Those were the days!

[vanillafluffy]

My curfew was the street lights and mom didn't call my cell, she yelled "time to come in". I played outside with friends, not online. If I didn't eat what my mom made me then I didn't eat. Hand sanitizer didn't exist, but you COULD get your mouth washed out with soap, and your butt spanked. Repost if you drank water out of a hose and survived

Comments

[jagfanlj]

\o/

[vanillafluffy]

No bike helmets, either!

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[jagfanlj]

Or knee pads, and my knees have the dent scars from gravel to prove it! It hurt, but I learned not to go fast on gravel -- which served me well when I started driving.

[adventurat]

Me too! Though my mother never washed our mouths out with soap.

[vanillafluffy]

Neither did mine, but my 4th grade teacher did!

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[adventurat]

Really? Wow.

Maybe I just wasn't the kind of kid who needed the soap treatment. I didn't swear much, because the parental (particularly the paternal) disapprobation was worse than any other punishment.

[vanillafluffy]

And yet, we survived. Isn't it amazing?

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[chocolate_frapp]

i hate to sound like an old lady yelling get off my lawn, but not only is washing a kid's mouth out with soap deader than disco but kids are pretty much allowed to say whatever the hell they want to now. :(

[vanillafluffy]

I know, right? Nothing appalls me quite like some foul-mouthed little kid whose parents think they're cute. Knowing a whole bunch of swear words DOES NOT constitute a well-rounded vocabulary!

On the other hand, tonight I saw a news story about a local school that's been having a pest problem. The anchor solemnly said it was infected withcockroaches. *eyeroll* I'm pretty sure she *meant* 'infested'.

Then a mother of one of the students was interviewed. She was upset because the children were eating in a cafeteria tent set up on the grounds, and the food, which was being brought in from an uncontaminated facility, was cold. "That's not right!" she said. "I send them there so they can get a good hot meal!"

Gee, silly me. I thought you sent them there to get an education. If that's the kind of example the adults are setting, no wonder kids keep getting dumber.*

* Not all of them, but an swful lot of them, it seems like.

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[chocolate_frapp]

I was one of those kids whose parents were always complaining that they "read too much" (whatever the hell that means) and should be out playing (they considered it irrelevant that even as a kid i hated all that running around crap.)

[vanillafluffy]

I wasn't a total sloth. I used to ride my bike a lot, pretending it was a horse. Active, somewhat, athletic, no.

My mom was fine about me reading; I had ALL the Bobbsey Twin books, a great many of Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and the Three Investigators. My dad, on the other hand, once became so enraged by me reading at the dinner table that he grabbed the book and tore it in half. What made it worse was, it was a school library book. Thereafter, I checked to make sure he wasn't around before I accompanied a meal with a book.
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[kukkurkurat]

No soap in my mouth but spanked, yes. Garden hose water, absolutely. Did not have anyone to play with in the garden, though. No kids of similar age in our street section. But amused myself with climbing trees, playing in dirt and washing my socks in the rain water gathered in various old dishes outside.

[vanillafluffy]

It's just as well that I never reproduced; I'd be in jail by now. I think kids who get dirty are, over all, healthier than kids who stay clean, that a good swift swat on the butt is an excellent attention-getter, that a steady diet of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches won't hurt 'em as long as they get regular multi-vitamins, and that natural selection/Darwinism happens for a reason.
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[jagfanlj]

AMEN to this!