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03/01/2006 02:23:49 AM · #1 |
Got this in my mail:
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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. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.
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.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches. 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, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.
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 (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) 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 there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.
I recall the kid 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 ever survive?
LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T- SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING
Pass this to someone (over age 40, of course), and brighten their day by helping them to remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best! |
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03/01/2006 02:28:38 AM · #2 |
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03/01/2006 02:50:53 AM · #3 |
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03/01/2006 02:56:44 AM · #4 |
Originally posted by Didymus:
... I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. ... |
amen
Although a person doesn't have to be over 40 to have lived thru that era. I'm not there yet -- close, but not quite!
David
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03/01/2006 04:16:01 AM · #5 |
lol - I identify with that so well. And mercurochrome still stung!
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03/01/2006 04:48:03 AM · #6 |
Swimming in lakes, rivers, anywhere with two feet of liquid water, that was how we did it. Nobody ever looked what brand of trunks others were wearing. The mere thought of that would have been utterly ridiculous.
When I was ten, I could drink to my hearts content straight from the river flowing through our village. Now the idea sends shivers down my spine.
We built treehouses and kept falling down from the treetops in the process, but no one ever complained.
The fights we had to fight, we did on our own. No attorneys, no police, no mommies.
And somehow there never seems to have been such thing as bad weather.
Am I just a sentimentally nostalgic old man? :-) |
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03/01/2006 05:04:46 AM · #7 |
how about this?
they put real oranges into your orange-smelling shampoo, but they put artificial flavouring into your orange juice... |
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03/01/2006 05:22:28 AM · #8 |
Yup. And then you drink decaffeinated coffee with semi-synthetic cream powder and artificial sweetener.
Is nothing real any more? |
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03/01/2006 06:41:05 AM · #9 |
i was born in '77 and i still remember most of that. My grandmom spanked the kid down the street for teasing me in grade school, i ate raw hamburger, no ice packs for lunch (is weird how we didnt get sick, hmmmm), and i had a broken shoulder for 2 days then my mom took me to the doctor.
P.S. well i dont do this anymore because they tell ya not to but raw hamburger is really good if you throw some salt on it :)
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03/01/2006 07:53:27 AM · #10 |
| HA! I lost a shoe in the best mountain of dirt now under an apartment building.....I didn't want to go home either, You REALLY think I was afraid of the "time-out" chair? (not like I could sit for hours....) |
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03/01/2006 07:58:59 AM · #11 |
I gotta say that's good, and you definately don't have to be over 40 to know what that was all like. Possibly it was the town that I grew up in, but that's how it was for me as a child.
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03/01/2006 01:22:40 PM · #12 |
Originally posted by queanbeez:
P.S. well i dont do this anymore because they tell ya not to but raw hamburger is really good if you throw some salt on it :) |
We used make sandwitches consisting of a patty of raw hamburger, salt/pepper and a sprig of watercress. We called them "cannibal" sandwitches.
And we were always cracking each other during rock fights, not that accidents don't happen, but we were able to survive it. If I came home crying because I got hit in the head with a rock, the standard reply was that I shouldn't have been there. End of story. |
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03/01/2006 01:35:50 PM · #13 |
I am only 30 but a lot of this rings true for me too. Life was so much simpler then.
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03/01/2006 01:40:56 PM · #14 |
I'm only 27.... but I remember some stuff like this.
My step mom used to use mercurochrome on our cuts. We called it indian paint, and we would get elborate designs drawn on and around our booboo's. Then the other siblings would get jealous of the awesome artwork (such as flowers, dogs, kitties ets) and would request a picture for their "booboo's" as well.
I also remember playing king of the hill and goofing off in the neighborhood from 8am - 8pm. No video games... just playing outside, sitting on other kids porches and having a great time.
It's really scary to raise kids these days. I am terrified to raise my 3 and 6 year old. I dunno about where you are all from, but the biggest time passer around here is... sex. Kids - young kids.... it's just shocking!
I wish we could go back to even was I was younger. We were safe to walk the city streets (we are now the US's 25th most dangerous city) ride bikes for hours unattended, and not have a care in the world.
Bless you who are just growing up in this generation.
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03/01/2006 01:43:25 PM · #15 |
Remember disappearing for the day in the summer with a bottle of water and jam(jelly) (if you were lucky) sandwiches? Our on our bikes or playing cricket in the fields with all the kids in the street for the whole day and mum coming to call from the field gate when it was bath time(no showers) and tea time. No problem with worrying we were going to be abducted despite there being some weird people about!
