Otp old times
in [Arthritis]
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From: Harvey R. Stone on 3 Aug 2008 14:15 Subject: Remembering our childhood in the 40's and 50's: Our Childhood, in Black and White before color tv. Got these memories from a friend and replied back with the added comments: You got that right. We always played ball in a vacant lot or field. No one ever thought to sue the owner if we got hurt or broke a leg stepping in a hole. We played football across the front lawn of 4 houses. Nobody thought their lawns were more important than the children in the neighborhood. Remember when dogs ran free and followed you to the store or to school. Most people didn't care if they crapped on their lawns (okay a few did---and he was the neighborhood grump). I know kids who got bit by dogs (it happened every now and then especially if you were foolish enough to try to break up a dogfight). Parents took them to the doctor but not to an attorney. Typically the dog's owner would offer to pay the doctor bill. The only real concern was that the dog had a rabies shot. And bike helmets?! How many kids do you know that were killed riding one speed bikes by hitting their head falling off a bike. Okay, if you are a 10 speed road racer maybe so, but really riding with training wheels and a helmet. More important would be for boys to wear cups when riding a bike. I remember hitting walls and sliding off seat onto the crossbar---now that hurt!!! ----- Original Message ----- FromSent: Subject: Fw: Our Childhood, in Black and White I remember those days. He forgot to mention that the whole family would sit around and listen to the "Grand Ole Opry" on the radio before the TV came along. db Our Childhood, in Black and White. Whoever wrote this, described our childhood to a "T." If you're under the age of 40, you won't understand. Some of the first TV reception was so bad, you could hardly see the shows for all the snow and static. We'd spread the 'rabbit ears' as far as they go, even add 'tin foil' to the ends. Pull a chair up to the front of the TV set to hear: '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, put in a brown paper bag, not in ice-pack coolers. I can't remember anyone or myself getting e-coli. Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake, instead of a pristine pool, talk about boring. There were 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, that we only wore in gym class, 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, sang the National Anthem, Pledged allegiance to our flag and had after school detention, if we were caught causing trouble. We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a starched white hat and uniform. 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, Wii, or 270 digital TV cable stations. We didn't know what bored meant then. Oh yeah? Where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have died! 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. We liked it better, because it didn't sting like iodine did. And, then we got our butt spanked. Now - it's a 4-hour trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of antibiotics. After we get home, Mom calls the family attorney, to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly dangerous pile of gravel where kids can have access to it. We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either, because if we did, we got spanked there. THEN - we got spanked again when we got home. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his dumb tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know, she could have owned our house, if she would have sued my parents. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him on the butt, 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, we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! Tell me - how did we ever survive? This is for all of us who remember this era and think of it fondly, and to all who didn't. I'm sorry for what you missed out on. I wouldn't trade it for anything. Pass this to along someone who remembers these 'good old days,' and will get a smile from this. And, to anyone else who didn't experience this time, to show them that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best. |