Looking Back
Looking
back,
it's
hard to believe that
we
have lived
as long as we have.................
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.
Our
baby cribs were covered with
bright
colored lead-based paint.
We
had no childproof lids on
medicine
bottles, doors, or cabinets,
and
when we rode our bikes,
we
had no helmets.
We
drank water from the garden hose
and
not from a bottle.
Horrors.
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
streetlights came on.
No
one was able to reach us all day.
No
cell phones.
Unthinkable.
We
played dodge ball and
sometimes
the ball would really hurt.
We
got cut and
broke
bones and broke teeth
and
there were no law suits
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
ate cupcakes, bread and butter,
and
drank sugar soda
but
we were never overweight....
.....we
were always outside playing.
We
shared one grape soda
with
four friends,
from
one bottle and
no
one died from this?
We did not have
Playstations,
Nintendo 64,
X
Boxes, video games at all,
99
channels on cable,
video
tape movies, surround sound,
personal
cellular phones,
Personal
Computers,
Internet
chat rooms,
...............
we had friends.
We
went outside and found them.
We
rode bikes or
walked
to a friend's home and
knocked
on the door,
or
rung the bell or
just
walked in and talked to them.
Imagine
such a thing.
Without asking a parent!