The Better Days...

by Blueblades 12 Replies latest jw friends

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  Blueblades

  My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cuting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't get food poisoning. My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat a bite 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 anybody 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. ( PHY. ED. )...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 refelectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must of 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 Athem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must of had horribly damaged psyches.

  What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything, and she could even give you an aspirin for a headache or fever.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 the sterilization Kit when I got that Bee sting? I could of been killed!

  We played 'king of the Hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, 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 butts 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 butts spanked there and then we got butted spanked again when we got home. I remember 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 of owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof.

  It was a neighborhood run amok. 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 for those who didn't---sorry for what you missed. I wouldn't trade it for anything. Life's most simple pleasures are very often the best!

  From Karen Wise.

  Blueblades ( For those over 40 )
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  tetrapod.sapien

  LOL!!

  BB,

  ( For those over 40 )

  i am 28, and i it.

  my childhood was like that.

  when i discovered porn, it wasn't freaking online highspeed ADSL streaming. i found an old water logged porn mag that some farmer hucked out of his truck window into the ditch that i carefully dried out for a week under the porch before i turned the pages.

  TS
• 

  wombat

  Blueblades....Ah..They were the innocent days. Never to be regained.

  Don't blame the lawyers. It's our greed.

  Would you sue if you slipped on a spilt Mac?
• 

  poppers

  Thanks for that Blueblades - I agree. I tell kids today about playing "work-up" and "500" and they look completely puzzled (both are baseball type games when you don't have enough kids for 2 teams for a regular game); they've got to be part of an organized team with uniforms and practice schedules. We neighborhood kids "appropriated" a vacant lot and with push mowers and developed our own ballfield. We made a backstop out of 2 X 4s and chicken wire. Our thirst got quenched from the garden hose from a house across the street. In left field where the weeds grew tall we dug "tornado" shelters - 4 foot deep holes in the ground, big enough for one person. More than once when playing a baseball games, the left fielder would completely disappear as he inadverdently stepped into one while attempting to catch a deep flyball.
  
  On the same lot we created a circus with different acts, one a sharpshooter with a BB gun (I stood with an 8" straw in my mouth while the neighbor kid would shoot it out of my mouth from 30 feet away! And he never missed). We invented games based on Japanese horror movies we saw on TV - "Rhodan" comes to mind, which required the use of the neighbor's large lot, as well as neighboring roof tops. The lady who own the house would bring us homemade cookies and only asked that we didn't ruin her flowers. We made our own fun - today the kids have to have the latest in electronic games, DVD and CD players, and iPods to keep their minds full of manufactured noise.
  
  Our local swimming pool was the most popular in the county - it was a stream that got dammed up during the summer. It had a "deep" end with high and love dives, a huge slide, and at the dam's entrance, which was infested with blood suckers, we put up a basketball hoop. It also had a "shallow" end with a small diving platform and smaller slide. Twice a year it had to be weeded out by hand by the local caretaker, who would wade through the pool swinging a big sythe to and fro. What torture it was waiting for that to be done. Sometimes a local youth who was suffering from temporary insanity and wished to actually bathe, brought a bar of soap to use while in the pool. Today, almost no one goes there anymore, favoring instead the artificial pools where you have to shower before and after swimming.
  
  Those of us who were lucky enough had BB and pellet guns. We could roam the neighborhood plinking away at birds, bottles, and tin cans that were laying around. Nobody called the police unless a window somehow got broken, or an errant BB ricocheted off something and hit someone causing real harm. The really adventuresome, like me, made homemade blowguns out of aluminum tubing we stole from the local TV antenne dealership, or homemade firecrackers and rockets. Today, if someone were to do either there would be a SWAT squad called.
  
  For an outstanding return to yesteryear as experienced in my era (late 50s and 60s) and state, Wisconsin, read The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked. Simply wonderful.
  
  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812966589/sr=1-1/qid=1139161802/ref=sr_1_1/104-7155561-4394350?%5Fencoding=UTF8
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  greendawn

  It helps out commerce all these changes in lifestyle. In the past people would eat plenty of butter, eggs, cheese, and meat and not worry about cholesterol, and it now seems that was the healtier diet. Then they would go for processed vegetable fats which are thought now to be the real artery cloggers. Meanwhile pharmaceutical companies make a fortune out of selling useless and dangerous cholesterol lowering drugs.
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  Kaput

  i found an old water logged porn mag that some farmer hucked out of his truck window into the ditch that i carefully dried out for a week under the porch before i turned the pages.

  Yes, yes, go on.......
• 

  calico

  We played 'king of the Hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, 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 butts spanked!

