BellaOnline Forums News and Politics Senior Issues Remember when....?

This is kind of a jump off of another thread in this forum about "Nana what's a phone booth?" so I kind of wanted to refresh it as I got this in my email today.

So, Remember when...?

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 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 butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall the kid 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?

And, Spanky's docile dog was a pit bull - he loved kids and they loved him back.

Thanks for the memories, I remember them well!

I love the bit about the pitbull!

Love it all! I can remember going out to play - ALL day - and mom never worried...

My best friend's dog was a rottweiler - we climbed all over him, fed him the stuff we didn't want off our plates, and teased him unmercifully, and he loved it all...

Our cribs and playpens were wooden, and (GASP!) painted with what was probably lead paint...

Thanks Vance!

Exactly, we used to go outside from the time we got up until it was time to go to bed. Sometimes not even coming in for meals during the summer.

I remember when there was no such thing as ADHD. We were just "incorrigible" and being "rascals" or just plain misbehaving.

The only medicine we had to take when we were not feeling good was St. Joseph's Chewable aspirin. Those little orange flavored pills just seemed to cure everything.

I remember being spanked before it became a felony. (Not that I enjoyed that but I certainly deserved it lol)

Comic books used to be ten cents. I used to be able to get a big bag of chips, a quart of RC Cola, and a comic book all for under a dollar.

Going to the Drive-In movies and playing on the playground there in my pajamas until the movies started.

It just makes me want to cry thinking about the Old Days.

Now I have to listen to the song "Old Days" by Chicago.

Speaking of songs, remember when you used to be able to understand the words to songs?

I remember when my mom would bring home the hamburger (ground beef) and she and I would always have a taste before she cooked it. The funny thing is that I haven't done that in so many years because of the news.
Yes, good old days.

Mom used to use either mud or baking soda and water for bee stings

Chloe, thats funny my mom us to eat raw hamburger also

We drank from the garden hose

We swam in the river, now its polluted