An "all nighter" had nothing to do with not getting up to pee.
I miss: When a kid could just jump on his bike and go to the neighbor's house--- without putting on enough body armour to deflect a cruise missile, without his .45 caliber-proof bike lock and chain without slathering on SPF 60000000000 sunscreen over every inch of his body, without carrying 2 forms of ID, without making sure he's bringing his DS2 with the latest Mario whatever game installed, without putting on his GPS tracking device, without his cell phone with speed dial 911 preset, email and SMS ready to respond at any moment while he twitters his journey and updates his Facebook, and without checking to make sure that his Ipod was fully charged and his Itunes software updated.
Looking for the best place to get diamond needles for your record player. I guess that's coming back though??????
There's a billboard in Houston that talks about kids wearing helmets, with a picture of a wheelchair. While it makes sense, I still don't know if I could ever force my kid(if I had any) to wear a helmet or pads. Although I'd probably get arrested for child endangerment. Remember when as kids we complained when we were forced to stay inside and we never knew what hot or cold was we just wanted to be outside?
I'm all for helmets. If you fall off your bike, you can get hurt badly. That makes sense. It's likely you can fall off and likely you can get seriously hurt. So, its good advice to have them on. But, it's this idea that everything must be PERFECT and we must plan for every single possible horrible event, no matter how minimal the risk, that makes me crazy. Somehow I managed to survive my childhood. If I tried to explain it to parents of today, they would think it impossible or that I had horrible parents (which I didn't).
Ah - another 'remember when' for me. I should have been a poster child for bike helmets. When I was 8 I somehow crashed my bike and went over the handlebars right into a rockery, hitting squarely on the top of my head. Spent 40 days in the hospital, had to have another hole cut in my skull to pull out the original bone bits, and spent several days in a coma. Nearly died. Had I been wearing a helmet.... dust me off and away I would have gone. Jedi
-ride a bike, fall off, get hurt and child protective services wouldn't be at the door when you got home -could see a movie at the drive-in in southern California -go to the store a couple miles away by yourself or with another kid and be perfectly fine -the only 'reality tv show' was the news -the only hippies were in Berkeley, CA
I should have worn a helmet myself with all the ramp/track jumping I did. But I rarely crashed somehow. A friend of mine broke his collar bone doing it. We're all severely lucky. I should have had a helmet on when I was an infant in my walker. I walked myself right into my parents sunken shower and landed on my head. I have a flat spot on the back/top of my head and I'm guessing that's where it came from. We're all pretty lucky. You definitely were.
Cutoffs - after jeans were unhemmed and patched many times over for that accidental Country Soul look. Tube Socks White T-Shirt Black and White "Tennis" shoes were washed and line dried until Fall, a time of year recognizable to us old farts not only by the smell of burning leaves, but by said shoes being gray and full of holes and shoelaces having 17 knots each - and Mother deciding it is time to get a new pair of shoes for the year, although shoes are just being broken in. Above spiffy ensemble was the uniform of choice, and a Blue Schwinn Stingray was the bike. Paddleballs, rubberband-powered balsa airplanes, army men, marbles, jacks and much more were on squeaky rotisserie toy display. If that store stocked Fabergé Organics with wheat germ oil and honey, in addition to Prell along with Head and Shoulders - you were livin' large. Oleo. Bottle opener on machine and by front and outer door of markets. Can and bottle openers were given away at each register, as Drivers needed to puncture beer in order to drink it on way home. Hot Pants, Halter Tops & Designer Jeans. The girls who wore them would, could and should. A risque magazine would show nekkid women playing volleyball. "Mohoccan". Columbian Gold. Acapulco Gold. Rainbow. Maui Wowie. The saddest day of all was in 1974... Image Unavailable, Please Login
- The guy at the gas station would fix the flat on your bike for free. - ALL gas stations had rest rooms and ALL gas stations had mechanics. - The Dentist would give you a lollipop after your visit, same for the Doctor's. - The Dentist STOOD next to you while you were in the chair. - Getting whacked with a yard stick by the principle. - The Air Raid siren at my elementary school would be tested every Wednesday at 12:00 noon while we were out on the play ground. NO hearing protection. The thing was LOUD! - A pack of cigarettes was .25 cents - Gas was .23 cents a gallon. - #2 heating oil was .16 cents a gallon. - The freezer compartment in your refrigerator was the size of a bread box. - There were Bread Boxes - There were Milk Boxes - Your mailbox did not require a lock on the door. - Our home entertainment system consisted of a MONAURAL High Fidelity music center my Dad built from a Heathkit. - Stingray bikes NO HELMETS - Jiffypop - Fizzies - Erector sets - Lincoln Logs - The ORIGINAL skate board - The Beach Boys ( "Surfer Shirts" were big then) - Pocket sized transistor radios - AM radio was the only game in town - 45 RPM records. - BUTTER - Pixie Sticks - McDonald's Cheese Burger was .23 cents - Studebaker - Soapbox Derby - Unlimited Hydroplanes with V-12's (Turboed Allisons or supercharged Rolls Merlins.) Those were the boats! - 8mm movie cameras - Flashbulbs - Flash Cubes - Kodak Instamatics - Calgon - Coke was a soft drink that cost .10 cents It wasn't until the 80's I realized that the Wizard of Oz began in Black & White and changed to Color when Dorothy landed in Oz. The best cartoons on TV showed gratuitous violence, The Roadrunner show. Rocky and Bullwinkle (with Boris and Natasha) Snidely Whiplash etc....................... I Love Lucy Mitch Miller Singers "Live from Miami, The Jacky Gleason Show!" The Honeymooners Blondie and Dagwood The Rifleman Lassie Shane! Gunsmoke Batman The Green Hornet Gilligan's Island (Ginger AND Maryanne, I could never make up my mind) Hawaii Five-O Lost in Space The original series, Star Trek. The Walt Disney Hour I'll think of more later.
48?!?! I am surprised that you can remember ANYTHING I am 36 -I remember when we first got Pong...all the neighbor kids would come over to play (to the younger crowd before X-Box Live you actually had to go sit in each others homes to play games together) -I remember our first VCR was a top loader with mechanical buttons that stayed down when you pushed them it came with a wired remote control -I remember 3 Tonight Show hosts (Carson, Leno and Conan) -I remember when casts for broken bones only came in one color, white -I remember when playgrounds had monkey bars that were about 8 feet over a pad of asphalt (hence the need for all of those white casts) -I remember old pop vending machines that dispensed glass bottles. You put the money in and yanked the bottle out.
tangled phone cords - stand on a chair, let the handset dangle and watch it spin .. . . sitting on the driveway, removing your skateboard's wheels, careful not to lose the ball bearings, cleaning them and the races up w/ WD-40 and a paper towel and putting it all back together. . . scraping and re-painting galvanized gutters during summer vacation . . . the unprecedented (and never again repeated) event of pulling the TV (b&w) into the dining room to watch the moon landing . . .
Remember when cable TV came with a box and a long cord for the remote. Remember how you could slide the channel knob really fast from end to end and the channel would change as rapidly as you slide the handle? Why the hell does it take a little bit less than a second or two for a channel to change now 20-30 years later?
