What do we think now?
- Thread starter JLM
- Start date
I don't believe that. We were safer as kids then, then kids are now. It was completely unheard of to have a local news bulletin stating that someone in a van had tried to entice a kid into their car at a local school. Not once did I hear that even after I married and had children of my own in any town or city I lived in before about 1975 or so. I've stated before that my girlfriend and myself used to go down by the river at night and sit and talk to the bums passing through town on the RR. Sat around their camp fires and talked to them without any harm. Chances of that happening today are remote. Drugs were not even discussed when I was growing up. I can't prove they were not around but I honestly do not believe they were in my town at least as far as the grade 1 - 12 crowd. I have too big a family not to know. I lived in a small town but on my street alone, we could field more than enough to play ball for hours after school and - we did. The big bad thing we did as we got around 14 was to smoke if we could gather enough money together to buy a pack. We got really brave once and bought a whole carton! Hid it under the cattle scales at the Brewery Corral! Used to sneak under there for a smoke as long as we weren't playing fence tag at the same location. Couldn't let everyone know we had a stash! lol
kidnapping and peophiles are new? lol... no, sorry VI... that's a pretty stable human trait.
And no... drugs were not discussed... no one's arguing that fact. A lot of things weren't discussed. Naivety was prized. You didn't discuss the uncle who touched, you didn't discuss the time your boyfriend didn't hear the word no, you didn't discuss how much your dad beat you... tons of stuff wasn't discussed, including the drug addicted cousin. The addict aunty. The bum uncle. It doesn't mean they didn't exist.
And no... drugs were not discussed... no one's arguing that fact. A lot of things weren't discussed. Naivety was prized. You didn't discuss the uncle who touched, you didn't discuss the time your boyfriend didn't hear the word no, you didn't discuss how much your dad beat you... tons of stuff wasn't discussed, including the drug addicted cousin. The addict aunty. The bum uncle. It doesn't mean they didn't exist.
I never said they didn't exist or that they were new. "Bad" things like that happened in the big cities. If they happened in my town - I never heard of it. I am still in touch with a lot of the people I grew up with. Was everything as perfect as it seemed to me? For me - pretty much. I've yet to hear of any of them having any of those difficulties in their lives. Maybe just living in such a small place mattered. I didn't have any addicted cousins. I had an alcoholic Aunt and Uncle (brother & sister) but the whole town knew it. My Dad wasn't a beater and I never knew anyone else's father who was. No one came to school with big bruises. I stand by what I said.
Nope- just replied to the statement exactly as it was written................:smile::smile:
When I attended school in Duncan in the 50s there were two or three families who were a little "unorthodox" and I suppose there is slim chance drugs were part of the unorthoxity, but never a word was whispered to that effect.
Karrie- VanIsle and I grew up in small communities in the 50s and a lot of sh*t went on , including drunkeness, incest, beatings etc. BUT the drug scenario was far less pronounced. In the late 50s we moved to a larger city and there was no visible evidence of drug problems there either and if there was, it wasn't reported in the media. In that respect it was a different world. There is no denying that.
Sorry Karrie - didn't mean to p*ss you off............:lol: and I think Gerry is largely right too with a couple of exceptions - drugs and the respect kids showed toward their elders.
No.......I am not..... maybe it's a matter of the people you know are lousy parents and don't bring thier kids up pro[perly....because.....I don't see disrespectfull kids.... at least not the kids I have met through my kids friends........ or maybe it's because most of the kids I know come from Catholic families.
I was born in the city, grew up in the city, took the city bus to catholic school when I was 6,
went to vancouver to visit my dad when I was 9, on the tram by myself and home again, transfers
and all.
My dad wasn't always there right away to meet me at the depot, so i would play around, skipping on
the marble type floors, in and out of the ladies room. over to the drinking fountain, and a couple
of times he didn't show up, so I found my way home again.
Never had to be aware of needles anywhere, other than the knitting kind.
I liked the pecking order in the schools in the 50's, the teachers were the boss, and the inmates did
not run the assylum.
Corporal punishment was more prevalent in the home back then, and also in the schools, as the strap
was used. A stupid method of 'helping' children, really. If you want to make kids worse, wack them
with a strap, the only ones who would respond to that method were the ones who were scared, and, those
were not the kids sent to the office.
