dno
> I don't know who put this together to give
> them credit, but here it is.......

> 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 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.

> 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
> 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 survive?