We should be dead

NotTooHappy summed it up in a quaint phrase, "kids today are pussies."

Originally posted by clearmind
well written...i'm one of those living that should have died

me and my friends would run around the neihgborhood playing 'army' ,cowboys and indians had toy guns too!!!!!...never locked the doors at night, stayed out till midnight..boy, how did we ever survive???...u know, maybe it is all the 'sheltering' and PC that is wrong....just a thought

Toy guns?!? Wimp. In my neighborhood, we used real guns! Sure, some kids got dropped, but some losses were acceptable!

Sure thing, BB guns wars, just aim below the head! Now its Airsoft and Paintball, with protective gear and approved facemasks.

Kids today pussies? I really don't think so. When I was in school we didn't have to worry about getting shanked,or shot, because something was on my mind and I looked at someone wrong. Also got home and, look at that, Supper was ready, house was clean because Mom didn't have to work. And I didn't come home to an empty house either.

Great article. I grew up in the 70s myself. I remember doing all those things you named and I lived very rural.

Running the riverbanks and fields full of Copperheads(snakes) and electrified livestock fences which you only touch once on purpose and then learn to cross at the low spot. I crossed overland to friends houses through dense forests and always ended up waiting too long and having to come back home the same way in the dark. Throughout these years, I learned that about the only thing scary about the dark was the pack of hooligans I ran around with...and an occasional ill-tempered wild dog but being what we were, someone always had a BB gun to take care of that.

At about age 12, we graduated to .22 rifles and pistols. I got my Marlin .22 for Christmas when I was 12 and still have the same gun. I do remember a guy I went to school with shooting himself in the leg but he was a new city slicker as we called them. No body shot anybody else but we did outshoot each other in healthy competition and I guess I am guilty of bagging the occasional squirril, rabbit, or groundhog.

I never considered it tough living. I always thought it was easier than playing amoungst all the crime of the city.

Now, even our rural areas are plaqued by predators and as deviant sexual behavior is becoming accepted, these pervs find new lengths to go to for thrills.

Now, we have interstates replacing our rural routesa and speeds have gone from 40 to 80 and vehicles have gotten much smaller and not as struturally sound.

I for one am sorry to say that even though I try to allow my son the same childhood I had, I cannot. Things change. The danger now isn't a broken leg from falling out of a tree house, its the danger of abduction. It isn't sliding into a ditchline and calling a neighbor pull you out, its a head on fatal collision with an 80 mph tractor-trailor.

Ah to go back to those days you talked about. The days before we became softened by technology and tainted by perversion. The days where being nasty meant sneaking a peak at the JC Penny underwear section and not stumbling onto the porn channel. But, I think they are gone forever but it was nice to think about them again. Thanks.

That was back when drunk driving was a hobby, and coc aine was good for you.