Our Childhood In Black In White, Do You Remember?

[LaurieJim]

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 said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detentionafter 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, Ninten do, X-boxor 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 our butt spanked again when we got home.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, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T; SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING

 

[heatherad]

We use to have to walk to school with snow up to our waists but we were all bundled up and loved it.
After school we'd climb the snowbanks that were so high we could reach the top of a telephone pole.
Nowadays, school is cancelled at the mere mention of an impending storm, and also cancelled at the first signs of a few flakes.
Thanks for the memories there lauriejim. I wouldn't trade those days for anything either.

 

[Jasminebed]

I'm soon to be entering my 50th year (trying to avoid 49 AGAIN!! jokes), and I remember it well.

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.

Well, I'm pretty sure that my mom washed the board after raw meat, but our chickens were not raised in the same factory conditions that exist now, nor were they fed the antibiotic laden meal they are now. Bleach is a simple and effective germ killer, and those "antibacterial" soaps & detergents just all allow the bestest[I know it's not a word] & strongest germs to survive. Early exposure to small amounts of bacteria help strengthen immune systems, and the Government of Ontario in its infinite wisdom has decided that I cannot be served a "rare" hamburger anymore, and runny eggs are under the gun!

Watch out Laurie. Donny R* might be a hot shot lawyer now & be coming after your current home.

My daughter (now 23) thinks that most of her peers were namby-pampied and that my decision that money was better spent on things other than cable was not the worse call I made as a parent, although she railled against it at the time. She says that she still thinks our annual observance of Turn Off Your TV week

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was lame-Oh, especially since we did not have cable the rest of the year, but I hope to persuade her otherwise by the time I am grandma. I observed it myself this April, but did stay online.

I miss mecurochrome, and my mom used to use "ammoniated tincture of mercury"

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to treat scabs. Did a great job, but apparently subjected us to low level of mecury poisoning, and to the best of my knowledge no longer available in Canada. Not as much as ground leaching from broken fluorencent light fixtures, and those nifty new energy saving CF bulbs. They belong in Hazardous Waste bins or facilities, not in regular trash.

Fish in Lake Ontario have lower levels of mercury than the 1970's. When I was a teen, my mother would not eat fish from Lake Ontario, and we fished rivers & smaller back lakes that did not have industry.

Heather, your mom must have been tougher than mine - we only had to slog through snow up to our thighs. Now they cancel school buses if it threatens to snow.

I think it is a mistake to shelter children from all risks in this world. Provide them with common sense (less common than one might hope) and the ability to take and learn lessons from small risks, like skinned knees & the like, and they may not take overly dangerous risks later thinking they are immune from all harm. Or that there are no consequences to their actions.

As we get older, it's hard not to long for the "good ole days", but I enjoy many of the privileges of this day & age. But my radio station is firmly "Golden Oldies" and I am dismayed to find this includes music after my daughter was born!

 

[GrandMaster]

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.

 

[BingoT]

Oh yes all them great times from the past.

Going to the Keg Parties in the woods Every Sat night.
Skip school and go to the beach for the day.
Throw eggs at houses and that toilet paper on the tree thing.
A group of us 50 would buy $100.00 worth of bubbles and hit the Town Water Fountain.
This was every year for the four years of high school.
Getting caught doing someting
Having my Mom run after me with them high heal shoes in her hand to hit me with.
Lighting fires and having the Fire Dept come (And my father was a Fireman)
OMG I can go on lol
This is why my Mom called me Tommy All named Tommy were trouble.
But in the end I made my Mommy Proud.

 

[babs7262]

Licking the spoon from cookie or brownie mix
not getting your halloween candy xrayed on top of not having a curfew
walking to school even if there was 3 inches of snow or more.
bringing groceries in for older people for a quarter and not being scared
having a different cleaner for every room of the house? lol, soap is soap
getting hurt on someone elses property and not getting sued (that happ to my brother laurie lol) He broke his nose twice playing football on front lawn
NOt hiring professionals for parties. Not standing in line for 2 days to buy one toy or electronic game. I could go on and on as well. But the fact is, there were less hormones put into meats, things were pure back then

 

[Mousey]

In a nutshell, what I miss about 'the good ol' days' is common sense and a sense of responsibility for our own actions. (i.e. ... if I die from lung cancer due to smoking it's because I smoked, not simply because RJ Reynolds sell the product. I'm fully expecting to read about diabetics suing Mars candy co. any day now.)

 

[suzecat]

What I miss most about the good ole days of my youth are the people I loved who are gone. Now there are no more great grandparents, grandparents, father, some cousins, some aunts and uncles. I am now a great aunt! Bummer!