Remembering Childhood

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Mama

Mama

Head Chef
Joined
Feb 16, 2008
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1,810
Location
Georgia
I got this as an email...boy, did it bring back the memories:

(Under age 40? You won't understand.)

You could hardly see for all the snow, spread the rabbit ears as far as they go. Pull a chair up to the TV set, 'Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet.'

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 ice-pack 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. 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 spanked there and then we got spanked again when we got home.

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 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.
 
AMEN to them all!!

mama said:
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.
Click to expand...
And it didn't require books and sitting on your butt in a classroom. You actually DID activities and they wonder why kids are overweight!!
 
When my son asks me what we did in " the olden days" without computers and video games. I told him we used to ride our bikes , and throw rocks at each other. the occasional ring and run , and phony phone calls ( which you cant do anymore do to caller ID)
 
I also rode my bike in the street without head gear, elbow and knee gear.

I also walked around the mall on my own.

I sat in the front seat of the car next to my mom or dad when it was just the two of us.

I didn't have to wear a seatbelt.

I played outside for hours with my friends after school without any supervision even beyond dusk.

I visited neighbors without my parents and knew all my neighbors.
 
The good old days! My two don't understand life without a computer and game machine - the moans I get when they are asked to do without them for a while.

You could also talk to other people's children without fear.
 
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anyone remember army men ?? do they still sell those green army men anymore ?? I used to hide them in my moms plants, then sit across the room and try to shoot them out of the plants with rubber bands. And id make it a point to get 'sick' and stay home from school so i coud set up an awesome matchbox car track that started from the upstairs, and went all the way to the first level. And cant forget playing marbles with my sister.
 
Thanks for the stroll down memory lane Mama.

I remember starting off each day in school with the Pledge of Alligience and the Lords Prayer. Seems the world was just a little nicer back then.:)
 
We couldn't get away with anything in our neighborhood. The neighbors would discipline you if your parents weren't around. We actually knew our neighbors. lol

My 3 brothers and I walked home for lunch and made it ourselves. Nowadays we'd have CPS called on us.

We used to sled down the hill by the lake and go onto the lake when it was frozen over. (ok, that was dumb).

Yes, they still sell the army men........I bought my gds some for Christmas.

Barb
 
How funny. I used to hate dodge ball. I have severe astigmatism and wore very thick, in those days real glass, glasses. One of the side effects of sever astigmatism is a very bad sense of distance perception. I'm surprised there is a single picture of me without two black eyes, because that's what happens when the ball hits you straight on the bridge of your nose when you're wearing heavy glasses. Most games that we played when I was a kid involved me ducking the projectile and hoping I'd get home without any major bruising.
 
Psssh.

img_781627_0_2a478c9292be6b6f9cdd53dd219efce0.jpg
 
Mama, I enjoyed your post very much. Yes, I do remember all of those things. And that remembrance is one of the reasons we live in Mexico. People (the whole family) ride around in the backs of pickup trucks. No one seems to fall out and get hurt. The sidewalks (where they exist) are uneven, the stairs are not standard sized, there are huge potholes in the road, and when you walk, you'd best keep your head out of the clouds and your eyes on the path in front of you. If you fall down and try to sue the property owner, the judge will laugh and tell you to watch where you're going. There are no leash laws, but the street dogs don't bite anybody. The people selling street tacos don't wear face masks and rubber gloves, but no one gets sick from eating this wonderful food. Most homes in our little town don't have TVs, phones or computers. They also don't have fancy patio furniture or soft, cushiony couches in the stores here because average Mexican people don't have much leisure time to be couch potatoes. They work six days a week and Sunday is family day, when everyone goes to mass, then the weekly market, and then to the town plaza, to get some good food, listen to the music and dance a little. Kids, too.

It's alot like living in the 1950s.

I know, I know...there are plenty of minuses living in a developing country as well. Lax environmental regulations, little or no recycling, I could go on and on. But we do treasure the concept of personal responsibility that is currently embraced by the people who live here, as well as the lack of materialism and greed. I'm sure it will change as they become more "Americanized." Too bad in many ways.
 
Even though I grew up in the completely different country pretty much most of it applies to me too, those were the days.
 
I remember when anyone in our neighborhood got ANYTHING new (car, furniture and such), all the neighbors would see and come running and we'd make a celebration out of it. How nosey we all were, lol Those were the days!
 
Oh gosh, Glorie, our neighborhood was like that, too. Whenever someone got a TV, they shared it with the neighbors who didn't have one yet, until finally, everyone had one. It was pretty nice...
 
MexicoKaren said:
People (the whole family) ride around in the backs of pickup trucks. No one seems to fall out and get hurt.
Click to expand...

Oh, Karen. You reminded me of one of my cherished childhood memories. We lived in a very small community (about 500 people and 500 dogs). Our neighbor was a farmer, who had land some farm land area away from his house, which was next door to ours, would come home every day and plenty tired. He had a rattle-trap old pick 'em up truck that he loved. All of us children would beg him to take us for a ride in the back of his truck when he came home. He never refused our request and we would pile in (about 6 or 7 crazy children) and he'd take off to our favorite bumpy road, Turnip Salad Road. It was weavy and windy and we had a blast bumping along for several miles. What fun!!!!!
 
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