OK, I agree with a lot of this, and I'm not yet 30 (and don't look or act like I'm on the brink of 30-dom....)
HOWEVER, as I was saying... I played in the street, riding bikles, jumping ramps (sometimes higher that I was tall) and I fell down and got road rash and/or bashed my head. bashed my head. bashed my head and NOTHING is wrong with a little head bashing. Nowadays, everyone has tripped out on the safety thing so much that kids wear helmets and knee pads and elbow pads and diapers (really, who in their RIGHT MIND would have thier kid on a commercial saying they wear a diaper (and these kids were like 10 or at least 8.... [img]graemlins/1disgust.gif[/img] ))
the "group" or generation or whatever you wanna label me as was taught by people like you, Arvon, and the wise lessons we learned were that if you wanna ride a tricycle off the 6 foot high porch of you neighbor and fall and bash yer head, then go ahead... you hopefully will learn that you don't want to do it TWICE. We learned that if you misbehave, you will be corrected, physically if necessary (Ultimately we learned we are responsible for our own actions, which is NOT taught anymore (put yer kid in timeout, anyone???))
We learned that in a game/competition/real life that not everyone gets to win, and therefore if you really want something you better get out and give 'em hell trying to get it. We learned that if you got "beef" with someone, go handle it (and that does NOT mean go shoot them down, that means go duke it out... way too many of the younger crowd are way too scared to take a beating so that way too many go and shoot eachother. thats 100% for real wimp stuff right there.)
Now, other than that we learned plenty else, but can't remember the lessons because we suffered way to much from bashing our heads.
I really agree with the wimps thing, tho.
SilentThief