I want to be young again!

[Romany Jones.]

Re: I want to be young again!

I think this belongs here.

WE WAS BRUNG UP PROPER!
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1930′s 1940′s, 50′s, 60′s and early 70′s !
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos…
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Nandos…
Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn’t open on a Sunday, somehow we didn’t starve to death!
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because……..
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
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. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY ,
no video/dvd films,
no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms……….WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents.
Only girls had pierced ears!
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time… We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,
We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them! Mum didn’t have to go to work to help dad make ends meet because we didn’t need to keep up with the Jones’s!
Not everyone made the rugby/football/cricket/netball team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT
Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and throw the blackboard rubber at us if they thought we weren’t concentrating .
We can string sentences together and spell and have proper conversations because of a good, solid three R’s education.
Our parents would tell us to ask a stranger to help us cross the road.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law! Our parents didn’t invent stupid names for their kids like ‘Kiora’ and ‘Blade’ and ‘Ridge’ and ‘Vanilla’ and ‘Tiger’
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT ALL ! And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.
And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

[Heather74]

Re: I want to be young again!

Hmmm the parents bringing up today's kids, and the people who make the streets unsafe for the kids to play in have a lot to answer for!... Oh wait that's the same generations

Taken from else where but this is what I have always said since the first time I read these sorts of round robins

"logic dictates that it was therefore it's our generation who made the streets unsafe by either bad parenting or lack of self control... it was us who invented the internet and things that come with it..... what its actually saying is .." we let our children down"

[sf1378]

Re: I want to be young again!

There's many a time I've just ached to be 8 or 9 again and have that feeling of wonder and excitement, that went with so many things back then (just when would that free Action Man that I sent off for with 21 stars arrive), again. Losing my Mum and Dad over the past couple of years hasn't helped things, either. Selling the family home I grew up in was probably the hardest thing I've ever done.

I'm currently experiencing this right now - having to sell the family home I've lived in the past 26 and a bit years. As some know here I lost my Dad last year. My Mums already passed on. I've only mentioned these sorts of things on DYR because many of you like Wii and I have experiences like this - not to emotionally blackmail the forum and be the poor me of the place. I know - and this is NOT a stirring comment to cause an argument dig at anyone - but there are some who think I've made such comments to gain sympathy - no, its life I'm simply discussing with like minded people here. I just mention it as DYR is on the whole a place where life experiences come together.

I also wish many times I were little again. The comments so far in this topic are very apt and sage. I'm 34, and do now wish everything, especially the BIG decisions were made for me by my Mum and Dad again. Even like some have said, being told to go to bed! I'm sure many who cook their own meals here wish at times Mum and Dad would be doing the cooking, making nice tasty meals we all remember but cannot for the life of us sadly replicate.

For me, now selling the home, while difficult is a release from it all. It needs to be done for now. Maybe one day I'll buy it back! I often see little kids with their Mums or Dads holding their hands, waddling along, clutching a well loved soft toy and wishing I could be that small again and made to feel safe and loved by Mum and Dad again but sadly such days don't come back so I do sadly hold onto the memories. Yes, life was very easy back then - everything done for us, decided for us, dinner made for us etc, etc - bliss really. You recall how impatient you were to 'be big' and have 'real freedom' but in hindsight, it was actually heaven to be that small and not have the pitfalls and responsibilities of bills, etc - life in general really. Life is really all about hindsight, you learn from it. Thats how I view life in general...shame theres not a rewind button.

I collect vintage toys as it reminds me of my lost innocence and the simpler, better days of ignorance as a little boy. They remind me even of my parents when I look at them.

Great topic all in all....I even saw a little girl with her Mum earlier today sat at my local haunt of a coffee shop and her Mum had taken her for a stroll out of Starbucks next door and I wished I was like that again...

[80sChav]

Re: I want to be young again!

I am glad I noticed and found this thread. In many way's I for me this ios what "Retro" and 80s/90s stuff stands for - for me (and the 70s - though I n only shared a frew years of my life with the 70s, but i've learned so much of it through varying articles/TV etc.

Thinking about Retro thing's and times from being a kid and getting a bus anywher near by, thing's being novel etc and remembering my childhood makes me want to be young again and bring's the youthness out in me in a way quite deeply, it makes me think of times too when the High Street was not totaly dominated by mega Supermarkets like Sainsbury's, Asda and Morrissons selling everything going,this makes me want to be young - though i'm not in a situation as I fully dislike mega Supermarkets - I just hope they don't get any bigger, but in my region we are blessed so far that the mega supermarkets (appear) to attract people to the local shop's as thing's used to be like. With me being an "exploerer" though i'll go about looking in a Town, Village a big supermarket opens - it rekindless my childhood and the hope of finding a unique bargain etc. There are so many other places and thing's too that make me a kid again, though I find them not easy to discribe - I guess the best way at the moment I can think of is going into a nice restaurant or cafe you instantly know the smnell of your favourite meal there or something like. I hope the last bit makes sense/or i've tried to.

