THOSE WERE THE DAYS
MANY of you will have seen this before (especially e-mail users), but it still makes you think! I-low did we survive growing up in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s?
• Our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint, which was promptly chewed and licked. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors or cabinets.
• 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 real treat.
• We ate dripping sandwiches, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy pop with sugar in it, but were never overweight because we were always
outside playing. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle - it tasted the same. We shared one drink with four friends from one bottle and no one died.
• 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. After running into stinging nettles 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 before it got dark. No one was able to reach us all day and no one minded. We walked to and from friends’ houses.
• We did not have PlayStations, 99 TV channels, videos, mobile phones, computers or the internet. We had friends - we went outside and found them.
• We played rounders in the street with a ball that really hurt. We fell out of trees, broke bones and teeth but
there were no lawsuits - they were accidents. We learnt not to do the same thing again.
• We had fights, punched each other hard and got black and blue - we learned to get over it. Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected.
• We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate live things, and although we were told it would happen, we did not have very many eyes out, nor did the live things live inside us forever.
• The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.
Our generation went on to produce some of the best risk-takers, problem- solvers and inventors, ever.
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. What can it all mean?