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| Kids today? |
| Better? |
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10% |
[ 30 ] |
| Worse? |
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43% |
[ 127 ] |
| Kids in my day.... |
|
12% |
[ 36 ] |
| Is there soup today? |
|
15% |
[ 45 ] |
| Wanders off...... |
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19% |
[ 56 ] |
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| Total Votes : 294 |
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 Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 8:47 pm
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 cros s-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 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.
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Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 10:58 am
Kids in my day were human tv atennas (sp?) We had black and white tv and 3 channels ABC, NBC, CBS and if you were really lucky 1 PBS station. girls wore dresses to school boys wore shirts and ties. Mom stayed home and cleaned and baked and cooked dinner which we all sat at the table together for, and your grandma still had an outhouse to use and a pump in the kitchen for water. Your dad could still show you where he got water as a kid and the farm he milked cows at. Sunday was family day... all gathered at one of the grandparents visiting, getting a nickle for a bag of penny candy... oh my the memories go on and on. I'm glad I still remember biggrin
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Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 8:44 pm
Auntie in the Attic Kids in my day were human tv atennas (sp?) We had black and white tv and 3 channels ABC, NBC, CBS and if you were really lucky 1 PBS station. girls wore dresses to school boys wore shirts and ties. Mom stayed home and cleaned and baked and cooked dinner which we all sat at the table together for, and your grandma still had an outhouse to use and a pump in the kitchen for water. Your dad could still show you where he got water as a kid and the farm he milked cows at. Sunday was family day... all gathered at one of the grandparents visiting, getting a nickle for a bag of penny candy... oh my the memories go on and on. I'm glad I still remember biggrin Flash back... My grandma had a house for a while with a pump in the kitchen!!!
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Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 6:15 pm
Can almost hear the party-line on my grandparents phone (rotary, of course) ... and knowing that listening in was not an option... If it ain't an emergency, get your butt off the phone... so different from the "Party-Lines" of today - in those days they weren't gonna pay an arm and leg 900 numbers... or X-rated... well, maybe... we didn't listen long enough to know... wink
Nodi can testify to them not having to spank us - no, instead my gran would definitely have made you regret it if you'd done something she didn't like - tis a look that could make you feel less than an inch tall - and feel guilty for months after... and Lord help ya if she had to follow-up with saying something - razors couldn't be so sharp as her tongue if you was messing up. Sure do love that woman - I'm a better person for knowing her. heart
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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 6:17 am
Wow, this is a great thread. It reminds me of summer nights outside catching fireflies in jars. Kids nowadays don't appreciate simple things like that anymore, it seems.
Another advantage today that kids have, is when I was in school I was diagnosed with severe depression. Back then depression was something to hide and be ashamed of. Now there are places to get help all over the place. Back then, anyone seeing a "shrink" was considered "crazy".
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Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 12:39 pm
Okay, so I'm not that old, (I'm just 21) but I did have a moment the other day where I felt like I was.
I was a day camp counselor this summer, and I took care of five and six-year-old little girls. Man, I loved those girls. Anyway, they asked me what I liked when I was a kid, and I mentioned Rainbow Brite. Their response? "Who?" gonk I felt like my childhood was gone.
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Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 1:03 pm
The_Only_Ace_Of_Hearts wow. Im 14 and I baby sit. I have a blast with kids younger than me. but I still have a life and any one here who is over oh say 30 who isnt actually OFFICAL GAIA STAFF needs a life either that or a job. People in your 20's I understand. well at least I understand if you are still in college. My cousin is 22 and in college she plays Gaia too and inside she is still a kid.
neutral There's nothing wrong with spending some time on the internet, whatever age you are. You say get a job? Perhaps you should go outside, kid. Working people have days off too you know, just because it doesn't come in two month increments doesn't mean we don't have some down time, frankly, I don't see any way that you ought to be able to dictate how we spend it.
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Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 1:12 pm
All this talk about them new-fangled high-speed internets...my dial-up connection gets a download speed of 26 kps when it's runnin' downhill...and I get around the Internet jest fine! mad
*waves cane at young'uns zipping all around her & then falls asleep*
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