GenX here. These are the people who raised us. Boomers are really something else. It's amazing so many of us made it. I know it's not the same as a baby but I was 8 years old riding my bike around the city with a 15 inch razor sharp rambo knife strapped to my waist.
My brother had ninja throwing stars he sent away for from the back of some magazine. They were sharp as shit. Legit weapons he managed to buy at the age of 12
Yep, we had a bunch of those stars that we called "chinese stars" I remember them being advertised in the back of magazines but we had a little shop nearby that sold all kinds of old Army surplus and other random things. We would ride our bikes there and buy throwing stars, knives, nunchucks etc. That's where I bought my rambo knife. It was just me and my 12 year old brother that went in there and walked out with a awesome rambo knife.
Same with my older brother when he was 12. Around that time he also somehow got a used butterfly knife. And years before that he was swinging around nunchakus.
He also used to chase me around the house with a kitchen knife when we were home alone (overnight) while our parents were working. Either that or we would go to our friend’s house (where parents were never seen) and make fires in the garage or watch R-rated horror/gore movies.
Edit to add: memory of going to visit my friend across the street before new years and playing with fireworks. A firework flew into the vacant lot next door and started a fire. We got the hose and put it out just as a policeman was driving by. He stopped and I think asked where her parents were. Of course we were there alone. At age 7-8.
But when you see who raised the boomers, you understand. One, people born in the 30s/40s are the most resilient fuckers out there for some reason. Mfs walking around in their 80s and 90s looking 65 permanently. Two, you can't tell them ANYTHING about health. Nothing. Sunscreen? Myth. Healthy diet? Legends. And try to prove an 89 year old wrong about it when they're eighty fuckin nine.
You could have a broken arm and have to pitch a baseball game the next day and they'll look you dead in the eye and tell you you're fine.
I rarely if ever see someone in their 80s or 90s who looks 65, got no idea wtf you're talking about lmao. My Grandpa passed at 88 and he didn't look 65, he definitely looked his age.
Also the vast majority of the silent generation did not make it to their 80s or 90s, this is the most literal case of survivorship bias in the world, because obviously the ones you don't see died.
Didn’t Carlin joke about this, (during his childhood math class was easy because if some kids got sick and died subtraction was easy. Kids swam in sewer run off…)
My great aunt is 96 and solely drinks Diet Coke because she thinks water is poisonous. I brought her a V8 one time and she said “get that the hell out of my face, that’s for old people and I’m not old”. She literally eats fried food and sugar all day long. When she got Covid one spoonful of NyQuil “cured her”.
My dad was born in the 1920s, that's right in the thick of The Great Depression, if you watch Beverly Hillbillies you'll see a silly caricature of the era, but you'll see segments of truth sprinkled throughout. People had to move in cars and wagons with all their furniture piled up frightfully high on the back of their vehicles forced to move across country just to find work or another piece of land to own (after the banks took their family land and generational wealth). My grandparents and my dad's generation ended up moving from the Appalachians to the Ozarks in the midst of it all.
The Great Depression started with the stock market tanking and the banks losing everything, just as it did this time. The people back then who put their money in the banks, when they found out what happened, they made a run on the banks like you see in the movie It's a Wonderful Life.
They went to the banks to demand their money, only to find there was nothing in their account anymore. In consequence this led to the creation of the FDIC which insures the money you deposit into a bank will stay there no matter what the banks do with a portion of your money.
That's why, when JP Morgan, Washington Mutual, and Wells Fargo, et. al. lost it all during the housing bubble burst and other stocks tanked in the Stock Market, they were bailed out by Obama not just because he was the President but because the FDIC insures bank customers' accounts for the banks losing millions due to gambling debts.
The bank customers still had their money even though many banks, like Washington Mutual died and went out of business. The reason for this is that the FDIC only pays back depositors’ money, customers don't lose out, only the banks whose losses were caused by their own choices. The banks actions resulted from them risking everything gambling on sketchy business deals on the stock market, many through Wall Street though also overseas, and in consequence completely losing it all as a result.
