Freeper email from my mother

[EstimatedProphet]

who is no freeper by the way...I don't think she got the context of what it really said. Anyway, it's an old one. I'm sure everybody's seen it. I've got my reply at the bottom.

Those Born 1930-1979! This is hilarious and sooo true! My - how times have changed!


TO ALL THE KIDS
WHO SURVIVED the
1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!


First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.


Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.


We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we
rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.


We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.


We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and


NO ONE actually died from this.


We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because .


WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING !


We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.


No one was able to reach us all day.


And we were O.K.



We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down
the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.


We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms.......
WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!


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


We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.


We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,

made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang
the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!


Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!


The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.


They actually sided with the law!


These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!


The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.


We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned


HOW TO

DEAL WITH IT ALL!


If YOU are one of them . . . CONGRATULATIONS!


You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as
kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives


for our own good


And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.


Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:

"With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks,"Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?"

My reply:

Hmmm...

Has the government made it illegal to drink from a garden hose? Does every cut and scrape result in a lawsuit?

I'd really have to ask the person who put this together which country they live in. It's true in my opinion that parents today are too overprotective - I was outside every day it snowed! - but that's the result of a scaremongering media and paranoid parents, not the government.

Government regulations gave us the 40 hour work week. Ask the author how they'd like going back to the days of the rail barons, and work 7 days a week for 16 hours a day.

Government regulations gave us the minimum wage. Ask the author how they'd like working those hours for 5 cents an hour.

Government regulations gave us the Clean Water Act. Wouldn't drinking truly toxic polluted cancer-causing water be fun?

Government regulations gave us the Civil Rights Act. I can guess what the author of this crap thinks of that.

Government regulations got rid of lead-based paints. The author thinks that's a bad thing. I think the author reasons as if he ate some of those paints.

The government has done a lot of things that are undeniably good. All the things above, plus they have made it possible for me and people like me to get an advanced college education, they've made it possible for many citizens to own a house, they've worked to improve the health of citizens and people around the world. The government represents us. The government IS us. Wonder why tghe author hates it so much, even after it's clearly done well by them?

[txindy]

1. No, they weren't okay. They turned into brain-dead, ignorant freepers.

Probably all of that lead paint they slurped off of their cribs.

[karlrschneider]

2. Here's a 'reply to all' if appropriate

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=20557

[EstimatedProphet]

6. I added that, thanks!

[karlrschneider]

7. My pleasure!

:D

[muntrv]

3. Eating mud pies and worms is why you're a freeper. I didn't eat those.

[yorkiemommie1]

4. " After running into the bushes a few times,

.... we learned to solve the problem. "

My favorite line in the whole piece! We haven't solved the problem yet but we're getting there!

:-)

edited for spelling.

[lapfog_1]

5. I would add this...

In the sixties and seventies, eating tuna was OK because we hadn't yet poisoned them with mercury.

When I was growing up (in 6th grade) one good friend killed another in a hunting accident... he was walking behind my friend with a small shotgun and tripped, the safety wasn't on and the gun discharged... killing my friend instantly.

When in high school, I had a group of friends that went for a ride in the back of a pickup (yup, it was common back then)... well, they missed a turn and flipped the truck in a ditch, killing one friend and injuring the others sever ly.

Oh, and we had lawn darts (jarts) back then too.

And no one said you can't share your bottle of soda with whoever you want... but even when I was growing up we learned to not do that and wash our hands (or at least I was taught that).

[Clark2008]

20. And cigarettes, btw, probably didn't have the added chemicals

and nicotine that they do now - thus ensuring we stay addicted.

Not that it was great to smoke back then, but I'm guessing cigarettes weren't AS harmful.

[John Gauger]

8. No one died?

What the fuck? Oh, so everyone was immortal? Every single one of those safety concerns exists for a reason: because a significant number of people suffered from the results of those dangerous circumstances. I find it offensive that this author would mock the suffering of people afflicted by birth defects from lead paint, whose children died while playing in unsafe conditions, who died from poor nutrition or diabetes. Try telling Ralph Nader that auto safety is stupid and unnecessary while he's looking at the corpse of a four-year-old girl who was decapitated in a car accident (which happened in 1950; he was hitchhiking, which was safe then.) What a moron.

[EstimatedProphet]

9. Exactly!

[emulatorloo]

10. Tell that one to Poppy Bush: "The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of

"They actually sided with the law! "

You really gotta wonder if the writers of this nonsense think things thru.

[EstimatedProphet]

11. They don't. It's clear.

[Patchuli]

15. Those experiences were not "nonsense"

even if you young folks don't like the writer! I'm really curious about the age differences here on this one...

