# Which generation is made of sterner stuff? (List coming) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 8, 2004, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611 "2004-11-08T07:44:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2004, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/21 "2004-11-09T16:10:26Z")
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing “Hallelujah.” But you try and tell the young people today that… and they won’t believe ya’. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![bizzwire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/958977/32.png) [@bizzwire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bizzwire)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2004, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/22 "2004-11-09T20:14:42Z")
They forgot a couple of other excellent things. For instance, the glue we used to build our model airplanes with was the real McCoy; airplane glue you could get a good buzz off of. We could put flaming bags of dogshit on our neighbor’s porches without fear of being shot. With none of the advanced features of today’s digital telephone technology, we could make crank phone calls without fear of having it traced backed to us. Those were the days, alright… ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2004, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/23 "2004-11-09T20:38:48Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing “Hallelujah.” > > But you try and tell the young people today that… and they won’t believe ya’. > > Daniel I think I saw the same segment of _The Marty Feldman Show_ you did. 😃 😛 Incidentally–the Teeming Millions may call that lawyer a “wimp” at their own risk. I would NOT want to test her temper. ---
**Author:** ![Klaatu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Klaatu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Klaatu)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2004, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/24 "2004-11-10T01:53:59Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing “Hallelujah.” > > But you try and tell the young people today that… and they won’t believe ya’. > > Daniel Yeah, and we also had to actually get up and walk over to the TV to change channels, and we only had three channels! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2004, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/25 "2004-11-10T02:51:41Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Little League has never had tryouts to play, ever, in the entire history of its existence. Little League is by definition a house league; any child who signs up will play, and in most cases will play regularly. Local associations may try out kids for All-Star teams and such, but all kids can play Little League, and All-Star teams cannot compete for the Little League World Series. Every child who signs up does get to play in Little League during the regular season (and always has) - but not every kid in each Little League gets to play on the tournament team hoping to get to the Little League World Series. That tournament team is generally made up of _some_ of the kids who made the all-star teams- gotta have 2 all star teams to have an all star game, but the tournament team only has a certain number of spots. I suppose some places might use tryouts- my son’s league alows the tournament team managers to choose without tryouts.(since they’ve already seen the kids playing all season.) ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2004, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/26 "2004-11-10T03:13:38Z")
I was born after 1985. Let’s look at this list. > [@dougie\_monty](#): > > 1. Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. Lived in a house with lead paint? Check. Sister once tested for higher than average levels of lead? Check. > [@](#): > > 1. We had no child-proof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets (not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking). 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. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors! Non-childproofed equipment during my childhood? Check. Ridden sans helmet? Check? Ridden sans seatbelt? Precious few times, thanks to my mother’s childhood, seatbelt-free car crash that killed one of my uncles. Back of a truck? Check. Drank from the hose? Check. > [@](#): > > 1. We ate cupcakes, bread, and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. Bad food? Check. Mesomorph? Check. > [@](#): > > 1. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scrap and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes… After running into the bushes a few times, we caught on. Shared food? Check. Get sick a lot? Check. Never have built a downhill racer, though. > [@](#): > > 1. 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! I have never had a cellphone, though I have played all day in the woods. > [@](#): > > 1. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms. Well, you got me there. > [@](#): > > 1. We had friends! We went outside and found them. We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt. > We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and 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 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. Friends? Check. Painful games of dodge ball (school sanctioned, no less)? Check. Fallen out of trees? Check. Never broken anything, though. Few fights, have made up many games, never eaten a worm or put a friend’s eye out, though. > [@](#): > > 1. We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s home > and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them. Check. > [@](#): > > 1. Little League had tryouts, and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Uh, everyone plays Little League, as as been pointed out. > [@](#): > > 1. Some students weren’t so 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. Sounds like my school. > [@](#): > > 1. