How Did We Live?

Unknown author

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have...
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, but I
can't remember getting E-coli.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we
had no helmets.
We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers, and used our fingers to
simulate guns when the toy ones or my BB gun was not available.
Some students weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard so they failed a grade and were held
back to repeat the same grade. That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and
problem solvers. We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to
deal with it all.
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about
boring), 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.
Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on
linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we
could have sued the school system.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and stayed in detention after school and
caught all sorts of negative attention for the next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged
psyches.

I can't understand it. Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have
known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of aspirin and cough syrup if we
started getting the sniffles. 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, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or 270
digital cable stations. I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial
of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to
some guy's vacant lot, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought
over who got to be the Lone Ranger. What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that
lot? He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a
self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.
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 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
(physical abuse) . . . and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.
Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the
gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (remember why Tonka trucks were made tough . . .
it wasn't so that they could take the rough Berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with
leaded gas.
Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my
imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks
now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.
Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know that mowers came with
motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive. How sick
were my parents?
Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. 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 amok.
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!

... do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or What shall we wear?
For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all
these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall
be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own
things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
Matthew 6:24-34