I remember when,.......

[Littleleaf]

Sunday nights listening to the Dr Demento show on WKY radio.

 

[Dr. Purpur]

I remember when we called women Broads. Or if she was your girlfriend, she was "Your Old Lady"

 

[Scottish Research]

I remember when there were winners and losers on field day at the end of the year. Now, we can't have winners and losers. The problem is that life is full of winners and losers; why not prep the kids for it?

R.Fortune

 

[Useful Idiot]

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have.I remember when, 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 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 spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem.

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 the BB gun was not available.
We were not ridiculed for this play, not thrown out of school, and didn't all grow up as mass murderers. Most of us grew up with guns in the house and rather than being taught to fear them, we were taught to handle and use them responsibly.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never over-weight; 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 (amazing we aren't all brain dead from that), and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention for about the next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.
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 and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself, church was somewhere your friends went on Sunday too (except for the Murdocks down the street, but nobody trusted them anyway),

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 over the counter mercurochrome and then we got butt-whooped. 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 butt-whooped (physical abuse) there too... and then we got butt-whooped 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. There was surely a Ho-Jo somewhere nearby that would have been safer.
Summers were spent behind the sickle 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 Johnny 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 pick 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 know 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?

 

[Liza]

I can relate to what you are saying. On the other hand I don't think the internet, innercity traffic or a lot of television is especially childproof. So how did we survive that? I once broke my pubic bone when a car ran over my bike.

 

[inyectado]

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have.I remember when, 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 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 spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem.

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 the BB gun was not available.
We were not ridiculed for this play, not thrown out of school, and didn't all grow up as mass murderers. Most of us grew up with guns in the house and rather than being taught to fear them, we were taught to handle and use them responsibly.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never over-weight; 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 (amazing we aren't all brain dead from that), and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention for about the next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.
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 and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself, church was somewhere your friends went on Sunday too (except for the Murdocks down the street, but nobody trusted them anyway),

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 over the counter mercurochrome and then we got butt-whooped. 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 butt-whooped (physical abuse) there too... and then we got butt-whooped 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. There was surely a Ho-Jo somewhere nearby that would have been safer.
Summers were spent behind the sickle 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 Johnny 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 pick 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 know 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?

Terrific piece man, I'm that old too, and as I was reading, I thought my life exactly. You are dead on!
I have been lucky to live the last 15 yrs where it's still pretty much that way. Must be why I like it here so much. (I'm not in the US.)
Great post, THANKS!

 

[Useful Idiot]

I can relate to what you are saying. On the other hand I don't think the internet, innercity traffic or a lot of television is especially childproof. So how did we survive that? I once broke my pubic bone when a car ran over my bike.

NOTHING is childproof. When I was growin up,there was no internet,no cell phones,nothing.I honestly think technology has ruined the younger generation.Think about it,do you remember going to the library?? trying to find info on a certain topic you were interested in?? I do, I remember it like it was yesterday, when I finally got the info I was as happy as a dog with 2 dicks, now adays folks just Google it!!

 

[supermanlives]

i remember when bush was acceptable in porno. never seen a shaven beaver when younger. i am totally cool with the new look and no more hairs in my teeth. lol

 

[supermanlives]

Sunday nights listening to the Dr Demento show on WKY radio.

dead puppies and fishheads. fish heads fish heads rolly polly fish heads lol

 

[supermanlives]

I remember when we called women Broads. Or if she was your girlfriend, she was "Your Old Lady"

well the old lady hasnt gotten any younger. we just reside together as she has gotten too old . lol

 

[Scottish Research]

I remember seeds, a pine smell, and a blue plastic Grafixx bong I got in '91...

No dumbass names like Alien this or kush that, whatever... I also never got the munchies, and was never couch locked.

R.Fortune

 

[Arthritis_sucks]

I remember when OG wasn't called OG.

 

[Scottish Research]

i remember when bush was acceptable in porno. never seen a shaven beaver when younger. i am totally cool with the new look and no more hairs in my teeth. lol

You don't like the drapes to match the carpet?

This whole shaved thing leaves nothing to the imagination.

