A friend emailed me the following gem yesterday. You've probably seen it already. At first glance it reads like a light-hearted (if heavily cliched) look back at childhood with all its bumps and scrapes. Read it again. It asserts some ideas that many of us accept which are actually quite harmful. My responses are in italics.
Subject: People Over 30
People over 30 should be dead.
Here's why ............
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats! , [Apart from the bad punctuation, the "regulators and bureaucrats" phrase raises a red flag. Who are we talking about here?] those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.
Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. [Oh. THOSE bureaucrats. They took away our lead paint. Wah. You know how many kids still get sick from lead every year?]
We had no childproof 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.) [Hey, as long as you don't get in an accident, you're OK if you're not wearing a helmet. If you do get in an accident, bye-bye brain.]
As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or air bags.
[See previous paragraph. My parents always made me wear a belt, because they weren't dumb and wanted me to live. OK, I still think of air bags as a newfangled thing too]
Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. [OK, so I miss doing that.]
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors! [What do "today's bureaucrats" have to do with that?]
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. [Yeah, do you know what they put in those things?!?! My parents wouldn't let me eat them much either. At least with regulations, we know what's in them.]
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this. [Huh!??!]
We would spend hours building our go -carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.
After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. NO CELL PHONES!!!!! Unthinkable!
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-! Boxes, no video games at
all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.
We had friends! [And TV. What about books?]
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. [Note the casual, innocent mention of the word "lawsuits"]
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. [Ah, but of course, this doesn't happen with kids anymore.]
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.
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.
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors! [Yep. This still happens]
Tests were not adjusted for any reason. [Like learning disabilities?]
Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. [Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds like a straw man argument to me. We still care about consequences.]
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law. Imagine that! [Law that was developed by bureaucrats, remember?]
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever.[What generation are we talking about? People never took risks before? The Renaissance didn't produce amazing problem solvers and inventors]
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
And you're one of them!
Congratulations!
Gee, thanks. I think.People over 30 should be dead.
Here's why ............
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats! , [Apart from the bad punctuation, the "regulators and bureaucrats" phrase raises a red flag. Who are we talking about here?] those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.
Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. [Oh. THOSE bureaucrats. They took away our lead paint. Wah. You know how many kids still get sick from lead every year?]
We had no childproof 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.) [Hey, as long as you don't get in an accident, you're OK if you're not wearing a helmet. If you do get in an accident, bye-bye brain.]
As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or air bags.
[See previous paragraph. My parents always made me wear a belt, because they weren't dumb and wanted me to live. OK, I still think of air bags as a newfangled thing too]
Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. [OK, so I miss doing that.]
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors! [What do "today's bureaucrats" have to do with that?]
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. [Yeah, do you know what they put in those things?!?! My parents wouldn't let me eat them much either. At least with regulations, we know what's in them.]
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this. [Huh!??!]
We would spend hours building our go -carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.
After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. NO CELL PHONES!!!!! Unthinkable!
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-! Boxes, no video games at
all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.
We had friends! [And TV. What about books?]
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. [Note the casual, innocent mention of the word "lawsuits"]
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. [Ah, but of course, this doesn't happen with kids anymore.]
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.
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.
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors! [Yep. This still happens]
Tests were not adjusted for any reason. [Like learning disabilities?]
Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. [Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds like a straw man argument to me. We still care about consequences.]
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law. Imagine that! [Law that was developed by bureaucrats, remember?]
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever.[What generation are we talking about? People never took risks before? The Renaissance didn't produce amazing problem solvers and inventors]
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
And you're one of them!
Congratulations!
Now the part that got left out of this version but is in the original, is this tell-tell sentence at the end:
Pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good.
Excuse me? Lawyers didn't invent head injuries. The government didn't cause lead to appear in our paint. Regulations are the reason that we know what's in our food, and that companies don't get away with more trickery than they already do. (Ever read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle? That book is partially responsible for the reform of the meatpacking industry... which took — you guessed it — regulation.) Lawsuits and government rules don't exist so that stupid people can blame others for their own mistakes. They exist so that we can be protected from the stupid decisions of companies who are only focused on their bottom line. You can't get rid of all companies just because some of them screw up, or get rid of all people because some of them commit crimes. Why would getting rid of all lawyers and rules because some of them are bad make things any better? If nobody enforces the rules, there are no rules.And it's not funny, dammit.
(Additional note: I'm not the only one to find this thing immensely irritating. See a list of other things that happened during "the good old days" here.)
