>d 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.
>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. 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?
>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.
>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. 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?