I have been reminiscing lately, about my childhood, and I have come to the most startling conclusion. IT IS AN ABSOLUTE MIRICLE that I am alive today to reminisce about my childhood!
When I was a kid, the world around us was MUCH more dangerous than it is today.
A few days ago, while watching Elizabeth Warren at the convention, I decided the time was ripe to do something I had, for far too long, neglected.
I read the label on a bottle of recently purchased shampoo.
Along with all the directions, which can only be read with the use of an electron microscope, were the only words clearly visible from space…
“WARNING: FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY.”
Really?
My God given common sense has, so far, prevented me from drinking the shampoo.
As fascinating as I found Elizabeth Warren, I left the TV and headed for the bathroom where I started checking OTHER labels.
Did you know that your antiperspirant is ALSO for external use only?
Our hair dryer has a warning on IT too.
“WARNING: KEEP AWAY FROM WATER – DANGER – DO NOT USE IN BATH OR SHOWER”
Set aside, for a moment, the shocking possibility of being electrocuted and consider…on the moron scale…where one would have to be to believe that, while in the shower, with the water running, one could get their hair dry.
Let’s face facts.
Such warning labels are NOT there for YOUR protection. Those warning labels are there to protect the manufacturer from YOUR attorney.
This is because God given common sense has been replaced by litigation.
Think about it.
At some point, far too many people were simply falling out of the wide open rear windows of cars.
Obviously, the government had to get involved and regulate the auto industry so that from then on, rear car windows would only roll down half way.
Apparently, nobody has ever fallen out of the FRONT windows as they, to this very day, roll ALL the way down.
It’s a wonder, considering all the bodies found in them, that cars are still allowed to have trunks.
A little over a year ago, in upstate New York, there was an attempt to pass a law outlawing wiffle ball as it was considered too dangerous for children to play.
I would have to go back through piles and stacks of old documents from my Midwest hometown but I’m reasonably certain, somewhere, there MUST be recorded proof of a wiffle ball death o,r at the VERY least, a maiming of unspeakable horror.
As a young lad, I rode my bike without a helmet (which I’m sure clears up some things for my readers) and went for rides in the family sedan without a child safety seat. There was NO rubber pad on the playground of my grade school but there WERE monkey bars AND a jungle gym…AND WE PLAYED ON THEM. If we fell down (and we did…every day) we got back up and continued to play.
Today, thanks to bureaucrats, THOSE things are considered as deadly as a soup bowl full of plutonium.
If only I had known as a youth what I know today I would have been OBVIOUS as to why, in church every Sunday, they talked so much and so often, about heaven…Because at church picnics, we roasted wieners on SHARP STICKS…after sack races…
THEY WERE TRYING TO SEND US THERE!!!
I’m pretty sure too, that my parents were trying to kill me as they kept telling me to go outside and play.
Had I as a kid, been strapped in a booster seat while riding down the highway (today I think one is required to be in such a seat until the age of 22) and had I NOT been watching my hand make ocean wave motions out the wide open back window (at 75 miles an hour) I would surely have noticed that the side of the road was littered with arms and/or…former back seat passengers.
Back then, it was God given common sense rather than hell bent for election regulations that prevented us from falling out of the car windows.
All things considered, I believe the warning labels are being placed on the wrong things.
There are far too many people in society who would tell a judge, “Well, the package didn’t SAY not to hit myself in the head with the hammer…” and the jury would award the knot head MILLIONS.
God given common sense should be enough for most things…And warning labels should be saved for REALLY dangerous stuff.
