Remember
when......?
When
the worst thing you could do at school was smoke in the bathrooms, flunk a test
or chew gum.
And
the banquets were in the cafeteria and we danced to a juke box later, and all
the girls wore fluffy pastel gowns and the boys wore suits for the first time
and we were allowed to stay out till 12 p.m.
When
a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream car. . . to cruise, peel out, lay rubber and
watch drag races, and people went steady and girls wore a class ring with an
inch of wrapped dental floss or yarn coated with pastel frost nail polish so it
would fit her finger.
And
no one ever asked where the car keys were 'cause they were always in the car, in
the ignition, and the doors were never locked. And you got in big trouble if you
accidentally locked the doors at home, since no one ever had a key.
Remember
lying on your back on the grass with your friends and saying things like
"That cloud looks like a..."
And
playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game. Back
then, baseball was not a psychological group learning experience-it was a game.
Remember
when stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals 'cause no
one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger.
Remember
Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel & Hardy, Howdy Doody and The Peanut
Gallery, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Belle, Roy and Dale, Trigger
and Buttermilk as well as the sound of a real mower on Saturday morning, and
summers filled with bike rides, playing in cowboy land, baseball games, bowling
and visits to the pool...and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.
When
being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that
awaited a misbehaving student at home.
Basically,
we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive by shootings,
drugs, gangs, etc.
Our
parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we all survived because
their love was greater than the threat.
Didn't
that feel good, just to go back and say, Yeah, I remember that….