What was my mother thinking?
> >
> >
> > 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 icepack 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.
> >
> > Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson [and
> > provided comic relief] 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 sang the national
> > anthem and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of
> > negative attention. 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, Play
> > Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV 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 lot,
> > 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 (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 (physical abuse) here too and then we
> > got 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 lawn mower 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 ever survive?
> >
> > LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA,
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>