You Gotta Be Over 40 to Understand This
>
> 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 a bite raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped
in wax paper, in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I
can't remember anybody 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.
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> 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 hightop 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, and she could even give you an
aspirin for a headache or fever.
>
> 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.
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> 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!
>
> Pass this to someone (over age 40, of course), and brighten
their day by helping them to remember that life's most simple
pleasures are very often the best!