It was the best of times, it was the worst of times (But really the best) - Big Big Forums

redrig · 03-11-2003, 02:43 PM

This was forwarded to me in an email. I spent a lot of time getting all those little >'s out of this so you'd better enjoy it!

It's hard to believe we have been able to live this long....
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, but I can't remember getting E-coli.

As children we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

Our baby cribs, toys and rooms were painted with bright colored lead based paint. We often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and
when we rode our bikes we had no helmets.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us all day.

We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or my BB gun was not available.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never overweight; we were always outside playing.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team.Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.

Some students weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard so they
failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem solvers. We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), 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.

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the
halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention for the next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

I can't understand it. Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did give
us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the
sniffles. 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, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations.

I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the
denial of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant lot, built forts out of branches
and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger. What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot? He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.

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 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 (physical abuse) here too... and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks
(remember why Tonka trucks were made tough...it wasn't so that they could take the rough Berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure
that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.

Summers were spent behind the push lawn mower and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive.

How sick were my parents! Of course, my parents weren't the only psychos.
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, what we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we survive?
P.S. We really grew up in the BEST times!!!!!

MommyG3 · 03-11-2003, 03:23 PM

AIN'T THAT THE TRUTH!!!

lpelham · 03-11-2003, 03:36 PM

I forwarded this to several friends when I saw it yesterday. I still have one of the dishes from my china set - real china! I also remember the toy - I think it was called the clacker or something - the two glass-like balls on the string that you tried to hit together? That was great until someone got hurt and they quit making it. Now they make them and they are plastic - which sucks :-)

And the real wire slinkys? Remember those? Mine were only good for about a week because somehow the wire got bent and it would never work again :-)

Libby

tiggerzme2 · 03-11-2003, 03:57 PM

I rember clackers! I still have my orginal pair! My brother used to have great big bruises on his fore arms from those things but he was the best on our block with them! He still has his also. Mine are perfect but his has big chips out of them. He can still make them go where as I never really could....but I still have mine

yep those were the days!

rugratsX2 · 03-11-2003, 04:44 PM

LOL Every time I try to tell my parents what to do with my girls (ie: Babies sleep on their backs now) My dad rolls his eyes and says "It's a wonder you kids ever made it!' LOL It really was a better time to grow up, IMO.
And I could have sworn they were called "Ker-Bangers"... I remember giving my brother quite the egg on his head with mine! You suppose the statute of limitations has run out on his lawsuit???

harlow · 03-11-2003, 05:11 PM

OMG - I so remember eating raw hamburger! Maybe that is why I hate red meat now! But back then it seemed so good! EWWWWW!!!! I didn't play on gravel piles but I grew up in a neighborhood that was slowly developing so we played on huge dirt mounts and had mud fights all of the time! Now I think I would freak if I caught my boys doing that! I think I was allowed at the age of 5 to go to friends houses and the corner store all by myself - now I don't even allow my kids to take their hands off the shopping cart while in a store!

schsa · 03-11-2003, 06:35 PM

We made houses out of the leaves that fell from the trees. Not real houses but we determined where the walls would go and that some of the piles were beds. And we climbed trees and fell out of them. It was important to get to school 15 minutes early so you could play circle ball on the play ground. Or kick ball. And everyone had jacks.

ttistin · 03-11-2003, 06:47 PM

ahh the good ol days

LOL

lpelham · 03-11-2003, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by schsa
We made houses out of the leaves that fell from the trees. Not real houses but we determined where the walls would go and that some of the piles were beds. And we climbed trees and fell out of them. It was important to get to school 15 minutes early so you could play circle ball on the play ground. Or kick ball. And everyone had jacks.

My grandfather would go fishing quite a bit and built a frame to put leaves in. Or at least my cousins and I though it was just a frame to put leaves in. Turns out, after we had been diving in the leaves for about 30 minutes, it was really his worm bed to produce worms for fishing. That thought still grosses me out, but your leaf story reminded me of it :-)

Libby

moe265 · 03-11-2003, 10:54 PM

LOL!! Good ole monkey blood (mercurochrome) the absolute cure all stayed on for days! LOL Yep those were the days!!

Donnagg123 · 03-12-2003, 12:47 AM

Quote:

It's hard to believe we have been able to live this long....
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, but I can't remember getting E-coli.

The reason that "back in the good ole days" people were able to do most of this and you can't today wasn't because E-coli and salmonella was not there, it is because we have killed our immune systems with the overabuse of antibiotics. People have a virus and instead of realizing that you cannot cure a virus with antibiotics you just have to wait it out, they demand doctors give them something or doctors just automatically give antibiotics. Plus our cows are pumped full of them so when we eat meat we are getting antibiotics. Also, by using antibacterial everything we have killed off the less harmful versions of bacteria leaving the stronger ones to survive. I'm sorry, didn't mean to hijack your thread with a pet peeve of mine so I'll get off my soapbox now.