A different time, a different world

Published on August 30, 2007 By KarmaGirl In Blogging

So many times I catch myself saying things like: "when I was a kid, we didn't wear bike helmets, and somehow we lived", or "we only had like 3 channels, and I can remember how our first remote was on a cord" or "It used to be that only the kids who were good made the team and played, not everyone who showed up" and things like that.

Well, I was listening to the country station today (all my regular stations had commercials playing or were in 'talk morning' mode..and I was too lazy to dig out a CD). The song that was playing was sung by a generic sounding country singer. The song wasn't too exciting to listen to, but the lyrics were spot on.

I dug it up, and it's a Bucky Covington (which I guess was on American Idol at one time??) song called "A Different World". Here are the lyrics:

We were born to mothers who smoked and drank
Our cribs were covered in lead-based paint
No childproof lids
No seatbelts in cars
Rode bikes with no helmets
and still here we are
Still here we are

We got daddy's belt when we misbehaved
Had three TV channels you got up to change
No video games and no satellite
All we had were friends and they were outside
Playing outside

It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world

School always started the same everyday
the pledge of allegiance, then someone would pray
not every kid made the team when they tried
We got disappointed but that was alright
We turned out alright

It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world

No bottled water
We'd drink from a garden hose
And every Sunday,
All the stores were closed.

It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world

It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world

It was a different world

Comments (Page 1)

foreverserenity

on Aug 30, 2007

You're right, Bucky Covington was on American Idol!

I hear ya. I was having this conversation the other day. I also say the same things to my kids too, they so think mommy is ancient!lol!

Tova7

on Aug 30, 2007

hahahaha

I laughed out loud at the remote with a wire on it. I REMEMBER THAT! Though we weren't well off enough to have one ourselves. But my gal pals were living large! That cord constantly tripped people and was yanked apart. But it was easier to find when we lost it.

CharlesCS

on Aug 30, 2007

~lifts buttcheek and farts dust.

Sometimes I wish I didn't have such a vivid imagination, it would keep me from picturing comments like these in my mind.

singrdave

on Aug 30, 2007

That is a great song which I haven't heard yet. How did we ever survive?

I remember the years before car seats. Picture this: age 4-ish, standing up in the passenger seat, hands on the dashboard propping myself up, forehead against the windshield, no seat belt in sight.

Moderateman

on Aug 30, 2007

I was my dads 'remote control' "elie? change it to channel 2 will you?

I climbed trees Oh My god, I fell from them too, I played ball with no head protection {maybe that explains allot!}

Sadly we are raising a bunch of wimps, that do not understand that not everyone is good enough to play certain sports and should be told so!

CharlesCS

on Aug 30, 2007

I'm not that old to remember not having a TV in the house, but moving to Puerto Rico in '84 kinda gave me an idea of what things were like in the US before TV's were invented. Not that there weren't TV's in PR, it was just more like how this song describes back in the day. We played outside more than we watched TV. Saturday was basically the day I watched TV the most, maybe an hour or 2 on weekdays.

I use to love jumping on my bike and running off to a friends house or just to ride around the town. I miss the school parties, trying to meet girls and conjure up the valor to ask them to dance. I miss playing in the fields behind my house, making guns out of 3 pieces of wood, 2 nails, a clothes pin and a rubber band to shoot stuff from the guns, playing games like tag, hide and go seek, baseball with balls made of aluminum and covered with electric tape. I use to climb to the roof of my house in the middle of the night to watch the cars drive by and watch the stars that were so clear. Turning on the hose to wet ourselves was a weekend must. Paper planes from last years school notebooks gave hours of fun and hours of yelling for filling the community street with paper. $1 could actually get you a soda, a bag of chips, some cookies and gum. School was fun, no security guards, no constant lawsuits or police for childish behavior. Those were the good old days, my kids got a small taste the last time we were in PR, even though things were a bit more like over here.

Today we have pedophiles in every corner, gangs shooting without a care, stressed people who work too much and don't make enough (according to themselves), people who can't drive, drunk people who shouldn't drive, craziness in many religions, etc. The list gets worse. What is happening to our society?

KarmaGirl

on Aug 30, 2007

Yeah, those were good times. . Heck, this generation looks at corded phones as ancient....can you imaging if they would have had to dial on a *gasp* *shock* ROTARY phone?!?!?!

I remember the years before car seats. Picture this: age 4-ish, standing up in the passenger seat, hands on the dashboard propping myself up, forehead against the windshield, no seat belt in sight.

Or riding in the back of a pick-up, or having you and all your friends piled in the back of a stationwagen?

How did we live without bike helmets or knee pads. Can you imagine learning to rollarskate without knee pads?? The horror!!!!

