Black and White TV

  "Good night and God bless."

Go all the way to the bottom

past the pictures... I think you'll

enjoy  it. Whoever wrote

this must have been my next door

neighbor because  it totally

described my childhood to a 'T.'

Hope you enjoy  it.

Black  and White 

Black  and White

(Under age 40?

You won't understand.)

You  could hardly

see for all the snow,

Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.

Pull a chair up to the TV set,

'Good Night, David.

Good Night, Chet.'  

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. Our school sandwiches

were wrapped in wax paper

in a brown paper bag,

not in ice pack coolers,

but I can't remember getting e..coli.

  

Almost all of us

would have rather gone

swimming in the lake instead

of a pristine pool (talk about boring),

no beach closures then.

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.

We  must have had

horribly damaged psyches.

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,

Play Station, Nintendo,

X-box or 270

digital TV cable stations.

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  

(kids liked it better because it didn't sting

like iodine did) 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 there and

then we got our butt spanked

again when we got home.  

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 neighbourhood run amuck. 

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!

 How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA;

AND TO  ALL WHO DIDN'T,

SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED.

I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR  ANYTHING!

 Remember that life's most simple

pleasures are very often the best.