No seat belts front or back, no child safety seats, no foam at the bottom of the slide or monkey bars, parents chain smoked in the car with us in the back seat windows rolled up, we swam in any and all bodies of water deep or shallow, camped all summer barely home, at what mama fixed for meals (or went without), played lawn darts, horse shoes, shot BB guns at one another, if we got bullied we'd either fight back or just learn to grow some thicker skin! :-)

And if you did not behave at the back seat, you did not get a dvd to watch or an xbox to play, but a nice swift backhand at the most reachable bodypart. And by the time you got to the grocery store... if one thought to make any kind of ruckus there, one was just stupid and asking for it. And nobody called police or social services for your parents when they kept their kids in line either.

These days you have to check for cameras and witnesses first, or go outside... check for more cameras... hypothetically speaking, of course 

Only one regret about those days, I should not have licked so much lead paint..

I have told my kids before, I'll trade you a 1 day of my childhood for yours... I'll guaranty you'll get some perspective on just how easy you have it in life. Everything is handed to kids!

Also, what's with cops in school?!?!
Back in the day if there was a cop in school somebody REALLY screwed up!
Oh and why does everyone get a trophy?
This country is so messed up with the signals they're sending our kids... I have been to a few parent teacher conferences and they demand that I take the time and sit down and do the homework with them and I answer with "Uhhh I already graduated, my teachers did a fine job preparing me so I think yall got this, I have shit to do!" It embarrasses my kids but they get where I'm coming from. I help them in a lot of other areas.and they do fine in school without trying to read me the instruction on what they are supposed to be doing for homework. Its my job to provide they're only job is to do their homework and get good grades, they are getting off easy I tell ya!

I agree on this school thing.

I did my homework in the public library after school, in the subway waiting for or riding the train, in the hallway fifteen minutes before class. If I provide a nice chair and a clean desk for homework, and help in figuring out how to find tools and how to use those tools to provide answers and solutions, it is up to them kids to do their own homework. No entertainment or touching my ice cream before they do either.

I read a few web forums and I see kids asking direct questions from their home work assignments. They seem completely uninterested about figuring anything out, just want someone to give them the answer. Pathetic.

Adding more to them disappearing things... books. Kids interested in history watch history channel, then other channels for other topics. With nobody there to explain that tv is produced for entertainment and what using a grain of salt means. Read actual history books, too much work. Who cares about checking your references. They find a weird word, they google it. Or just skip and ignore it. Finding an actual dictionary book or two and looking it up... too much work. And so forth.

They graduate and mommy tells them to find a job, they get dumped with a guy like me and I expect them to actually work... OMG he so mean... yeah I met a few of these kids ;-)

Which reminds me... diapers! They seem so comfortable these days that one really does not have any reason to be potty trained before they are old enough to go to school. Training pants and pull-ups (still diapers) for teenagers? I remember "borrowing" tobacco products and stuff, whistling at girls and diving off the docks and running rooftops after shooting someones headlights off with a slingshot as a sweet innocent twelve-year-old, no I can not relate much...

Remember wrist rockets!?!?!?! Those things are outlawed in a LOT of places! But then, some kid might get depressed and try to turn it on him or her self! LOL

Err.. the thing with the wrist support thingie, tubes and such? Yes, can not even order one online anymore, especially if you live in Jersey. Then again, in Jersey, you can not even buy a regular sling shot. And kids these days, I do not see them with home made ones either that much, at all? Too busy being home, staying doped up on their prescriptions and being wired to their xboxes I guess...

Mostly made them from a wooden fork, patches cut out from an old leather work glove, and some heavy duty tire inner tubes cut to strings. Heavy duty insulated single thread copper wire cut to little v-shapes worked good as precision ammo too. Did not cost much of anything to make as I found most of the material from any number of construction sites after hours.

Could shoot anything from rocks and pebbles to ball bearings, and if needed, easy enough to get rid off and make a new one later... I have a feeling loads of folks would have been happy if I had video games growing up, heh.

Geez you think you guys have it tough over there. You outa live down here. The fun police are out everyday here. You can't do nothing anymore without someone dobbin you in for it. A kid gets caught with bird scarers, small crackers that really go boom when set off. They haul in mom or dad or both to see where little johnny got em..cause they are illegal. I remember talkin back to my mum when I was little, my gran swiped me, and my mum laughed so she hit her too..kids today talk back..cause they'll sue their parents if they touch em..I used to have pellet gun as a kid , not anymore all guns are banned. air guns even potato guns are banned, cause they look like pistols..
I got caned at school..now days the kids run the place...discipline is out anarchy is in...but thats not so bad....religion thats the new demon....just wait and see what happens....20 years from now we'll all be bowing twice a day on some woven rug...unless......

oh yeah someone up the head of the line said something about keepin up with the Jones' who ever coined that phrase was outa touch...you'd be backpeddlin to keep up with what i didn't have when i was a kid...and i grew up fine. in a manner of speaking.

Been there,did all of that,and still alive! If you tolded me back then, that some day you'll pay 2 dollars for a bottle of water. I say your nuts

You know what we didn't grow up with???  A sense of entitlement.  This generation, has a serious issue with that.  They seem to "expect" that everything is just gonna get handed to 'em.  And FREAK...when it doesn't.  They don't get the actual concept of "hard work, is it's own reward".  You know, the way OUR parents, raised us?  I tried to instill some of that into my own child.  But you know what?  It's pretty hard to compete with all the crap he's hearin' and see'n out there.  We did live in a simpler time, and I sometimes wish, things hadn't progressed to this point.  Technology is awesome and all, but, they're all gonna get a rude awakening when "real life" comes up and smacks 'em in the face...

And speakin' of gettin' smacked...How many of you, had parents that wouldn't hesitate, to blister your ass, if you stepped outta line?  The belt?  Ohhhh crap.  Better yet, Momma and the dreaded wooden spoon.  Still gives me goosebumps...   That may be why kids today are so mouthy.  Somewhere along the way, it became "child abuse" to corporally punish your children.  And they KNEW IT!!!  Not so, with mine, I gotta tell ya.  I beat his butt, when he screwed up.  Soap was used for a foul mouth, (well, least til he turned about 16), and I even had one cop tell me, if I needed to, to smack the crap outta him...lol (true story). 

Well, I go on, and this post was under the "humor" forum, so I'll leave ya with this...How about those Drive-In movies? 

Ride Free 
Tweek

There are days I truly feel old and I had one of them days yesterday when I was at the Verizon store asking them if I could just trade in my 'smart phone' for just a regular phone... I was informed that they don't really have 'regular' phones... I'm actually considering just letting my contract run out and getting a land line... I know, it sounds crazy but I haven't had a land line in years and I'm not really all that in love with phone on the go anymore... you can be tracked LOL

Still to this day, I will not walk across a mopped floor that's still wet no matter where I at. When I was a kid, my Mom would wear me out from the knees to the belt line when I did that in the house. Left a REAL good impression. lol  She was the only person I know of that could be in a dead run in flip flops chasing me, pull one off and smack me with it, put it back on and still catch me.