Shared from a friends Facebook page. I'm also a 60's baby so can totally agree with this -
How the hell are we still alive?
I’m a boomer, born one year into the 60’s in the UK and grew up in a time when health and safety was “try it and see!”
Derelict houses were playgrounds, gathering up any old mattresses you found in a pile and seeing how high you dare jump from.
That roundabout in the playground that had only one rule, hold on or die! No such thing as soft flooring, if you was lucky you bounced off the concrete without breaking anything.
Go carts cobbled together with old planks of wood and Silvercross pram wheels. Your brakes was the soles of your shoes, if they held out.
We ate dirt, toys coated in lead paint, some designed to actually hurt us, clackers you swung about that if you didn’t stop right broke your wrist!!
Building the biggest bonfire in the area in September ready for bonfire night then guarding it night and day to stop the other gangs from stealing your wood only to find some bastard set fire to it as you all slept in it!!
Were the parents in all this? At home cleaning the stoop or chatting to the neighbours, you was sent out with the instruction don’t come back until the streetlights come on, if you hurt anything it got spit washed and you was sent on your way.
It was a hard life but it was the only life we knew, we did things that would make young parents now scream in disdain. We were free to be kids and lived a wild life when out with friends.
For all the things designed to kill us they didn’t, we are still here carrying the scars of play like medals of honour. Looking at the wonders of modern technologies children have now but still knowing we wouldn’t change our childhoods for theirs.
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