Top 10 Things That Weren't Dangerous Then, But Are Now

10. Lawn Darts and Other Killer Toys



You just can't have a conversation about things that weren't considered dangerous in the 70s without mentioning Lawn Darts. Lawn Darts were mini javelins with wings that you were supposed to throw up in the air and have them land within a certain target area. Problem is, they had a habit of landing on kids instead of lawns. Oddly enough, so did acid rain, and I never saw anyone crying out to ban that 'for the children'.

9. Fast Food



There was once a time when children were taken to McDonald's as a treat. Now it's like a punishment. "Do your homework, Ashley, or I'll make you eat a Double Whopper with Cheese, then berate you for two days until you wallow in a mire of weight issues and turn to bulimia!" Yeah, back then, burgers were a simple pleasure. You even won prizes for knowing the ingredients of a Big Mac and being able to recite them in under 3 seconds. These days, however, you'll be better off spending those 3 seconds thinking about whether any of those ingredients are are genetically modified or destroy the rain forest. Oh, and remember that Super Size Me movie? Yeah, I haven't touched the stuff since, either.

8. Babies in Cars



Before Britney Spears attempted to make it fashionable, there was once a time when kids weren't strapped into cars like a dancer in an Iron Maiden video. They just kinda hung out in the back, or on the passenger seat. There were no child-seat laws, hardly any child-seats to buy anyway, and a lot of parents had pick-ups which didn't even have back seats, so the kids would just hang out on the truck bed, or in the trunk of the station wagon. The back of a car was a play ground for kids. They pinched each other until full blown fist fights broke out, and then whoever was driving, could throw a hand back there and sort it out without even accidentally hitting the accelerator instead of the brake.

Kids of today, many people will tell you great tales of what happened in the back of the car when they grew up, and end those tales with the phrase, "and nothing happened to me, I'm still here!" Well, they're here via a combination of responsible parenting and blind luck, just most kids throughout history. Don't let them fool you into thinking that anything they did was safe, however. It wasn't. But Zowie, Cavey, it was a heck of a lot more fun.

7. Riding Bikes without Helmets



On the one hand it's fun to have the wind in your hair. On the other, it's stupid. Seriously, you could take an eye out with one of those things or something.

6. Chopping Boards



Here's what we know now. "Keep two separate cutting board for vegetables and meat,never cut on the same board to keep E Coli and Salmonella bacterias at bay." - Taken from the Aromahope Blog.

Here's what we knew in 1972. "My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli ." Taken from a much-bandied about, yet unattributed email that hit the blogosphere back in about 2005. Here's a good version of the whole thing from Agonist.org.

5. Other people Smoking



Believe it or not, the photo above is fairly recent. They just look like they live in the 70s.

Back in the 70s not everybody smoked, but few people believed it was really that harmful to you or to others around you. We smoked in the streets, in the bars and cafes, in the nightclubs, at home in front of the TV, in our offices, in hospital waiting rooms, on planes and trains, in our cars, in other people's cars, in front of our children, in front of other people's children, before, during and after pregnancy... Every-freaking-where. Nowhere was sacred from the dangers of first and second hand smoke. Also, smoking was considered something you enjoyed, rather than something you were simply addicted to. You enjoyed the first cigarette after a meal, and the first one after sex. So much was post-coital smoking popular, that it became code for sex. You'd see two people in a bed, then cut to them smoking with a smile on their face. The 70s was the last decade of guilt-free living for many things, and smoking was arguably one of the guiltiest pleasures of them all.

4. Disturbing Writing/Artwork



I'm not going to comment on this one actually, only to say that the below didn't really happen too much when I was a kid.

Kid suspended from school for DRAWING a gun on paper

http://www.kpho.com/news/13943838/detail.html

Student Suspended For Drawing Gun
5-Day Suspension Cut To 3 Days

POSTED: 3:06 pm PDT August 21, 2007
UPDATED: 8:04 pm PDT August 21, 2007

QUEEN CREEK, Ariz. -- A 13-year-old student who drew a picture of a gun on his homework at Payne Junior High School in Queen Creek was initially suspended for at least five days, but his father was able to slash it to three days.

