1stepcloser
02-28-2005, 09:27 AM
I copied this from an off road forum I frequent, I wanted to share as I am from this era, and it rings so true...
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 counterAND 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 reflector. 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 [and provided comic
relief] 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 sang the national anthem 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. Do you remember
going to the School Board dentist?
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.
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 lot, 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 a
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 neighbour's house either because if we did, we got
our butt spanked (physical abuse) and then we got it 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 lawn mower 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? 0f course my parents weren't the only psychos.
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 neighbourhood 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
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 counterAND 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 reflector. 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 [and provided comic
relief] 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 sang the national anthem 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. Do you remember
going to the School Board dentist?
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.
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 lot, 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 a
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 neighbour's house either because if we did, we got
our butt spanked (physical abuse) and then we got it 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 lawn mower 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? 0f course my parents weren't the only psychos.
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 neighbourhood 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