So here's a list, in no particular order, of the things that I miss the most from my childhood that made the world so much better than the one kids have today.
Number 1: Water
Remember being a kid and not having to worry about the water supply running out? Now we're down to a 33.8% storage level and you can't even wash your car at home with a bucket and hose. It used to be that having a pool was the luxury but now it's just having water at all.
The things I miss the most about an ample water supply are:
- Running under the sprinkler in the backyard.
- Slip 'n' Slides.
- The sprinklers that used to be on every park and sports ground in the country. You know the kind that went chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff, chick, chick, chick..? For me now, that sound perfectly captures the essence of the type of Australian summer that we might never see again. It's actually what lead to this current bout of nostalgia.
Number 2: The Cold War
Yes, this might be a fairly unusual thing to miss but hear me out.
Okay, so from the mid 40s until 1991 after Communism had all but collapsed we lived with a vague, unsettled fear that one day someone's trigger finger might get a little itchy and a brief but very noisy WWIII might crack the planet in half.
In the beginning, the Cold War was serious, scary stuff. After WWII the US and Russia found themselves the only 'Super Powers' left standing and began jostling for position and fighting over the shape the new post war world would take. In the 50s Khrushchev flopped his manhood onto the table and dared Eisenhower to do the same. In response, Eisenhower committed US forces to drive the North Koreans back and stem the tide of Communism in Asia.
1962 saw JFK and Castro engaged in a nerve wracking face off during the Cuban Missle Crisis. Then came Vietnam (whoops) and in 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan (sometimes described as the Soviet's own Vietnam.)We had the arms race and Moscow even paraded their nuclear arsenal through Red Square (although in a revelation worthy of Hollywood most of the 'nukes' turned out to be fakes).
Serious, scary stuff.
But by the time the 80s rolled around and my generation was old enough to understand what was going on, the whole Cold War was a bit of a toothless tiger. Sure Ronald Regan was living in one of his old western movies and threatening to fight Communism where ever it took root but Gorbachev emerged as the voice of reason and a dialogue started, if only because the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse and they had no choice. Besides, nobody could drop a nuke because the consequences were too dire (remember the Matthew Broderick movie War Games where a computer takes the world to the brink of nuclear war before a simple game of naughts and crosses teaches it that there can be no winner?)
In the end, Communism blinked first and in 1989 the Soviet Union collapsed , the Berlin Wall came down and by 1991 the Cold War was over. Capitalism won (although I'm not sure too many feel like winners after the past few months.)
For us 80s kids we saw tension, we saw aggression but from where we sat it was one of those schoolyard push fights were there's a lot of shoving and hollow threats but not a punch is thrown.
So much more civilised than attacking countries for oil or flying passenger planes into buildings.
Number 3: Innocence and Naiveté
It's becoming so much harder to just be a kid these days. I'm not necessarily talking about war, terrorism or global warming, I'm just talking about being allowed to be a kid.
Kids seem to have so much pressure and stress put on them by the adult world. It's bad enough that we bombard them with advertising that makes them think that they're not cool enough if they don't have the latest trading cards, dolls, PSP/DS/XBox console or game etc. To exacerbate the problem we then have parents who dress their kids in designer baby wear from the brands that they themselves didn't care about until they were at least in their late teens.
A friend of mine recently mentioned that her eleven year old daughter received a bunch of hand-me-down clothes to go through, all of which she thought were ugly... until the brand names on the labels were pointed out to her. Sheesh!
It used to be that you were cool if you had a BMX, leg warmers or fluro anything. It didn't matter about the brand or if your clothes cost two dollars or two hundred. Now if your kid isn't wearing D&G sunglasses in the sandpit he or she may be ostracized.
Video games used to be something that you had to go to an arcade to play unless you were lucky enough to have a friend with an Atari or Commodore 64. Maybe you had a Nintendo Game & Watch which played only one game which you inevitably learned to 'clock'. Donkey Kong was about as violent as it got. Now you can run over pedestrians, kill, maim and rape in 1000 different ways in glorious HD and parents are expected to buy multiple games at $99 a pop. We used to go out and ride bikes or play sport or games after school; now kids just sit, play video games and watch their waistlines expand.
I wish we could somehow jump in the Wayback machine and give our kids a world where they don't have to worry about terrorism, melting icecaps or being abducted or assaulted by weirdoes. A world where violence isn't so prevalent and where they wouldn't see 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on TV before they turn eighteen. A world where they don't have to worry about what brand they're wearing or if they have the latest gadgets. A world where your ten year old doesn't need his or her own mobile phone.
I wish we could allow our kids to be innocent again.
Number 4: Not Having to Admit That You're Getting Older and Seeing Your Childhood Through Rose Coloured Glasses
Yeah, yeah fine. There are so many glaring holes in what I've written above that you could fly an exploding space shuttle through them.
I used to hate it when my dad started sentences with 'When I was a boy...' but maybe I'm destined to do this myself.
When it comes down to it though, the world isn't much different now than it was twenty or so years ago when I was growing up. We used to have a hole in the ozone layer, now we have global warming. We worry about water restrictions now but in the 80s we experienced a drought so bad that half of the houses in my suburb had signs up in their gardens declaring that they were using bore water.
Yes, kids have more gadgets and video games but I'll bet when my parents gave me a handheld Pac Man game I spent as much time with my face buried in it as does your average kid now with their PSP or Nintendo DS.
As for the Cold War argument, even as I was writing it I didn't really believe that one. Let's not forget that we're still paying for all of the political maneuvering that happened as a result of the Cold War during the eighties.
For example, the US had a problem with Iran so they armed Iraq who then became the problem. Russia invaded Afghanistan so the CIA armed and trained the mujahideen, including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden who later formed Al Queda.
So somehow during the Cold War the US (and let's not forget it's allies), trained terrorists who then brought their war to New York and London.
That's some smashing foreign policy for you!
As far as the threat of terrorism goes, Australia had a terrorist attack on its own soil in the 80s and it wasn't a bunch of foreign extremists that did it; it was a bunch of Australians. The same goes for the Kansas City attack in the US. So again, nothing new.
We like to think that our neighbourhoods were safer when we were growing up but I was nearly lead off a beach when I was little by a man who wanted to show me his 'pink puppy dog' and my sister was flashed when walking home from school one day. We were taught not to talk to strangers and how to identify a 'safe' neighbourhood watch house.
As for the media not spewing forth so much bile and horror, I remember seeing on the news that John Lennon had been murdered ( although I didn't really understand and thought that a man had been killed by a beetle), and asking my mum why a man would want to 'rake' a lady. I remember waking up ridiculously early to watch the Challenger launch and instead seeing seven people incinerated. There was also the widely publicised hanging in Singapore of two Australians convicted of drug trafficking. The papers printed black and white photographs of the bodies being carried away, pale white feet poking out from under the sheets. Dead bodies hadn't really been shown in the media until then and I remember it vividly.
Going back to before I was even born the world wasn't exactly safe and innocent. We had participated in two world wars. Darwin had been bombed by the Japanese and atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Australian troops were sent to both Korea and Vietnam. Two Kennedy's had been assassinated.
And thinking about brand names and designer clothes; I seem to remember having a Rip Curl hoodie that I was particularly fond of.
So none of this is new. The world probably isn't any less safe, it's just that the dangers have changed. The world in which I grew up wasn't remarkably different from the one we live in now and if I have a son, he will probably love his childhood too and will one day look back and say to his kids, 'When I was a boy..."
So I guess I'll just try to let my kids be kids and grow up in their own world because, no matter what the media says, it probably isn't that bad a place after all.
But that doesn't change the fact that I really miss those sprinklers.
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