Bear1949
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posted on March 29, 2005 08:45:42 AM new
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.
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.
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 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 (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 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-stopper 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 ever survive?
A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones that need the advice."
- Bill Cosby
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CBlev65252
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posted on March 29, 2005 08:53:03 AM new
Bear
I have long said we are sanitizing ourselves out of existence. My mother used regular milk in our bottles and pureed our food. No Gerber, no fancy formulas. Geeze, with the way they talk about things today, I guess they think it's a miracle we survived. 
Cheryl
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Libra63
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posted on March 29, 2005 08:55:33 AM new
Wow! You said a mouth full.
What World did we live in?
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classicrock000
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posted on March 29, 2005 11:39:57 AM new
thanks for the memories bear
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cherishedclutter
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posted on March 29, 2005 12:29:36 PM new
Why do I feel so old now? lol
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Libra63
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posted on March 29, 2005 02:35:11 PM new
Because I think we are...
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Bear1949
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posted on March 29, 2005 04:45:20 PM new
I can remember playing outside in the rain & when enough water filled the gutters on out street, we would crawl through it. .....Those were the days...
A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones that need the advice."
- Bill Cosby
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CBlev65252
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posted on March 29, 2005 05:07:25 PM new
We lived in a rural area and loved the days they would come and tar the street! Of course, my mother hated it!
Remember being able to go trick or treating WITHOUT a grown-up attached to your hip? Or actually being able to just go out and play without an ever present "eye" watching you?
Bear - I remember the rain. I used to love to splash around in it. The wetter I got, the better! In fact, deliberately finding the largest puddles and jumping into them was the thing to do. I don't ever remember my mother saying to come in out of the rain before I catch my death of cold. As long as the golashes were on, the raincoat buttoned and the hat on top of the head, all was well.
Although, I also remember the layers upon layers of clothes in the winter time. Remember Ralphie's brother in Christmas Story? That was me in the winter.
Cheryl
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bizzycrocheting
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posted on March 29, 2005 05:25:24 PM new
How about when you were playing and went to a neighbor's house for a drink of water? Or sleighing down the neighbors (or 3 as in my case) hill? Or exploring the woods without any bug spray on? Or actually swimming in the lake without worrying about diseases and germs (and actually catching a nip or two in the tummy from a fish)? Or ice skating on the street because the entire street froze and all of the neighbors were right there with you? Or just riding your bicycle on the street and the neighbors knew there were kids riding and were careful when they came home from work or errands?
Those were truly the good 'ole days!
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twig125silver
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posted on March 29, 2005 06:18:54 PM new
We didn't have gutters, but we did have HUGE mud puddles! We would ride our bikes through them over and over, knowing we were going to be in BIG trouble when Mom saw us!
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Bear1949
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posted on March 29, 2005 08:42:01 PM new
And you could walk down to a friends house, stay hours and hours, then go home and no one had called the cops looking for you.
I can remember one neighbor kid I played with. His grandmother lived with them and she was always baking fresh rye bread. She didn't speak english and for a long time I wondered what those numbers tatooed on her arm were for. That woman had a sense of humor and kept us laughing for hours.
A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones that need the advice."
- Bill Cosby
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bizzycrocheting
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posted on March 30, 2005 05:44:02 AM new
Bear -- How about going trick or treating on Halloween with just a group of friends? And NOT having to wait until you got home to have your candy checked for needles, etc.? These days kids can't even go trick or treating anymore. It is too dangerous.
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classicrock000
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posted on March 30, 2005 06:06:21 AM new
I remember the night before halloween-"mischief" night.We use to gather up dog sh*t and put it in a paper bag-go to someones door and light the bag on fire.Then we would ring the door bell and hide across the street.When the guy opened up the door he saw the small fire and stamped it out with his feet and walk back in his house with dog sh*t on the bottom of his shoes.Not realizing it,he would track the dog sh*t all over his carpet.A good time was had by all!! AHH THE GOOD OLD DAYS
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My sex life isnt dead yet....but the buzzards are circling
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yellowstone
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posted on March 30, 2005 07:39:10 AM new
Mischeif, i'll tell you about mischeif. Dogsh!t in a bag on fire to us was a smalltime practical joke.
We used to put a line of very dry tumbleweeds across the road at a curve in the road with just a little gasoline on them late at night and when a car finally came along we'd light it when the car was about 20 or 30 feet away. There'd be a wall of fire and tires screetching. We'd all run away laughing.
