COMMENTARY

This came across the transom from the Internet, from which everything is true, dontcha know.

There is a smattering of truth to it, although just about every generation, looking back, may say that the decade or two in which they survived the bumps and scrapes of childhood and adolescence, were simply, irrefutably, The Best. It seems to closely describe how Baby Boomers, the generation I am a part of, grew up.

We survived being born to mothers who may have smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. Thankfully for me, not the case.

They took aspirin, ate Bleu Cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

After that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored, lead-based paints.

We didn’t have child-proof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets, and, when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps, not helmets, on our heads.

As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes. My mother’s right arm, like a rail road-crossing barrier, would seemingly automatically swing out to hold me against the seat back, where I was standing while watching where we were headed in our early-1950s Chevy.

We rode in the back of a pickup truck, suffering the bumps and jolts seated on the pickup bed’s wood or metal surface. No one thought a thing about it.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And we weren’t overweight. Why? Because we were always outside playing!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back for supper, or when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day and, we were OKAY.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out that we forgot about brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Play Stations, Nintendo and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVDs, no surround-sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms. We had friends and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and lost teeth, and there were no lawsuits from those accidents.

We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, ping-pong paddles, or just a bare hand and no one would call child protective services to report abuse. We ate worms, mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, .22 rifles for our 12th, rode horses, made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them. Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment.

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

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors ever.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?

-Adapted from an anonymous submission via the world wide web.