Makes me wonder how I ever reached my current vintage. Sat in cars without seat belts, rode a push bike without a helmet, played with fireworks on "cracker night", drove my car safely with a 0.08 blood alcohol content (this limit was later deemed unsafe (read:not enough revenue) and lowered to 0.05).
IMHO the world has gone mad.
The attached piccy says it all....
Last edited by Peter Ward; 21-02-2023 at 07:37 PM.
Yep remember those days when one was able to be a kid and enjoy life, now kids just hide inside and screens.
We used to build canoes out of sheets of roofing iron and paddle them around on the dam. There are many still on the bottom.
Ride horses we caught and ride them bare back, disappear into the bush all day and play, it just goes on, but we did have fun.
We made bows and arrows and catapults and fought with rival groups for command of the hill behind my place ..which had a fort in effect built from rocks....and how no one was never injured I do not know.
Making bolt or key bombs was popular and certainly there were quiet a few kids in town who had fingers blown off...but never any eye damage so I dont know why so much fuss.
We made canons using water pipe and used crackers for propellant and marbles for projectiles and no one was ever injured ...seriously.
We would run into beer bottles with our billy carts to smash them and admittedly there were a few cuts but really nothing serious.
AND all this was before TV which I did not watch until 13 years old..prior to that my eyes were perfect and now they have deteriorated and I can only think it must be a result of watching TV as they were perfect before TV.
So we would see a movie on Saturday afternoon..and would come home and if a pirate movie make pirate stuff, or if a war movie make a rifle replica, cow boys make hand guns...I can remember seeing August of the Tea house Moon and coming home and making some thongs using fence timber and rope...this was years before thongs appeared.
AND fight...as it seemed that was all we had to do...after school and weekends...just wrestling and judo no punches so that was safe although a kid almost broke my neck once ..well it felt broke for over a week but again nothing serious.
The main thing I notice as to change is back then besides not being preoccupied with safety (which is not a bad thing) was we made most everything as money was scarce and wire and wood plentiful.
Good old days??? no way just different.
I was lucky because I could make money. Gardening, collecting horse hair and cow hair for the sadler, and newspapers for the butcher paper, and I made money from prize money for paintings that I sent all around the country shows..I would take out first, second and third prizes (names not displayed until after places were given...so they did not know they had given first, second and third to me but then it was too late...all for an all up return of $1.05 (1st,2nd and 3rd was 5 shillings, 3 shillings and 2 and six pence) plus I would win money for model planes ...and I bred love birds and so I was able to buy a microscope and a guitar and make my model planes...
Spreading gloom isn’t my intent….. My Grandchild though rich in the blessing of youth, with a loving family are inheriting a world much poorer then the world we entered.
There’s naught that can be done about the situation, it guess as the non puritans watch the puritans turn the world upside they must have felt much as I do now.
The world is intolerant and hopelessly bigoted, as never before. At the same time we screech tolerance. The free press has disappeared, freedom is now an undignified and stilted dance.
Spreading gloom isn’t my intent….. My Grandchild though rich in the blessing of youth, with a loving family are inheriting a world much poorer then the world we entered.
There’s naught that can be done about the situation, it guess as the non puritans watch the puritans turn the world upside they must have felt much as I do now.
The world is intolerant and hopelessly bigoted, as never before. At the same time we screech tolerance. The free press has disappeared, freedom is now an undignified and stilted dance.
There are certainly things to worry about David but really humans have never had it so good, ... other than the time when I was young the world was rather crook in the past..this century or last even the ones before ..it gets worse the further you go back...the constant war back to the year dot, poor medicine, poverty, slow cars, expensive astro gear are behind us and heck with a smart phone you can learn anything you want, make a movie or a music album and publish it, you can sell stuff without a shop front.even ask for money from the world to do something neat..what has changed is we are better informed ..these days we are bombararded with bad news...some of it valid..but the result is you can overlook all the wonderful things humans now have...even superstition is loosing some ground...maybe but figures tend to suggest this..but most important we can check stories to find out if they are credible or not...after a while you realise that they fill your head with negative stuff but you look out your door and up and down your street and things seem ok..no sex slaves being traded around here anyways...
In any event don't worry about the future it won't be here until at least tomorrow and most of it won't get here for months and even years...unless we get hit with some mass extinction event like Yellow Stone going bang or getting hit by a giant rock from space, or a full on killer pandemic, or a colapse in transport and hence food and medicine supply, or a super nova close by or major volcanic activity...but nothing to really worry about.
You look after yourself and don't worry about a thing..I promise everything will be fine.
Laughing at the fact that you needed mattresses.
Wimps...
When I was a lad, we'd get up in the morning at 10:30 at night, half an hour before we went to bed....
We'd have to grind up the broken glass with our teeth, then mix it with poison before placing it in piles on the ground. We'd then fight to the death to see who could go first at jumping on the glass piles.
And you tell that to the kids of today, and they won't believe you!
[Shamelessly stolen from Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen]
When I was a lad, we'd get up in the morning at 10:30 at night, half an hour before we went to bed....
We'd have to grind up the broken glass with our teeth, then mix it with poison before placing it in piles on the ground. We'd then fight to the death to see who could go first at jumping on the glass piles.
And you tell that to the kids of today, and they won't believe you!
[Shamelessly stolen from Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen]
Hahahaha, Shane, you’re a champ !!
That was the very sketch I was thinking of when I wrote my reply.
Glad you picked up on it mate.
Yep remember those days when one was able to be a kid and enjoy life, now kids just hide inside and screens.
We used to build canoes out of sheets of roofing iron and paddle them around on the dam. There are many still on the bottom.
Ride horses we caught and ride them bare back, disappear into the bush all day and play, it just goes on, but we did have fun.
Leon
Leon, a former colleague and Ophthalmologist friend of mine wrote a paper a few years ago that dealt with insomnia in young people suggested that it was prevalent due to screen use before bed due to the '50 Cycle' factor and that it takes time for the brain to slow down, another suggestion that he also made was that continued screen use will eventually erode Peripheral vision skills in future generations.
There are many still on the bottom.
