When the worst thing you could do at
school
was smoke in the bathrooms, flunk a test or chew gum.
The banquets were in the cafeteria and we
danced to a juke box later
All the girls wore fluffy pastel
gowns
and the boys wore suits for the first time
and we were allowed to stay
out till
When a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream
car. . .
to cruise, peel out, lay rubber and watch
drag races
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.
No one ever asked where the car
keys were 'cause
they were always in the car, in the ignition
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..."
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.
And...with all our progress...don't you
just wish...just once...
you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace...
and share it with the children of the 80's and 90's.
So send this on to someone who can
still 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.
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!
And was it really that long ago?