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law. Imagine that! Never actually broken the law… Me a wimp? Come over HERE and say that! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![pokey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ebca7d/32.png) [@pokey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pokey)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2004, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/27 "2004-11-10T03:45:43Z")
> [@Ghanima](#): > > I find it quite ironic that the generation who legislated and voted for all these types of laws now feels smug enough to make fun of the rest of us for living under them. :rolleyes: Not to take yet another shit on the email but that’s exactly what it made me think. It’s not like the kids of the 80s and 90s invented their own videogames so they wouldn’t have to go outside! > [@](#): > > According to today’s regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40’s, the 50’s, the 60’s, or even maybe the early 70’s probably shouldn’t have survived That’s sort of snarky. It’s not like there is a law against calling on your friends. How’s it the fault of bureaucrats that these wonderful kids of the 50s and 60s grew up to enjoy having sex and shooting drugs in the parks and woodlands and throwing their biohazardous condom and needle litter everywhere so that all their own kids would have to stay inside and keep their shoes on at all times? Just when I thought it was out of style to hate the baby boomers! Honestly, though, you have to admit it’s the nervy generation. ---
**Author:** ![Gala\_Matrix\_Fire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4da419/32.png) [@Gala\_Matrix\_Fire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gala_Matrix_Fire)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2004, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/28 "2004-11-10T11:14:26Z")
Biohazardous condoms? Who used condoms back then? ---
**Author:** ![calm\_kiwi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc348/32.png) [@calm\_kiwi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/calm_kiwi)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2004, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/29 "2004-11-10T12:32:30Z")
> [@manx](#): > > For what its worth, I turned 21 last Sunday. Lists like these really bug me, and I’ve tried to pin down why. They bother you cause you ain’t an old fogey and you feel attacked. I’m 38 next week so I’m soooooooo Old fogey (and I feel sorry for myself!..pre birthday BLAH) > [@](#): > > So far as I can tell, lead poisoning is [bad for your health](http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/FL/00068.html). I imagine that one of the reasons lead based paints are no longer used around children is because there was a clear link between infant developmental difficulties and high levels of lead in their blood. If we chewed on leaded paint and are here to tell the tale we are Darwins Champions 😉 Listen to the leaded ones! 😃 > [@](#): > > When I was younger, my brothers and I would ride in the back of the station-wagon. It was fun. Riding around without a seatbelt, that’s fun too. But I don’t do that anymore, because I’ve seen what happens to someone launched through a car windscreen traveling at speed. And it’s awful. There are more cars on the road than there were in the 70’s. And those cars go faster, on better roads. My mum grew up on a farm. A ride in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was not ‘a special treat’, it was, she says, damn embarrassing. And uncomfortable. When we were kids it was, seatbelts? Seatbelts? What are they? The Morrie doesn’t seem to have them. You are right about the number of cars and the speeds (Morries didn’t go that fast) but we still bounced around the back seat in the days that a 30 minute trip today would take 3 hours. Made Christmas camping seem like a safari. 😃 It wasn’t safe but it was usual practice. > [@](#): > > My mother and her siblings ran around all day barefoot in farm paddocks. Forty years later, they’re all having cancerous moles removed from their bodies. I on the other hand, do not go outside in the summer without SPF30 sunblock on. And in the middle of the day, with my pasty white skin, I stay in the shade. My child still has to be convinced that outside of school uniform there are time he must wear shoes. Don’t worry there are still shoeless kiwi kids…and adults! I know we have the harshest sun in the world, but shoeless is always a god thing. > [@](#): > > There’s a big menningitis awareness drive at the moment in NZ. One of the easiest ways to transfer it is through ‘sharing spit’ as the ads say - like all drinking out of the same bottle. It’s a prevention thing, I think. Probably sharing someone’s coke won’t kill or harm either of you. but it might, so why not just be smart about it? Yes meningitis is a worry. But I was mightily offended when the child wouldn’t let me have a sip of his drink! Education is a good thing. Paranoia is not. > [@](#): > > I like my cellphone. I like the fact that I am reachable. I like the fact that I don’t need a landline, and I like how easy it is to get in touch with my friends. Your opinions may differ. That is fine. I can’t