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Tuesday, March 07, 2017

Black & White TV

Black and White
Black and White
(Under age 45? You won't understand.)

You could hardly see for all the snow,

Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.


'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 $99 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 jerk. It was a neighborhood run a muck.

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!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

love it thanks for the memory

Anonymous said...

Ah yes , I remember.
Now it's called TV of color , can't say colored TV (racist)

Anonymous said...

And the principle had a large paddle hanging on the wall behind his desk

Anonymous said...

Mr. Tatem's paddle had holes drilled in it. He said it would swing faster and hurt more.

Anonymous said...

I used to eat raw scrapple

Anonymous said...

Remember drinking water out of a hose or faucet, without any issues. Now everyone has plastic bottles and says faucet water is bad or too "hard" here on the island.

HAHA where you do think the water for your fancy dancy highfalutin ice maker comes from? Idiots!

Anonymous said...

I miss every moment! This generation has no idea what they have lost. Sure they have their gadgets, but somehow they have missed out on the true wonder of childhood. Neighbors used to know each other. You didn't need to lock your doors except when going on vacation. Things were simpler and less complicated than today. Less stressful.

Anonymous said...

Scrapped is already cooked when it arrives at the store. You then fry it to crisp, but it's not raw.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how many times I had the crap coming out both ends, when I was growing up, that it was the result of improper handling of food in the kitchen. If you remember all the lack of hygiene your mom used to practice in the kitchen, as a child, then you can probably remember some of the times you became violently ill, with no explanation. I can't just not evolve when there is overwhelming evidence that safe food handling practices reduce the risk of food borne illnesses. I'm not going to "make myself sick" if I can avoid it, and I always practice the safe food handling things that were mentioned that my mom didn't do. I'm sure if she had known, she would have practiced better food handling techniques in her kitchen.

Anonymous said...

Little kids were allowed to run thru the sprinkle nude, now you would be put in jail and on a list for allowing this!

Anonymous said...

Anger management was a switch and/or belt. Kept my adhd in tact. The threat or fear of calling my mom was warning enough