SOME of you may be aware of a show on Channel 7 called The 1% Club, where 100 contestants per show compete by answering questions a little more unusual than the normal. They play for a prize pool of $100,000.
By thinking outside the square and answering the questions correctly, contestants have the opportunity of becoming part of the 1% of people in Australia able to answer these questions.
We may not be that good at answering those questions, but some of us have already joined The 1% Club, simpy by being here.
Following is an extract, in part (other thoughts added), of an email I received recently.
“If you were born between 1930 and 1946 (78 – 94 yrs old ) you are only 1% of the people left in the world, still alive!”
You are the last to remember ration books for everything from tea to sugar and shoes.
You saved brown paper and string to tie up parcels to send by post.
You remember milk being delivered to your house and weekly visits by the ice man, the greengrocer and regular fresh bread deliveries.
Discipline was enforced by parents and teachers and the local policeman.
Police would pick you up if walking at night and drive you home and admonish you if you did something wrong.
You imagined what you heard on the radio. Yours was the last generation without TV and you spent your time outside playing.
Telephones were one to a house, black on a cradle or hung on a wall, while your TV had a black and white picture.
Computers were called calculators, and letters were typed on a typewriter, throwing the carriage and changing the ribbon.
Daily news was broadcast on the radio every night, while there were comics in the paper for the kids to read.
You walked to school. On wet days, you wore a raincoat and gumboots, and in Spring, dodged the magpies swooping on you. You had a bike and rode everywhere.
You went to the shops and bought broken biscuits, paid the butcher a visit and walked on the floor with sawdust and the smell of raw meat.
Parents were free from wartime depression, and threw themselves into working hard and making a living.
You felt more secure for your future, although poverty and depression was deeply remembered.
Polio was the scourge at that time. Children had TB X-rays and pupils had doctors and nurses come to schools for health checks.
Full cream milk was left for an hour in the sun and one often had thick cream coating to get through. Yuk!
You were the last generation to experience an interlude where there were no threats to our country.
Where the time after WW2 was full of promise and plenty.
You should feel privileged to have lived in the best times. If you have already reached 77 years old, then you have outlived 99 per cent of all other people on this planet.
What a milestone!
You are already in The 1% Club.
