As children we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. (Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.)

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this. Where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

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.

We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth. There were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda. We were never overweight. We were always outside playing.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those that did not, had to learn to deal with disappointment.

We had fights and punched each other; got blackand blue and learned to get over it. We made up games with sticks and tennis balls; 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; knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.

Some students were not as smart as others or did not work hard so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Tests were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.

That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem solvers. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, We learned how to deal with it all.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool. The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell. A pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I cannot recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now. Flunking gym was not an option....even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Every year someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the Pledge.....stayed in detention after school and caught all sorts of negative attention for the next two weeks. We must have had horrible damaged psyches.

I cannot understand it. Schools did not offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we would not have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles.

What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat, white hose, white shoes, and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just cannot recall how bored we were without person cell phone or computers, PlayStation, Ninetendo, X-box, DVD, surround sound or 270 digital cable stations. We had friends! We went outside and found them.

I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers that could have befallen us as we treked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant lot, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger. What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot. He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites. When we got hurt, mom pulled out the 48 cent bottle of mercurochrome. Then we got our butt spanked. Now it is a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10 day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics. Mom then calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We did not act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked.....then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, children choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playhing with Tonka trucks and Dad drove a car with leaded gas. Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play. I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations.

I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.

Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower. I did not even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive.

How sick were my parents? Of course my parents were not the only psychos. I recall the boy from nextdoor coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.