My husband and I decided to not have children. We’ve had the adventure of a lifetime so far. Socially it’s been daring in the way that many people with kids think we’d be happier with kids. They treat us like we’re, I don’t know, dangerous!

walking in downtown Prague by myself while the iron curtain was still up and I am a Dept of Defense employee-I’m sure they could’ve cared less, but I felt like I was on the edge of the envelope  :) Flying over beautiful mountains in Germany in a Blackhawk with the gunner’s door open, hanging half out- amazing feeling! and whitewater canoeing near Oil City Dam after heavy rains and a canoeist drowning there two days previously- they even had an emergency crew on standby as we went under one of the bridges- how lame is all that?  but I felt baaaaaddddas*

I married a Marine after everything my parents had warned me about them.  Both my Father and GrandFather were Marines and everything they told me about them was the God’s honest truth. 

There great fighters, work hard to save their country and do their jobs, but a majority of them cheat and drink and abuse their spouse.  I grew up in that kind of family and I married into what I knew. 

 I wished I’d had learned from my childhood.  My Minister kept telling me you "Can’t help who you Love.", but he should have added "You can’t change the person you love either."

There’s a saying among Marine Wives "THE ONLY THING HARDER THEN BEING A MARINE IS BEING MARRIED TO ONE."  and GOD that is the TRUTH.

I am 25 now but when I was 17/18 I had what I refer to the summer of danger. It was a summer of compete firsts: Drugs, sex, jobs ( not prostitution) etc. I would meet and become friends with people on a moments notice. There was one day I literally met a guy at a stop sign with his friends, he followed me home I got in his car and we went cliff jumping. The cliff was a good 50 foot high you jumped and landed in a body of water, I’m not even sure what you would call it. lol. I often wonder how I managed to survive that summer. But I also remember it as some of the most amazing and fun times of my life.

There is no need to worry. I only tried pot once and I am now a happily married mommy of two. I am still adventurous, I had both children without the help of pain meds.

Jumped out of an airplane skydiving and broke my ankle.

Mine isn’t as cool as most of the posts here, but here it goes.  When I was about 11 or 12, I saw a man with a dog at my elementary school (this was several hours after school ended for the day).  I ended up going with my friend to his house to babysit his dog for him.  Nothing happened to me, but to this day I wonder if he tried anything with my friend.  I’ve always looked old for my age which is what probably saved me.

I was an11th grader and I had walked up to a drug store my parents used, to buy a softdrink.  It was about 9pm and warm for early June. In front of the store, a woman and her little were facing down a big man with an even bigger pistol arguing and pointing the gun at them.  Forsome reason I didn’t stop walking. The prickles on my neck were standing 7 feet high. In just a moment he noticed me. He started to move the gun toward me. Almost in one movement I took the gun out of his hand and turned it on him. Ordered him onto the ground and lace his fingers behind his head. In a few more moments the police were there. ( they always shoe=w up when it’s over) Asked me what I had done and how I learned it. 1st it was from TV and the neighborhood friends I played war and Cowboys with. Somewhere in the play I learned how to take a gun away and not get shot. Was I being brave. No, I just knew I could disarm the fellow. (Happened in the mid-1960s. )

Rejecting the family way. I refuse to blame others for my mistakes. I don’t let drama rule my life.  When my parents divorced (I was an adult, married, living in another state and coping with a whole array of unexpected difficulties; though thankfully not children), I refused to take sides, on the grounds that their marriage was their business, not mine, and having grown up with them, I had been expecting it for years. When trainwrecks have occurred in my life, I rarely let people know until well after the fact, and then quite calmly, withought sturm and drang. These would include two emotionally abusive marriages, one relatively easy divorce and one that was ugly, giving up alcohol (well on the slide to alcoholism), cigarettes, and an addiction to painkillers without church, AA or rehab (no relapses), maintaining steady income through it all, even after the loss of a beloved 9 year job, losing my home to a very unexpected flood, bankruptcy (very shameful), an autistic son and severe psychiatric issues (OCD, clinical depression, schizophrenia with full-blown hallucinations). I am now married for 15 years to a wonderful man, have a second son, am lightly medicated, in control of myself and very happy. The most dangerous thing I have done in my life was to be honest with myself. I am not a "wifey" or a drama-queen. I despise angst, chick-flicks, and Oprah-list books. I like movies about ghosts (sans romance, please) and in which things explode frequently. I do not like foreign films. My favorite books are "Catch-22", "The Once and Future King" and "Maynard’s House". I watch "Mythbusters" and shows about parasites and "Bridezillas", the latter because it is an interesting and extremely amusing commentary on human nature. I find people fascinating, moving, and completely comprehensible. Little or nothing humans do shocks or even surprises me. I have female friends, but we don’t do girl’s nights out. My last remaining phobia involves churches, and while I am at best doubtful of organized religion, at worst I would describe my feelings as ones of revulsion and loathing. I am, however, a spiritual person, and believe that some consciousness passes on after the body ceases. My family (mom and sisters) thinks that I am a Philistine. For a while they sent me "serious" modern literature (I am a Lit major) which was largely depressing and host to "protagonists" who were uniformly self-serving, manipulative, bitter creatures because of some "tragic" event in their pasts that caused them to treat their "loved" ones like waste matter. Do you hear me, Wally Lamb? And Art Films. When I truly gently rejected their offerings, they assumed my brain had turned to pudding. Also, I live in Texas. In suburbia. (No mini van or PTA, at my son’s elementary, the PTA ladies were somewhat sceptical of my buzzcut and Doc Martens, and would never toss volunteer work my way.) What my relatives don’t quite get is that I am not their whipping girl anymore (that was formerly my position in the family), that I don’t like their attitudes, drama, angst and miseries…not to mention the vast well of family secrets, the disdain for my father, dead these 26 years, the inter-family competition and clawing and the general refusal of anyone to accept reality or responsibility for their own actions. So I took the dangerous road and my life is much better for it.

Here’s to US!!!!   No matter what our kids and the new generation think about us,   WE ARE AWESOME !!!! OUR LIFE IS LIVING PROOF !!!!

To Those of  Us  Born  1930 - 1979

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED 1930’s, 40s, 50s, 60’s and 70’s!! 
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can and didn’t get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-base paints.. 

 We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps not helmets on our heads.   And when we had our sleds, we tied them to the bumper of a car and had a really neat ride as long as you made sure you didn’t slide under the car when it stopped

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes.

Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter or lard and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And, we weren’t overweight..  WHY?
Because we were always outside playing…that’s why!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on..
No one was able to reach us all day. And, we were OKAY.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into th e bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem

We did not have Play stations, Nintendo’s and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s,  no surround-sound or CD’s, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms.

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. 
We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, ping pong paddles, or just a bare hand and no one would call child services to report abuse..


We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.


We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment.
magine that!! The idea of a parent bailing us out if we        Broke the law was unheard of.  They actually sided with the law!   
These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever.
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
If YOU are one of them, CONGRATULATIONS! 
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good

While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave and lucky their parents were.   Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it? ~A…Had to Share this…

I’m doing the most dangerous thing I have ever done right now!

THe most dangerous thing I ever did was driving under the influence of alcohol…on more than one occasion.