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In childhood we rode in cars without seat belts and airbags. Medicine bottles didn’t have safety caps, doors were often unlocked and closets weren’t locked at all.
60s, 70s, 80s and 90s
We drank water from the drinking fountain on the corner, not from plastic bottles. No one would even think of riding a bike wearing a helmet. Terrible!
For hours we put together all kinds of little vehicles from a plank and stroller wheels, and only when we hurtled down a hill did we remember that they had no brakes.
Only after we’d crashed several times into thorny rosehip bushes in this way did we realize that it wasn’t the same without brakes. We left home in the morning and after school we played who knows where outside.
We came home when the first streetlights came on. All day no one knew where we were.
Mobile phones didn’t exist
Everything was completely different
Occasionally we cut ourselves, broke a leg or knocked out a tooth, but nobody sued anyone. It just happened.
No one even thought that it might not be entirely our fault. Remember? How many times we fought and went around with bruises! But we ignored them.
We lived on buns, licked ice cream and drank lemonade, but none of us gained weight from it, because we were always running around and playing.
A bunch of people drank from the same bottle and nobody, for sure, fell ill from it. We didn’t have PlayStation, computers, 165-channel satellite TV, CDs, mobile phones, tablets, or the Internet.
How did we even survive?
We went to the home of whoever had a television to watch films – there were no videos back then either. But we had friends. We went out with them.
We rode bikes, threw twigs into the current of a stream or creek, built little ponds and dams out of mud, played tag, sat on benches in the park or on the school railing and talked about all kinds of things.
If we wanted to talk to someone, we simply went to them, rang the bell or knocked, the door opened … straight in!
Without permission, without accompaniment, without protection!
Alone in that cruel and dangerous world!
We played dodgeball with a ball or hockey with sticks and old sneakers, rang strangers’ doorbells, picked apples and pears in other people’s gardens, swallowed cherries with pits and, surprisingly, those pits didn’t start to grow in our stomachs. Everyone tried at least once to sign up for the football team or for hockey, girls for gymnastics … not everyone made it.
We learned to cope with disappointment. Our deeds were ours. We were ready to bear the consequences. There was no one to hide behind.
Our generation gave the world many people capable of taking risks, handling problems and creating something that hadn’t existed before.
We had the freedom to choose, the right to risk and failure, we had responsibility and we learned how to deal with it all.
