Amen, Chief!  LOL I sliced open my foot in the sawgrass out behind our
house. After the doc sewed it up I was grounded for two weeks after it would
heal since I had been told to stay out of the sawgrass in the first place. I
was grounded because I caused my mom and dad to have to pay out $12.00 for
the doctor's visit and they were steamed. LOL

DeeTee

it's funny, i get these kinds of "trips down memory lane" in my emails all
the time.  often, i can relate to some of the "remembrances", but much of
the time they don't fit what i experienced and makes me think that these
aren't as universal as "memories" as the person who first decided to
idealize them thinks.  i think it would be kind of interesting, and
educational, if each of us went through this list and wrote a little about
our real and honest childhood experiences.  i'll go first.

Remember childhood?

You could hardly see for all the snow,

***not in san francisco, but i do remember this in connecticut.

Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.

***only my father was allowed to "adjust" the reception, because we kids
would make things worse.  televisions were expensive and my father was sure
we would break it.

Pull a chair up to the TV set,

***i never sat in a chair or on the couch to watch tv.  usually, i was on
the floor on my stomach watching tv.  often, i also listened to my
transistor radio and did my homework at the same time.

"Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet."

***the news was rarely watched at my house, except for election night or new
year's eve or some major event or disaster.  mostly, our tv was used for
entertainment.

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.

***we never did have a cutting board when i was a kid.  my mother used a
dinner plate to cut things on.  my mother was also scrupulous about washing
everything she used and didn't use the same knife or even the same stirring
spoon in different pots or with different ingredients.  if she tasted
something with a spoon, the spoon never was used again without being washed
first.  we weren't even allowed to drink from anything any one of us had
already drunk from.  "germs" was a big thing back then and the polio
epidemics made people nervous, even years later.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw
sometimes, too.

***she didn't freeze hamburger.  we got it fresh ground round or ground
sirloin from the corner butchershop.  and i did eat it raw sometimes, but
not without being soundly scolded for it.  any fresh fruits or vegetables,
that might have been handled by other people before being purchased, were
scrubbed, 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

***even in grammar school, i ate hot school lunches in the cafeteria.  when
my folks couldn't afford to pay for them, i actually worked in the school
cafeteria kitchen for free school lunches.  usually, i dried the dishes that
came out of the commercial dishwasher, which were like segmented/divided
trays rather than dinner plates.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a
pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

***no.  actually, i preferred swimming in a swimming pool as a kid.  i
didn't like the itchy rash i usually wound up with from swimming in
lakes--made me feel creepy about swimming in lakes.  i did love swimming in
the ocean, though.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a
pager
was the school PA system.

***i don't think the term would have conjured anything for me.  but
party-lines were not parties, for sure.  most of the time we were yelled at
by adults, on the other end of the party-line, to get off the phone so they
could use it.  and pager wouldn't have meant anything to me, either.

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 took PE, not "gym", back in the 1950s-'60s and most of that was
outdoors, except back east in the winter.  "gym" was the room with the
hardwood floors.  our one piece "gym suits" were hideous and often
uncomfortable, when you grew too fast.  our sneakers were white and a
cut-down version of high top basketball shoes.

I can't recall any injuries but they must have
happened because they tell us how much safer we are now..

***i remember injuries in PE, my own and my classmates.  mostly sprains,
strains, bruises, abrasions, falls, broken fingers and an occassional
dislocation.  once in awhile an ambulance was called to the school, because
somebody almost drowned in the school pool or broke a leg or injured a knee
badly.

Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be
much
harder than gym.

***friends of mine did indeed flunk PE (gym) back then, especially if they
played the "period" card too often or if they didn't put any effort into the
class.

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 very rarely said prayers in school, never in assembly.  except i can
remember in first grade we prayed before our milk and graham crackers break.
did sing the national anthem.  the pledge of allegiance did NOT have "under
god" in it, when we said the pledge each morning.  yeah, you were considered
a "bad kid" when you had to stay after school writing "i will not . . ." a
bazillion times for whatever infraction.  and you had to write a note
telling about what you did to wind up on detention. that note had to be read
and signed by your parent and then, returned to the principal.  i did that
once and neither my mother nor father made any fuss about it.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

***no.  it was just a different place in time and some attitudes and
practices are actually better now.

What an archaic health system we
had
then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

***yes, we did have school nurses and she did wear a nurse's uniform.  i had
to see her once because my fingertip got ripped open when my teacher sent me
down to close the door to the playground, because she forgot to. i remember
i avoided the nurse after that, cuz she was stern and suspicious and seemed
to have a mean streak.  and we had visiting doctors who gave us
innoculations, booster shots and the oral polio vaccine.  and we had eye
exams in school.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed
to
be proud of myself.

***i was always told that being proud of yourself meant you were conceited--  
and not just by my parents, either.  from the time he was little, we raised
our son to be proud of himself, for just being who he is--it seemed like all
his accomplishments followed that.  it was like he believed in himself and
felt worthy of accomplishment.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station,
Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

***i can recall being bored, at times, especially if i couldn't go outside
to play.  we had hula hoops, pogo sticks, yoyos, bicycles, roller skates,
dolls, tea sets, stuffed animals, baseball cards we played flip with, board
games, etc.  lots of other things.  very few books, though.

Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that
bee
sting? I could have been killed!

***my first bee sting occurred after i was married.  my orthopod, during my
appmt. the next day, actually gave me a shot for it, because my leg swelled
gigantically and i had a bit of a rash.  he was the one who asked whether i
had been bitten by an insect or stung.  i didn't even think about it,
because i always swelled up with mosquito bites, too.

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.

***we played a lot of "truth or dare" and did some pretty crazy and
dangerous stuff for dares-- like jumping off of garage roofs and landing on
our feet on concrete, or jumped from rooftop to rooftop, in the city.  we
got down on our stomachs and sorta surfed down stairs.  we got our butts
spanked for getting hurt, too.  i remember both iodine and mercurochrome.  i
once had my shoulder cut, age 6 or 7, on a broken jelly jar on concrete;
bled all over the place and soaked bath towels with my blood; got spanked
even though my brother pushed me into it.  and later, because of those
wounds, the doctor was called to our house, because i spiked a fever and the
wound got infected.  and my first grade teacher saw the doctor's dressing on
my shoulder and said, "what happened to you?  nevermind.  you probably
deserved it."  she also let the little boy who sat behind me pee in his
pants and all over the floor, because she wouldn't respond to his raised
hand.  i still think she was mean and shouldn't have been a teacher.

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.

***though this does happen, i think this is an over-generalization.

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.

***we weren't allowed to go over or inside the neighbor's house, without a
parent.  we were told there were too many "bad people" and you couldn't tell
who they were, without a parent.

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.

***most of our neighbors didn't have any assets to sue for, anyhow; most of
us were renters.  and i still think most parents swatted kids back then,
because it was easier than having to think or discuss anything with kids.

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?

***no.  that term wasn't used in those days.  but other terms like, "bad
blood", "bad people", "disgusting", "busybodies", "deadbeats",
"troublemakers", "slobs", etc. were commonly used to refer to families.

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?

***no.  but valium use was rampant among the mothers in the '50s-60s.  and
"nervous breakdowns" was commonly heard about mothers.

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T-
SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED.  I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING

***i think i would've definitely traded some of it.

kate

Nor would I Chief.... nor would I
Harv