levnubhin

iTrader: (30)

I got this in an email and wanted to share it. I think anyone over 40 would enjoy it.


Black and White
(Under age 40? You won't understand.) You could hardly see for all the snow, Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.
Pull a chair up to the TV set,
'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 in a brown paper bag, not in ice-pack c oolers, 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 hav e 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 v acant 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 our 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 o ff, 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 social 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 and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best.

I think I can honestly say that growing up in the 80's was much the same.
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olderguy

iTrader: (19)

Sending this to some of my "older" friends. The late 40's thru early 50's were my childhood. Every time I see the Christmas Story and hear Gene Shepard, it takes me back.

boardboy330

iTrader: (5)

My parents are from West Virginia (let the jokes ensue). Alot of the items you mentioned are still in practice today. I see a HUGE difference from then until now - and I was born in 1983!!

Louis

Older firends? Who might that be? Is there anyone older?

Good post levnubhin - yeah it was like that for sure. I remember getting my butt kicked from a kid down the street, but as soon as I started to win by pinning him to the ground, my dad pulled me off. The kid got a quarter and I got a dime. I'm sure there was a lesson in there somewhere

hustler

iTrader: (6)

There was a 5-acre lot next to the house. I had a 50cc 4-wheeler when I was 5, it was awesome. The land owners had a bobcat and we made a few jumps so I could tak ethe 80cc RM through its paces at age 12. My dad would fire up the big-block supercomp Vette and "tune" it up and down the 4-lane street in front of the house, the police would park and watch. Mom and Dad (3rd time they married, lol) would trailer the Camaro to "Regal Row" for the street races. The police would ask you nicely to put it back on the trailer and go to the other side of the highway and run in that city.

Now there's a mini-development in that field and the police came by when I fired up my car for the first time with the 3" exhaust at 1 in the afternoon.

mad0953

iTrader: (1)

I still have a jones for Annette.

Scuba_Steve

iTrader: (4)

Ohhh, the number of times I held her picture in one hand

Rafa

iTrader: (22)

Brigitte Bardot on the other side of the pond!

dpexp

iTrader: (6)

South Florida was a kids paradise in the 70s. I enjoyed it very much. Now not so much.

cueball1

iTrader: (13)

Pretty amazing the difference in parenting and experiences looking at the last 3 or 4 generations. I walked the mile to school alone from the time I was 7 years old. I rode my bike around town from the time I was 10. I got a bb gun at 6, a 22 at 10 and a shotgun at 12. While my parents were likely the most affluent of my circle of friends I got 2nd hand tonka trucks for Christmas and loved them. Kids were the last to eat, not the 1st. Kids were swatted in public and no one hissed that someone should call the police. I didn't have to wear a helmet, elbow and knee pads to ride a skateboard or bike. The playground had swings, slides, rings, etc on top of concrete or blacktop. We played games that actually had winners and losers. We made stuff up and used what was available. A stick for a gun was just fine for cops and robbers.

Our overprotective, paranoid, kids are the center of the universe, culture is raising a bunch of self centered weinies. The best way to learn not to touch the stove is to touch the stove! Your hand is burnt, you aren't going to do it again. By making everything "safe" you don't learn what your limits are. Does anyone really think we are creating better people with the current "it's all about the kids" attitude.

Gee can you tell you hit a sore spot with me?!?

It drives me nuts going down the freeway and seeing every other SUV or minivan with the tv's going and the kids ignoring the tv to play whatever video game is in their hand. The constant stimulation and entertainment kids get now is not helpful. Shove them outside and tell them to go play. They'll look at you like you told them to eat a turd.

God I'm crotchety already and I'm only 43.

l_bader

Annette was "too nice"... I was more of a Julie Newmar fan; long legs, narrow waist and !

- L

kenzo42

iTrader: (6)

I watched a twilight zone a couple weeks back w/ Julie Newmar. Man was she hot when she was young.

I was pretty awestuck, looked up the Twilight Zone episode, and sure enough it turned out to be her. The Inet stalking ensued shortly after.

I was saddened to see how much people change w/ the years; probably b/c I'm going to be 30 in a month.

naarleven

iTrader: (2)

Was also coke paradise. SoFL was easily the most dangerous place in the nation in the late 70's early 80's.

gman3

Maryanne on Gilligans Island

harleybutter

iTrader: (34)

Certainly saw a difference in the way kids were raised in my years of restaurant management. From the kids eating with their parents to those "kids" I managed on a daily basis. Just cannot figure where and why things changed. Those mis-managed kids we see today, belong to kids I went to school with that the school disciplined with a few swats on the ***... We came out fine... why the change...

dpexp

iTrader: (6)

It wasnt dangerous in my neighborhood. Maybe you've seen scarface too many times.

fmowry

iTrader: (8)

cueball1,
You're my brother from another mother. I'm almost 41 and share those experiences almost exactly. My 5 year old gets a little bit of time playing video games and better go outside when it's nice to rid her bike. She doesn't get to carry a video game to a restaurant, watch 10 hours of TV a day, or get to live in a protective bubble. She eats what we put on the table for dinner. She has to clean up her play room and has chores that she has to do to earn her fun. She gets to cut her own dinner with a knife.

Frank

cueball1

iTrader: (13)

Frank,

How did I know that you'd be raising kids right?!?

I have 2 brothers-in-law with kids. One family is metro area. TV, unlimited internet access, video games, texting, over protective, kids 1st attitude. The other is more rural, spent several years teaching in Africa, read books, chores and responsibilities, limited internet and that only recently. Not hard to guess which family has the problem kids and which one has raised respectful, fun good kids.

Of course it's easy for me to be critical. My wife and I made the choice not to reproduce.

naarleven

iTrader: (2)

I've seen documentaries and read statistics on the area.

Something like 900 people were murdered in Miami in 1981. Those are similar numbers to U.S. soldier deaths in Iraq by year.

Brought from the hallowed antiquity of Time magazine...

Trouble in Paradise - TIME

Toddcod

iTrader: (8)

I'm only 30. but I'm from the country, we didn't get supended for fighting. We got licks and went back to class. And we had respect for the guy we just fought, and usually became friends. Or would atleast get along.

Now kids want to shoot someone with no self control.

Nothing creates self control like knowing you are going to get a switch if you do bad.

Dr. Spak even admitted he was wronge.

We need to campain for the rights to raise our kids right again.

Now your kid has no self control and will go to jail for doing something stupid, or just not hold a job, with the ideal raising methods.