I did just fine and my parents weren't always on top of me. Sure my mom was always worried but she trusted my judgment even when I was 12 years old. I remember going to school parties at around 13 every Friday and/or Saturday and the parties were not close . I had till 1:00 AM to get back home. I usually showed up around 12:30 considering I had to walk for about 20 minutes from the parties. My mom new that sometimes there are thing you can only learn by experiencing them. That's why I often wonder what could happen to those children who grow up in a pillow covered room (if you know what I mean) and become adults and bump into concrete walls for the first time? Talk about taking the child out of children. Eliminate all that can teach them about life and then throw them into a school system that sucks and you get the same results as the movie Idiocracy.

I just showed my 8 year old and 4 year old 2 pictures of of people who didn't brush their teeth. My oldest did not react much but will find out tonight just how much impact it had on him since he had already brushed his teeth this morning. But my youngest? He ran to the bathroom almost instantly after looking at the pictures. My wife tells me "he's in the bathroom brushing his teeth". I didn't even notice till she told me. Guess that theory worked.

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.

!

You know it just occurred to me that the song is really lacking something.  They should have taken out the drinking and smoking mother part and replaced it with the something about vulgar language and adult content.  Man, every public place I go I have to tell my daughter to ignore some swear word that somebody used.  There are only a couple radio stations that I can listen to to avoid swear words.  And, there are very few movies that the whole family can go to anymore.  What's up with that?

People want to talk about how we have made the world "safer" since those days, but I'm not sure.  Sure, women shouldn't smoke or drink- but why aren't we so harsh on the parents of fat kids (don't even get me started on the child obesity rate)?  We make everything so "safe" that kids don't fear things like they should.  Cars are so "safe" and easy to drive, that people don't think of them as the killing machines that they are.  Instead of teaching and learning, we try to "protect".  The problem is that when things go wrong, people no longer know what to do.

I miss a lot of the "good old days" as some people like to call it.  I miss the time before people sued over spilling hot coffee in their lap (it didn't WARN me that it was hot!) or before you had to insure yourself for every little thing that somebody could sue you for.  I miss the days when things didn't run 24/7 and people knew how to take a day off.  I miss the days when people used common sense and didn't assume that somebody else would warn them about something (ever read the warning tag on a hairdryer?). 

I just saw a TV show last night about some of the worlds funniest commercials. They had this one, I don't remember the country, where a guy passes by another girls desk and asked her what was that jar with money on her desk. She told him it was a curse jar where if people cursed they had to put money in it. He wondered who would get the money, the girl explained it would be used for the office. Things like office supplies, new equipment, lunch and maybe even beer. The guy replied "F_ucking awesome" and dropped a quarter in the jar. the the commercial goes on to having everyone in the company cursing about anything. The funniest was a girl who was having trouble with a copy machine and said "Oh poop". A co-worker comes out of a cubicle and said "that doesn't count" and she replies "Oh f_ck you George". then at the end the Boss holds a meeting and everyone has a beer in their hands and almost evry word he said about how good a job they did that month had a curse word after it. keep in ind the whole commercial was bleep after bleep after bleep.

That was a funny yet sad commercial. I wonder if the country it was from bleeped the words?



Yea, I love the fact that we have people who have opposing views over abortion and whether the baby is a baby or a mass of cells while having commercials how about pregnant shouldn't drink or smoke during pregnancy but God forbid we tell these same women anything once the child is born.



Same here, we have become a pillow society who fears even brain freezes. And if they continue to hold back our military we will eventually not be able to defend ourselves either.

I like the song, but can't help but think that there's no way that Bucky Covington lived through all of those things.  Much of what is mentioned in the song happened or changed back in the 60's and 70's.  Covington has to be all of 35 years old, if that (maybe 36 or 37 now since it's been a few years since he was on Idol), so chances he lived through a lot of what he's singing about are next to nil.

Umm, I'm 37 and lived through just about ALL of that, terp!

Bucky is just shy of 30.

OK, so born in 77 or 78...after childproof caps, seatbelts in cars, and in the infancy of child safety seats. And DEFINITELY not old enough to remember no video games! The Atari 2600 was released before this guy was out of diapers!

OK, so born in 77 or 78...after childproof caps, seatbelts in cars, and in the infancy of child safety seats. And DEFINITELY not old enough to remember no video games! The Atari 2600 was released before this guy was out of diapers!

