A Trip Down Memory Lane...

Got to be Over 40 to Understand (or close to it)...

Received this from a cousin (who’s older… sorry John!) and I liked it. It reminded me of my childhood and how much fun I had. It also made me realized that “today” is different. Here’s how times changed (and in green what I’m doing now, remember or still wish to do.)

Mum used to cut chicken, slice eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't get food poisoning. (I, to this day, never bleached my cutting boards. A good wash and that’s that!)

My Mum used to defrost ground beef on the kitchen sink AND I used to eat a bite raw sometimes, too. (I still do that…(but not in summer!) otherwise it takes too long in the fridge, and there was nothing like fresh ground beef, raw with a little salt & pepper - yummy!!!)

Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper, in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember anybody getting e.coli. (I must say that I have a cute lunch box with a mini icepack that I like a lot, but I find that my sandwich taste much better when not in there. I like it warm…)

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then. (And I still do, but not around here.)

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system. (or what a “drug pusher” had clip to his belt!)

We all played sport, and also did PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of Dunlop runners (only worn in the gym or the sports ground) 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… (Never mind Dunlop, what about the no-name brand! That’s what I played with, until my husband came along… with him each sport has its shoes!)
Flunking sport was not an option.... even for stupid kids! There were not many fat kids.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the National Anthem and got free school milk for strong bones and teeth, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches. (I remember the whole class going to the gym to pick up a snack (mostly veggies) and milk. Detention wasn't an option viable at my house... way too much explaining and way too big consequences! )

What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses?
Ours wore a hat and everything, and she could even give you an aspirin for a headache or fever.
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. (I spent so much time playing, discovering and reading! Went to the local library so often, sometimes 2-3/day…)

Oh yeah.. and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! (I used to collect bees in an old Cheez-Whiz jar, after having punched holes in the lid (for them to breath!) – the thrill of catching them without getting sting!)

We played 'king of the castle' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mum 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 hair ruffled and got told to get back out there! Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mum calls the Solicitor to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat. (Every summer I would get scabs, you know, the thick kind? And summer was officially here after both knees had been redden with Mercurochrome)

We didn't misbehave at the mate's house either, because if we did, we got our bum smacked there, and then we got bum belted again when we got home. (in my case it was also on the way home!)

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front veranda, just before he fell off. Little did his Mum know that she could have owned our house.
Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a yobbo. 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? (Never mind us, think of the up-coming generations! They’re in for a tough ride!)

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

Life's most simple pleasures are very often the best!