[Patchuli]

12. I hate to tell you this

but I agree with a lot of that. I don't think the author thinks it was bad that the government got rid of the lead-based paints. The tone I get from that one (and I've seen and related to it very well as a kid from the latter '50s and the '60s, is that we survived a lot without our parents babying us to death and enabling us not to take responsibility. I work with kids and I see a lot of attitudes of nonaccountability for actions and responsibilities of being a student and getting an education. Parents who argue endlessly with teachers that their child who never turns in homework for example, still should get an A in the class. Kids who lose expensive textbooks and the parents who refuse to pay for them (that live in million dollar homes). Kids are terribly obese and inactive now compared to previous generations and that is a damn shame. They have to have IPODs and video games and all manner of things to entertain themselves. We could find a prized thing, a refrigerator box and make a fort out of it that would entertain us until the box fell apart! We played HARD and that does keep you fit.

I don't just automatically blame the government and I know that there are good laws passed for our health and safety, but life is a whole lot more regulated than it was when I was a kid. We had more freedom than succeeding generations, for better or worse. And even though getting old sucks generally, I wouldn't have traded being a kid then for being a kid now.

I don't think that was a "freeper" email. That was a 'geezer' email! BTW, your mother was sharing her childhood with ya! ;-)

[EstimatedProphet]

13. I'm not arguing that parents aren't overprotective

and that kids aren't tech junkies. I agree that kids could use less toys and more time outside. My point is that most of this comes from parents being paranoid, not government minding our business. That was a freeper email. It was about complaining about the fact that the government is in our business because of all the regulations there are now. And I think the regulations I listed are a good thing, and I call bullshit on that email.

And believe me, that was not my mother's childhood!

[Patchuli]

14. Well I don't know how old you or your mom are,

but it was a lot of fun growing up then and that was my main point to you. As for the laws, they were started by individuals petitioning for them, not the government necessarily. Maybe the person who forwarded that list of the 'olden days' has a freeper tone but the list is pretty right on.

I think you should try to see the entirely playful tone of that email. We did survive rough and tumble times and our generations have produced some great things.

So, now it's you guys' turns.

[EstimatedProphet]

16. Respectfully...bullshit

I disagree. The 'nanny state' idea that freepers love to throw around is very prevalent, and is the obvious focus of this email when you look past the good old days statements. This thing actually complains about banning lead paint around kids by laughing at how he didn't get hurt! What about all the people who DID get hurt?

The laws are there for a reason. The thing that pisses me off about writings like this is that they make fun of the people that are hurt without knowing about it, possibly without caring about it. Not challenging the statements lets them stand in the minds of people who don't take the time to think about what is being said. That's how propaganda works.

I'm not arguing that kids aren't overprotected today, and if you think I am, then you need to read what I wrote. The author of this POS though is trying to put letting kids play outside on the same scale as using lead paint and allowing them uncontrolled access to medications. Then he has the nerve to clain that no one died from this! That is freeper bullshit! There's a lot of people that suffered unnecessary developmental nerve damage and even death from these things, and this assclown is trying to convince people it didn't happen so that he can live out his libertarian masturbation fantasy of a nonexistent government and a population that never has anything bad happen, just like on Father Knows Best. You may have survived rough and tumble times, but not everyone did, and for the author of this crap to dismiss all the people that didn't just because he doesn't like the government making regulations is callous at best.

[NewJeffCT]

25. great points

I would also say that 30-40-50 years ago, we did not have the omnipresent media with access to satellite, so those of us on the East Coast likely rarely heard about tragic accident in suburban Seattle, or small town Texas, or wherever, involving two children in a back seat that did not even have there seatbelts buckled. Nowadays, if a cute white child goes missing, it almost instantly makes the national news.

The same with toys - I remember after my daughter was born a little over 3 1/2 years ago, I was in my parent's basement and noticed the old toy horse my brother & I had as children. My first reaction was it was amazing we didn't kill ourselves on it, or at least get seriously injured, as while I'm sure we loved it as kids, I realized the thing was also a potential life-long scarring waiting to happen with large exposed springs in each corner. I could just see a 4 or 5 year old riding it, and then slipping off and getting a large gash on their leg, arm or forehead when they raked against the spring & hook it was attached to - and, how many times did that happen across the country in the 60s and early 70s? It's just that toy tragedies were not big news back then.

The media makes money by selling fear.

Every snow storm is now "The Storm of the Century" or "Death Storm 2006" or similar. When I was growing up the in 70s, the dividing line for canceling school was usually somewhere around 4" - 5" of snow on the ground that morning. if there was more snow, school was probably canceled - less, it was most likey on unless there was a lot of freezing rain, too. These days, school is canceled if an inch of snow is forecasted for that day - parents would freak out if their kids were went out in the middle of The Killer Storm of 2005!!!!!!!!!!! We have a local news station here in CT that will seemingly drop all their regular programming and go to round-the-clock storm coverage if we get anything more than a light drizzle of rain. If the temperature is forecast to drop below 50, we'll be sternly warned to dress properly for the conditions.

The same thing with missing children. Do you think it's a modern phenomenon? But, these days, a station here in Connecticut can beam their signal across to every news outlet in the country, and we can get digital news archives instantly recalled of every other missing child for the last 20 years. Then, we can get feature stories of every sexual predator within 100 miles.

