Rhonda, 
Those were the good old days!  And justthink, we even liked our parents!  
Virgie and Hoshi  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rhonda Partain" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2006 1:03 PM
Subject: if you're over 40 read this!


> 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
> someti mes, 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 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
> 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
> 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?
> 
> 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!
> 
> __._,_.___
>