I had just thought to check back on Bucky's age and it was as TW mentions above.  Born in 77 (late in that year, November), so definitely born after much of the stuff he is singing about had changed.  By the time he was 3 Space Invaders, Pac-man and heck, even Ms. Pac-man had ruled the world.

The Pledge of Allegiance might have been said in his school, but that is hard to tell as I don't remember for sure when it went out of vogue.  Prayers were most likely a no-no for him unless he attended a church school.

Anyway, I like the song, and even enjoy his twangy singing of it, though it seems to me that he's trying to sound like some of the classic country artists, and that perhaps the song was manufactured to be a hit all along (not that most artists aren't trying for hits, but some have their products created by 'hitmakers' that are just about guaranteed to produce a chart topper, depending mostly on whom the artist is signed with and just how badly that record company/producer wants the artist to be a hit).

Coming from some of the older country singers, I wouldn't even consider the issue of the artists age as it would seem to fit with the song.  Knowing roughly how old Covington was, it seemed the song wasn't a good match to me.

And oh yeah, by the way, if memory serves the part about lead-based paint on cribs would have been dealt with back in the 70s for sure.  I was born in '62 myself and remember my parents having concerns about lead in paint when I was in early grade school.  By the time I was moving into high school lead based paint on cribs would definitely have been gone.  Though it did take a while after that before we got around to worrying much about the space between the rails in the cribs and things like that I guess.

 

I did think of something that the song doesn't cover though and that is mercury poisoning and scares about same.  Haz-mat handling I guess some would say.  When I was a youngster if you dropped a thermometer and it broke (which was easily enough done back in the olden days of glass tube thermometers with mercury in them) it was no big deal.  Wipe up the mess, toss the paper towel into the paper grocery bag that was lining the garbage can and go on about your business.  Now if you drop a thermometer you evacuate the building and declare it a biohazard until the mercury can be eradicated.

Same with asbestos being in buildings back in the 40's, 50's and 60's (and into the 70's and perhaps 80's before it was determined that asbestos was such a nasty thing).  Kids like me plowed through crawl spaces in ceilings and under floors finding hiding places for games of hide and seek and such and never knew that the stuff in the air that we were dustin' up was supposed to be so bad for us.

Then again workers in Pittsburgh, around Savannah, GA and other places with lots of substances in the air (Iron/Steel and black sooted smoke around Pittsburgh, paper pulp smell around Savannah, GA) never knew that the stuff they were breathing was so bad for them either.

Not really, terp. On new cribs, sure, but back when I was born, most parents were using cribs that had been handed down for twenty years or so.

And even if lead based paint had been dealt with, plastic with lead based coloring had not. As I mentioned on another thread, I was working with plastic with lead based coloring in 1996 for over two years before I was informed there was lead in the plastic.

What, you thought Bucky WROTE the song? Jennifer Hanson, Tony Martin, and Mark Nesler wrote it. However, I have no idea how old they are.

What, you thought Bucky WROTE the song? Jennifer Hanson, Tony Martin, and Mark Nesler wrote it. However, I have no idea how old they are.

No.  I was certain that Bucky Covington didn't write it and that a team of hit-makers was responsible for the song.  My comments were in regards to my thinking that it's not a song that seems appropriate for a younger singer.  Again, if someone older sung the song, it would seem to be more autobiographical.  As is, with Bucky Covington singing it it *sounds* auto-biographical unless you know something about him.  If you are aware of his history and his age, then it seems out of place.

If it were coming from someone in the 40 - 55 age range, it would seem like that person was singing their own life story.

 

On a side note, are you aware that the song Mississippi Girl (Faith Hill sang it) wasn't written by Faith Hill?  Again, considering the lyrics, it is very auto-biographical.  But again, it was turned out by other writers and presented as a song that just had to be on her Fireflies album (CD).

If it were coming from someone in the 40 - 55 age range, it would seem like that person was singing their own life story.

You really don't have to be that old.  I am 35 and can relate to the song on how we grew up. It also depends on where you grew up.

album (CD).

Hehe...remember "records"..or 8-tracks...or the days of tapes?  I'm glad those days are gone.  CDs are so much better.  Oh, wait, I forgot MP3's!

 

I moved to Puerto Rico in 1984 at the age of 8 and this song basically describes life in my small town almost perfectly. I lived there for 8 years so I guess I can say I did thru most if not all of those things. except maybe the smoking and drinking while pregnant part. But I did witness it myself. This gives Bucky a possibility of having experienced it, though I doubt it as well.