work the antique cell phone I was given…and I am not that old! I hope to get over this soon! > [@](#): > > Now, I’ve always lived in cities, so I was restricted to parks and reserves, but where would you go all day? There’s not much space to play if you’re a kid, especially if you don’t have a backyard or nearby park. The idea of free ranging in the weekend or after school is more limited now, I know this. But I find myself urging the child to free range more then he wants to. > [@](#): > > Internet chat rooms, I can do without. Message boards, this one in particular, are a big part of how I stay aware of the world outside of NZ. I would be much quicker to dismiss the States as a homogeneous mass, if I didn’t spent so much time on the boards. Me too :). So it can’t be a bad thing if our kids learn about message board. You just have to know where they are. Mine an be found on NeoPets. I’m not seeing that as a bad thing so far. > [@](#): > > Eh, I have friends that I do that to. I have friends who do that to me. Would I do that when I was a kid? Maybe, but I was pretty shy. Dopers, what’s your take on this? Would you have simply announced yourself at a friend’s doorstep? When we were kids a phone call was rarely needed, we just visited. Now I want the child to phone and he tells me the families schedule. Yes that has changed. > [@](#): > > Not everyone makes the team now. My brother plays rugby. He’s in something like the 5thXV. He’s not top grade and he still gets to play - what’s wrong with that? I was really, really crap at P.E and sport. I lived through the teasing. The child is living through the same…genetics are fun. He plays when he has to. Nothing has changed. > [@](#): > > You didn’t have scaling in the States? Also, the idea that people learn differently isn’t so woowoo nutjob, is it? Scaling was a stupid, stupid, stipid idea. It was never fair and fucked over many and rewarded many. > [@](#): > > Unfair, I say. Dopers over thirty, was life really a happy blaze of barefeet and sandlot baseball, steak & ice-cream, rosy sunsets? Was it really ‘tough but fair’? Well there was no baseball. The ice cream was cheap and bloody good and the steak was ok too but being a kid I liked the sausages better. But YES we never wore our shoes! Some of us don’t as soon as summer starts (Tuesday. Shoeless supermarketing!) ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/30 "2004-11-11T01:39:22Z")
> [@bluethree](#): > > Biohazardous condoms? Who used condoms back then? That depends on how far back you go. My Dad used condoms when I was a kid–I know, because I found some in his dresser drawer and I caught hell for it (I was about eight years old, in 1957, when this happened). ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/31 "2004-11-11T02:07:19Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > That depends on how far back you go. Unless you’re going back to [the sixteenth century](http://www.embarrassingproblems.com/pages2/condoms.htm) (or arguably back to [ancient Egypt](http://my.webmd.com/content/article/71/81244.htm?action=related_link), nuh uh. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/32 "2004-11-11T02:15:57Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Unless you’re going back to [the sixteenth century](http://www.embarrassingproblems.com/pages2/condoms.htm) (or arguably back to [ancient Egypt](http://my.webmd.com/content/article/71/81244.htm?action=related_link), nuh uh. > > Daniel Well, I can assure you that the friend who sent me that e-mail is not from the 16th Century or Ancient Egypt. 😛 😃 ---
**Author:** ![pokey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ebca7d/32.png) [@pokey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pokey)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/33 "2004-11-11T02:51:20Z")
> [@bluethree](#): > > Biohazardous condoms? Who used condoms back then? I mean that the condoms and needles in the parks that everyone worried about in the 80s and 90s were not put there by little kids. Therefore, they were put there by the people who were born in the 50s or 60s, who also worried about their kids picking them up, and therefore kept the kids inside. The point is that either way, it wasn’t the little bambinos who made the decision. I don’t mean that there were condoms in the park left over from the 50s. ---
**Author:** ![pencilpusher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d6d6ee/32.png) [@pencilpusher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pencilpusher)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611/34 "2004-11-11T03:48:41Z")
I was born in 1969. In 1973 I was playing in a mud puddle with about 5 of my little 4-6 year old friends, barefoot when an older kid thought it would be funny to throw a coke bottle into the puddle and smash it. An amputated toe and 14 stitches later I was getting a balloon from the army doctor. The year I was 7, I was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a MUCH older man. It was never spoken of after my father went to prison. At the age of 12 I was beaten up by 3 boys that were in my older brothers school just because I was his sister. They also broke my leg to keep me from running away. When I was 14 my father got out of prison my father got out of prison and came home a bitter man. He beat us regularly. at 15 I got pregnant, then got married, dropped out of school and became a housewife. at 18 I got a divorce and started REALLY getting into trouble. Good old days??? Where the fuck were **they**? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-generation-is-made-of-sterner-stuff-list-coming/273611.md?page=1)