Nearly everyone's
Mom was at home when the kids got home from school? Nobody
owned a purebred dog?
When a quarter
was a decent allowance?
You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a
penny?
Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?
All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers
had their hair done every day and wore high heels?
You got your
windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all
for free, every time? And you didn't pay for air? And, you got
trading stamps to boot?
Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes
or towels hidden inside the box?
It was considered a great
privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your
parents?
They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed.
. ...and they did?
When a 55 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise,
peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady?
No one ever asked where the car keys were because they
were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never
locked?
Lying on your back in the grass with your friends
and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a ..." and playing
baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?
Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals
because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?
And
with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once, you could slip
back in time and savor the slower pace, and share it with the children
of today? When being sent to the principal's office
was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?
Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of
drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and
grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived because
their love was greater than the threat. Send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy
Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Doody and the Peanut
Gallery, the Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Bell, Roy and
Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk.
As well as summers filled with
bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the
pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar. Didn't that feel
good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?
I am sharing this
with you today because it ended with a double dog dare to pass
it on. To remember what a double dog dare is, read on. And
remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know
better and too young to care.
How many of these do
you remember?
Candy cigarettes
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside Soda pop
machines that dispensed glass bottles Coffee shops with tableside
jukeboxes Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum Home milk
delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers Newsreels before the
movie P.F. Fliers Telephone
numbers with a word prefix....(Raymond 4-601). Party lines
Peashooters Howdy Doody 45 RPM records Green
Stamps Hi-Fi's Metal
ice cubes trays with levers Mimeograph paper Beanie and Cecil
Roller-skate keys Cork pop guns Drive ins
Studebakers
Washtub wringers
The Fuller Brush Man Reel-To-Reel tape recorders Tinkertoys
Erector Sets The Fort Apache Play Set Lincoln Logs
15 cent McDonald hamburgers
5
cent packs of baseball cards - with that awful pink slab of bubble gum
Penny candy 35 cent a gallon
gasoline Jiffy Pop popcorn Do you remember a
time when... Decisions were made
by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"? Mistakes were corrected by simply
exclaiming, "Do Over!"? "Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the
fastest? Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire
evening? It wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends"?
The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was
"cooties"? Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a
slingshot? A foot of snow was a dream come true? Saturday morning
cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures?
"Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense? Spinning around, getting
dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles? The worst
embarrassment was being picked last for a team? War was a card game?
Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle?
Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin? Water
balloons were the ultimate weapon?
If you can remember most or all of these,
then you have lived!!!!!!!
