Remember When......

I guess I am showing my age, but I remember doing all of these things.................


Randy



Subject: Just Remember When


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 would leave
home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the
streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. 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 Ked's (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 must 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 and caught all sorts of negative
attention for the next two weeks. 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.
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 could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a
mile down the road to some guy's vacant 20, 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, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.
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 of gravel 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 butt 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 picked him up 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?

[daninthesand]

Randy,

I could not have written that better myself! LOL. Brings back many fond memories. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

Funny, but sad, in a way. Life seems to have gotten so much more complicated.

Daniel

Damn Randy that is great!!!! I'm sheading a tear as I type. :'(
Guess that shows my age too....

Oh well. :-\

[Glenn]

Randy your making me feel old.

that was great...

so what's the answer?? what happened?? have we been brain-washed into thinking we need lawyers and psychiatrists and that we shouldn't be held responsible for our own actions anymore?? :

I hear you Randy ;D

Am just wondering what a kid from today will remember in say 2035 ???

Something like : Can you remember we actually had to use our hands and a joystick to play on one of what we called a computer :-[


Ronald

Wow...... :-\ that brings back alot of memories huh??

just the other day I was thinking.....8 or 10 year old boys today dont keep thier pockets full of the INVALUABLE items I used to keep when I was that age....

pocket knife....
lucky rock.....
string.....
roll of caps......

Times have definately changed....

Tony

[April]

that sounds exactly like my neighbourhood.
and tony...i still have all those cool things in my pockets.
i had pockets full of marbles...now their in my aquarium for safe keeping.
still got my swiss army knife..even managed to take it on the plane to your house withme...they never took it away . lol.
my favourite is the little chain for keychains that were my pet snakes. i still save them all and join them up. lol.

[nalah]

thats progress........... or is it?
We did things as kids that nowdays could get our kids in a lot of trouble.

For kids anyway,life was better then.

[brewmaster15]

LMAO thats too funny, and it describes my childhood so well....Those we the good old days!


Tony... ahhh the pocket knife and caps... man was it fun to hit the whole role at once with a rock, or toss it in the fire.

helmets..never owned one. we rode our bikes down cliffs, towed each other on skateboards, and fit more kids on the bilke than a school bus. Scrapes and bruises were baqttle scars to be proud of!

Spare the rod...spoil the child... I was definetly never spoiled though I believe several rods were broken during my upbringing...as well as an occasional shoe... which I swear my mom could throw around corners with precision!

Thanks for the memories!
-al

[brewmaster15]

Oh and hey...remember that concept called recess at school... we used to get what seemed like hours..now they get maybe 15-20mins... sad :'(
-al

[DarkDiscus]

Al,

My grammar school had recess - which was 30 minutes and a 15 minute break later in the day...

Depressing, ain't it?

John

[cgrim10]

this was one of my favorites. still is. cg

[Lynn]

Randy,

That was great! I guess that makes me old too! lol

I think we miss out on all of these things today because we are too busy...the few people that I know that spend a siginificant amount of time with their kids, have kids just like that...pockets full of treasures, doing daredevil bike rides, camping in the backyard and roasting any food item in the fire and eating it!...and eating dinner as a family, with food that did come from a box in the freezer.

Maybe todays kids will have good memories too, we just can't see them yet.

Craig....nice top!

[RichieE]

My childhood - 1 Tv ,13 channels, black and white, no remote, and I had to ask to turn it on.

My kids- 6 Tvs, one for the car, all color, Video games hooked up to most, all with remote, surround sound on two, ones on all the time.

My Mom and Dad- Radio Rich