“WARNING: DO NOT VOTE FOR THIS PERSON IF THERE IS A “D” AFTER THE NAME”
“WARNING: IF YOU ARE OF VOTING AGE, AND THE PERSON WHOSE NAME IS ON THE BALLOT HAS BEEN IN OFFICE TWICE AS LONG AS YOU’VE BEEN ALIVE – DO NOT ELECT THEM AGAIN”
“WARNING: DO NOT PASS THIS BILL UNTIL AFTER YOU HAVE READ THIS BILL”
“WARNING: THIS PERSON REQUIRES $1000.00 WORTH OF BIRTH CONTROL PER YEAR”
“WARNING: DO NOT PLACE EMPTY CHAIR UPON PEDESTAL AS THE CHAIR IS UNSTABLE”
“WARNING: IF SOMEONE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT HAS A FORGED BIRTH CERTIFICATE, A FORGED SELECTIVE SERVICE CARD, A SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER ISSUED FROM A STATE IN WHICH HE NEVER LIVED, HAS GONE BY AT LEAST 3 DIFFERENT NAMES, ASSOCIATED WITH DOMESTIC TERRORISTS, SPENT 20 YEARS IN A CHURCH WHERE THE PREACHER YELLED GOD DAMN AMERICA, WENT TO COLLEGE ON A FOREIGN AID PROGRAM WHILE HANGING OUT WITH SOCIALISTS BUT WON’T RELEASE HIS COLLEGE THESIS, BRIBES PEOPLE TO PASS BILLS THEY HAVEN’T READ DESPITE THE WARNING LABEL, SAYS HE WANTS TO FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM AMERICA AND PLAYS MORE THAN 100 ROUNDS OF GOLF INSTEAD OF MEETING WITH HIS JOBS 
COUNCIL WHILE THE NATION’S ECONOMY GOES TO HELL IN A HANDBAG AFTER HE RACKED UP ANOTHER 5 TRILLION DOLLARS IN DEBT – – – USE YOUR GOD GIVEN COMMON SENSE!!!”
Anyone who would fail to heed these warnings probably drinks shampoo and, I don’t even WANT to know how they’re violating the “FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY” warning on the deodorant.
Craig Andresen
The National Patriot
Weekend Edition 9/9/12
Climbing trees without harnesses, riding your skate on your butt while going down the hill feet and hands yelling, “am I winning?”, trampling through wooded areas with nothing but a couple of 10 penny nails, rubber bands and a tree stick only to encounter a big snake and wonder if it was poisonous, so you used the rubber band and nail like a sling shot. If if rattled or lunged at you, you hit it in the head with the stick, kicked it with your tennis shoe and moved it out of the way and went on, jumped off the top of a dirt mound into the wet sandy surface below only to sink up to your neck and all the while wondering how you managed to do that!!!! Sooner or later one of you would get out and pull out everyone else with a tree branch or two. You left home after breakfast, went inside for lunch, back until the street lights went on then it was time to go in before mama’s yelled, supper is ready!!!! There were mudball fights with rocks hidden inside them, pulling and tugging with a rope over a fast moving stream of water to see which team was strongest, losers fell in and had to swim out, running snakes off the shore with rocks to keep them away. Rainstorms were reasons to slip and slide on unpaved red clay streets without benefit on knee pads, ankle supports or helmets too. Tumbling and fighting were just all part of the day’s joy. We had roly-polies in jars or our pockets, lizards clipped to our ears, they wouldn’t let go, and we were really worn out at the end of the day. If we timed it just right we were able to get a bath and pajamas on in time to see the Mousketeers Show before supper and shortly thereafter, it was time for bed. Bandages were worn with honor and pride and we were fearless. When did all the concern enter our world that we could be killed???? Just about the time we were told God couldn’t come to school with us anymore. Then it was this rule or that one and now, kids can’t even play dodge ball or red rover at recess and Moochelle Obama has the gall to tell Americans they are overweight???? Well, they stopped Physical Education, Band Practice, childrens games that allowed them to run and romp off all that pent up energy and made them start sitting around to be safe, because everything else was harmful or dangerous to your health. Now we have a generation of kids who have never seen a push mower (not lawnmower), or hedgeclippers or things we used to do our chores. So however in this world did we survive these horrible and dangerous situations???? We were told we could do and be anything we wanted to, and we believed it. We did it. I wanted to be SuperMan, but I was a girl, in the tallest tree, jumping with a towel around my neck and my arms flapping wildly when I leaped from the tree to fly………..oh my golly that was fun, and did it often. Back then we could do anything because we didn’t live in all of that fear that exists today. We were the generation of kids who could and kids who did!!!! Today we are the adults and are forced to follow laws that limit the imagination of our children and grand children.
Ah those days of old. where you can swing as high as you want without being shout out to not do that. Those were the day of bread,butter, and sugar sandwiches. Now if you ask grandma for bread, butter, and sugar sandwiches, you get told “no darling, it will give you diabetes.” It is kind of knit picking now days not back then.
And to think we swam in any body of water without wearing flotation devices on every limb except that holding tanks of the sewer (I know of couple of guys who even tried that!), went down huge hills on the old school skateboards, acquiring scrapes & bruises in places we didn’t even know we had places, drove cars in the Carter era that were glorified cardboard boxes that didn’t even have seatbelts to speak of, walked logs in the curing pond at the lumbermill, never once thinking of the chemicals in that water, waited fire trains to get within spitting distance to stick a penny on the track w chewing gum….it’s a miracle any of us survived!