The Mosteller family moved to Chandler from Colorado Springs only four weeks ago, but it's not the kind of greeting Paula Mosteller said she was expecting.

Her 13-year-old son was suspended from school because he drew a picture of a gun on homework.

"My son is a very good boy," Mosteller said.

"He doesn't get into trouble. There was nothing on the paper that would signify that it was a threat of any form," she said.

The principal at Payne Junior High School kept the actual drawing.

The picture was enough to get him suspended, initially, for five days.

"He was just basically doodling and not thinking a lot about it," Mosteller said.

CBS 5 News tried to get more details from the Chandler Unified School District but were told, "Federal privacy law forbids the school or district from discussing student discipline."

"We're not advocates for guns," Mosteller said.

SURVEY: What Do You Think?

"We don't have guns in our home. We don't promote the use of guns. My son was just basically doodling on a piece of paper," she said.

After the father went to the school and talked to the principal, the suspension was trimmed to three days.

CBS 5 News investigated the rules students must follow while at school. There's nothing in a portion of the student handbook that addresses conduct to indicate the drawing of a weapon poses threat.

There is a rule that says students should not engage in "Threatening an educational institution by interference with or disruption of the school."
Copyright 2007 by KPHO.com. All rights reserved.

3. Tap Water



Back in the 70s, there was one popular make of bottled water, Perrier, and it was fizzy. And that was about it. Somehow, we have been convinced that drinking water out of the tap is badwrongfun, and that luckily, there are countless suppliers of water there to rescue us from the filthy Mexico City style tap water that the UK and the US have suffered for so long, it's enough to give you cholera. According to the chart below, from the National Resources Defense Council, the US alone has gone from drinking roughly 300,000 gallons of bottled water in 1976, to about 3.5 million gallons in 1997. The International Bottled Water Association gives preliminary statistics for 2008 as 9.8 billion gallons.


Gone are the days of heading to the tap to get a glass water, and not minding too much if was a little cloudy, as long as it was cold and wet and didn't send you to the crapper every 20 minutes. Now, in order to avoid crap like the drugs that end up in our water system, for every three swigs of water we take, we pretty much contribute to a landfill somewhere.

2. Losing



No one wants to lose, but everyone knows that losing is an important life lesson. My school system thought they were being smart buy practically eliminating all competitive sport from our schools. There was only one inter-school sport's day during my entire childhood. I was in the 4x100 meter relay, had to run last, came last and lost the race for the whole team. It sucked, and I was probably kicked about for it later, but in the end, at least I had a chance to compete against kids from other schools for one day. It was tres cool.

So it worries me when I read articles like this one, that we are wrapping our children in such a warm blanket that they may grow up looking like sheep by the time we've decided to them go. If they ever go. There are quite a few reports coming out now about the current crop of college graduates hitting the workforce, unable to cope with the basic rigours of life in the corporate climate. It's hot, kids, and you're going to need to drop that blanket or sweat to death.


1. Hairspray



Yep. Hairspray. It used to be pomade, and after that it was mousse and styling fudge, but back in the 70s, if you wanted to look like Charlie's Angels, you needed about one can of Aquanet extra strong per evening. We sprayed in the morning before going to work, in the evening before going to the roller disco, we usually had a can roughly the size of tube of Pringles just sitting in our handbags in case it didn't hold, or there was a sudden rain shower. Whenever we saw woman doing womanly things, which were back then, riding bicycles and swinging their hair and such, we were supposed to ask ourselves, "Is she, or isn't she?" Which was stupid. Everyone was.



So how the hell were we supposed to know that looking like the above, would create the environmental hell we're looking at below? Like I said, the last guilt-free generation.