Do You Remember When…
As the summer comes to a close and I see the kids in the neighborhood standing in groups wearing headphones or talking on cell phones, while parents stand guard in cars awaiting the arrival of the bus, my mind wanders back to my own youth.
Do you remember when the worst thing you could do at school was smoke in the bathrooms, flunk a test, or chew gum. When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited a misbehaving student at home.
Banquets and the proms were held in the school cafeteria or the gymnasium. Teens danced to a juke box and the girls wore fluffy pastel gowns and the boys wore suits, many for the first time. For such special events curfew was relaxed and we were allowed to stay out till 12 a.m.
When a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream car. People went "steady", and a girl wore her guy's class ring with a quarter inch of wrapped dental floss or yarn coated with nail polish so it would fit her finger.
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. And you caused a lot of trouble if you accidentally locked the doors at home, since not everybody regularly carried a key.
Remember lying on your back on the grass with your friends and saying things like "That cloud looks like a...", or playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game. Back then, baseball was not a psychological group learning experience or a proving ground for the pros - - it was just a game.
Or going out to play with your friends and nobody worried about where you were because you knew the limits and wouldn’t think of getting home late missing lunch or dinner.
Remember when packages and containers came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger.
Do you remember Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel & Hardy, Howdy Doody and The Peanut Gallery, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Nellie Belle, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk as well as the sound of a push mower on Saturday morning. Summers filled with bike rides with baseball cards in the spokes, playing as cowboys, baseball games, and visits to the pool.
With all our progress...don't you just wish...just for a while...you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace...and share it with today’s children.
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