Reply With QuotePretty funny, but true. And ya gotta do something with that damn Avatar.
HOW DID WE SURVIVE??
Looking back, 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 metal dashboards and 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 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?
Pretty funny, but true. And ya gotta do something with that damn Avatar.
Liberator TJ1984:
HOW DID WE SURVIVE??
As children we would ride in cars with metal dashboards and no seat belts or
air bags. Didn't need em. Remember how your skin would stick to those Naugahide seats? That sh*t was like velcro
Wet Dream:
And ya gotta do something with that damn Avatar. I second that! My eyes hurt now. wink
Amazing what this county has turned into. burningm
3rd on the avater.
Great post other than that! wink
I fourth that!! The real miracle would be downsizing the avatar.
[ January 21, 2003, 07:54 AM: Message edited by: Backtanner ]
Ouch !! tell me how to shrink the damn thing and it,s a done deal
use a smaller picture
Put this link in your avatar selection, under your profile. After you copy and paste this, you have to make a post before the changes take notice.
http://free.***boat.net/ubb/Avatars/..._liberator.JPG
[img]http://free.***boat.net/ubb/Avatars/Avatars/tn_liberator.JPG[/img]
[ January 21, 2003, 08:21 AM: Message edited by: Wet Dream ]
Liberator TJ1984:
Ouch !! tell me how to shrink the damn thing and it,s a done deal
You know, I had a 1960 Kingswood Chevy stationwagon. That this had an all steel dash with all kinds of sharp edges on it. It had 3 bench seats and had never had seat belts. Seat belts were an option back then and I guess that guy didn't get them.
We uesed to ride skateboards in empty pools and on big 1/2 & 1/4 pipes. None of us wore helmets or pads back then.
Now the poor kids have to wear helmets to ride a freaking razor scooter. Poor kids!
I do have to admit though, now when I go downhill mountian biking I wear all the shit. I don't bounce like I used to.
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