First of all I survived …

First of all I survived being born to a mother who smoked and drank while she carried me!

I took Aspirin, ate blue cheese, tuna from a can, and did not get tested for diabetes.

My baby crib surely had a bright colored lead based paint on it.

I had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, cabinets, or toilet lids.

When I rode my bike and I had no helmet.

I do have an (illegal now- not then), fireworks burn on my body.

Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.

As a child I rode with no seatbelt or airbags.

Riding on the back of pick-ups on a sunny day was a treat.

We drank water from a garden hose, not a bottle.

We shared a soda with 4 friends, and no one actually died from this.

We ate… cupcakes, white bread, real butter, soda pop with real pure sugar and no one was fat                                               because we were outside playing.

We would leave home in the morning, play all day, and everything was o.k. as long as we were   home by the time the street lights came on.

No one could reach us all day and we were fine.

We would spend hours building go-karts out of scraps and ride them down the highest hills we could find, with out brakes till we could figure out how to build them! A few crashes into bushes and we solved the problem.

We did nit have Nintendo, x-box, Playstations or, any video games at all! No 200+ channels on dish, no videos to rent, no computers no Internet chat rooms, WE HAD FRIENDS and we played with them and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, broke bones, got cuts and bruises, knocked out teeth and there were NO   lawsuits from these accidents …odd huh?

We were given B.B. guns on our tenth birthdays

We made up games with sticks and no ones eyes were poked out, even though we were told this would happen (all the time)

Little league had try-outs and not everyone made the team (they lived with disappointment did not kill them)

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

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas

We had Freedom.

Lawyers and lawmakers are in my children’s lives too deeply for my comfort

Makes me want to run with a pair of scissors

And I am going to forward this to my children so they will know how brave we all were!

O.K. IT IS…. Exaggerated a bit but, that’s what parents do…mine got up before they went to bed and walked 5 miles in the snow, uphill, to go work in the coal mine, before going to school, and then they worked the farm till bedtime.. etc… and so on…. You know.