Does anyone remember these days?

Question

How Did We Ever Survive Our Childhood?

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.

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 sang the national anthem and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. 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 20, 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) there 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 duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

Answer 1

I am only 28 but I was raised that way. I found out about motorized lawn mowers at age 10, but my grandma wasn't having it. I had to deal with that rusted push mower. My 12 year old is getting a push mower for christmas to help him mow yards for money this next summer. Otherwise, he won't have enough money to buy his school supplies and soccer gear. I liked that screwed up society where kids actually had to find a friend, were disciplinedand actually had to live with disappointment instead of shooting up their schools. Respect was what they had for their elders and people didn't fear CPS banging on their doors because their kid didn't like the chores they were given.

Answer 2

Yes, and it's 'progress'. But the world has changed and now that we know better, we do better. Would like to know the source of your story, leave the url if you can.
Here's something my sister recently sent to me, since we are 'waxing nostalgic' - sorry, she didn't give a source, so I can't cite one -

"I grew up with practical parents who had been frightened by the Great Depression in the 1930's.
A mother, God love her, who washed aluminum foil after she cooked in it, then reused it. She was the original recycle queen, before they had a name for it, before it was fashionable, or politically correct...
A father who was happier getting old shoes fixed than buying new ones.
Their marriage was good, their dreams focused. Their best friends lived barely a wave away. I can see them now, Dad in trousers, tee shirt and a hat and Mom in a house dress, lawn mower in one hand, and dish-towel in the other.
It was the time for fixing things: a curtain rod, the kitchen radio, screen door, the oven door, the hem in a dress. Things we keep.
It was a way of life, and sometimes it made me crazy. All that repairing, eating, renewing -- I wanted just once to be wasteful.
Waste meant affluence. Throwing things away meant you knew there'd always be more.
But then my father died, and on that beautiful spring day, I was struck with the pain of learning that sometimes there isn't any more.
Sometimes, what we care about most gets all used up and goes away...never to return.
So... While we have it... it's best we love it... And care for it... And fix it when it's broken... And heal it when it's sick.
This is true... For marriage... And old cars... And children with bad report cards.... And dogs and cats with bad hips... And aging parents.. And grandparents. We keep them because they are worth it, because we are worth it.
Some things we keep. Like a best friend that moved away or a classmate we grew up with.
There are just some things that make life important, like people we know who are special... And so, we keep them close!"

Answer 3

LMAO @ "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 still does it and we won't eat it now that we have our own kids :p

Things were so much greater back then... I was just thinking about being able to buy a pack of smokes at the corner store for my "mom" with a note for three dollars no questions asked, and that ice cream for the "Dickie-Dee" only cost a quarter a piece LOL

Answer 4

Right on!

And, skipping school was because you were really sick with something but going to the doctor also meant that you really had something to go there for too.

A mom was someone that was there at home with you as a child, was there when you left for school in the morning and still there when you got back from school in the afternoon. She was also there when the nurse had to call her because you got sick in school. Now you don't even know if she is your mom or the lady you see all day long and half the night is because that lady is the one that gets you from school when you are sick and takes you back to her place to care for you.

Girls were content to play with dolls, play dress up and learn to sew and cook and they had lots of fun with it too. Now they play with the boys and play undress and the majoriety of them cannot even sew on a button or even boil watter successfully.

Boys had a really good time delivering newspapers and playing with the dog and swinging in the tire that hung from the tree in the back yard. Now they deliver drugs to their buddies and pets are something to abuse and neglect and they 'swing' with all the chicks on the streets after curfew.

When you graduated from school you really knew how to read and write well and do arithmetic and you learned how to solve all the puzzles that solved every question. Now all the answers to solving a puzzle are already done for them and they just bring them up on a computer. They can't even do simple basic math without help and they don't know their head from a whole in the ground. Memory is out the window and when you ask them a simple logic question they have to turn on their computer to get the answer.

Answer 5

I agree with all except:
"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."

...that's not only gross, it's dangerous.

Also, I don't use bleach or any chemicals. Whatever happened to cleaning with vinegar and lemon? My grandmother has ALWAYS done this. People now days think everything has to have a crap-load of chemicals to clean ( i.e. Lysol, Clorox, etc).

Answer 6

Yep those were the days!! All of us kids got thrown in the "way back" of the station wagon with a blanket and some toys and had a blast!!!

I try to give my kids as much of the good old days as I can. I homeschool and yep they have to actually DO something before they are praised....and if they get hurt doing something stupid, the get told "I bet ya won't do THAT again will ya??"

Mindi

Answer 7

Yea I remember those days, but just because it didn't happen to us didn't mean it didn't happen to others! It obviously happened that's how they got the idea that it was dangerous!The only thing I really agree on is the computer and video games I really wish kids these days would go outside, but with supervision God forbid someone steal our kids out of the backyard. It does happen! It did seem like the good old days but thank goodness we now know better!

Answer 8

Well said. I wish I could bring my children up during those times. It was a lot more fun then, than now. Technology is now teaching our kids what they could learn on their own by playing. I think technology has done more harm to families now then ever before. I would give up anything to have my children experience life before this technology boom, let them know that a swat on the behind is not child abuse, and that getting hurt does not mean you need to sue. Life was so much easier back then without all this! Thanks for bringing back the memories!!!

Answer 9

And other thing...remember if you were offered money for doing a chore you would jump at the chance ,now kids look at you like your stupid for asking them to cut the grass, take out the trash , feed the dog's ,etc...So lazy that even money doesn't get them to do anything .

How about your parents telling you not to do something and now you find yourself telling your kids the very same thing

Answer 10

I remember going to the neighbor's house to play (unsupervised sometimes gasp!) and not being expected to be home till dark. I also remember riding my bike WITHOUT A HELMET AND KNEEPADS. My friends used to climb trees (I was too scared) but when was the last time you saw a kid climbing a tree these days? I also used to have a lemonade stand in the summer, haven't seen one of those in forever.