Ric
11-07-2008, 01:15 AM
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 did not 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 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 m any 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.
:old:
(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 did not 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 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 m any 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.
:old: