Thread: How tough were we

Originally Posted by Disco Steve

i know what you are on about. there is a kid in my sisters class at school that has a mobile, and he is 8yrs old

and I dont go to the shops at all these days but I just happened to stop in at Nandos for a feed (harbour town QLD) and the amount of 12yo girls dressed up like 18yo with mobile phones looking like tarts is disturbing.

When I was twelve I burned round in daggy trackpants, catching wild animals and getting stung by bees and running from snakes in the national park directly accross the road from my house. I would spend hours in there sumtimes traveling over 10klms (easily) and come home all grubby and Mum didnt have a worry in the world cause we seemingly knew how to survive and look after ourselves.

Man I swam with eels twice my size and tried catching them in old shopping trolleys, we would jump into the same swimming hole from a selection of rock ledges upto 15meters high.

I woke up at 4:30 everymorning, watched the early morn cartoons for half hour, left the house and met up with friends from up the street, we would play in the bush, under the house, and ride for ages, before returning home to get changed (if we wernt already in school unifrom) and then burned to the bus stop.
Directly after school even before goin home we would be out on the street, in the bush playing till 8pm and no one was worried about us and I honestly cant think of a time that they should have been.

Maybe I was lucky to live in a rather quiet area.

Originally Posted by PhillWilde

Damn i'm lucky to have made it!!!!! Add to that 1 x civil war, years of apartheid and countless booze filled nights, with loaded weapons and car keys in the pocket

x2

Wow brings back memories. Still think the kids these days have it tougher in some ways.

Originally Posted by QSDT

Wow brings back memories. Still think the kids these days have it tougher in some ways.

I think this has always been true - what they have are different problems. But a lot of the problems today are ones of perception, rather than reality. For example, many parents take their children to school by car, in the belief that it is safer. Unfortunately, the statistics suggest that it is in fact the most dangerous possible way for them to travel - even more deaths and injuries than walking or cycling. By far the safest is by bus. (I walked half a mile to the bus, then walked from the bus stop to school (no special school bus)).

One of the factors operating is that even if you go back fifty years, the survival rate of children (mostly from disease) was way lower than today, so the tendency was to worry less about the minor risks of daily life, given that there was a pretty good chance that the child would not live to adulthood anyway. Look through the headstones in any old cemetery. In the last fifty years the situation has changed to where the loss of a child has become a quite rare event, and hence the feeling that anything that might damage a child is to be avoided. Unfortunately bringing up a child in a cocoon might be satisfying to the parents, and society in general, but it hardly prepares the child for adulthood!

John

Damn straight !! I was born in the early 80's i also remember and loved doing most of those things....... But then again i was a country kid.

Definatly bring back the simpler times !!

Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift

no, mine had pram wheels,,
little ones on the front,
huge sit down look thru the spokes ones on the back,,
races down grevillia street from---
THE TOP

scarey stuff

Pram wheels at first, later ones with ball races. Down Junction street across Willandra into the creek . Its a wonder I was able to produce kids after a collision with a few house bricks whilst on the Billy cart.


Martyn

And special kudus for those select few who were born in a cupboard under the stairs whilst some mad germans dropped bombs on them

Originally Posted by JDNSW

In the last fifty years the situation has changed to where the loss of a child has become a quite rare event, and hence the feeling that anything that might damage a child is to be avoided. Unfortunately bringing up a child in a cocoon might be satisfying to the parents, and society in general, but it hardly prepares the child for adulthood!
John

Perhaps too, the fact that a lot of children today are an only child makes them more precious. Maybe Mum wouldn't have noticed for a day or two if one of her brood of a dozen or so disappeared.