Remember when...

It's been an interesting day. Every time I turn the radio on, there is something on about the seventies or eighties.

This was the era I grew up in.

Here in Australia, in the summer, it still meant things like backyard cricket with the neighbourhood kids, or touch footy. It meant staying out until the sun went down, sometimes eight o'clock or later. It was going to the beach, sans sunscreen, and staying there until lunch, racing home for salad sandwiches and being collared for an hour by the parents. ("You'll get cramps if you go in so soon after eating! So sit there quietly!") Hah! Six kids sitting quietly for an hour?, not in your wildest fantasies. It would be back to the beach until hunger set in again. We'd come home absolutely barbequed and Mum would wipe cucumber or cold tea all over us, admonishing us, while she stroked the cool stuff over fiery, reddened skin, that too much sun was bad for you.

Summer also meant the Southerly Buster. On some days, we'd sit out on the verandah at about five o'clock and wait for it. The breeze would pick up and lower the temperature, the sky would be filled with rapidly racing white clouds and the day would darken. Sometimes, there'd be rain, sometimes Mother Nature would clap her hands - those were some wicked storms - and sometimes, there'd be nothing but wind and a cooler temperature. As a family we'd head indoors for dinner then an evening watching television or playing board games.

The next day, we'd poke our sunburn to see how bad it was. If not, down to the beach we'd go. If it was still painful, we'd be reading, watching the cricket on the telly, out riding the pushbikes, climbing trees, or fooling around elsewhere.

Those days were excellent. We would swim from the October long weekend (the first weekend) until Anzac Day (in the last week of April). We were outside most of the time getting exercise. We were falling out trees, getting branded by cricket balls, laying skin on roads when we crashed the bikes, stung by blue bottles, cut by oysters... we were also brimming with good health, fit, tanned, relaxed and happy.

The computer wasn't freely available, no Playstation - although we did get that ping-pong game - no VCR or DVD or CD player, had a radio, though, and a kid's best friend: imagination.

The point is that we weren't afraid of going outside to play; not like kids today. Parents have worried and protected their kids right into obesity and indifference.

Parents should be letting Rupert, Milly and Socrates out into the backyard to explore, out to climb trees, ride bikes, swim at the beach, watering hole, pool, play backyard cricket or touch footy, not threatening law suits should the little lambs hurt themselves.

Life is about hurts; it's about learning to pick yourself up and move on. It used to be if you tripped and fell, you'd jump up and check to see if anyone saw your humiliation; now people jump up and check for witnesses for their lawsuit.

Where has personal responsibility gone? Has it disappeared along with body shirts, flares and long hair? Sucked under by the 'greed is good' generation?

I remember my youth as being a fun time; when I learned all sorts of things, like don't step on a dead stick when you're ten feet off the ground in a tree, start to slow down at least fifty feet before the ninety degree corner comes up and you only have back breaks, cricket on television isn't as interesting as playing it, the beach is an astonishing playground, I look good with a tan, storms are scary, my family makes up a volleyball team, half a cricket/football team and together, we were unbeatable, and so much more.

Damn, today's kids are wusses, and their parents are pussies who are denying their children the sheer joy of being a kid. Gotta feel sorry for them and future generations, because they're surely missing out.