The 70's...

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 get food poisoning.
********************
My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter...
AND I used to eat a bite raw Sometimes, too.
********************
Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper,
in a brown paper bag, ... Not in icepack coolers,
but I can't remember anybody getting e-coli.
********************
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming
in the lake, instead of a pristine pool-
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's! I guess PE must be
much harder than gym....
********************
Speaking of school, we all said prayers
and sang the National Anthem,
and staying in detention after school...
caught all sorts of negative attention.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches.
********************
What an archaic health system we had then.
Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat
and everything, and she could even give
you an aspirin for a headache or fever!
********************
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 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 neighborhood 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!

"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life". -John F. Kennedy