WHEN WE WAS BRUNG UP PROPER

Congratulations to all my friends who were born in the
1940s, 50s and 60s.
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or
drank sherry while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, bread and dripping, raw
egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, and didn’t get tested for
diabetes or cervical cancer.
Then, after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with
bright coloured lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or locks on
doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not
to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or air
bags.
We drank water from the garden hose, not from a bottle.
Takeaway food was limited to fish and chips, there were no
pizza shops, McDonald’s, KFC, Subway or Nando’s.
Even though all the shops closed at 6pm and didn’t open on a
Sunday, somehow we didn’t starve to death!
We shared one soft drink with four friends from one bottle
and no one died from this. We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in
at the corner store and buy toffees, gobstoppers and bubble gum.
We ate white bread and real butter, drank cow’s milk and
soft drinks with sugar, 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, but we were OK. We would spend hours building go-karts out of old prams
and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.
We built treehouses and dens and played in riverbeds with
Matchbox cars.
We did not have PlayStations, Nintendo Wii and Xboxes, or
video games, DVDs, or colour TV.
There were no mobiles, computers, internet or chatrooms. 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. And we ate worms and mud pies made
from dirt, too.
Only girls had pierced ears.
You could buy Easter eggs and hot cross buns only at Easter
time.
We were given air guns and catapults for our tenth
birthdays, we rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door
or just yelled for them.
Not everyone made the school rugby, football, cricket or
netball teams. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Imagine that. Getting into the team was based on merit.
Our teachers hit us with canes, gym shoes and threw the
blackboard rubber at us if they thought we weren’t concentrating.
We can string sentences together, spell and have proper
conversations now because of a solid three Rs education.
Our parents would tell us to ask a stranger to help us cross
the road.
Mum didn’t have to go to work to help Dad make ends meet
because we didn’t need to keep up with the Joneses!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was
unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
Parents didn’t invent stupid names for their kids like
Kiora, Blade, Ridge and Vanilla.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we
learned how to deal with it all.
You might want to share this with others who grew up in an
era before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives.
And while you are at it, forward it to your children, so
they will know how brave their parents were.