How Did We Ever Survive?

(Author Unknown)

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have.

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.

As children we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in

the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Our

baby cribs, toys and rooms were painted with bright colored lead based

paint. We, often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when

we rode our bikes we had no helmets. We drank water from the garden hose

and not from a bottle. We would leave home in the morning and play all day,

as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to

reach us all day.

We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We played

with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers, and used our

fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or my BB gun was not available.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never

overweight; we were always outside playing.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't,

had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as

others or didn't work hard so they failed a grade and were held back to

repeat the same grade. That generation produced some of the greatest

risk-takers and problem solvers. We had the freedom, failure, success and

responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

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 of allegiance and

staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention for

the next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches. I don'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, uniform 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 our 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 ever survive?????