When I was your age...

I found this article courtesy of my browser feeding me stuff I’d never go looking for. It’s a good article and food for thought
Your best childhood memories probably involve something today's kids will never experience

...”The ability to take risks”... I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s so when the author discusses the freedom of growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, I gotta smile.

Ah..the things we had in the "good old days" -polio, smallpox, stick shift cars without those bothersome seat belts, football games ending in a tie - the list goes on and on.

To some, things were always better way back then. Mostly, they were just different.

I grew up in the 70´s and 80´s and there is some truth in the article.
My parents often had no idea where I was when I was not at home. That was quite normal.
I usually had some mechanical puzzles or kits assembly required as gifts for my niece and nephew. It took some effort to keep my sister from helping the kids with it. To her it was not easy to understand that the gadget was not the actual gift. Gadgets like radio receivers or bat detectors are so much nicer when you soldered them together on your own.
It´s really ironic that some parents would deprive kids of success by trying to ensure that they do not fail.

I see some truth to the article. Maybe it was my small time upbringing but more was probably the lack of the technology that's ubiquitous today (primarily the cell phone). Helicopter parenting wasn't technically feasible to the degree it is today when children as young as seven or eight have their own cell phones. Likewise we didn't have the internet and 24 hour cable news pumping fear of The Other into our home day and night. Certain there were dangers out there like there's always been but it wasn't front and center in our daily lives. We walked to school (when we lived in town) and would now be called "latchkey kids". When we lived in the country we rode our bicycles five miles to the local stock pond to fish for bass and bluegills. We went out unsupervised with our rifles and shotguns (!) to walk the draws hunting rabbits, etc.

There are probably rural areas where this still occurs but much of what was normal childhood experience would now result in a call from CPS. It's a very different world now. Sure, I'm glad I don't need an iron lung and until the anti-vaxxers ruin it at least many childhood diseases are gone.

It seems like we should be able to keep the best part of the freedom we used to have while enjoying the advances we have today. That balance is hard to find in our post-9/11 surveillance state.

Growing up from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, I'm perhaps the closest to the current generation without being able to understand them. I did not use the internet regularly until I was fourteen and I did not own a cell phone until my early twenties.

Jeanette Isabelle

I did not touch a computer until I was about 35 years old, in the beginning of 2000.

I was using computers since I was five (1991). All we had was the Disk Operating System, which was a command-line interface.

I was first introduced to the internet in school when I was eleven (1997), using Windows 95.

Edit: I remember learning how to use Windows from the book Kermit Learns Windows.

Jeanette Isabelle

Back in the '60s and '70s:
Hay rides
Visiting Dad as a family when he was at the farm summer fallowing
Jumping off the garage just because
Climbing trees
Pet rabbits dying
Dog running away
Camping with the family
Camping with CSB troop x several times
Building a raft and poling it around a pond
Playing "ditch" until the curfew siren sounded, then keep playing until 10 pm!
Lighting fires in back yard
Building a hobo stove and showing people how to cook eggs on it when I was 8
Having a plane do an emergency landing at the farm
Catching my first fish
BB guns and getting shot in the chest
Building bean shooters from clothesline pins
Hanging my towel up to dry on the clothes line after swimming lessons
First kiss
Shooting arrows in the back yard
Playing with real steel tipped lawn darts and never getting hurt
Mowing the lawn a bazillion times
I was always the one to light the BBQ (Mom was afraid of this!)
Getting the "strap" in grade 1
Writing "I will not...." on foolscap as punishment x many times
Tossing hay bales
Driving farm equipment before old enough to drive car
Helping Dad with building various things around house
Learning to bike (by myself!)
Learning to skate and trip and fall and trip and fall
Kickball contests - hitting a 10' wide goal from 75 yards!
Building model rockets and flying them
Riding on an ice boat
Building a darkroom for Shop class
Excelling at technical drawings for Shop class
Converted bedroom closet to a darkroom at home
Sticking my tongue on the flag pole (long before I saw Christmas Story!)
Real chemistry sets with stuff to blow up!
Microscopes and telescopes
Many generations of pet cats
Breaking my collar bone / chin
Chipping my teeth
Getting sick with EVERY childhood disease imaginable
Smallpox vaccine
Breaking my right arm
Breaking my big toe
Breaking my glasses multiple times
Being chased by wasps
Camping in the back yard under a bed sheet when I was 5
Waking up in the middle of the night so my brother and I could fix the bunk beds so it wouldn't fall on me
Watching the moon landing - LIVE
Watching Vincent Price movies, B horror flicks on TV
Watching movies back when the had Comics, Preludes, & Intermissions in the theatres
Spending 5 cents on candy bars, penny for 4 double bubbles, stubby cokes for 7 cents, full size cokes for 10 cents, comic books for a dime
Ice cream floats
Many ice forts
Several underground dirt forts
Hanging around EVERY house being constructed in town
Reading shelves worth of books

Yep, growing up was fun.

When I was eight, I learned how to cook simple dishes such as tuna mac, wash laundry (I learned by reading the box of powdered laundry soap and reading the directions on the inside lid of the washing machine), and help Grandma with her oxygen therapy.

Later, when my cooking skills improved somewhat, I learned how to make hot cocoa the old fashion way (from scratch), and I created a new recipe: french-toasted peanut butter sandwiches.

Jeanette Isabelle