[darren]

Re: I want to be young again!

i can identify with this in so many ways mate.
watching old music shows like totp 2 which shows old songs from the seventies eighties and nineties makes we wish i was young again.

it gets me really nostalgic in a very deep way.

those recent programmes on bbc 2 learned me so much but brought back some wonderful memories of when you could go up your local town centre and see all these small independent shops instead of all these huge supermarkets.

for example a new shop opened recently its called the candy store abnd when i walked past, it was selling creamola foam and it sells tons of old sweets from our youth.

we have another shop that does the same and its never changed its name in my lifetime.

going in you can see the sweets up high in those clear plastic screw top containers you can still ask for a quarter or half pound of them and they still use those silver scales to weigh them.

sometimes ill smell a certain thing or hear about a certain thing that will bring back memories for me.

i can get quite emotional when it comes to remembering certain things.

although im no longer a kid if you met me you would see how much much of a kid i still am with the rogrammes i watch like he man she ra thundercats etc.
and i do not feel bad watching them.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am glad I noticed and found this thread. In many way's I for me this ios what "Retro" and 80s/90s stuff stands for - for me (and the 70s - though I n only shared a frew years of my life with the 70s, but i've learned so much of it through varying articles/TV etc.

Thinking about Retro thing's and times from being a kid and getting a bus anywher near by, thing's being novel etc and remembering my childhood makes me want to be young again and bring's the youthness out in me in a way quite deeply, it makes me think of times too when the High Street was not totaly dominated by mega Supermarkets like Sainsbury's, Asda and Morrissons selling everything going,this makes me want to be young - though i'm not in a situation as I fully dislike mega Supermarkets - I just hope they don't get any bigger, but in my region we are blessed so far that the mega supermarkets (appear) to attract people to the local shop's as thing's used to be like. With me being an "exploerer" though i'll go about looking in a Town, Village a big supermarket opens - it rekindless my childhood and the hope of finding a unique bargain etc. There are so many other places and thing's too that make me a kid again, though I find them not easy to discribe - I guess the best way at the moment I can think of is going into a nice restaurant or cafe you instantly know the smnell of your favourite meal there or something like. I hope the last bit makes sense/or i've tried to.

[80sChav]

Re: I want to be young again!

i can identify with this in so many ways mate.
watching old music shows like totp 2 which shows old songs from the seventies eighties and nineties makes we wish i was young again.

it gets me really nostalgic in a very deep way.

those recent programmes on bbc 2 learned me so much but brought back some wonderful memories of when you could go up your local town centre and see all these small independent shops instead of all these huge supermarkets.

for example a new shop opened recently its called the candy store abnd when i walked past, it was selling creamola foam and it sells tons of old sweets from our youth.

we have another shop that does the same and its never changed its name in my lifetime.

going in you can see the sweets up high in those clear plastic screw top containers you can still ask for a quarter or half pound of them and they still use those silver scales to weigh them.

sometimes ill smell a certain thing or hear about a certain thing that will bring back memories for me.

i can get quite emotional when it comes to remembering certain things.

although im no longer a kid if you met me you would see how much much of a kid i still am with the rogrammes i watch like he man she ra thundercats etc.
and i do not feel bad watching them.

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I think in some part's of an area i'm in i'm lucky as though the old shopping places blend with the new, as i've been to a massive Retail Park this Afternoon, it all creates a sense of Yesteryear and being young still, because it is near a Village that has shop's selling antiques etc.

All this gives the feeling of being young to high degree I think, hoping to find bargain's. I hope these amazing scenario's in many a City, Region and Town can last even though these type of places (antique places/2nd hand places) are in steep decline - if they went so too would my past and yearning to be young (though a lot of it is based on memories too). As long as thing's reign as so i'm happy and it keep's the link of past and present.

80sChav

[the-peoples-poet]

Re: I want to be young again!

Smee, I reckon you are right, things were better 'back in the day'.

And whoever it was, don't diss the 80s, they were fab! All my memories are from the 80s, I loved all the puffball dresses, shoulder pads, pastel jackets with rolled up sleeves, the hairstyles, the comedy (esp the comedy), everything. The 80s were fabulous!

[the-peoples-poet]

Re: I want to be young again!

I loved He-Man when I was a kid and I am a girl! I was fascinated by him and his body. I was very young at the time but I knew that a man with no shirt on (cartoon or not) was a bit naughty and I liked that. I loved his bulgy muscles and his long hair too. It was also this show that gave me my life-long fascination with skeletons and skulls. I. Love. Skeletor. Even to this day. When I got older, and I realised that boys, well, men, weren't all gob and gonads, some of them were actually lovely, I looked for a real-life He-Man. I am now almost 33 and I am still looking.

[80sChav]

Re: I want to be young again!

I think that the 80s were so simple and easy - yeah there was rough thing's, the area I grew up was rough but life was so straight-forward and not like it is today with rough elements to life. I can not speak for the 1960s or 1970s but the 1980s to a total 100% degree is where i'd take a space-shuttle back to and as a return point to planet earth I think, say 1994 i'd return (1996 no later0 as that was like a true extension of my youth from the 1980s.