R.Fortune

 

[megayields]

I remember;

No cell phones
Panama Red, Maui Waui...and my favorite Opium dipped Thai Sticks
Skateboarding BOTH on clay and the " new" polyurethane wheels, my first board was a Alva, w/ Independent trucks, and Simms wheels...I was dah man back then...
Seeing KISS at the Cow Palace in 77' ( snuck out of my room and we had to drive 2 hours from the valley to get their...got home stoned out of my mind like at 4:30 am)
I remember disco.....platform shoes.....tight pants...I mean TIGHT your junk was their for every babe to see...lol


Ahh the good old days....great thread!

 

[dddaver]

I remember playing hockey at the frozen over basketball courts the city's parks and rec department would plow, then spray with a fire-hose he'd connect to a fire hydrant. This was a as kid growing up in a small town in central NY, way back in the 60's. There was a long shack by the"rink" with a wood burning pot bellied wood stove in it to warm the shack for the skaters during the day. The shack was only open during the daylight hours. I remember how great it was to sit on the worn wooden benches that lined the walls and put your icy feet/skates up on the side of that wood burning stove to warm them and melt off some of the ice that had caked on. I still remember the wonderful smells of wood burning combined with leather and metal as it was melting/burning while the ice melted.

We played hockey under the under the lights at night, a lot. A guy from the city's recreation department job was to turn on and off those lights at night, plow then flood the rink, and also part of his job was to watch over the shack and buy and stack a cord of wood for the stove every year. MR. Clark. We were never chased off by the cops, ever, and we were there most nights too. That guy was in charge. If he came and shut off the lights you knew it was late and time to go home and he wanted to plow and flood. We stayed and watched him sometimes. Very methodical. He knew what he was doing, especially after the 500th time or so of doing that over the years.

The hockey we played with no pads either, and it was not rare that somebody got whacked-up pretty bad or cut up by the cold hard puck or even a skate blade, once in a great while. Blood was a pretty common sight but it coagulated fast in the cold air for some very cool reason. I purposely whacked Pat McCabe's little brother in the shin, during a scrum over the puck once. I made him cry. I felt bad about that, but not much, it was part of the game. Wimpy little twerp deserved it. Today's gangsta's might put a tech 9 to his temple, that would fix him.

I wiped out my right knee pretty bad back then, which is STILL fucked up to this day. That was the first of many injuries to that knee. Eventually I tore a ligament in it that was never repaired by the military quacks, but that's another story.

My friend got hit by the puck on the eyebrow and had to go get stitches once. That same friend and I traded a baseball catchers shin guard I wore over my knee cause it was sensitive to any touch/hit, for some old hockey skates that sat unused in my cellar. Those skates turned out to be my Dad's. He was pissed but didn't demand them back (to his credit). I remember going home after playing hockey and thawing out, with terrible chilblains in my frozen feet as they thawed, god that hurt.

Kids could never do anything like that stuff today, but it was great, great fun, with truly wonderful, long lasting memories. The insurance companies, child-protective laws, and just lawyers in general, while "improving" on life, have really just mostly squelched the lives of kids and our future generations. It seems that way to me anyway, you know? Kids now say, "Lets go watch the cool Hi-def for a few hours, or maybe we could sit and veg while playing of Madden 2011". What? Wow!

 

[bruceinpacifica]

Sunday nights listening to the Dr Demento show on WKY radio.

Sunday nights was also Ed Sullivan & Disney with Walt as your host.

But curlers in ladies is the best one I've heard yet.
Cheers

 

[supermanlives]

i remember skate boarding and bicycle riding without a helmet . only ones wore a helmet were retards. now everyone wears a helmet . hell when i ride a motorcycle i wont wear a helmet unless its the law.

 

[lordofthenugz]

Slam Bang Theater and Icky Twerp.

 

[lordofthenugz]

I remember when the vacant lot was the host of the neighborhood baseball game that lasted all day until your mom MADE you stop playing and come inside.

I remember when you weren't allowed inside during the summer time unless it was to get a drink, and most the time we drank from water hoses. It didn't matter how hot it was, you played on.

 

[noyd666]

i remember going to court, because i wouldn't remember what they wanted me to remember , so they gave me something to remember lolll ,i remember that bit,