To An Overprotected Generation

From a member of an earlier one...

We survived being born to mothers who smoked and drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, ate tuna from a can and never got tested for diabetes.

After all that trauma, we were put to bed on our tummies in a crib covered with lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicines, no childproof locks on doors or cabinets. When we rode our bikes we had no helmets, no elbow pads, no knee pads, no training wheels.

As infants and children, we rode in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of an open pickup on a hot day was always a real treat.

We drank water from a garden hose, not a plastic bottle. We ate cupcakes, white bread loaded with real butter, drank kool-ade loaded with sugar but never got fat, because we were always outside playing.

We would leave home in the morning, disappear for the entire day, and nobody would mind ,so long as we were home before dark.

We had nothing like a cell phone... Nobody could reach us all day.

And we were fine.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendos, X-boxes or computers. we had no video games at all. We had maybe three black-and-white TV stations, not 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound, no CD's or I-pods,no cell phones or personal computers, no internet or chat rooms.

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

We were given bb guns on our tenth birthday and our first .22 on our twelfth.

We made up games with sticks or old tennis balls, and although we were repeatedly warned, never put out somebody's eye.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those that didn't had to learn to deal with rejection and disappointment... And get on with life.

The idea that a parent would bail us out if we broke the law was unheard of. Our parents actually sided with the law.

Our generation produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever, and the past fifty years has seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, experienced both success and failure, was taught what responsibibilty is, and learned from it all.

So, if you get the sudden urge to run through the house with a pair of scissors in your hand, go ahead. Odds are you're going to live through it.