Got This In An Email - For Us Old Folks

[CatDancer]

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes too, but I can't remember getting E-coli.

As children we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Our baby cribs, toys and rooms were painted with bright colored lead based paint. We often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or my BB gun was not available.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never overweight; we were always outside playing. Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't, had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem solvers. We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring!). The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system. We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Keds (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they had to have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym. Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system. Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. I can't understand it. Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything. Students and teachers were expected to dress appropriately and were warned only once by the principal. Next time they were sent home to change. I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations.

I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers that could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant 20 acres, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger. What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot. He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48 cent bottle of mercurochrome and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did,we got our butt spanked (physical abuse) here too ... and then we got spanked again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (remember why Tonka trucks were made tough...it wasn't so that they could take the rough berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas. Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.

Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive. How sick were my parents? Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead she just picked him and and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck. To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes?

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How did we survive?

[302Riz]

Ahh the simple times. When I was a kid growing up in the 80's it wasnt that much different. During the summer I was always outside riding my bike jumping curbs and cracks in the sidewalk, played tackle football with my friends infront of our elementary school on the weekends, hopping fences, digging huge holes in our backyards.

I wonder when it all went down the shi**er.

Now that I think of it, I hardly see any kids playing outside anymore. I guess they sit inside all day and play video games and spend time on the internet.

[Katalina]

Good post!
I remember eating cookie dough all the time. Never got sick.
Now I tell my kids they can't have any until the cookies are done, because of the raw eggs.

So then mommy can eat some


Riding in the back of my grandpap's pickup truck on a warm summer day was the best!!! We would get more than 5 kids back there and he would drive up the highway to the tasty freeze for icecream.

I remember being 13 and he would let me drive his truck on back roads and my grandma would hold on to the dash with all she had. He would just smile and say keep her on the road.

Or getting to have a small glass of homemade beer..
The old times (Sigh)

You brought back some great childhood memories for me. Thanks

[CatDancer]

Originally posted by Katalina
Good post!
I remember eating cookie dough all the time. Never got sick.
Now I tell my kids they can't have any until the cookies are done, because of the raw eggs.

So then mommy can eat some

Sounds like me!

[Robin ®]

When I was a kid, I didn't want to be inside! There was too much to do and too much to see outside!

And! Not only did the schools not offer abortion info or condoms, but when I was in junior high (yes! junior high, not middle school!), I actually got a some swats with the teacher's paddles for acting up in class!

[92Notch]

Amen! I was always outside getting into **** when I was a kid. Best days of my life for sure.

[RedLine99]

Originally posted by 92Notch
Amen! I was always outside getting into **** when I was a kid. Best days of my life for sure.

LOL. I look at some of the kids I know now and I can hear it..."yeah, when I was a kid I actually went outside once..."

I imagine it won't be long before a "home cooked meal" is a thing of the past.

[Katalina]

Originally posted by RedLine99


LOL. I look at some of the kids I know now and I can hear it..."yeah, when I was a kid I actually went outside once..."

I imagine it won't be long before a "home cooked meal" is a thing of the past.

Bah! That will never happen in my house
Except tonight..tonight is "fend for yourself night"

Well.. I will be fending for the kids, while he fends for himself

[92Notch]

Originally posted by RedLine99


LOL. I look at some of the kids I know now and I can hear it..."yeah, when I was a kid I actually went outside once..."

I imagine it won't be long before a "home cooked meal" is a thing of the past.

Yeah, no ****. Sad too. My kids will have home cooked meals... even if I have to do it myself!

[Joe]

Amazingly even a youngster like me remembers when going and playing outside was much more fun than sitting inside watching tv or playing video games (Nintendo was just coming out when I was in elementary school). We used to play baseball in baseball season, football in football season and basketball in basketball season even if we only had 3 people to play (ghost players were great athletes). Growing up in the late 80's and early 90's wasn't too much different than what you described, although that is when it was starting to change.

[QtrHrsmn]

You know, I could have written that...LOL I remember those simpler days with longing....... just TRY to get a kid out of the house now....I wish I could have a do0over, so I could go back and be a kid again. I wouldn't change a thing.

[206]

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes too, but I can't remember getting E-coli.
I am 43 and I still defrost stuff on the counter.

As children we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
Or VCR's and individual stereos built into the arm rest..

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot.
The image this brings to mind makes me chuckle.

[Midnight]

I wouldn't mind living life back then for a few months......I love technology, but I hate the PCness that is spreading......