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Old School

4K views 52 replies 31 participants last post by  rockrat 
#1 ·
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 icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the la ke 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 all owed 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 the boy from next door coming over and doing h is 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?
 
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#8 ·
Iam 30 And I Get It Very Sad But True I Let My Kids Play Less Then 30 Min. A Day Of Video Games And None At All If They Screw Up[which Happens Alot There 6 And 11 And Both Boys] Whens Its Nice Outside I Make Them Play Outside I Tell Them If They Want To Stay Inside I Have Plenty Of Chores To Get Done Around The House On Top Of The Ones They Already Have.i Can Also Remeber Riding In The Back Of My Dads Truck With Out The Fear Of Dying Now If Your Anything But Mexican Its Illegal.[JOKING]. :poke:
 
#13 ·
we rode bikes without helmets, a neighbor kid had a lemon peeler with no front tire and just the forks. we used to ride wheelies with it and if you dropped the front end it was your own problem.

remember the real green machines.

I have a horn on my head from being hit with a cinder block during a rock-fight.

anyone else shag the school bus in the winter with the consent of the driver?

my dad would take me fishing and cut the salami with the same pocket knife he used to cut the worms without washing it.

we played red-ass at recess with a racquet ball.

my grandma would take me to the hugarian butcher that had live animals. you pick and then watch as he killed and dress it for you to eat that night.
nothing like fresh duck.

i helped my grandma make her own sausage, I ran the grinder, we ate head cheese and salt pork for a snack.

painting my dads office with oil base paint he spilled a bucket on me in my hair, we cleaned it out with gasoline.
 
#18 ·
i remember

playing king of the hill
riding in the back of the truck
playing outside
playing in construction sites after all the workers had left
drinking out of the hose
jumping my bike, while not wearing a helmet, and crashing too.
climbing trees, climbing on top of our shed.
getting my ass beat
shooting guns(oh no guns!! they are dangerous and kill people)
my dad gave me a bb gun, told me if i ever shoot anyone he'll beat my ass with it, i never shot anyone.

kids are over protected now-a-days, i see all these kids riding bikes with helmets and laugh.

and i never had 1 broken bone or a trip to the emergency room. :D
 
#21 ·
i remember

playing in construction sites after all the workers had left
I'm only 22 and I remember growing up we used to play in foundations and recently framed houses that were going up in our subdivison after the workers left. Kids can't do that now. One of the houses that got burnt down and rebuilt this past year was completely fenced off.
 
#19 ·
My parents were pretty strict and I was a smartass; spent lots of time grounded, "writing lines" (can't leave your room until you write "I will not smack my little brother" 500 times... legibly!), doing extra chores, or getting my mouth washed out with soap. GOD, did that taste awful! :p
 
#22 ·
How about a note to go pick up a pack of cigarettes and a six pack?

Folded the front wheel on my bike when we were haveing a jumping contest in the alley. When I woke up my dad was standing over me and beat my ass all the way home. Got driven to the hospital just-in-case. There were no lawyers or 911.

Who remembers sliding the channel selector on a box hard wired to the tv for cable tv? 2 pay channels, cinneview and hbo.:sonicjay: :sonicjay:
 
#26 ·
I remember watching ultraman and johnny sako on our "2nd" TV witch was in the basement plugged into the only outlet was a tubed b/w dealio with the round hoop antenna.
 
#27 ·
My parents used Lead Paint
We would leave the house after eating breakfast and not come back untill Dark in the summer riding bikes ,swimming, walking the Beams in the Barn, climbing trees.

In our teens the older girls flaged down cars to buy us beer, and they did it. camped out back and our parents never checked on us. (If they would have I don't know what they would have done??)

But we did get our Butt's Beat if we talked back, did not get our chores done, or got bad grades in school.

Kids today do not know what it is to be a kid. and a good spanking on the bottom never left a mark but it got you to behave.

:tonka: (But I did not spank my kids):tonka:
 
#31 · (Edited)
I remember buying cigarettes at like age 11 with a note.

I remember fetching beers for the neighbors at age 10 and learning to mix whiskey sours at age 12. We had a fun - albeit "transitional" neighborhood.

I wasn't allowed to have a BB gun - my dad thought they taught bad gun safety habits. I did, however, have a .30 cal M1 carbine and a .22LR Marlin bolt action in my room.

I got my ass beat on several occasions (and generally deserved it) - with a shoe or something else as I got older and my mom broke a blood vessel hitting me on the ass.

I remember putting the 64 Bonneville into neutral and "driving" as it rolled down the driveway, across the alley, and into the neighbor's bushes.

I remember getting opening day of hunting season off school (if you showed a valid license).

I remember girls (in a big city public school) not being allowed to wear pants to school. They could wear "leggings" is it was below freezing, but had to take them off at school. We walked home for lunch and returned for afternoon classes - no in-school lunch until high school. There were NO school busses in town - even if the high school was 2-3 miles away. You got a bus pass to ride the city bus.

We had a jar of mercury we played with.

We had a blue star in our front window - our neighbor had a gold one.

My first "real" job was at a Chevy dealership washing cars. I washed the new 74 Chevys when they were delivered - and wanted a white and maroon Laguna S-3 (with a 400 and swivel buckets!) something terrible.

I remember "Fridays" with Micheal Richards, Wolfman Jack on the "Midnite Special", and when SNL was new - although it was tough since SNL competed with The Ghoul ("armapay armapay froggie froggie - turn blue and scratch glass").
 
#34 ·
I also remember when staying at my grandma's over a weekend saturday nights we ate ginger snaps and had to watch lawrence welk or read.

I remember when we had a big snow it was just generally assumed there would be no school. all us neighborhood kids would quickly form hockey teams and play out there til way late. nobody cared.
 
#35 ·
Without a blink of an eye, or any administrator disaproval, I was able to take a firearm into my senior Communications class for a demonstration speech. Most of us 18 year olds that hunted brought guns to school in our cars/trucks so we could go straight to the field when we got out.

Now you can't even draw a picture of a gun without being suspended :(
 
#37 ·
Laugh in, Mash, Little House on the Prarie, Re-runs of I love Lucy, and Sat. Night live with Blues Brothers, Lilly Tomlen, and Gildna Radner.

Sat. were the Road Runner, Bugs, and the real cartoons.

and how did Mr. Rogers stay on the air? and Pee Wee Too.:sonicjay:

How many recall the show Alf?
 
#38 ·
Funny thing about ALF.... I watched it faithfully but besides his love of eating cats I cannot remember any of the shows. at our house on saturday nights the whole family watched the muppets at 7pm, the love boat at 8pm and fantasy island at 9pm...

fast forward to our first VCR. it was the family xmas present. with it we got 3 movies. star trek, time bandits and purple rain.
 
#45 · (Edited)
+1 Go out side... just be sure to come home before the street lights come on. No worries about dinner the neighbor would feed you.

+1 We had a game called Tacklelina... AKA one kid in the center and he tried to tackel somebody as we ran for the endzones. Then there were 2 in the center..Each would take somebody down until there as an angry mob of kids after just one kid
 
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