It's often occured to me that if eating sugar, butter, eggs, beef etc. was really bad for you then there wouldn't be many elderly people around - they'd be dead by now because there weren't any substitutes for these items way back when :)

I was born in 1955 so I can definitely relate to the text. Along with everything that's been said you also didn't mouth off to your teachers because they'd smack you and if you ran home and bawled to your parents you'd get smacked again. That may sound a bit heavy handed but you didn't need metal detectors and security guards at school like you have today. It seems the chickens have come home to roost on a lot of 'enlightened' social policies concerning kids but that doesn't seem to stop the 'authorities' from coming up with new ones. I think you need a booklet from the motor vehicles department to know how to put a kid in your car these days. We used to ride in the back of a pickup truck along with the dog and nobody complained :)

I especially like the part about learning to deal with dissapointment. Now every kid needs to get a gold star whether they're in first place or last. That should ensure that we end up with a generation of adults where mediocrity will be the standard of achievemet. Hell, maybe they're just being proactive because if you tell little Johnny that he's a loser he may get an automatic weapon and waste the whole class :)

The important thing to remember is that if we can save the life of even one child then it's perfectly acceptable to stomp out the rights and fun of millions of other children in our persuit of the completely safe and idiot proof world where people would live forever if they would only eat right and give up all of their bad habits :)

- Rick