Our Childhood in Black and White... [Archive] - Talk of The Villages Florida

Donna

02-01-2008, 08:38 PM

Black and White
(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, 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 $149 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 Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front step, 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.

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redwitch

02-02-2008, 12:03 AM

Don't forget that almost everyone had the right to swat us kids if we misbehaved. No need to wait for Mom to do it (of course, she'd do it, too, as soon as the swatter told her what we were up to.

Now a true story: Was living in Kentucky, about age 10, had to take the school bus. I was notorious for missing the bus home. It was about a 5-mile walk but someone would usually stop and give me a ride home. My mother put out the word that I needed to learn a lesson. So, here I was walking home from school, carrying a French horn and my books (and no backpacks back then). Our next-door neighbor stopped, I opened the door to jump in, she said no, just give me the horn so you don't damage the case and, then, "Happy walking!" Oh, did I mention it was winter and cold and there was snow on the ground and since I was a girl, I couldn't wear pants. Guess who never missed the bus home again?

Wonder how the scenario on this would play out today: First, the bus would have to wait for me -- too dangerous to walk home alone. Second, if I did have to walk, no one would stop to give me a ride for fear of being accused of child molestation. I'd still be late and expect the world to wait for me. Definitely think the old way was better!