This week’s column is dedicated to those of you who grew up in the fifties, sixties, seventies, or eighties. Congratulations! If you are reading this, it means that somehow – I really don’t know how – you managed to survive all these years. Unless, that is, you’re a web bot that stumbled upon this article while scraping the bottom of the Internet – in which case, please don’t hack into my bank account, okay?
I’m going to remain optimistic and assume for the moment that you’re a human and not my future AI overlord. If you grew up during one of these four decades, you were exposed to a remarkable number of things that today would cause an anxious parent to immediately call a pediatrician, a lawyer, or possibly the police.
And yet, somehow, you survived. So, let’s take a nostalgic stroll through the decades and marvel at the fact that you somehow made it to adulthood. Truly incredible.
The 1950s
The 1950s were apparently a time when parents looked at their children and thought, “We’ve got five kids. So what if we lose one or two along the way from exposure to potentially dangerous toys.”
Chemistry sets were incredibly popular. And not the kind of chemistry set where you drop a pack of Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke and watch it turn into a towering geyser of foam. No, these were actual miniature laboratories containing test tubes, chemicals, Bunsen burners, and various substances that were apparently intended to teach an overly curious nine-year-old the valuable life lesson of how to start a kitchen fire.
But if regular chemistry wasn’t exciting enough for you, there was always the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab. Yes. You read that correctly. The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab. This was an actual toy sold to children in 1950 and 1951.
It came with a Geiger counter, a cloud chamber, a device called a spinthariscope, and various radioactive samples so Junior could spend the afternoon learning about nuclear physics. Nothing says “Merry Christmas” quite like: “Here’s your new radioactive science kit, son. Don’t eat the uranium.”
Today, if a toy company included a radioactive substance in a children’s science kit, there would a few extra bureaucratic steps involved, like an oncology report, a police report, and possibly a congressional investigation.
Siting a severe shortage of broken ankles and wrists, elementary schools implemented an exciting new playground feature: monkey bars.
Riding a bicycle didn’t involve helmets. Swimming pools had no lifeguards. And if you wanted to spend the afternoon playing outside, your parents didn’t track you on their phones. Heck, most days they had no idea where you were. They just assumed you’d eventually come home when it got dark.
And when you got home from trying to assemble a nuclear bomb in the basement of your buddy Henry’s house, you had to listen to your parents complain about how Elvis Presley was destroying America.
The 1960s
If you grew up in the 1960s, you survived an era when parents apparently believed that children were essentially indestructible. Cars were essentially death traps. Car seats for the family’s precious toddler? Forget it. You rode in the back of the family station wagon – without a seat belt – or a seat.
You proudly rode your Schwinn Sting Ray wheelie bike down the street without holding onto the hi-riser handlebars. Helmets were still only for playing football, not bicycles. If you crashed, you got up, looked at your bloody knee and went back outside to play.
And then there was television. Only three channels. And your folks only let you watch one hour a week – usually either Bonanza or The Ed Sullivan Show. For the first half the decade the picture was black and white. There was no remote control. If you wanted to change the channel, you had to get up and walk across the room. Looking back, this may explain why people in the 1960s were in such good shape.
Siting a continuing severe shortage of serious injury risks, toy manufacturers introduced an exciting new game for kids of all ages: Lawn Darts. In case you missed this fad, Lawn Darts involved throwing giant weighted 12-inch-long steel-tipped darts – think miniature javelins – into the air and trying to get them to land in a target, located inches away from your best friend and opponent, Henry. Somewhere, some toy manufacturing executive came up with the brilliant idea, “Hey, you know what would be fun? Sharp metal spears. You know… for the kids.”
And when you got home from playing Lawn Darts in Henry’s backyard, you had to listen to your parents complain about how the Beatles were destroying America.
The 1970s
If you grew up in the 1970s, things got slightly safer. Unfortunately, the fashion got significantly worse. Bell-bottoms. Platform shoes. Polyester leisure suits. And somehow, you thought you looked fantastic. Trust me. You didn’t.
The 1970s also gave us some interesting toys. Pet Rocks. Yes, a rock. You bought a rock, put it in a little box and took it home as a pet. No feeding. No walking. No veterinarian bills. Looking back, the Pet Rock may have been the safest toy of the entire decade.
On the flip side, hospitals nationwide, siting a severe shortage of emergency room visits, supported the introduction of a hugely popular new outdoor activity: skateboard parks, followed by an impressive spike in liability lawsuits.
And when you went to the beach, you didn’t put on sun screen. Just the opposite. You lathered your body with Hawaiian Tropic Dark Tanning Oil which fried your skin like bacon on a hot griddle.
Meanwhile, back indoors, you were playing with toys that required batteries, electricity, fire, or some combination of all three. Every toy, it seemed, contained asbestos, formaldehyde, or lead paint.
The 1970s also introduced us to roller disco. Think about that for a moment. Someone looked at roller skating and thought, “You know what this needs? Disco.” So you put on satin shirts with the extra wide collars and roller skates and headed to the rink. And yet you weren’t embarrassed. Looking back, how is that possible?
And when you got home from the roller rink, you had to listen to your parents complain about how Disco music was destroying America.
The 1980s
Then came the 1980s. The decade when we finally became sophisticated. At least that’s what you told yourself, while wearing your sparkly gold parachute pants and a lavender-colored Members Only jacket.
Not to be outdone by the 1960s’ lawn darts or the 1970s’ skateboarding craze, the 1980s gave kids yet another exciting way to injure themselves: Clackers. Kids could enjoy the fun of clacking together two hard balls connected by a cord. They’d compete with their friends to see which one would be the first child whose clackers exploded, thus turning the balls into shattered, sharp-edged projectiles headed straight for their eyeballs. What fun!
The 1980s also brought us video games. At first, this seemed like a wonderful development. Instead of going outside and risking injury, you could sit on the couch for six straight hours developing carpal tunnel syndrome while watching a little Italian plumber jump over barrels, as your mouth exploded from chomping on Pop Rocks candy.
Then there were the toys: Rubik’s Cube. Transformers. Care Bears. Cabbage Patch Kids. And Simon, with that bee-bop-bee-boop sound that irritated your parents so much they briefly considered putting you up for adoption just to stop that annoying racket.
If you were thirsty after playing outside in the summer on the slip ‘n slide for three hours, you didn’t reach for bottled water. You drank from the garden hose, with the cool, refreshing taste of plastic and industrial chemicals.
And when you got home from five hours of playing Pac-Man in Henry’s bedroom, you had to listen to your parents complain about how rap music was destroying America.
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Looking back, every decade seems to have been a strange combination of questionable safety standards and things that seemed cool at the time but now look completely ridiculous. Perhaps we all survived because apparently the human body is considerably tougher than we gave it credit for. Or maybe we were just lucky.
Either way, if you grew up in the fifties, sixties, seventies, or eighties, and you’re still here, you deserve a gold star. You survived your precarious childhood and your turbulent teenage years, not to mention your head-scratching high school fashion choices. And most importantly, you survived making countless bone-headed decisions that your misplaced self-confidence assured you was a great idea at the time.
But you made it. Congratulations. Now that you’re all grown up, hopefully you’re well past the phase when you kept coming up with lame, poorly-thought-out, impulsive ideas for fun… like bungee jumping. Now, don’t even think about it, buddy. You’re getting way too old for that.
That’s the view from the bleachers. Perhaps I’m off base.
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