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: 03-14-2007
Fri, 03-06-2009 - 11:07pm

My grands like hopscotch and hula hoops too. I let them make hopscotch..ummm..boards or grids or you KWIM..on my driveway. They also fill the whole driveway with huge art work with colored sidewalk chalk.


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iVillage Member
Registered: 01-18-2003
Sat, 03-07-2009 - 1:25pm

Yes I do remember the ballerina slippers...How about the saddle shoes? Mom loved them because they were well worth the price....they never wore out....LOL


shoesSearssaddle.gif saddle shoes ad image by flieonthewal

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-14-2007
Sat, 03-07-2009 - 2:55pm

Oh, yes, saddle shoes. Some of them had a piece that went around the back and there was as short strap with a buckle on the back. That's the kind I had, the buckle kind. They came in white with black, brown or red. I think I had black/white. Mom made me keep them polished too and wash the shoestrings, but I didn't mind for they always looked clean.


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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-17-2007
Sat, 03-07-2009 - 3:29pm

Oh I remember my playmate having ballerina slippers - I was so envious of her - I asked my mom but she refused.


Hey Donna, I wanted to answer this on the weekend, because I love these kinds of posts and didn't want to rush my answers.

Granny to Caleb and Scotia

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-17-2007
Sat, 03-07-2009 - 3:33pm
My saddle shoes were white with navy - I didn't like the black ones and I don't remember that piece around the heel.

Granny to Caleb and Scotia

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-12-2003
Sat, 03-07-2009 - 5:28pm

Oh I loved saddle shoes... mine were

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-14-2007
Sat, 03-07-2009 - 11:30pm

I can relate to lots of those things too, fun to think about for sure!


So, Rusty, you've been chasing the boys since you were 7 years old, eh?!! Oh, excuse me..make that the boys have been chasing you since you were 7 years old!! LOL!!


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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-14-2007
Sat, 03-07-2009 - 11:41pm
Oh, those awful gym showers, I hated that!! We had to shower in the gym

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