Childhood in Black & White.......

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-14-2007
Childhood in Black & White.......
28
Wed, 03-04-2009 - 11:08pm

We've heard this stuff before, but this is a version I had not heard before.
Makes ya wonder how we got through it and lived to tell of 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 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 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 amock.  

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  didn't need 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! 
How did we ever survive?  

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED 
THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, I'M 
SORRY FOR  WHAT YOU MISSED. I 
WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING.  


~~Donna~~
 


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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-24-2000
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 6:38am

Ahhhh....I soooo agree....those were the good times !

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-12-2003
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 8:15am

I loved it,

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-05-2006
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 8:29am

Great post, thanks for sharing and bringing back great memories.


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iVillage Member
Registered: 12-12-1997
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 9:13am

Yep, it's like I have often said, we Baby Boomers shouldn't be alive, considering all the dangers we lived with every day. We played with no helmets, knee pads or constant parental supervision and our cars didn't have seat belts.


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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-14-2007
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 10:28am

How about Birthday Parties?!! My mom used to bake me a cake and put it outside..my bday is in June..on a table in the yard. The neighborhood kids would show up and I don't even know if Mom invited them or not, they were just there because they were always around. They'd sing Happy Birthday, we'd eat cake and run around playing for awhile before going on with our usual fun stuff of the day. No one brought gifts for no one had any money and we never expected or thought about gifts except from Mom & Dad and maybe Grandma and our Godparents.


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iVillage Member
Registered: 02-09-2007
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 1:07pm

Amen to ALLLLLL of that ... what the heck happened and how can we get it back????


 
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-18-2003
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 2:36pm

Thanks Donna....fun to read and remember those carefree days...


My sister and I were just talking about skating and using a skate key....and she still has the key....LOL

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-12-2003
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 2:58pm

oh ann, I can not get the picture of those kids getting cut in half out of my head...

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-12-2003
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 3:04pm

I hate theme parties... I just don't like the keep up with the Jones..

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-12-2003
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 3:06pm
We have to start bringing up our kids to like a more simple life,, so then they in turn will teach their kids to enjoy a simpler life etc etc...

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