How Things Change But Stay The Same

Published by The Editor on 7 December, 2009

After trying to explain to a member of Junior Church why we say ‘dialling a number’ when we actually press buttons to use a telephone these days, reminded me of something I read recently.

We Were Brung Up Proper!

First we were born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.  They took asprin, ate cheese that had seen better days, ate raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat (probably containing sawdust and other unmentionables) and nothing had a ‘best by’ date.

Once we were born our cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint.  We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets. We drank water from the stream not from a bottle; we shared one soft drink from the same bottle with four friends.  We never had a whole Mars bar until 1971. We collected old drinks bottles and cashed them in at the corner shop and bought toffees that pulled your teeth out, gobstoppers and bubble gum. We ate white bread with real butter half an inch thick, but we weren’t overweight because we played outside all day.  Even though all the shops closed at 6pm and didn’t open on a Sunday, somehow we didn’t starve to death!  You could only buy Easter eggs and Hot Cross buns at Easter time.  We rode bikes without wearing helmets or even shoes.  If we had a car it didn’t have seatbelts or airbags.  We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were home before dark.  We would spend hours building go-carts out of prams and then ride them down hill, only to find out we’d forgotten the brakes.  We built tree houses and dens and played in the river. We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and nobody sued anybody!  We got catapults and toy guns for our birthdays.  We didn’t have TV, Playstations, Nintendos, X-boxes, Videos, DVDs, mobile ‘phones, text messages, internet.  We had real friends that you could go out with and talk to.  Our teacher used to hit us with gym shoes and throw the blackboard rubber at us if they thought we weren’t concentrating and our parents would side with the teacher!   How did we survive! and how different things are now.  Through all this one thing remains constant – God and His love for us all.