Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring).

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE ... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option ... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches. Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without computers! Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations.

I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant lot, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger. What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot?

He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.

Oh yeah ... and where was the Enadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48 cent bottle of Mercurochrome and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked (physical abuse) here too ... and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (remember why Tonka trucks were made tough ... it wasn't so that they could take the rough Berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.

Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive.

How sick were my parents? Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall the boy from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes?

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we survive?

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Even being young, I had a similar childhood. Unlike the other kids where it was ok not to do something if they did not want to do something, I got called a wimp by my dad or I was told to get off my lazy butt. I sometimes wonder what the kids of my generation will be like, probably a bunch of wussified fat slobs sitting inside all day, wait that's the present not the future. 

My generation is educated but with a room temperature IQ and not enough collective common sense to fill an eye dropper. The kids I know are even afraid to leave highschool and many are comming back for a fifth year. I could go on but I'd start to sound even more of an old man. 

Thank you for the compliment. I have no copyright on this, nor do I claim one, so feel free to use it. If you want to credit me...that would be fine.

Well said Romulus. You have expressed my own feelings in your unique way.
Please remember not to blame the younger generation. They only know what they are taught. It's our generation's fault for allowing it to happen.

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I can't say that it is the fault of our generation as much as it is the fault of the government for taking parental rights away and trying to raise our children for us. At least here in the US...parent s are scared to discipline their children for fear of incarceration. Or worse yet ending up on the Jerry Springer show as a side show attraction.

Seems to me since the US government/state governments have taken away the rights of parents ...that we've seen all sorts of school killings...parents shot to death in their sleep. etc, etc. The old ways may have been harsh by today's standards...but they worked. That and for all the supposed violence we had to endure...we've produced some pretty incredible Scientists, Doctors (i.e., medical break throughs), etc.

It remains to be seen what our governments will produce to lead the world on into the future as they continue to raise our children for us. But from my vantage point...I'm glad I won't live long enough to see the outcome.

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I don't want to turn this into a political discussion but this is my point. We stood idly by & let them get away with it. Who exactly is this government with the power to take our parental rights away? They are elected by us, the people, to serve us, the people. If they don't do it right they should be made aware of it & voted out. If necessary, people who think as we do could stand as politicians ourselves to fight them. I'm sure we would get plenty of votes.

I'm as guilty as anyone & just sit & moan when I could do something constructive about it.

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I can't speak for Rommie but this is not what I meant. I'm sure he did not mean it either. I have no time for so-called parents who beat their kids up for the fun of it.

Too many young people these days are wrapped in cotton wool & not allowed outside to get dirty or experience the everyday knocks in the real world. This is not a good preparation for adulthood. They are taught all sorts of politically correct rubbish at school & have little or no respect for their parents or adults in general. Many parents have no time for their kids & stick them in front of the TV or buy them expensive toys to keep them quiet & out of their hair. Unless things change soon & we return to the old values & respect Rommie describes we will be living in complete anarchy. IMHO

Raising kids worked the "old way" for a couple of hundred thousand years and the new way that is 40 years old or so is better?

Now kids are not raised by parents - they are raised by a commitee consisting of teachers with agendas, government meddlers, MTV, Hollywood, Gangsta Rappers and Madison Avenue.

You know what they said about a horse designed by commitee.

I believe current times to be quite different than the generation gaps of old.