And, last week, well, it was a really good time for me. You know, sometimes, you just have those weeks that are especially nice. Along with Carson being here for some of spring break, I was fortunate enough to spend part of each day with old friends from my childhood and teenage years. Some were here from out of town and some were teacher friends who were out for spring break and some, well, it just turned out to be a good time to get together. When you’re with old friends, old times are bound to come up and they did. We talked about the things we did and the places we went when we were young. When your face is starting to show the lines of age and you can still look across the table and see the faces of your childhood, then you are blessed. There’s nothing quite so dear as having a friend who endures from the innocence of youth through all the years since. There’s something about having traveled through all of life’s stages with a person that connects them to you in a deep down place. After the different conversations, I thought about all the good things we did- so much that kids don’t do anymore. 

Today’s kids will never know the thrill of sliding over the top of a vinyl bench seat and falling into the back floorboard while going 55 mph. Or stretching over the front seat from the back to press the radio preset buttons. Or sitting in the opened car window or in the back of a truck while going down the road. Or sticking your gum in those little car ashtrays- my word, we were surrounded by ashtrays everywhere we went. They’ll never have the feeling of living dangerously- traveling down the interstate unbuckled, because the seat belts were hopelessly lost in the bowels of the vinyl seats. It’s not really a bad thing that they’re missing out on this, but it sure seemed fun at the time. 

Kids probably never smear Elmer’s glue on their hands and peel it off after it dries anymore. Sometimes, we used candle wax. No, with smart phones, gaming systems, streaming tv, and travel ball and dance, they’ve likely never experienced the level of boredom that is required to come up with such pastimes. When the glue thing got old, we’d get our mothers’ stick pins and run them through the skin in our fingertips. Or maybe that was just me. If so, just forget I said anything. 

They’ll never know the mystery of answering a phone with no idea who’s on the other end- could be a good surprise or a bad one. Either way, you were on the hook. On the flip side, the anonymity it provided when calling someone just to see if they were home and then hanging up was priceless. It also gave you cover when calling strangers to ask if their refrigerator was running. And they’ll never experience the fear associated with their parents answering their phone calls and the great unknown of what they might say to their friends when they call to speak to them. It was harder back then to conceal the fact that you did, indeed, have parents. 

Nowadays, schools have early dismissal every time the weather even thinks about getting bad. Back then, we just crawled under tables or lined up in the hall- heads between our knees with our books shielding our skulls. Sometimes, we just squatted with our heads against the wall. I remember kids crying and wailing and one even wetting her pants. Everybody wanted their mama. I don’t care what kind of weather was headed straight for the school, if it wasn’t 3:00, you weren’t going anywhere. We still had sentences to diagram and we weren’t done carrying the one. Que sera, sera, kids. 

The whole school lunch experience was different. There weren’t all the convenient disposable things they have now, but our lunchboxes were the coolest. These kids will never know the smell of metal mixed with bologna and cherry kool-aid after your lunchbox had gotten left in the car. The stern threats from your mom when she sent ravioli in your thermos, “you bring back my fork- that’s one of my good ones.” 

I don’t think kids know about the freedom a bike could give back then. Unlike today, the bike was your most prized possession. There was a feeling that it was an extension of yourself and your key to a day of independence. Your mom didn’t have to know where you were going. She said nothing about staying where she could see you. Why in the world would you want to do that? As long as you got home when you were called to dinner, the bike could take you anywhere you wanted to go. You were queen of the road on your pink Huffy with the banana seat, handlebar streamers, and playing cards flapping in the spokes. 

Kids don’t know about the novelty of Saturday morning cartoons anymore. They have cartoons whenever and wherever they want them. And you can’t talk about Saturday morning cartoons with out mentioning reading the cereal box while eating for a lack of anything else to do- unless it was Sunday and the funny paper had come. Then, there was digging around in the cereal with your dirty hands to find the prize at the bottom before your brother did. I mean, you couldn’t let him get his hands on the plastic terrarium, or diving submarine, or secret decoder ring. 

Most kids will never know what it’s like for the outdoors to be their playground where the playground equipment consisted of swollen creeks, culverts, bridges, drain pipes, tall trees, flooded ditches, and railroad tracks. Where were our mothers? I’ll tell you where they were. They were watching Victor and Nicki on The Young and the Restless, while swishing Pine Sol around in the toilets and smearing lemon Pledge on the furniture- forgetting they even had children. 

There are no longer any dangerous toys, because they do this new thing called safety testing. Instead, toys now have warnings to not eat the batteries. Back then, you were welcomed to eat the batteries if you were that dense. Nobody was going to tell you that you couldn’t. There were a lot of dangers in our toy boxes. Recall? Pshhh. Here, take these clackers outside and knock yourself silly. Go spear your friends with these lawn darts. Let’s see how many limbs you can break when your Keds slip off those metal monkey bars and you fall through that nest of rebar. Here are some Fisher-Price figures that will fit perfectly in your small throat- go suck on these. Not to mention, all the boys were running around with loaded BB guns and pocket knives. It was survival of the fittest out there. Our legos contained lead and who knows what that nuclear material was inside Stretch Armstrong. Our childhood was really a test- a boot camp of sorts. Who can make it to adulthood alive? 

Fun but unhealthy activities were a must. Did our mothers know water from the hose contained lead and a heaping dose of BPA? Of course, not. And ignorance was bliss as we ran behind the mosquito truck in the cloud of DDT with them waving from the kitchen window. The feeling of your hair blowing in the wind as you rode down a big hill without the confinement of a bike helmet. Or the thrill of lying on a friend’s black roof slathered in vegetable oil or baby oil or any other oil you could find to fry your epidermis so it would eventually turn brown. I don’t ever remember our parents supervising our fireworks. They just sent us out with a box of matches and our explosives and trusted that they hadn’t raised idiots. No, mothers now are armed with so much information and so many warnings that their kids will miss out on these fun, yet questionable activities. 

Teenagers are now getting cars as nice or nicer than their parents. They’ll never develop the coping mechanisms needed to drive a 15 year old gray tank up into the student parking lot. It fosters the development of one’s sense of humor. Of course, a lot of people had these type of cars, so we just named them and gave them a life and personality of their own. Most of the time, your parents didn’t just go buy you a new car when you got your license. That was something you had to work toward. Starting out, you were only getting one if, say, your grandmother was getting a new car and you got her old one. I believe that’s how I came to drive the Green Bean for a short time- only to have it replaced later by the Pale Rider that my daddy bought off some old lady without any consultation with me. He seemed more impressed by the low mileage and garage-kept condition than he was worried about how it would look to a 16 year old. 

I wouldn’t trade my 70’s childhood and 80’s teenagehood for anything. We’re the survivors. The fittest. The ones who figured it out on our own. And when I think about the times in my life when I have felt safe, secure, loved, and happy, my mind takes me there, first of all. There’s no greater gift that a child can get or a parent can give than that. 

“A happy childhood is perhaps the most fortunate gift in life.” Dorothy Richardson

I enjoyed remembering with y’all. Hope you’re having a great week! 

JONI