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: 02-09-2007
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 3:16pm

For my birthday this year Tom took me to a nice high-end Japnese Hibachi Grill ... where they prepare the food in front of you and you sit at a grill table with groups of strangers ... I like those places ...


BUT ... when we entered there was a group of about 6 8-year old boys playing in the Water-fountain-wishing well ... snatching coins off the bottom ... Dad standing idly by .... Part of a birthday party for one of the boys ...


Then we went further into the restaurant ... and there was a grill table full of 8-9 year old girls ...


Sushi ... steak ... shrimp ... lobster???

 
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-15-2008
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 9:01pm

This brought back some memories.


There is a few things that was different. It could be because of the area we lived in.

  Mari
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-15-2008
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 9:21pm
What I remember is the five cent pop cycles and a chance to get a free stick. Where you could get a free pop cycle.

  Mari
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-14-2007
Fri, 03-06-2009 - 12:55am

Oh, Pin the tail in the donkey, I forgot about that! We also blew up balloons and sat on them to pop them.


I prefer the simple grammy grampy parties too as it's more comfortable for me, but the kids sure have had tons of fun at the theme parties too.


When I was a kid, all of my friends had simple parties like mine except for two kids. One's mom was a teacher and they'd invite every kid in the class and had wonderful parties outside with a loooooong table for everyone to sit at. They really didn't do anything extra, it just seemed that way because it was big. The other party


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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-12-2003
Fri, 03-06-2009 - 4:04am

It would have been more fun for those kids to make the sushi at home themselves and then eat it....

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-05-2006
Fri, 03-06-2009 - 9:36am

Oh Yes! the clamp on skates, used to tear off the soles of your shoes.


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iVillage Member
Registered: 01-18-2003
Fri, 03-06-2009 - 12:50pm

Oh yes, I remember tearing off the soles of our shoes...we would try to glue them back so that mom wouldn't find out....LOL


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iVillage Member
Registered: 01-05-2006
Fri, 03-06-2009 - 1:15pm

LOL, my dad would glue them back on for me.


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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-12-2003
Fri, 03-06-2009 - 2:59pm
Hi! I remember the clamp on skates they were fun,,, I skated quite a bit, right down the driveway etc...
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-18-2003
Fri, 03-06-2009 - 3:10pm

I bought my dgc hula hoops and they had a blast with them.....


Along with all the electronic games,

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