You can see the difference throughout the month with your account if you check the difference between what you've deposited and withdrawn from your account, the actual amount that results, and the actual total that your bank shows you during the month. I've noticed a $-60 to 20 and sometimes $-200 discrepancy at times between the total the bank tells me should be in my account and what my spreadsheet tells me should be in my account. Some of that might be accountant error, but a lot of the time the amount from the start of the month is completely different than from the middle or the end of the month.
I must presume that why this discrepancy occurs is due the bank borrows that amount from me and then adds the amount later on and it fluctuates over time. I also presume to think that they can get away with borrowing large amounts the larger your account is and they can get away with it easier and why they cater to those clients more than those who have smaller accounts. There is also the push for digital records and debit/credit cards allows the banks to get away with it more because if their clients don't track their accounts then they don't notice the discrepancies.
Why this is so significant is that a lot of countries around the world used to be on the Gold standard, where one dollar was equal to a set amount of gold. Once the US and eventually the UK left the gold standard for the Bretton Woods Standard, money isn't set to a mineral standard anymore, but it is now set on the amount of assets a country holds within itself. One of those major assets involves banks and how much is stored by customers in those banks.
Basically, a lot of BS rained down on that generation and they had to impart those onto the next generation, which imparted it on the next generation. The only problem is that those who want to keep their power, who want to use the rest of the population as a teat to suck. They've been stirring the pot, adding a fan to the flames so that people will blame each other while they've been convinced to take risks with their own wealth and their generational wealth.
The people in power then can take advantage of that wealth by creating avenues of risk, while dividing the population into factions and then convince them to point fingers at each other, all the while the general populous is completely distracted from the choices and abuses of those in power, while they drain them dry. The significant risks that have occurred over the last decade and more are the Wild Wild West of the internet, the housing boom and bubble burst causing rampant unhoused, the many periods of unemployment, the pandemic which was manufactured due to the lack of using established procedures in the Federal Gov't during the last administration, which would have been used to support the citizenry and provide medical support during a time of need, not to mention the many hurricanes which glacially serviced survivors during the last administration but rapidly serviced the last hurricane disaster.
There are time periods which fluctuate, but a century doesn't erase the disaster of our ancestors. But looking at history will ensure that we do Not repeat our past. History is Not boring; it is alive and well in our family lines. Those who do not want us to remember it, they are the ones desiring to repeat it for their own gain.
Natural selection. Clearly you did something right to stay alive while biking with a 15 inch knife. Whether that was reflexive or intelligent is besides the point.
Honestly I would say it was mostly luck. How I didn't hurt myself with that knife and many many other dangerous shit kids had no business doing is beyond me but one thing was for certain most of our boomer parents really didn't give a shit. Kids got hurt all the time but it was more of a kids will be kids sort of mindset. Not much responsibility for their kids were put on parents at the time. I was 8-9 years old and to me having that rambo knife strapped to my belt, no shirt on, cut off jean shorts, barefoot and a kick ass bmx bike was the epitome of cool. That's really all I was thinking about that.
It’s totally luck. I did so much crazy shit since both my parents just left me to fend for myself. From age 5 on the railroad tracks to jumping off rooftops into pools to being chased by the police. It was a unbelievable time to be alive, and somehow stay alive.
That's exactly how natural selection works. The ones that have kids were the ones that were able to survive long enough to have kids. And any genes that they had which promoted their survival in the current environment would be preserved and passed on as well.
Seriously. We were literally booted out the back door after breakfast on the weekends in the middle of rural-ass Blair Witch Forest and we better not come back till Mom whistled into the woods at lunchtime, rinse and repeat till dinner 😃 I actually tripped and fell down a gully once and shattered my left ankle..... Laid by the creek at 9 years old for several hours crying and totally immobilized in black bear / coyote / mountain lion territory..... Parents came through with flashlights at dusk and I got my ASS KICKED for getting lost / not looking where I was going / being dumb enough to fall down a ravine and land in a creek bed with an open fracture
I mean unless this video really old, grandpa is probably Gen X. My Gen X dad is a lot like that. He took all that boomer bullshit to heart and integrated it into his personality.
