Bob Haase Another Can Of Worms

The Good Old Days?

Remember the good old days?  Over the last few weeks I have had a number of people comment about the good old days.  This is often followed by “I am concerned about the future for my grandchildren”.

For some reason this kind of stuck in the back of my mind and I kept thinking about it.  The more I thought about it the more I realized they were right.  It isn’t that there were no problems or threats back then, but things really have changed and not for the better.

When I was growing up we could play outside without much adult supervision.  We played cowboys and Indians without worrying about being politically incorrect.  We might sneak a puff on a cigarette but we had no idea what drugs were such as marijuana, heroin, or acid. We didn’t have much money but with a few marbles we could entertain ourselves for quite a while.  I think we appreciated things a lot more than we do today and were thankful for the things we had such as a new pair of shoes or a new shirt.  We didn’t expect high cost gifts such as computers and cell phones and were usually quite happy with a new board game such as Monopoly or Checkers.

We could carry pocket knives to school and never thought about using them to hurt another student.  We usually settled major disagreements with a good fist fight, but it ended there and we were usually better friends after the fight.  There were no cops in our schools and we felt safe.  Very few if any kids were on medications for attention deficit disorders and if we deserved a bad grade we got it and nobody worried about how it made us feel. In sports we knew that someone had to win and someone had to lose. I guess what I am trying to say is that life was not always easy and not always fair, but we were better off because we learned how to deal with the problems in our lives.

When someone had a birthday we could bring treats to school such as cookies or cupcakes and they were not banned because they had too much sugar.  We usually got enough exercise to work it off and was in better shape that most kids today.  Most of us had rules that we had to follow and if we did something really bad we often got a spanking and our parents didn’t worry about going to jail for child abuse. 

Take the time to reflect on your life and how things have changed since you were a child.  Take your age and look back to how things were when you were a child.  Now compare that to what life is like today.   Next project out the same number of years as you are old and think about how life might be that many years in the future.  Did you live in the “good old days” or do you think life is better now and will be even better in the future.  If you feel that you did indeed grow up and live in the good old days you might want to think about what can be done to change things so that our children and grandchildren can look forward to the “good new days”. 

Bob Haase is the host of “Outdoors Thursday” heard Thursday mornings at 9:10 a.m. on News-Talk 1450 KFIZ.