According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 70's and early 80's probably shouldn't have survived, because...
Our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint which was promptly chewed and licked.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors or cabinets and it was fine to play with pots and pans.
When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip flops and fluorescent 'clackers' on our wheels. As children, we would ride in cars with no
seat belts or air bags - riding in the passenger
seat was a treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle and it tasted the same.
We ate dripping sandwiches, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.
We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can and no-one actually died from this.
We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went top speed down the
hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave
home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us all day and no-one minded.
We did not have Play stations or X-Boxes, no video games at all. No 99 channels on TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet chat rooms. We had friends - we went outside and found them.
We played elastics and street rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt.
We fell out of trees, got cut and broken bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits. They were accidents. We learnt not to do the same thing again.
We had fights, punched each other hard and got black and blue we learned to get over it. We walked to friend's homes.
We also, believe it or not, WALKED to school, we didn't rely on mummy or daddy to drive us to school, which was just round the corner.
Wow! am I cute
If yer ain't fishing, Yer ain't livin
Richard