Rainy days curled up with a book or a board game with your friends, walking to school with your friends and using a pen you had to dip into an ink well in the desk. If you were good, being ink monitor and having to fill the inkwells each morning from a bottle with a long metal tube sticking out the top. No health & safety worries then!
The sound of street sellers with their horsse and carts buying old rags for pennies and the very exotic man who came round with a grinder attached to his bike to sharpen knives.
Exploring the bomb shelters in people's gardens and bomb sites in London. No CCTV - if the local bobby (policeman) caught you he'd just clip you round the ear and send you off home.
1950's, early 60's in England
Oh how sweet is nostalgia!
Pauline
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03/01/2006 01:46:41 PM · #16 |
remember when you could have chapstick and your own glue in school? now kids sniff it, dont know the deal about chapstick but i know kids around here cant bring it to school now they have to get it from the school nurse. Thats just sick! I hope they have a tube for everyone lol!
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03/01/2006 01:49:59 PM · #17 |
Originally posted by queanbeez:
remember when you could have chapstick and your own glue in school? now kids sniff it, dont know the deal about chapstick but i know kids around here cant bring it to school now they have to get it from the school nurse. Thats just sick! I hope they have a tube for everyone lol! |
Sniffin chapstick?? Hmmmm, I'll have to try that.
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03/01/2006 01:57:33 PM · #18 |
| This is really funny, thanks for sharing. I can relate to a bunch of things here, but I've never heard of mercurochrome, my Mom used Bactine that stung like a sob. |
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03/01/2006 03:02:49 PM · #19 |
I'm only 18, and sometimes i wish i had those simple pleasures. We got it really easy i know that for sure, might have seemed hard while in the middle of it all, but looking back it was a piece of piss.
i mean, kids as young as 5 have mobile phones these days?!?! they're missing out on even more than i did. Culture is telling them to grow up too fast and they're not enjoying there lil freedom as much as they should.
i remember swimming in a lake in the Lake District. Absolutely beautiful! was too scared to swim in the sea though, i'd been dubbed with chlorine filled water from day 1.
i remember feeling safe playing out on the street with friends, going up on the forest to run around and scramble up the sand dunes (in the middle of Nottingham UK is a rare rare thing to find)
sweetshops, were the most amazing things in the world
a place where 10p seemed like a hell of a lot of money.
When sweets came in big jars and you asked for them by the quarter.
im sorry that i missed out on a lot of the things that children should enjoy, should feel. And im even sorrier for the kids younger than me who are experiencing even less of that.
*sigh*
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03/01/2006 03:27:01 PM · #20 |
Hey now... I remember all of this too, but I have 2 kids and they are being raised the same way (or as close as possible)... I can't do anything about the changes at school, but my kids are being taught that they are 100% responsible for thier actions here, there, and everywhere. The cell phone and PS2 are pretty neat, but my 6yo and his friends are bored to tears with it after about a half hour, and if they are not we, kick them out of the house to go find something better to do...
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03/03/2006 05:25:19 PM · #21 |
Originally posted by dsmeth:
Originally posted by queanbeez:
remember when you could have chapstick and your own glue in school? now kids sniff it, dont know the deal about chapstick but i know kids around here cant bring it to school now they have to get it from the school nurse. Thats just sick! I hope they have a tube for everyone lol! |
Sniffin chapstick?? Hmmmm, I'll have to try that. |
Let me know how it works! |
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03/03/2006 05:31:27 PM · #22 |
Originally posted by Gatorguy:
i know kids around here cant bring it to school now they have to get it from the school nurse. Thats just sick! I hope they have a tube for everyone lol! |
lol...Even Napoleon Dynamite knows better than that!
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03/03/2006 05:42:33 PM · #23 |
Remember when we would ride our bikes without helmets or any other type of padding... We were all such daredevils!
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03/03/2006 05:44:33 PM · #24 |
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03/03/2006 05:45:21 PM · #25 |
ahhh the memories..
blacks weren't treated as equals, for the most part could only have token roles in Hollywood, and interracial marriage was a big no no..
homosexuals had to remain in the closet..
people never talked about wife abuse (hey he's your husband get back in the kitchen)..
what they said on TV or newspapers was gospel (no internet to question the noble intentions of the government)...
ok there are lots of wonderful things that you have brought up..but longing for a past, well that sort of talk scares me..next thing we are banning books and telling people how to think..
I do miss the clean rivers/lakes... |
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