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 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.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and
when we rode our bikes we had no helmets.

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.

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 and stayed in
detention after school and caught all sorts of negative attention for the
next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

I can'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 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 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 lot, 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 $69 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) ... 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
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 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 home.  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 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 survive  ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ?

I live in my own little world, but it's ok they know me there!
Peace is seeing a sunset and knowing who to thank. As Always, Mona

written 1-20-1984