DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN...? All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?
It took five minutes for the TV warm up?
Nearly everyone ' s Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?
When a quarter was a decent allowance?
You 'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?
Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?
All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair
done every day and wore high heels?
You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without
asking, all for free, every time?
And you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot?
Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box?
It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real
restaurant with your parents?
They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed. . and they did?
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When a 57 Chevy was everyone ' s dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay
rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady?
No one ever asked where the car keys were
because they were always in the car,
in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?
Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no
one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?
And with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once, you could slip
back in time and savor the slower pace,and share it with the children of
today?
When being sent to the principal's office was nothing
compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?
Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by
shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much
bigger threat! But we survived because their love was greater than the
threat.
Send this on to someone who can still remember
Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Doody and the Peanut Gallery, The Lone Ranger,
The Shadow Knows,
Nellie Bell , Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk.
I am sharing this with you today because it ended with a double dog dare to
pass it on. To remember what a double dog dare is, read on. And remember
that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too
young to care.
How many of these do you remember?
Candy cigarettes
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Newsreels before the movie
P.F Fliers
Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(Raymond 4-601). And Party lines!
Howdy Doody
Hi-Fi's
45 RPM records
78 RPM records!
Green Stamps
Metal ice cubes trays with levers
Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Studebakers
Washtub wringers
Erector Sets
15 cent McDonald hamburgers
5 cent packs of baseball cards - with that awful pink slab of bubble gum.
Penny candy
25 cent a gallon gasoline
Do you remember a time when...
'Race issue' meant arguing about who ran the fastest?
Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening?
The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was 'cooties' ?
Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot?
'Oly-oly-oxen-free ' made perfect sense?
Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?
The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team?
Baseball cards in the spokes,
Transformed any bike into a motorcycle?
Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin?
Water balloons were the ultimate weapon?
If you can remember most or all of these,
then you have lived!!!!!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do You Remember?....TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!!
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while
they were pregnant.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and
didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby
cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and
when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we
took hitchhiking.
As infants &children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster
seats, seat belts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special
treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NOONE
actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-aid made
with sugar, but we weren't overweight because,
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were
back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day.And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride
down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes After running into
the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at
all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no
surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computer! s, no
Internet or chat rooms.......
WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
lawsuits from these accidents.
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in
us forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks
and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not
put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or
rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who
didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!
These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem
solvers and inventors ever!
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW
TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
If YOU are one of themCONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow
up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of
our lives for our own good.
While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how
brave (and lucky) their parents were.
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't
it?!
The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:
"With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding,
severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another,
and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this
is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?"
For those that prefer to think that God is not watching over us...go
ahead and delete this.
For the rest of us...pass this ON!
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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 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 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 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.
Pass this to someone (or not) and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best. Nothing good or bad will happen to you as a result, but it might put a smile on someone else's face.
