Sunday 20 August 2023

I always knew I was special!!

 INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE 1% ERS:

99% of people born between 1930 and 1946 (GLOBALLY) are now dead.
If you were born in this time span, your ages range between 77 and 93 years old (a 16-year age span) and you are one of the rare surviving one-percenters.
You are the smallest group of children born since the early 1900's.
You are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war that rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.
You are the last to remember ration books for everything from tea to sugar to shoes. You saved tin foil and poured fried meat fat into cans.
You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the "milk box" at the front door. Discipline was enforced by parents and teachers. You are the last generation who spent childhood without television and instead, you “imagined” what you heard on the radio.
With no TV, you spent your childhood "playing outside". There was no city playground for kids. The lack of television in your early years meant that you had little real understanding of what the world was like.
We got “black-and-white” TV in the late 50s that had 3 stations and no remote.
Telephones (if you had one) were one to a house and hung on the wall in the kitchen (who cares about privacy). Computers were called calculators; they were hand-cranked. Typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon. INTERNET and GOOGLE were words that did not exist.
Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and your dad would give you the comic pages after he read the news. The news was broadcast on your radio in the evening. The radio network gradually expanded from 3 stations to thousands.
New highways would bring jobs and mobility. Most highways were 2 lanes and there were no Motorways. You went downtown to shop. You walked to school.
Your parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war, and they threw themselves into working hard to make a living for their families.
You weren't neglected, but you weren't today's all-consuming family focus. They were glad you played by yourselves. They were busy discovering the postwar world. You entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where you were welcomed, enjoyed yourselves. You felt secure in your future, although the depression and poverty were deeply remembered.
Polio was still a crippler. Everyone knew someone who had it.
You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our country. World War 2 was over and the cold war, terrorism, global warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life. Only your generation can remember a time after WW2 when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty. You grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better.
More than 99% of you are retired now, and you should feel privileged to have "lived in the best of times!" If you have already reached the age of 77 years old, you have outlived 99% of all the other people on this planet. You are a 1% 'er!

Now isn't this interesting? Are you a 1%?
Chrisxx

4 comments:

Poppy and Me said...

Hello, I am a one percenter,(can't find the symbal on my keyboard.)!! Im am 80 now and as an only child have never felt lonely.I enjoy my own company. Every night I think back over the day and try to find 3 good things that have happened. I am very lucky in that my family are close and are always there for me and I for them. Wait till I tell them I am a one percenter they will laugh!How true your blog is. love and hugs from Val and Poppy x

Winifred said...

Oh my goodness!
How true this is. No phones, no telly, no internet & no cars in our street! Playing out until you were hungry or it was dark and your Mam called you in. Sweets were a luxury with rationing, no holidays just bus trips with old & young singing together on the way home. Happy days, we were satisfied with what we had now the war was over.
Now many young people don't seem to be satisfied with what they have & there are so many with mental health problems.
Seems progress doesn't always bring happiness.

Jo said...

I'm not a 1%er, I was born in the 60s, but I do remember having one telephone in the house situated on the table in the hall. We couldn't contact my grandparents because they didn't have a phone at all. I remember what it was like without computers and playing out from morning till dusk and making our own entertainment. I don't think that progress is always for the better.

jabblog said...

It's good to be special rather than invisible;-)