batguano

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 hav! ing 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 o n 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 here too 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 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 so 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- SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING! !

Lainey

I remember LOTS of those things. I often wonder how we survived!

Even the differences since my son was born and now my granddaughter amazes me. All the necessary "high tech" stuff you gotta have to care for a child "properly", all the changes in how to take care of a baby..........please!

I remember one time I took care of my sister's children age 5 and age 5 months for a few days while they searched for a house out of state.

She handed me a baby monitor to use at night. I live in a three bedroom ranch. I'm going to hear a baby cry, no monitor is needed

Popeye

....delivering newspapers on Schwinn Stingrays

ralper

I remember going to work at a very early age, and working every minute that I had off from school. I wanted to make something of myself, and I wanted to be as independent as I could as a teenager.

Not to say that there is anything special or noble about hard work, hard work is just hard work, nothing more nothing less. Looking back I think I overdid it, I should have taken more time to be a kid, but still, I find that my teenage son and most of his friends don't want to work. My son works because we've insisted that he pay for his own gas and entertainment, but, most of his friends don't.

I think we were more ambitious.

robb

I remember mercurochrome and Vics too! I also remember sitting in the front seat of my grandparents car it was a 71 new yorker with no airbags and a big hard dashboard. Also sitting on my Dads lap while he was driving and him letting me steer the car. Riding a bicycle without a helmet, going out without sunscreen on.

ralper

I did that too, until a traffic cop pulled us over and told my father to stop because it's dangerous.

valentine

Aaaah, I enjoyed this. I sometimes think about the "carefree" days of my childhood and think how I coddled my kids and wonder if they'll need prozac because I was so cautious .

dolebludger

I recall when my dad bought a '48 Dodge sedan ---- and it was a brand new car! After that, he bought a '50 DeSoto new, that got 0 to 60 in a little over 39 seconds I timed it!) . The other day, I say a young man in a parking lot with a new GTO. I asked if I could see it. I told him that I had owned and oringinal '64 GTO. He said , "man, where did you find that?" I told him "at my Pontiac dealer on his new car lot in '64!" The kid really freaked out, seeing I was driving an s2k, and not realizing how damned old I am.

But we remember those cars as much better than they were. My 64 GTO got 0 to 60 in 7 seconds. The heat from the engine compartment permeated the passenger compartment so as to make AC useless. Once, I had her up to 120, and then put on the brakes. I might as well have opened the door and drug my foot!

Basically, us vintage owners have ben through some very CRUDE cars!

Thanks,
Richard

dean

Sure it was, I did it - twice. What's more, I'm proud of it.

Not in my school, there would have been Hell to pay.

Then we learned what a pernicious toxin mercury is.

Your home life must have been happier and much more stable than mine. We weren't the Manson Family, or even the Osbournes, but we were a mess.

Morris

I remember playing all kinds of games, shooting, getting shot at, hiding. And it wasn't while sitting on the couch with a joystick. I was running around outside with guns and arrows with the neighbor kid, getting exercise, till Mom made me come in cause it was getting dark. I was skinny back then, too.