Under Age 40, You Won't Understand

Truckrat · Post by **Truckrat** » October 27, 2010, 11:35 am

Black and White (Under age 40? You
won't understand.)
You could hardly see for all the snow,

Spread the rabbit ears as far as they
go.
Pull a chair up to the TV set,

'Good Night, David.
Good Night, Chet.'

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 detention after 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, Nintendo, X-box or 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 neighbourhood 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!

Pass this to someone and remember that
life's most simple pleasures are very often the best.

Post by **Casey 65** » October 27, 2010, 6:50 pm

Yes, and we drank water from the garden hose and didn't get sick...

And the out house...better in summer or winter?

Oh, and no toilet paper, just a Sears & Roebuck or Monkey Wards catalog.

HiBoy63 · Post by **HiBoy63** » October 28, 2010, 12:37 am

I dont remember ever wearing a helmet when I rode my schwin bike to school and home. Or down the steep gravel road that the county road dept had just cut through the woods.
Next we got the little 20 inch schwins added bannana seats and goose neck handel bars and road around all day doing wheelies everywhere.

HiBoy63 · Post by **HiBoy63** » October 28, 2010, 12:43 am

Oh yeah the first color TVs were crap. Only one in twenty homes in the neighborhood had one. One of my friends parents had one and I can remember 10 kids standing on his front porch tring to watch that crappy picture screen.

slick4x4 · Post by **slick4x4** » October 28, 2010, 9:35 am

and dont forget sitting on the porch swing sipping Country Time lemonaid with Grampa.....
oh....

that was a commercial

Post by **Casey 65** » October 28, 2010, 9:53 am

Fanatic · Post by **Fanatic** » October 29, 2010, 6:41 pm

One word that they took out of the newest dictionary---Chores!

Alan Mclennan · Post by **Alan Mclennan** » October 30, 2010, 2:31 am

One day my Dad came home and said he had a " colour TV converter", we were over the moon!. After 2 days it kept falling off tho!, basically it was a piece of thick plastic with 3 bands of colour across it!. Lilly Munster never looked so sick!, green head orange belly and blue legs!, but we thought we were the kings of the castle, come to think of it I`m still easily amused!

Lowell · Post by **Lowell** » October 30, 2010, 6:22 pm

My Uncle was the first to get a tv in my area. The only stations were Indianapolis and Louisville , both were at least a 100 miles away. He had a large Antenna on the roof and a preamplifier and still got a lot of snow . When an airplane flew over the picture would flutter for 15 minutes. Later on Evansville In. got a couple of stations on the air and mom and dad got a new tv from Sears and Roebuck for Christmas. It had a screen 23 inches wide! imagine that! I think that was 1953.

DukeRoche · Post by **DukeRoche** » October 31, 2010, 7:22 pm

Hate to break it to the older crowd but I'm 32 and I remember almost all of this

Post by **Casey 65** » October 31, 2010, 7:42 pm

Duke, Did you have outhouses when you were a kid?

DukeRoche · Post by **DukeRoche** » October 31, 2010, 8:13 pm

No, I can't go that far back. For the most part I remember getting paddled in a public place and the adults around us were nodding in agreement instead of running to the phone to call the police. I also remember bomb drills and black and white tvs. Mostly I remember getting paddled in elementary school. Maybe not a big deal to some, but my mom worked at my elementary school so after the principal paddled me he walked me down to my moms room for double the pleasure. I also remember when Halloween was 1 day a year and continued well passed when it was dark, and the point of the costume and feeling was to scare. My favorite memory was calling a business and talking to someone, not a answer service. My least favorite was the mail in catalogs with the 6-8 week delivery service.