Caligula
11-28-05, 03:54 PM
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.
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 our butt spanked here too
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 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!!
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.
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 our butt spanked here too
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 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!!