[Patchuli]

26. I don't deny that people got hurt and still do

by things like toxic pollution which is a lot worse now than when I was a kid. I am lucky that I didn't get deathly ill and OD when I was about 4 and got into the St. Josephs baby aspirin which tasted like orange candy. I ate a ton of it.

I don't disagree that we need laws to protect ourselves but respectfully, I think you read a lot more into that email than I did. There's so much to be happy about this week. Let it go...

[EstimatedProphet]

28. There is a lot to be happy about this week

Far more than I dreamed.

But, I read a lot more into the email not because I am making it up, but because it is there. I'm tired of getting these things. I know they're lies. I'm fighting back now.

[seabeyond]

17. i am with patchuli..... i think we are outrageous in protecting our children

from all harm, all the time anymore and we are doing damage to our childen not to mention instilling a continous fear for them. and this is a mama that is too overprotective of my two children. i have seen the results, i know what i am doing and i KNOW the repercussion our society creates. a lot of the demands our society is instilling today i do actively work against with my children so they are at least aware.....

but i think there is a lot of sense in what this post says. moderation is always a good balancing exercise for me when i tend to push the extreme in fear of all things in raising my boys.

[EstimatedProphet]

18. Has anyone actually read what I wrote?

Christ!

[seabeyond]

19. i was putting in my 2 cents and not particularly about you

but the article itself. w(ho)tf cares what you wrote, lol lol, had little to nothing to do with my response. but cool that you see some truth in this

shruggin

[EstimatedProphet]

22. No, the point is there is not any truth in it!

The email is an attempt to take the fact that parents are overprotective now (they are) and use it to belittle good legislation, like childproof medicine bottling, banning lead-based paints, gettinng pregnant women to not smoke or drink - things that have been universally good for society. It is a subtly constructed argument (apparently it's successfully subtle) that government is bad and regulations are all nanny-state attempts to run our lives.

Playing in trees and getting cuts and scrapes are part of childhood. Birth defects shouldn;t be - but the author is trying to say it's the same thing.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

21. My Limbaugh-listening, small-government, anti-gay-marriagne ex-friend sent me this months ago.

I have a reply (that was the last I heard from him: he never responded to my reply), but it's on my computer at home.

It's astonishing how many medical facts get brushed aside in this email for the sake of "nostalgia".
Fetal alcohol syndrome, low birth weight from smoking, Reye's Syndrome, and lead poisoning are all waved off in a rose-colored view of
a very turbulent time.

I hate this piece 'o' crap email. Every few months it pops up again.
This anti-government, anti-regulation email (which glossed over the Vietnam war and the civil unrest of the 60s)
is a piece of crap wrapped up in that pretty wrapping paper called "The Good Old Days™"

The irony of the whole email is this: all the things that this email criticizes were developed, researched, invented,
discovered, and/or legislated (seat belt safety laws, clean water acts, Xboxes, lead paint bans, etc...) by the very same "risk-takers" this email praises.

So ask your mother this: if this generation was filled with so many "brave" people, who is responsible for all of this which that this email criticizes?
Magical "nanny-state" fairies?

And some of those "risk-takers" are the very same people who dumped mercury into the water, and now we can't eat as much fish anymore. Thanks a lot. (Mention that to your mom as well)

[EstimatedProphet]

23. Exactly!

Although I know my mother doesn't believe this crap. It's how their propaganda works: they cover it over with feelings of nostalgia and/or patriotism, and when the light is shown on it the poison stands out. But it slips under the radar until it's critically discussed. That's why it is so important to discuss these POS emails instead of just dismiss them.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

24. Indeed.

It's in our best interests to remember the past. All of it, not just the candy-coated version.
Nothing is born in a vacuum, and for each and every one of those things that this email puts down, there is a
very good reason there is some sort of "legislature" attached to it.
Life expectancies are up these days partly because of the "risk-takers" who grew up, became scientists, and discovered "Hey, chomping
on lead-based paints is really, really bad for your baby! Maybe we shouldn't make that anymore!"

Your mother probably passed it on thinking "ahh, I remember those days" and didn't think that this is a subtle right-wing anti-government screed.
Shows how effective it's been, since it keeps making the rounds.

[EstimatedProphet]

27. That's exactly true

I'm sure this email got passed on by my mother who focused on the 'drinking from the garden hose' part and overlooked the 'eating lead paint' part, and how the email was trying to equivocate the two. Just proof that it is effective...however, as you can clearly see, that screed is very much there. Some people have read it as being a simple nostalgia piece, but there's much more there than that, and I have no intention of letting things just go.

[Patchuli]

29. You know interestingly enough,

my sister and I were raised by an overprotective mother for the most part. We had a pretty safe environment for the times. I don't think that kids didn't get hurt but I agree with a previous poster who said that it didn't get so widely reported. I also wonder if the writer of that piece is just disgusted with the frivolous lawsuits of which there are many. That is not to say that all the suits which brought about change are not for the better.

Don't worry. That email's only going to appeal to geezers...