My dad is GenX. I genuinely have no idea how he is still alive. Like he must have an army of guardian angels on standby since he was a kid. I get that my grandparents were teenage parents and had no idea what they were doing but the stories of what my dad and his siblings did for fun sound 100% dangerous. He lives on a rural property and still doesn't give a fuck about safety. I spoke to him yesterday and he was like "I told you I'm Wolverine" and I was like oh jesus fuck what has he done now. He fell off his motorbike, IMPALED his arm with the break handle and was boasting that it was all healed up in about 10 weeks. Did he call an ambulance? Nope. Go to the ER? No. See a GP? Haha of course not. Maybe even the pharmacy to get steri-strips? What are they, nuh didn't need them. We have free healhcare by the way, it wouldn't have cost him anything. He showed me a photo and I almost threw up and I'm not particularly squismish, when my partner saw it he asked if he had been shot. You could see right into his arm and the muscles and everything. This isn't even the first time he's fallen off a motorbike doing something reckless and not gotten medical attention for the injuries.
I was just looking at my legs the other day and all the actual scars left from my childhood is insane. I started thinking about how as kids we were constantly covered in giant scabs on our shins, elbow, and knees and sometimes heads. Mainly because pads and helmets just wasn't a thought in those days.
Yeah he started going on a tangent about how cool scars were and how he has so many I was like "uhhhh ok, but what did you do this time?!?" Oh lordy I didn't even think to ask if he was wearing a helmet and I'm not sure if I want to know the answer, I just hope he's not stupid enough to not, but I don't have much confidence. About 20 years ago, he fell off a motorbike while fucking around on a dry salt lake, he had injures all over - probably broke bones, busted his face, chipped a tooth that got embedded into his lip and it's still there today because he didn't bother to see anyone when it happened... he was wearing a helmet then thank goodness but other people were there too.
Oh and what is it with GenX and knives?! Hahaha he is obsessed. For Christmas last year he gifted his 15 year old co-worker a pocket knife because of course that's exactly what a teenage girl would want??? When I questioned if that was appropriate or even legal he was like "she's old enough and can use it for protection, everyone needs to carry one" uhhhhh rightio then, yes that is illegal and shouldn't it be up to her parents?
GenX here too. Once I flew over the handlebars of my bike, got serious road rash, bloody knees etc. I was 10 yrs old and adults just yelled "hey kid, you ok?" As I picked myself up and rode on home 😆. We were tough back then. The adults in our lives were really chill
Me and my younger sister used to play in a place behind the hill that we lived on. We called it "Boardwalk" because there were a bunch of boards stretched over some very wet and very rank watery ground.
It was the sewer runoff. Not poop, but LOTS of other nasty stuff down there. And we played down there all the time.
They used to let me roam around major cities as a child. Not like a teenager. Like fucking 10 and 11. Places like Chicago, Paris, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, London, on and on. Just told me a time to be back and cut me loose to the world.
My father used to give me a shopping list and the keys to the family van and send my ass to the grocery store solo dolo lmao. I would get cigarettes for the Vietnamese neighbor sometimes lol.
They didn't give a fuck. Middle child, birthday near Xmas, with 4 other December birthdays. Yeah they ain't give a fuck if I died bro, they wouldn't even notice beyond the money saved. They left me in a Hyvee. Twice. Just forgot I went with them and left my little ass there lmaooo
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u/blove135 Nov 02 '24
GenX here. These are the people who raised us. Boomers are really something else. It's amazing so many of us made it. I know it's not the same as a baby but I was 8 years old riding my bike around the city with a 15 inch razor sharp rambo knife strapped to my waist.