[lcpd24]

> > : For the Older crowd who will understand.



> >
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > 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. 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?