Turning 70 next month has me thinking… Wow, how the world has changed. When I was a kid, smoking was healthy, lead was fashionable, milk cured everything, and hiding under a desk could apparently save you from a nuclear bomb. We survived margarine sandwiches, flying saucer panic, and no internet. Honestly? TikTok’s got nothing on 1965. “If you remember, you deserve a medal
I’m about to turn 70 next month.
Every year as my birthday rolls closer, I can’t help but look around and think: Man, everything has changed. When I was a kid, the world ran on a completely different kind of crazy — and honestly? Some days, it’s hard to believe we survived it.
Back in the 60s, if you lit up a cigarette, you weren’t damaging your lungs — you were following doctor’s orders. Seriously. Doctors were out here in TV commercials, smiling with their stethoscopes, telling people to pick up a pack! You could smoke in hospitals, in airplanes, while delivering a baby — and nobody would flinch. They’d probably offer you a lighter.
And if the Russians decided to lob a nuclear missile at us? Don’t worry — the plan was simple: hide under your school desk. A quarter-inch of plywood was apparently our last line of defense against nuclear vaporization. Makes you wonder how we didn’t all just build bunkers out of desks.
Speaking of home safety, our parents painted EVERYTHING with lead paint like it was holy water. Your crib? Lead. Your toy car? Lead. Your walls, your swing set, even your teething rings. If it didn’t have a faint metallic flavor, were you even living your best life?
Relationships? Oh, those were straightforward too. Ladies were supposed to greet their husbands at the door looking like June Cleaver, lipstick on, roast beef in the oven, and not one single complaint about the kids setting the house on fire.
Science wasn’t much better. Dinosaurs? In the 60s, scientists thought they were just slow, clumsy swamp monsters that basically got bored and died. No talk of feathers, speed, or cleverness. They were just sad lizards in a Godzilla movie marathon.
Health advice? Simple: milk solves everything. Sad? Milk. Tired? Milk. Grew an extra thumb because you lived in a lead-painted house? Yep — MILK.
Exercise? HA. Exercise was for weirdos like Jack LaLanne on TV, flexing in a bodysuit while the rest of us smoked and wondered why we felt sluggish.
And technology? Computers were warehouse-sized monsters. Nobody believed — nobody — that one day we’d carry a supercomputer in our pockets, use it to send selfies, and accidentally order a disco ball at 3AM.
And butter? Canceled. Margarine was the future, and it tasted… well, like sadness, but by God, it was safe sadness (until it wasn’t).
Meanwhile, everyone fully expected aliens to land any minute now. Flying saucers. Silver suits. Little green men. Basically, everyone was prepping for an episode of The Twilight Zone.
