I’m fifty years old this year
How did I get so old?
I’m lucky to have survived childhood
It was so dangerous or so I’m told
Our cots and toys, brightly colored
With lovely lead-based paint,
No child-proof caps or locked cupboard doors
We actually played in the kitchen how quaint
We rode bikes without helmets,
Or any other form of protection
We rode in cars without seat belts
Choosing the front seat without hesitation
We drank water straight from the tap
And very often from a brook or stream
We ate sweets with dirty hands
And our milk was topped with real cream
We ate full fat chips and bread and real butter
Milk puddings and jam Roly Poly
We drank fizzy pop full of sugar
But we never suffered from obesity
When we were out playing in a group
We bought one big bottle of pop
Probably eight or even ten of us
All drinking from the same bottle top
We built our own go-carts
Out of bits of scrap, very crude
We’d crash and get bloodied and bruised
Even the odd broken bone but no one got sued
In the holidays we played out all day
Getting home before it got dark
We had no mobiles so no one could find us
We did anything and everything just for a lark
We played knock-down-ginger and afraid
Of being caught after knocking the door
Our parents wouldn’t get us out of trouble
In fact they actually sided with the law
We walked everywhere my mates and I
We even had to walk to school
So if you think things are better today
Then you’re just a bloody fool
(This poem is based on an email that was doing the rounds a few years ago. To the best of my knowledge it was not credited to a particular writer but apologies if I got that wrong.)
