Remember When (Not For the Youngsters)

Do You Remember When?

How many of these do you remember?

All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?

It took five minutes for the TV warm up?

Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?

Nobody owned a purebred dog?

When a quarter was a decent allowance?

You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?

Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?

All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done every day and wore high heels?

You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time? And you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot?

Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box?

It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents?

They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed... and they did

When a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady?

No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?

Lying on your back in 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?

Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because 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 today?

When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the 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 survived because their love was greater than the threat.

Maybe you remember Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Dowdy and the Peanut Gallery, the Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk.

As well as summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar. Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?


I am sharing this with you today because it ended with a double dog dare to pass it on. To remember what a double dog dare is, read on. And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care.

Candy cigarettes
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Newsreels before the movie
P.F. Fliers
and the best candy ever - Dots; those drops of sugar stuck to a long strip of paper

Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(Raymond 4-601)
Party lines
Peashooters
Howdy Dowdy
45 RPM records
Green Stamps
Hi-Fi's

Metal ice cubes trays with levers
Mimeograph paper
Beanie and Cecil
Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Drive ins
Studebakers

Washtub wringers
The Fuller Brush Man
Reel-To-Reel tape recorders
Tinkertoys
Erector Sets
The Fort Apache Play Set
Lincoln Logs
15 cent McDonald hamburgers
5 cent White Castle burgers

5 cent packs of baseball cards - with that awful pink slab of "bubble gum"
Penny candy

25 cent a gallon gasoline
Jiffy Pop popcorn

Do you remember a time when...

Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"
Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over!"
"Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest
Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening
It wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends"

The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties"
Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot
A foot of snow was a dream come true

Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures
"Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense
Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles

The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team
War was a card game
Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle
Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin
Water balloons were the ultimate weapon

If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived!!!!!!!

Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from their "grown-up" life... I double-dog-dare-ya!

This message brought to you by an old guy. If you aren't familiar with most of the above, try Googling the unfamiliar terms - that should be interesting! Or you might be able to learn something from someone over 50.

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