Horrifying Dangers of Growing Up in the '70s.

If you were a child in the seventies and are still alive to read this blog you should thank your lucky stars to have survived such dangerous times. Here are just a few of the things that could have killed you on a daily basis.

1) Refrigerators. I was constantly warned about the risks involved with empty refrigerators. According to my mother, hundreds of children every week suffocated because they either climbed into, fell into, or were chased down and grabbed by fridges. It was as if armies of abandoned refrigerators sat in every basement and garage just waiting to smother some naive child.

2) Worms. The only thing my mother feared more that refrigerators was internal worms. She was convinced that I could get them from nearly every activity including going barefoot outside, consuming fruit without first washing it in Clorox (there’s a reason I hate apples), wearing the same tights twice, just looking at stray animals, and eating raw cookie dough. To combat my exposure, she kept a bottle of Worm Rid liquid medicine at all times. It was bright pink and sickly sweet. By the time I was ten. I had ingested more of that disgusting crap that I have bourbon to this day.

3) Razor blades. And, not just at Halloween. Any food could be compromised at any time with either a razor blade, needle, or broken glass. Eating one of these tainted treats would result in your cutting off your tongue and bleeding to death. Therefore, everything that was not prepackaged must be dissected to ensure that no foreign objects had been hidden inside by some sadistic grocery guy. And sometimes, even the prepackaged goods could be guilty. Remember the boy in Toledo who ate cotton candy with pink insulation woven into it and then his stomach dissolved?

4) Alligators in the Toilet. Someone from the Bronx took a trip to Orlando, Florida and smuggled an infant alligator back to the city. They flushed it down the toilet. At this same moment, a lady from Brooklyn flushed her pet alligator, as well. The two reptiles grew up, mated, and populated the sewer system. And, then they migrated all over the United States. Playing too close to an open sewer grate, exploring a creek, or using a commode in a public place could all result in having your ass eaten off—in the last case, literally.  

5) And as if the decade wasn’t horrifying enough, in 1979 Pop Rocks hit the shelf and kids across the country began to implode. All it took was one pack of Pop Rocks and a bottle of soda and KABAAM!

Considering all of these threats, we who survived growing up in the '70s should feel as though we made it through The Hunger Games. I’m going to have tee shirts made up saying, “I was a child of the ‘70s and lived to tell about it.”