Or we'd make a dummy with a pair of pants and shirt stuffed with leaves and a soccer ball for a head and we'd lay it in the street and just laugh when someone ran over it and stopped. They would think they were running over a real person.
Here's something better to do with dogsh!t. Get a large womens purse and fill the bottom with dogsh!t. Then fill it with cosmetics and womanly stuff and set it on a wall or sidewalk. Eventually someone will stop and get it and they will start to dig through it. Well, I don't have to tell you what happens next but it sure was funny to watch.
Ok one more, my favorite game was to play chase with the cops. In my neighborhood with the kids that I hung around with, it went without saying that whenever a cop would drive by we'd all run like we were guilty or something and try to get them to chase us. One time I had a cop chasing me and he finally caught me by the back of my shirt and he asked why I was running. I replied because you were chasing me, why were you chasing me. He replied because you were running. I told him, hey all this just looks like a huge misunderstanding to me, why don't we just forget the whole thing. He looked at me with a strange look on his face and all he could do was agree, so he let me go. We laughed about that one for weeks.
I miss the good old days too but I realise that some of the stuff we used to do as kids would land us in jail now. Kids these days can't have the same kind of mischevious fun like we did when we were young.
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quatermass
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posted on March 30, 2005 07:49:22 AM new
Right on Bear!!! The way pansytised people today talk, we never should have lived.
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classicrock000
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posted on March 30, 2005 09:44:21 AM new
"Ok one more, my favorite game was to play chase with the cops."
so you were that little bastard
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My sex life isnt dead yet....but the buzzards are circling
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twig125silver
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posted on March 30, 2005 04:13:29 PM new
classic-
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Libra63
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posted on March 30, 2005 04:22:43 PM new
We went out into the country and tipped over outhouses.
Did anyone play invisible rope? What about sandlot soft ball? Isn't it amazing how we could entertain ourselves and now they can't find anything to do...
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Libra63
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posted on March 30, 2005 04:29:05 PM new
Games like "Kick the Can", Ditch. And of course raiding gardens...
Classic that was difficult to do in our town with only 1 cop.
What age did every one quit doing trick or treating on Halloween?
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CBlev65252
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posted on March 30, 2005 04:38:00 PM new
Libra
I think I was around 12 or so. I see teens out all the time now. Some as old as 17 or 18. I feel sorry for the little ones.
I remember dodge ball (dangerous game, LOL), four square and jacks. I don't know if the kids play that anymore. Jump rope was fun, too. No video games or TV's in the bedroom. Black and white. I still remember when we got our first color TV. I think it was back in the early 70's. It was a huge console. No remotes. Gosh, you actually had to get up and cross the room to change the channel. We about wore the dial knob out.
Remember record players and 8-tracks? I still have a couple of my 8-tracks.
Cheryl
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classicrock000
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posted on March 30, 2005 05:55:44 PM new
"What age did every one quit doing trick or treating on Halloween?"
40
"Did anyone play invisible rope?"
Libra,was that were two people stood on each side of a dark road and when a car came along
each one was pretending they were pulling a rope across the road with each other? If thats the case yes-and the car usually ended up jamming on his brakes.
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My sex life isnt dead yet....but the buzzards
are circling
[ edited by classicrock000 on Mar 30, 2005 06:01 PM ]
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classicrock000
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posted on March 30, 2005 06:03:06 PM new
hey Cheryl-did you ever play "doctor"??
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My sex life isnt dead yet....but the buzzards are circling
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CBlev65252
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posted on March 30, 2005 06:12:35 PM new
Ha, ha, classic. I did play spin the bottle!
Cheryl
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classicrock000
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posted on March 30, 2005 06:16:09 PM new
oh yea I remember that and "post office"
I like post office better as you had your choice of who ya wanted to smooch-thank God no chick ever went "postal" on me
I see by that hedious laugh you KNOW what
"doctor" is<snicker>
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My sex life isnt dead yet....but the buzzards are circling
[ edited by classicrock000 on Mar 30, 2005 06:17 PM ]
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Libra63
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posted on March 30, 2005 06:17:44 PM new
Yes classic it was. But we had more than one on each side pulling. Many a car would stop, and ofcourse we ran. When we did trick or treat soaps or eats. if we didn't get a treat we always soaped. It didn't take much to humor us in those days. Now they probably rob stores.
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