Life, Friends & Anger !

Just thinking ,,, what again you might say ?
We have quite a few friends, the beloved & I,,, perhaps on an individual basis, me more than she since I socialise at the golf club ! and she tends to socialise with her Wii during that time !
However our "couple" friends fall into quite diverse catagories .,., ( and seldom do we mix them .,., now isn't that strange ? ) Some happy with life and others ,, well not so !
But what got me going on this subject was this .,., some of our friends have, over the years, become increasingly angry and bitter ! Not necessarily with one another but with life in general ,, the daily grind of listening to our exasperating politicians, reading newspapers, watching TV current affairs ,,, lack of jobs, drug ridden teens, ( and others ) wars, religious fanatics ,, and on & on ,, Even herself & I have become somewhat angry old codgers at the stupidities we bump into on a weekly basis !
So much of our country has been given away, so much normal childhood fun now also gone .,., such a dumbing down of our once proud Nation ,,
Here, read this ,, just as a fun example of some of the kinda things that have gone wrong .,.,.,

This is simply a CONGRATULATIONS to all my friends & family who were born & raised in the 1940's, 50's, & 60's !
Firstly, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos..
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
Take away food was limited to fish and chips,.,., no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC, or Subways ( except of course Glesca's Clockwork Orange )
Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death !
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING !!
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 O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.
We had no Playstations, Nintendo Wii, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY,
no video/dvd films, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet 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.
Only girls had pierced ears!
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time...
We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th. birthdays,
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them !
Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet !
RUGBY and CRICKET had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that !! Getting into the team was based on MERIT ....
Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and bully’s always ruled the playground at school.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.

They actually sided with the law!
Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL !
All this was commonplace before the lawyers and the government regulated the LIFE out of our lives for our own good !

But the end result of all this is my worry ,, we now have a huge number of silver haired angry old pensioners. It was never anything like as bad in my parents time ,,, sure they thought all we teenagers were quite mad, .,., I mean Elvis Presley and his gyrating pelvis .,., Zoot suits & DA haircuts ,, etc,
But the gap betwixt us oldies and our youngies is growing ( and in some cases festering? )

Back to our friends .,.,., some of them are now in such a state that they let this anger rule their daily lives from dawn 'til dusk ! They make vicious comment on everything they see wrong with today's world .,., and here's the rub ,, sometimes antagonsing their very own nearest & dearest ! ,, we know one couple who, because of this antagonisation, have now lost all contact with their son, daughter-in-law & grandchild ! Very very sad indeed ,,,

None of our other friends have gone down this road ,, not this far at any rate ,, but now doing a study of all of them has helped me, and hopefully now the beloved too, to get out of this grumbling habit.
It is positively ( or do I mean negatively ? ) destructive and serves no real purpose .,., our happier friends don't give a toss .,., well that's not true either of course .,., they do, but refuse to let it change their personalities for the worse ... so from now on I'm not playing this game any more ,, I have all but given up on politics ,, reading papers and I refuse to watch current affairs on the dreadfully biased & insular BBC .
I will of course complain when necessary and will give my opinion on world affairs when asked ,, but I am hereby giving up my Grumpy Old Man personna for the more outgoing happy-go-lucky model me !
Have a nice day y'all :-)