I Was Born a Long Time Ago …

By Gran13

SERENADE 2 SENIORS. I was born a long time ago. My mother and father lived in a house with an asbestos roof. She had never been tested for AIDS, diabetes nor cervical cancer. My baby crib was painted with lead-based paint. There were no childproof lids on medicine bottles in those days and we rode our bikes barefoot and wtihout helmets. Take away food? Take away food was limited to fish and chips usually wrapped in brown paper, but some stores used sheets of newspaper. In our dad’s Pontiac shown above, there were neither airbags nor seatbelts. We ate cake, white bread, candy and as much chocolate as we desired, yet, we were not overweight because we played out of doors. When I was a child, there was no television, no play stations, Nintendo nor computers. I had lots of friends and we improvised games. When it was time for soccer team trials, of course we did not all make the team. So, we learned how to deal with disappointment. Getting chosen was based on our merit and on our merit alone and not due to parental threats to the coach. Stores closed at  6 p.m. and remained closed over weekends. Amazing as it sounds, we did not starve.

My generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problm solvers and inventors that lived. Over the past 70 years, there has been an explosion of innovative ideas. To all those young people out there, the first time I watched television was in black and white, when I was a mother.