How Did I Ever Survive Childhood

Donny Osmond

I have a feeling I am going to date myself with this blog posting! 


I was just thinking about how on earth did I ever survive being a child? I was born in 63 and grew up in the 70's. I am sure everyone knows about the things that went on in the 60's and 70's. If not here is a low down on it...


In the 70's it was a time when you could basically do whatever we thought was fun. We did have to be home by dark or dinnertime.  But looking back -- given how much parenting practices and "what's deemed appropriate" have changed since we were kids -- it's truly a wonder that any of us ever survived childhood. Tons of stuff our parents did (or let us do) that was deemed commonplace when we were growing up, is totally frowned upon today. 

Nancy Grace

When watching Nancy Grace it seems to never fail that there is going to be a parent or guardian on there that did something stupid. I do respect Nancy, she does alot for victims of violence and has no problem stating what she believes. But back to the subject. These are many of the same stupid things our parents did as we were growing up in the 60's and 70's. But I am guessing it wasn't on the news much since we only had between 3-5 stations.  I'm not talking about killing your kids, but I am talking about going to the store and they act up and you smack their bottoms. Now you would be thrown in jail, then you would have been scowled at if you didn't reprimand your kids.  These things is what got me thinking about the differences between then and now. 

For example, we would go out after dark and hang out with friends and play hide and seek. We never worried about meeting a stranger. When we went somewhere with out parents, it was more common to not wear a seat belt rather than strap one on. I remember a time traveling across the country where all of us kids would crash(sleep) in the car and alot of the times it would be the back window. That was my favorite place to sleep. The cars was big and it had alot of room. I don't think I even recall car seats being around then. Most of the times the infants or children were sitting on laps, brothers or sisters or wherever their tiny little bodies landed. 

Here is a list of things that I did as a child and survived; 

• We would go out riding our bikes and we didn't have helmets or anything else... I do think this may have been a good thing to have had since I was bad at cutting off cars... We would drink after each other and guess what? We hardly ever got sick... 
• We had no cell phones... If I wanted to see someone I would walk over to their house and see if they were home... And the most interesting thing about that was that we got our exercise. 
• I got myself into a bit of trouble and tried things that I shouldn't have. But made it through that Cheech and Chong period of my life too... bad me :)
• Party line phones... If you have never had one of these phones, its where you share your line with your neighbors and we all waited our turn and if someone was on the phone, we would hang up. 
• We never really had any of the games like play station and such. I think those kind of games came out when my daughters were born and that was the Nintendo or something. But  we would go outside and play and have fun with our friends. 
• Never had computers, although they are nice, I think we miss alot by personal interaction with others...
• We could entertain ourselves by climbing trees, jumping down, pushing sisters off tall buildings,  and just having fun... Now days, I think Dr's and such would think you were trying to kill yourself if you jumped out of a tree. 
• I would have no problem accepting a ride from someone I didn't know. Better watch doing that now. 
• In High School we would ride in the back of my friend Davids truck and went to the Dry Lake and do donuts. If you don't know what a donut is, it is where you go around and around in a circle. We would even sit on the hood of the truck and see how long we could hold on. I have to admit, that was not a smart thing to do!
• We would occasionally get a soda, and it was a treat. Usually only once a week and T.V. dinners were not an option. 
• 8 Tracks- does anyone remember those and how much room they took up? We thought it was the most genius thing when cassettes came out. 

Little House on the Prairie

Some of my favorite things about the 70's were Donny Osmond(was going to marry), Scott Baio, Leo Sayer, American Bandstand, Walking to Rays Market for Hot Pickles, Shawn Cassidy and David Cassidy and how can I ever forget Andy Gibb and his brothers the Bee Gees. We had Staying Alive with John Travolta, Grease also with John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. There was one of the biggest movies ever, "Star Wars", and my favorite show, Little House on the Prairie. There were also cartoons such as The Smurfs, Banana Splits, Micky Mouse... What I would call normal ones, lol... 


When looking back and seeing things now, I guess there were many differences... I think the biggest is that people actually communicated alot more and didn't spend all their time in front of the TV. We got to spend an hour or so a day. But it wasn't a priority. Maybe we notice things more because of the internet, TV like CNN and other news stations.