Then and Now

 Subject: Once Upon A Time
 Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 23:11:17 -0800
 
My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread
 Mayo — all on the same cutting board with the same
knife and no bleach, but we never seemed 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. 
  
Speaking of physical activities, we also rode our
 bikes everyday, just about everywhere we went, and
 no one I knew even owned a bicycle helmet. I don’t
 think they were ever even heard of then. We just had
 respect for 1-ton pieces of machinery and we got out
 of their way when they drove down the street. 
  
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. 
  
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
 abortions and condoms to 14 year olds. 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 feeling ill. What an archaic health system
 we had then! Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat
 and everything. 
  
We also learned that we had to accomplish something
 before we were allowed to be proud of ourselves or
 expect praise. 
  
I just can’t recall how bored we were without
 computers, Play Station, 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 that
 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 first aid kit with the
 Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee
 sting? I could have died! 
  
We played “king of the hill” on piles of gravel left
 on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt,
 Mom pulled out the 49-cent bottle of mercurochrome
 and then we got our butt spanked. Now, it would be a
 trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day
 dose of a $49 antibiotics and then a call to the
 attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a
 horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a
 threat to “innocent” children. 
  
We didn’t act up at the neighbor’s house either
 because if we did, we got our butt spanked there too
 … and then we got our butt spanked again when we
 got home.   I guess I never knew I was being
 “physically abused.” I just always figured I was
 gettin’ what I deserved and it generally kept me
 from doing the even dumber things that had gone
 through my mind. I guess that was the idea of it. My
 dad always told me God gave me paddin’ there for one
 reason. 
  
Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for
 coffee, us 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 even drove a car with leaded gasoline.
 
  
Our music had to be left inside when we went out to
 play or anywhere else for that matter. We didn’t
 take it with us on our heads. And I’m sure that I
 nearly exhausted my  imagination a couple of times
 when we went on two week vacations in the car
 without TV and videos. I should probably sue the
 folks now for the danger they put us in when we all
 slept in campgrounds in tents. 
  
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 the boy 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 sued us and 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! Or were
 they? 
  
Call me old-fashioned, but I think things would be a
 whole lot better in our world today if a few things
 were more like when I grew up. I survived! 
 
I hope this one makes it to everyone, and maybe
 someday things can get back to normal.

This is one of those things I wish I’d written…