CharlesCS

on Aug 30, 2007

Here's another example of "the dangers of today's society":

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — An elementary school has banned tag on its playground after some children complained they were harassed or chased against their will.

Link

Oh the horrors of being forced to play tag against your will. I guess one of the other kids held a gun or a knife on the tagged kids back and told him "you better run and try to catch someone or I'll stab you or shoot you".

CharlesCS

on Aug 30, 2007

Yeah, those were good times. . Heck, this generation looks at corded phones as ancient....can you imaging if they would have had to dial on a *gasp* *shock* ROTARY phone?!?!?!

Imagine them having to talk on the phone in a single room and not being able to go places and talk on the phone at the same time. I still remember some of the first CD commercials where they showed a shiny disk on the bottom, a red laser coming from the top and then a rock group jump out of the red laser and rocking. I never understood it at first, I was into cassettes.

, I remember making mixed tapes, letting the tape rn a few more seconds before I stopped recording and then rewind a few second and start recording the next song so that the click of the stop button wouldn't come out while playing it. And having to actually listen to the whole song just to record it? My God, it took a whole hour and 20 minutes to record a 60 minute tape.

Jythier

on Aug 30, 2007

Never mind not being able to walk around the room, imagine not being able to drive while on the phone, or in the middle of a business meeting, or anywhere but by a wall jack... scary.

Demosthenes Locke

on Aug 30, 2007

Oh the horrors of being forced to play tag against your will. I guess one of the other kids held a gun or a knife on the tagged kids back and told him "you better run and try to catch someone or I'll stab you or shoot you".

Shouldn't kids be taught to stand up for themselves. This sounds like a perfect opportunity. I'll be the first to admit that I'll attempt to avoid conflict wherever possible, but I did learn how to get out of these situations as a child by having to deal with them, not by being protected from them. As adults, we should endeavor to give kids the information they need to learn these lessons with as little experience as possible. We can't simply take experience out of the equation, though, and assume that the lesson can be still be learned. Knowing a lesson is not the same as learning it. Like hearing the music is different from listening to it, if you get my meaning.

Damn, I hate getting to the middle of what I'm writing and realizing that I ought to listen to my own advice.

CharlesCS

on Aug 30, 2007

I believe there are things kids should not have to wait to experience in order to learn, such as guns, knives and beatings. these things we should protect them from them. But a game of tag? Every child in the school pays the price for the cries of a few kids? Sad, so sad. I'm the first one here to bitch about people not standing up for themselves and doing something about our Gov't system and here we have children basically doing exactly what I said except they applied it to the wrong problem.

Demosthenes Locke

on Aug 30, 2007

I believe there are things kids should not have to wait to experience in order to learn, such as guns, knives and beatings.

I'll agree here. Those are things for which the results can be seen and are disastrous. Think of this, though. If you were aware of or saw the results of a beating/shooting etc., how meaninful would the sight or knowledge of that pain be if you'd never been subject to any slight injury. Warning a child that something is dangerous is one thing. Teaching them to want to avoid it through experience extension would probably be more meaningful and forces the child to think the situation through more, which I'd suspect would only increase their understanding of the lesson, and therefore the desire to follow it..

I should disclose that I am not yet a parent, which is why I speak in the subjunctive.

I have always had a very vivid imagination, to the point that some might consider it morbid. As a child, I'd imagine stabbing myself in the stomach with a kitchen knife, not because I wanted pain or death, but I was curious. A few accidental cuts on my finger with a small knife quickly made me shy from this thought. I was still curious, but was also wary enough to know that it was not a pain worth experiencing, considering the pain of that small cut. If I'd not been able to be in a situation where I might get a small cut on a finger, who's to say that "morbid" curiosity might not have one day gotten the best of me.

How to deal with people can't be learned simply by being told the lesson. That's not to say that a lesson is unimportant, but new, sometimes difficult situations are what forces people to put that lesson into action and learn how to bend it appropriately to other scenarios. If people are shielded from every difficult situation, then those lessons are nothing but platitudes, and as such thoroughly impractibable.

CharlesCS

on Aug 30, 2007

I know what you mean, good thing about today is we have the Internet. No real need to expose my child to pain and suffering when there are videos on youtube.com to show him this pain from the safety of our home.

Dr Guy

on Aug 31, 2007

One wonders how children survived to adulthood. There was no one to take care of them, since the nanny government had not been fully formed. Children actually took risks - and failed. The horrors of it! How could we ever let our children to get hurt, or worse, lose!

The world is filled with ghosts - killed by a lack of supervision from the state - who just dont know they are supposed to be dead, maimed, emotionally damaged for all eternity - because there was no nanny Sam to take care of them from the cold uncaring callous parents.

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