Ah the way things use to be...

Reposted from Rob Arnie and Dawn: http://www.robarnieanddawn.com/GoodOldDays.htm

My family lived through this time up until about 1996 (when Khan was sent into exile), but the good times waned as we departed the glorious 20th century and the US became a whiney bitch instead of a world superpower that could bail any country out of any war they got themselves involved in. Today there's a pedofile around every corner, a rapist behind every tree, and everyone except you is responsible for everything. Or maybe this is just in western coastal states, where the environment is so forgiving that people become too lazy to raise their kids properly, raise their little pukes to become pussies and rely on others to do their job for them. If I'm ever cursed with a kid, I am not hanging around California, I'm thinking a southern state (except florida) would be more tolerant of my "passionate" lifestyle.

Growing Up... The Way it Used to Be

This "essay" has been circulating the internet in forwarded e-mails for years. We originally read it in the summer of 2001, and we have brought it back now because it seems to apply more than ever. The original author is unknown.
If you lived as a child of the 50's, 60's, 70's and even early 80's it is amazing that you have lived to tell about it, based on what we believe now in this country. Children of today will read this and wonder what kind of society we grew up in*and most will be insanely jealous.
*We would ride in the back of pick-up trucks on warm summer nights
*We rode bikes without wearing helmets
*We drank water from the garden hose, not from a bottle or a purifier
*We built go carts from scratch, only to realize when we got to the top of a hill that we forgot the brakes.
*We jumped our bikes and skateboards off of ramps*and fell.
*We had "rock wars"
*We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one could reach us*no cell phones.
*We played dodgeball*and sometimes the ball would hurt.
*We got cut and broke bones and broke teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us.
*We would light off fireworks in our yard, not watch them with 10,000 people in a park.
*We walked to school. Alone.
*We would ride our bikes to the corner school. A mile or two away, just to get ice cream
*We ate dirt
*Girls made fun of boys and boys made fun of girls, and it was ok.
*We got spanked
*We would cry, and our parents would respond by saying "I'll give you something to cry about*" and we knew how much they loved us.
*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 soda, but we were seldom overweight because we were always outside playing
*We shared one soda with four friends from the same bottle and lived to tell about it.
*We had no playstations, X boxes, 99 cable channels, Movies on tape, surround sound, personal cellular phones, pagers, personal computers, or internet chat rooms*we had friends next door.
*We ate dinner as a family.
*No phone calls or TV we permitted during dinner.
*No one left the table until everyone was done eating.
*We ate worms
*We played tackle football
*People pitched the baseball to us, rather than having us hit off a tee
*We had Little League 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.
*Tests were not adjusted to accommodate certain people from certain backgrounds
*We made fun of short kids, fat kids and weird kids*and they were told they had to learn to deal with it, because it was an unfortunate fact of life.
*Our actions were our own - Consequences were expected. No one to hide behind. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of*they actually sided with the law.