On my way to grade school there was a tannery, it stank of ammonia and much else. But we had to get past is to get to school. So we did. Surely 'persistence' can be taught in better ways.
Asbestos swimming pools. The cane (alternatively chalk, chalkboard, boot, whatever was in reaching distance and could be thrown). Showers after physical education. Flashers....although I don't think they've disappeared but just acquired a new name..paedophiles. Sorry, I got carried away I'm aware that is more than one.
This post was edited by kjames at January 10, 2019 12:08 AM MST
You're welcomed to answer any way you wish. It's a good list. (Or a bad list- I agree we're better off without those things. Mostly. I'm not certain about the showers.)
Ok, maybe I should of described our open showers Just Asking, that had been there since the school was built, where we all had to run through in front of the teacher! :D
This post was edited by kjames at January 11, 2019 12:32 PM MST
Falling out of trees and landing on your back with no one around to care or help you get home. Setting the woods on fire and getting your arse tore up because of it. Getting lost for hours on end in the woods never knowing if you were going to get home and when you did, they never knew you were missing in the first place.
Not much, have I experienced growing up that I feel both generations of my kids would be better off not knowing. Here are some highlights I feel bad for not having them experience:
Both generations, having to hunt and fill the freezer otherwise protein was going to be tight over the winter.
I, like many other 10 year old boys in the 90's, was not afraid of calling other kids faggot when I wanted to hurt their feelings. Or queer-bait. Or gayboy/lesbo. I doubt that kind of sh*t is fully extinct, but I don't think it's nearly as commonly thrown around anymore, and that is a very good thing.
This post was edited by Just Asking at January 11, 2019 12:34 PM MST
Agreed. Good point. What gets me is that it wasn't just the kids. It was adults- teacher too- who engaged in this. I missed that era by a generation (where adults were concerned, but not kids), and I'm glad I did.
OK I grew up in an upscale New Jersey suburb of New York City and certainly no one ever learned anything like that from their parents who were trying to make what they saw as a better life for us. I never heard the word "slut" until I left home. It was "boy-crazy". I recall sometimes teenage guys in the town would call each other "faggot" and "asshole" and stuff like that but it was just good-natured kidding around like guys do and not meant as any kind of put-down. I can't recall any bullying by boys or girls. I was 17 when I left home in 1974.
I agree with you to a point. But did we really know what we were saying then though? I grew up in the 70's, and can remember us calling our female PE teacher a lesbo, because she watched us run through the showers, and I can remember the boys calling their male teacher a queer, or poof, (we didn't believe this, in fact we later found out they were dating each other, however if a teacher was really enjoying watching children run through a shower they would be neither. I remember kids calling each other spastic, and divvy, they still use retard, and stupid today. I think political correctness has done little towards making this better by changing our language to a point where people are afraid to speak the truth, and where language has been diluted. Remember the word Flasher, or child molester, which is now paedophile, paedophile as a word actually describes someone who likes children, I don't think they do, some words from the 1970s were honest.
She watched kids shower?! That is super not okay. Not to derail the topic, but how do teachers get away with crap like that?!
Anyway, yeah I wouldn't say kids or even adults should be burned at the steak for using a word. But if the context it's used in is purely to belittle not only an individual, but an entire group that the individual belongs to, then IF the person who used the word receives blowback from his/her peers, I don't think that should be unexpected or seen as unwarranted.
There was this video I recently saw where a rapper invited a girl on stage during a show to sing his lyrics, but then he kicked her off stage and scolded her for using the N word (which was in the song). That is totally ridiculous, and ignores the context in which she used it. Like, she was there as a fan of his music, and did exactly what he asked her to! There are certainly plenty of examples of people taking offense when they really shouldn't.
But I'm talking about people rolling down their window to scream "N***er!" at black people they pass in their cars, or people who disown their children for being gay. Those people need to get their a**es kicked (is a**es a word I need to bleep here?). Back in the day, I don't think I knew what gay was when I used the derogatory term for it in 2nd grade, but I definitely knew what it meant in 6th grade. And at that point I was just being a d**k.
It was no big deal when we were at school, the teachers use to stand at the end of the open showers and made sure you ran through them. In infant and junior school at sports day we ran in just our school knickers and plimsolls, the boys ran in their shorts and plimsolls.
Here's a link to George Carlin, posted this because of what you said, you might like it, or have already seen it.
When I consider the way things used to be, as good as they often were, I can't help feeling frustration when you or someone else observes OK "society" does not allow us to be this way or that way but makes us do one thing or another. Because I remember back to when things really were restricted for women. Or people of color. Which sexism was not simply a matter of prejudice but of attitude and racism was legal and systematic. And I think OK if you all could only realize just how different and less restricted things are now for us than say in the 1960s or before. When we were not regarded as structurally capable of doing many things. Or of even acting responsibly. When safe abortions were primarily only for those who could afford them. OK we have come a long way from when we thought the only solution was abortion but not sure most people realize that. Were many more social pressures that mitigated against things like giving birth not married and I the 60s pregnant single girls were often sent to institutions or to their "aunt Harriet" to give birth so as not to draw the judgment of society. Different jobs and kinds of jobs were basically closed to most of us before say the early 1970s. Girls who liked sex were "nymphomaniacs" or if we didn't come in the three minutes it took our boyfriends to get there we were regarded as "frigid".
Seems to me from what I read and hear so many people have no notion of how things used to be and no gratefulness that many of us were around and active enough and caring enough to challenge them and change them. Now it may be that is mainly a function of the way we see ourselves and we have to liberate our minds and ourselves from certain ways of thinking to realize just what is there for us. I see things like "metoo" which seem to bring back notions which we got rid of years and years ago. As if we never existed. Which I think comes from misplaced compassion which only serves to enshrine our victimhood rather than help us get past it and beyond it. Same thing with attitudes and citing "facts" which only serve to limit us and restrict us rather than enoble us and give us hope.
So many things I guess I had the resilience to get past and move through rather than letting them control me hat OK can't help feeling that if I were a young woman today I would be able to do so many things than I felt I ever could have when I was young. Which I guess a lot of young women don't see that way because they are caught in their own dramas or those of others. Too bad. Really too bad.
kjames 