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How Did We Survive?

Note: This monologue, by an author unknown, appears in various forms on the Internet. This copy was sent to me by James Wall in 2003 - thank you James!

You lived as a child in the '60s or the '70s. Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have managed to live as long as we have. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention hitchhiking to town as a young kid!) We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors! We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode 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 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. No cell phones. Unthinkable. We played dodgeball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We got cut and broke bones and broke teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us.

Remember accidents? We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it. We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda but we were seldom overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one grape soda with four friends, from one bottle and no one died from this. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X Boxes, video games at all, 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cellular phones, personal computers, Internet chat rooms - we had friends next door.

We went outside and found them. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rung the bell or just walked in and talked to them. Imagine such a thing. Without asking a parent! By ourselves! Out there in the cold cruel world! Without a guardian. How did we do it? How did we survive? We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as others so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade - Horrors! Tests were not adjusted for any reason. Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. No one to hide behind. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was practically unheard of.

They actually sided with the law, imagine that! The generation of people who were kids during the '60s and '70s has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years has been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to. And you're one of them, so congratulations

Four wheel drive pickup crash black box results (Texas humor)

The National Transportation Safety Board recently divulged they had
covertly funded a project with the U.S. auto makers for the past five
years whereby the auto makers were installing black boxes in
four-wheel drive pick-up trucks in an effort to determine, in fatal
accidents, the circumstances in the last 15 seconds before the
crash.

They were surprised to find in 49 of the 50 states the last words of
drivers in 61.2 percent of fatal crashes were, "Oh, Shit!"

Only the state of Texas was different, where 89.3 percent of the final
words were: "Hold my beer and watch this!"

Definition of the Martian term "grok" according to Websters

grok \GROCK\ (verb)
: to understand profoundly and intuitively

Example sentence:
"Are you a disgruntled baby boomer? One who just doesn't grok
today's twentysomethings?" (_Computer Life_, October 1994)

Did you know?
"Grok" may be the only English word that derives from Martian. Yes,
we do mean the language of the planet Mars. No, we're not getting
spacey; we've just ventured into the realm of science fiction.
"Grok" was introduced in Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 science fiction
novel _Stranger in a Strange Land_. The book's main character,
Valentine Michael Smith, is a Martian-raised human who comes to
earth as an adult, bringing with him words from his native tongue
and a unique perspective on the strange, strange ways of earthlings.
"Grok" was quickly adopted by the youth culture of America and it
has since peppered the vernacular of those who grok it, from the
hippies of the '60s to the computerniks of the '90s.

You think you are having a bad day?

You think you are having a bad day? This should cheer you up a little

  1. The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdezoil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later, in full view, they were both eaten by a killer whale.
  2. A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to a carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his reactions. After weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her repeatedly with a an ax leaving her mentally retarded.
  3. In 1992, Frank Perkins of Los Angeles made an attempt on the world flagpole-sitting record. Suffering from the flu he came down eight hours short of the 400 day record, his sponsor hadgone bust, his girlfriend had left him and his phone and electricity had been cut off.
  4. A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current she whacked him with a handy plank of woodby the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Until that moment he had been happily listening to his walkman.
  5. Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs,all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death. And finally.......

There now! Your day's not so bad, is it?

Life before the computer

An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano.

Memory was something that you lost with age
A CD was a bank account
And if you had a 3 1/2" floppy
You hoped nobody found out!

Compress was something you did to the garbage
Not something you did to a file
And if you unzipped anything in public
You'd be in jail for a while!

Log on was adding wood to the fire
Hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened to your commode!

Cut - you did with a pocket knife
Paste you did with glue
A web was a spider's home
And a virus was the flu!

I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper
And the memory in my head
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash
But when it happens they wish they were dead!

This page and all web site contents were last updated and are copyright
8/9/07 and previous years by Peter Aiken - all rights reserved.