  That orange stuff was the miracle cure-all! Remember baby aspirin? Now babies can't have it!

  We used to make ramps out of planks of wood and go flying over the ditch with our bikes! Swim in the ditches when they were flooded--had our own baseball diamond with backstop--camp out in an old chicken house, and one of my favorites--make blanket tents over the clothesline!
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  Super_Becka

  Hehehe, I'm 20 years old and I still remember most of this stuff!!

  My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cuting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't get food poisoning.

  Yup, and my mom even had an old, worn wooden cutting board - people shudder now at the thought of using a wooden cutting board for raw meat, they can't soak it in bleach like they can with a plastic board.

  a pager was the school PA. system. We all took gym, not PE. ( PHY. ED. )...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 refelectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must of 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.

  Hehehe, love that school PA system. I don't remember Keds, though, I've only seen those in the movies. When I was younger, everyone had a pair of LA Gear high-tops, anyone else remember those?? And I didn't even hear the term "phys. ed" until I was a teenager, and when I did, I was horribly confused by it - I've always called it "gym class", thanks, and I still do. And no, there was no way to fail gym class, all you had to do was show up!!

  Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the National Athem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must of had horribly damaged psyches.

  We had to stand for "O Canada" and the Lord's Prayer, and some responsive prayers from our school's prayer books every morning, and I never thought it was weird. What was weird was when there were two JW kids in my class (only briefly, they left after a week or so) and one in my brother's class (nobody knew him very well, he had no friends) who would step out of the classroom when the national anthem and prayers were being done over the PA system. Why did they bother going out into the hallway, anyway?? There were speakers out there, too!!

  we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48 - cent bottle of Mercurochrome ( Kids liked it better because it did not sting like iodine did.

  OK, now I'm jealous, my mom always used peroxide and iodine when I managed to hurt myself, and that stuff stung like a sonofabitch!! Where was this fancy no-sting stuff when I was a kid?! And the only thing worse was when the bandages had to come back off - Mom would just tear them off, no being gentle, no soaking them off slowly, it was quick and painful, but it worked!!

  I also grew up in time of VCRs and the original Nintendo system, you know, with the little controllers with the red and black buttons and the Super Mario Bros. games (didn't you all just want to shoot that dog from "Duck Hunt"??). We had basic cable, but that was it, just about 25 channels, most of which were boring American channels. We had an old TV that didn't have a remote control, we had one of those old pop-top VCRs with a remote control that you had to plug in, and we had a car with no air conditioning or power windows. I didn't wear a bicycle helmet, though I fell off my bike a lot. When I went to the school library, there was a card catalogue, remember those?? Drawers filled with cards with the information and call numbers for books by topic, no fancy computer systems. Imagine how shocked I was when I switched schools as a teenager and they had computers instead of card catalogues!!

  Wow, now I feel old!!

  Anyone else have any fun stories from when they were younger??

  -Becka :)
• 

  LuckyNun

  I have to agree with some of it, but there have been improvements. If my son had been born even twenty years ago, he would have been left to rot in the Special Ed class by the school. Instead, he was diagnosed early and we were able to get support for when he started school, and now he's in advanced math and gets help with reading. Back when I was a kid, you couldn't be Gifted and Special Ed at the same time.
  
  Also, there was a LOT of child abuse and sexual abuse that never was reported because it was too shameful. I'm glad this is no longer a taboo subject. My parents and many of my friends parents were beaten and sexually abused by friends and relatives and could never tell anyone, so they suffered and thought it was their fault.
  
  I don't miss separate White and Colored sections, or women requiring their husbands signature to withdraw money from their own account, either. I don't miss police looking the other way when a guy beats his wife.
  
  They may have been simpler days, but they were not better, in my opinion.
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  evita

  When I was 9 I cooked dinner regularly for my family. I ate lots of raw meatloaf and cookie dough with raw eggs. Used one cutting board for everything.
  We never worried about what we ate. The hamburger was loaded with fat, mayo in everything, lots of bread and butter. When you invited people for dinner you had a big pot of spaghetti and everyone ate everything. We did have some vegetarian friends but they were considered extreme.
  We lived near a river and went swimming there regularly with no adults to supervise. I'm surprised we didn't drown as we did many dangerous things.
  We never wore seatbelts in the car and often rode in the back of pickup trucks. My dad took me for rides on his motorcycle with no helmets. I never wore a helmet when riding my bike, even when flying down hills, feet off pedals.
  When I was 8, I walked to school and the library alone. This was in San Francisco in 1967 during the "summer of love". My sister was 7 and went regularly to Golden Gate Park alone to play, or took our 5 year old brother.
  It really was a different time.