Anyone refusing the firing squad of course got the hell shot out of them anyway, as well as a permanent ban from future participation. Only way back in was to face the firing squad which consisted of every player present.

We usually had 20 or so players making the firing squad a powerful deterrant.

Needless to say, most of us became fine marksmen and stealthy woodsmen. No one lost any eyes, all of us came back from Vietnam era service alive. Some highly decorated.

I credit the many years of tree nursery wars for it. It also ingrained a grateful respect for layered armor which still serves well from a motorcycling standpoint these many years later.

Those multi pump Pelliguns were a ***** !

 
I have to admit......fjrchooser......that will certainly build character.

 
Those multi pump Pelliguns were a ***** !
Crossman Powermaster 760. Full tube of BB's, then when those ran out in went the .22 pellets (loved the sound of them when I ricochet them off the tips of my boots!). Never put an eye out or even broke skin, but the squirrel population suffered mightily.

Course, then there was Nicky 'The Russian' Stanovich with his Sheridan air rifle that he used .177 hunting pellets in... He didn't get along well with others. :trinibob:

 
Baseball cards in the spokes of our bikes to sound like a motorcycle held on with clothes pins.

The more inventive of us used balloons tied to the fenders of the bikes to get a deeper tone till the baloon busted...

I grew up in Detroit, and in the winter we used to go "fender bendin". We waited till a deep snow was packed on the street like a sheet of ice and when the cars would stop at a stop sign we would sneak behind it and stoop down and hold onto the bumper and be pulled all around the neighborhood. It just didn't seem dangerous at the time...

 
Couple of us took Estes rocket engines, taped them to dowel rods, and then shot them at each other. We were smart enough to be far enough away that the pk was real low! Only problem was that the engine would burn the hair off of your arms. Guess that was the start of my artillery career!

 
I rode my mini-bike through city streets at 30+ miles per with no brakes whatsoever. My Cub Scout troop rode to a hike, all 12 of us in the scoutmasters car, 5 of us in the open trunk, to the High Bridge in St Paul, where we crossed it on the structural supports under the bridge over the mighty Miss. When on my paper route, rather than pedal that load all over hell, I'd just latch onto a bus and let him pull me where I needed to go. I hitchhiked probably 2000 times when a kid, many times with my pockets stuffed from paper route collections. There was a drunk who sold flowers at the corner where I got my papers-he would let me drive his car when he was too drunk, as well as the 50's Dodge school bus he used as a flower shop there. My brothers and I got a toboggan going so fast it hit a bump and went completely airborne, exploding against an oak tree just after we bailed in mid-air, this at the end of a 12 hour day of sledding. These are just the stories my mother does know, they get a little better once I passed the age of 10.

 
I grew up in Detroit, and in the winter we used to go "fender bendin".  We waited till a deep snow was packed on the street like a sheet of ice and when the cars would stop at a stop sign we would sneak behind it and stoop down and hold onto the bumper and be pulled all around the neighborhood.  It just didn't seem dangerous at the time...
Oh, yeah! Memories! We called the art of 'bumper skiing', 'skitching'. My buddy's dad had a 4WD International Scout. After the snow fell and the plows came, he'd fire that POS up and tell four or five of us to grab the bumper and try to hang on. He would then proceed to thrash us about - much the same as being towed in a tube by a speed boat - and whip us off. Course, the 'hood would all turn out to watch us get tossed into snowbanks. Even the parents laughed watching their kids get buried headlong into the banks! Bunch of ******* today...

And baseball cards. Wow. Let's get in the Wayback Machine, Sherman! How about flipping cards? Topsies, leansies, skidders... Just wish I'd kept some of them - be worth a small fortune today.

And radman as a cub scout? That's precious! BWAAAAAAAA! :lmao:

 
The BB gun wars you've mentioned seem a bit x-treme, cant say we ever did such. We did however have those .177 pellet pump guns, Crossman I think was the brand name. My middle school principle lived directly behind us, I remember shooting at some target and missing and hitting his bathroom window. Yup, I ran and hid, he found me as you might imagine. Anyway, he brought me and my parents to his house and inside to the bathroom to show the damage. Yup, he was pissed (literally), as it turns out, he was taking a piss at the time the window exploded, his wife was holding back tears of laughter while he remained serious, as it turns out he ended up pissing on most everything in the bathroom. Funny now, but I was only about 8 or 9 and had not yet made it to middle school, I was terrified of what plans he had for me and all the time he had to think of what he was going to do to me when I got there.

Anyway, no BB gun wars, the most violent war games we had growing up were w/bottle rockets and firecrackers, those little f**kers hurt!

 
Oh yeah! BB gun fights in the woods, swamp hiking daring snakes and quicksand, taking "borrowed" boats on the bay, digging 100' tunnels, launching pop bottle rockets at each other' forts, firecrakers as grenades, jumping cliffs off of bicycles, grabbing car bumpers while on skate wheels nailed to a board, etc....

the memories.... and we survived!(because Mom never knew)

 
I forgot about riding the piece of plywood 15 miles down the St Croix till we finally gat taken in by a houseboat as we approached the Mississippi intersection. Course, I did that when I was 33.

 
I imagine we could start a whole other thread on the even stupider things we did when we discovered drugs and alcohol... :D

 
Thanks GB, it is halirious, can't belive I did all that stuff.

Lead paint on the crib beads, that explains it. :dribble:

Still, don't understand how anyone can sat in front of the TV all day, life is much more interesting,and yeah, I'm the kid that got the same BB gun three X-mas in a row. Took me two years to learn not to get caught.

 
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