With increasing age, people tend to glorify youth – of course not today’s, which has replaced the peace-making holding hands between Ulm and Stuttgart by sticking to asphalt and tying to trees (however, this is just as unsuccessful as the pacifist human chainmen of 1983 were) . No, it is one’s own childhood and youth that in retrospect appears rosy, happy and sun-drenched, even if in truth it was of course occasionally dark grey, depressing and hazy, as some days are to this day. The fact that some things that parents and others drummed into us as vital wisdom later turned out to be wrong, or even worse, irrelevant – who cares 40 years later?
For example, children in the 1960’s and 70’s were very convinced of the need to study the dangers of quicksand in detail. In every comic, in every episode of “Lassie,” in every afternoon western, someone with or without a horse would sink into gooey goo and it would take a great deal of effort, if at all, to save them. Every child knew: Don’t kick around in quicksand! Keep calm and wait for help, Lassie is already on her way.
Yes now. Nobody explained to us that quicksand hardly ever occurs between Trudering and Pasing and that for physical reasons it is almost impossible to sink completely into it. Incidentally, it is not much different with the myth that swallowed chewing gum takes seven years before it leaves the digestive tract again, and that if you swallow cherry or other fruit stones, a corresponding tree begins to grow in your stomach. Speaking of cherries: It was strictly forbidden to drink after eating stone fruit, as the result would be diarrhea similar to cholera. And if you go swimming right after lunch, you were as good as dead.
Any adult will be able to attest to having performed any action one or more times, accidentally or on purpose, and nothing bad ever happened. In most cases it’s not that bad. However, most people will have to cope with one disappointment: According to our parents’ warnings, we should be offered illegal drugs much more often.