After Oasis and Wonderwall in 1995 (or was it 1994 i'm unsure now!) this is a the time when in hindsight I think my youth became not my youth, and I think i'd call 1994 or possibly 1995 the last truly vintage year i'd keep in a bottle for prosperity like a fine wine, if possible. Though i'm unsure which i'd pick at all, luckily (though sadly) the choice can never exist, which i'm grateful for but sad deeply - even though it's not real-life.

[Richard1978]

Re: I want to be young again!

I've got a soft spot for the 1980s, most because it was the first decade I remember, & also because it always seemed to be "knocked" unfairly, often by the sort of people who keep bigging up the 1970s.

It's interesting compairing to the 1990s in terms of Pop culture. By then I was watch post-watershed TV, & music seemed to become very compartmentalised, with it being "out of place" if you seemed to be listening to the sort of music not if your demographic. In the 1980s there seemed to be a much more level playing field in pop music.

Is that just the the age I was at the time or it all get cliquey them. By the mid to late 1990s things seemed to even out for a few years, before reverting to a degree to the compartmentisation. By then I was easily mix & matching old & new music so it didn't really seem a problem.

[the-peoples-poet]

Re: I want to be young again!

Well my era for my childhood is the 80s, I was born in 79, and I class the end of my nostalgia era as 1997 as that is the year I left High School. In regards to post-watershed stuff, I was quite lucky in that respect. I was never censored as to what I could or couldn't see or hear or read. I was raised by my Grandparents and an Aunt and my Grandmother's attitude was 'she will just go ahead and listen/watch/read it anyway so what's the point in telling her not to have anything to do with it'. That's not to say I had no boundaries, I did, I knew what I could and couldn't get away with, what the boundaries were, how far I could 'push' things purely because of the way I was raised so I guess my nostalgia might be a bit different to some peoples when it comes to childhood things.

I never was one for being part of the masses and that wasn't necessarily through conscious choice, it was just because what I was into was not what everyone else was into. My 'big thing' in my childhood, and still to this day, was Rik Mayall and comedy shows. Everyone else around me didn't get it so I was the odd one out. It wasn't until I was into my 20s that I actually got to know people who were into him in the same way I was. Things like Have I Got News For You, Whose Line Is It Anyway, early Spitting Image, were the things I was most interested in, those and current affairs. Things like World In Action, The Cook Report, the news programmes, they were always on.

That's the good thing about memories. No matter where you end up in life, no matter how good or bad things may seem, they always go with you and they are always a source of comfort.

[Sly]

Re: I want to be young again!

My upbringing was very similar to yours. It wasn't very often I wasn't allowed to watch stuff that supposedly wasn't suitable for me.

On a slightly unrelated note, I used to love The Cook Report. That man had balls of steel to do what he did.

[havasack]

Re: I want to be young again!

I don't want to be young again !. No space to play in the streets, so much more pressure to be a grown up than there was in my day, tele that's americanised ****. I feel pity for my kids when I look back on the freedom of my childhood.

[battyrat]

Re: I want to be young again!

Times have changed,and so have many of the places we grew up.One of the biggest changes seems to be with people themselves and their attitudes in many cases to life itself and those other people around them.This change has not been for the better in my opinion.So many people to day do not give a thought about anybody not even their neighbours.I suppose if I was young again this is one of the big diffrences I would see.

Why would I want to be young again.There are so many reasons,but knowing what I do not I suppose I would have a chance at correcting so many mistakes I had made in life.One being a passion for drawing and art which by the time I had left school had been beaten out of me by the system.I still occationally dabble in it,but if I had continued with it things would of been so much better and it would of no doubt be second nature to me now.It would also give me a chance to hide some of my fav toys and books....so nobody else could have them.

[darren]

Re: I want to be young again!

so sad your love of drawing was beaten out of you mate.



id love to be young again but not in these times we live.

a lot of the time but not all the time people have no time for there neighbours.
when i was a kid we all knew are neighbours well.

we who where born in the sixties seventies etc we where lucky very lucky indeed.

being a kid now id not like it bo where to play etc people do not seem so nice but i do not mean everyone.

Times have changed,and so have many of the places we grew up.One of the biggest changes seems to be with people themselves and their attitudes in many cases to life itself and those other people around them.This change has not been for the better in my opinion.So many people to day do not give a thought about anybody not even their neighbours.I suppose if I was young again this is one of the big diffrences I would see.

Why would I want to be young again.There are so many reasons,but knowing what I do not I suppose I would have a chance at correcting so many mistakes I had made in life.One being a passion for drawing and art which by the time I had left school had been beaten out of me by the system.I still occationally dabble in it,but if I had continued with it things would of been so much better and it would of no doubt be second nature to me now.It would also give me a chance to hide some of my fav toys and books....so nobody else could have them.