One 15 year old, a friend of my husbands, was sent to the office, out came the strap, well, he grabbed
it out of his hand and wacked him with it, the story gets worse, not for the principal, for the kid.
Alchohol was always the big problem, it was the only substance back then to numb the brain, don't know
why there was so much drinking, because the economy was doing great, the depression long over, lots of
work and the whole country was pulsating with energy, so 'not' everyone was drinking that's for sure.
went to vancouver to visit my dad when I was 9, on the tram by myself and home again, transfers
and all.
My dad wasn't always there right away to meet me at the depot, so i would play around, skipping on
the marble type floors, in and out of the ladies room. over to the drinking fountain, and a couple
of times he didn't show up, so I found my way home again.
Never had to be aware of needles anywhere, other than the knitting kind.
I liked the pecking order in the schools in the 50's, the teachers were the boss, and the inmates did
not run the assylum.
Corporal punishment was more prevalent in the home back then, and also in the schools, as the strap
was used. A stupid method of 'helping' children, really. If you want to make kids worse, wack them
with a strap, the only ones who would respond to that method were the ones who were scared, and, those
were not the kids sent to the office.
One 15 year old, a friend of my husbands, was sent to the office, out came the strap, well, he grabbed
it out of his hand and wacked him with it, the story gets worse, not for the principal, for the kid.
Alchohol was always the big problem, it was the only substance back then to numb the brain, don't know
why there was so much drinking, because the economy was doing great, the depression long over, lots of
work and the whole country was pulsating with energy, so 'not' everyone was drinking that's for sure.
I can't believe that anyone would continue to dispute what I say about the time and place I grew up in. How could I possibly have known what was going on outside my world? We did not have TV. I used to lay on the floor, slowly turning the radio dial trying to find a news station for my Dad. Kids don't usually read the newspapers - not even the local rag that came out once a week and reported which people in town had visitors and where the visitors were from! Our population was 2500 people. As a kid - there is a good chance you either know those people personally or you know of them. Ironically I used to walk across the street from cops houses because I thought they might arrest me for something/anything. My Mom said if we weren't good, a policeman might come and take us away and oddly enough, she was kind of right!!! You could not get away with doing bad things those days. People called your parents if they thought you were out doing something wrong. I had 3 brothers. People did not pick on me. The next place I lived had 16,000 people and I really thought I had moved to the city! I cannot be the only one who lived such a childhood. One of the guys in our little group of friends called me a few nights ago. I have not seen him or talked to him in over 45 years. We talked for 2.5 hours and we talked about good times and good people. He has stayed in touch with the folks we grew up with far more than I have. He seems to know it all. No talk of drugs in our town. He did talk about one kid we grew up with that turned into a real pervert but - the guy is dead now. Drank himself to death.
Yes VanIsle, there were no drugs back in the 50's, (a little further back for me than you) but alchohol was a problem,
we had friends, or, just young people we knew, who were alchoholics before they were 20, and a few of them
were dead before they were 25, one guy drove over his little daughter in the driveway when he was drunk, killed her.
I could never figure out how people who were just starting their lives as young adults or teenagers could
be so weak and blind to throw a life away before it hardly started.
you're right, when we 'were there', lived the life, knew the city, saw life then
with our own eyes, were part of that generation of young people, we knew the life,
we knew the energy, the positive and negatives of that time and that place, it is
embedded in our memories, it was 'our' time, and always a very important time in
anyone's life.
That is not quite true- for instance peer pressure in many cases has more influence on a kid than his/her parent's good examples. Our kids would have never caught me or their mother dropping "F-bombs" in shopping malls or on public conveyances, yet I wouldn't be so naive for one minute to think none of our kids hasn't done so. :lol: but basically are fairly well mannered toward their elders individually.
JLM, research ephebophobia, and you'll see that yuor viewpoint is not unique, but rather, is a constant throughout history.
And, for the record, you haven't pissed me off, just made me laugh a bit.
Hi Karrie- you've just increased my vocabulary by one. More accurate than "fear of youth" would be fear of obnoxious youth. I do not fear most (90%) youths. I do fear for my grandchildren being in conflict with out of control, violent, drug affected youths. Most of the kids today are good kids, but a minority are controlled by detrimental peer pressure.