If you were born before 1986

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who werekids in the 60's, 70's and early 80's probably shouldn't have survived,because our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-basedpaint which was promptly chewed and licked.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors orcabinets and it was fine to play with pans.

When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip-flops andfluorescent 'spokey dokey's' on our wheels.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags -riding in the passenger seat was a treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle and it tasted the same.

We ate chips, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy juice withsugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outsideplaying.

We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can andno-one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went topspeed down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. Afterrunning into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve theproblem.

We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long aswe were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded.

We did not have Play stations or X-Boxes, no video games at all. No 99channels on TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobilephones, no personal computers, no DVDs, no Internet chat rooms. We had friends - we went outside and found them.

We played elastics and rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt!

We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones but there were no lawsuits.

We had full on fistfights but no prosecution followed from other parents.

We played knock-the-door-run-away and were actually afraid of theowners catching us.

We walked to friends' homes.

We also, believe it or not, WALKED to school; we didn't rely on mummyor daddy to drive us to school, which was just round the corner.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls.

We rode bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheardof...They actually sided with the law.

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problemsolvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion ofinnovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success andresponsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.