Over 40

[FLIPPER]

Over 40


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 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 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
spanked there and then we got 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

 

[DixieLady]

Flipper,
Here, Here. I remember them days too
Thanks for the stroll down memory lane

 

[ELKCHSR]

That was great Brian, those were the days...

Thanks for the read...

 

[Whiskers]

Thanks and your right. My brother Matt climbed up the drain pipe (them big ol cast iron ones) on the side of the school to the second story, fell landed on the concrete. We thought he was dead, they took him to the hospital, found out nothing was broken, that he was just bruised up. When he got home he got a licking (back then thats what we called a spanking, but a licking was a lot harder than a spanking). Nobody even thought to sue the school for not having the drain pipe enclosed.

 

[Curly]

I remember those days...........and I'm not even 40 yet. Close enough to 40 though, I guess. Thanks for reminding me.

 

[Gunner46]

When ya got home from school there were two "ya better damn well be home " times. Dinner and when the street lights came on. Otherwise, stay outta the house.

In winter you expcetced to get yer car hit in a barrage of snowballs. Hell, it was kids havin' fun, not dysfunctional delenquents expressing anti social hostile expression.

$3 got yer full acre lawn cut, trimmed, and edged. I sweated, Hard!

I rode my $19 Sears bike 10 miles to my Uncle's farm, with my 20ga single shot Stevens shotgun across the handlebars, to rabbit hunt, at the ripe old age of 12, BY MYSELF, and nobody thought anything about it. As long as I was home for dinner, then get the hell outta the house till the streetlights come on.

My Dad made me shot an 03A3, several times, when I was 8. "Makes ya Tuff". Hurt like hell. But, Yeah, it did.

I got Spanked until I was 13, then I literally got kicked in the A$$ til I went into the Marines. Never killed my parents in the middle of the night, cuz of abuse. They were just keeping me straight.

Screw up in school? Swats !! And then Dad had more waiting when I got home. Didn't screw up too often!

A different world now, but that doesn't mean it can't a better one. Just remember.

 

[Hunterman]

Yeah I remember those days hump Summer time was spent fishing, and I mean all summer long down on the coasthump Fall and winter was football time and spring was the trout season opennerhump

You know just the other day, Orca Lover told me that her boyfriends folks had to milk one of thier goats because she had too much milkhump When I asked her what they did with it, she said that they just poured it down the drain Man thats some of the bestest milk there is|oo Ya just can't get no fresher stuff than that|oo Raw milk, fresh cream, home made butter????
Told her to tell them the next time that happens to call me and I'll come and get ithump Utter hair and all..

Hunterman(Tony)