Something to think about
What a statement this makes on today's world...
It's hard to believe that we have lived as long as
we have. 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, but I can't
remember getting E-coli. As children we would ride
in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the
back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a
special treat. Our baby cribs, toys and rooms were
painted with bright colored lead based paint. We,
often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint. We
had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors,
or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we had no
helmets. We drank water from the garden hose and
not from a bottle. We would leave home in the morning
and play all day, as long as we were back when the
streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all
day.
We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would
really hurt. We played with toy guns, cowboys and
Indians, army, cops and robbers, and used our fingers
to simulate guns when the toy ones or my BB gun was
not available. We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and
drank sugar soda, but we were never overweight; we
were always outside playing. Little League had tryouts
and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't,
had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students
weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard so they
failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.
That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers
and problem solvers. We had the freedom, failure, success
and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the
lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), 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 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.
Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson
by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum
tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would
we be today if we only knew we could have sued the
school system. Speaking of school, we all said prayers
and the pledge and staying in detention after school
caught all sorts of negative attention for the next two
weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.
I can't understand it. Schools didn't offer 14 year olds
an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known
what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple
of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting
the sniffles. 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, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or
270 digital cable stations.
I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize
through the denial of the dangers could have befallen
us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the
road to some guy's vacant 20, built forts out of branches
and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over
who got to be the Lone Ranger. What was that property
owner thinking, letting us play on that lot. He should
have been locked up for not putting up a fence around
the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an
infrared intruder alarm.
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 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 (physical abuse) here
too ... and then we got our butt spanked again when we got
home.
Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee,
kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while
playing with Tonka trucks (remember why Tonka trucks
were made tough... it wasn't so that they could take the
rough berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with
leaded gas.
Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play
and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a
couple of times when we went on two week vacations. I
should probably sue the folks now for the danger they
put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family
tent. Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower
and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until
I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop
or an auto-drive. How sick were my parents?
Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall
Joey 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 survive?
Current Mood: 
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