• Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school.
• All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done every day and wore high heels.
• Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box.
• Lying on your back in 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.
• Turning in the empty bottles at the store and using the deposit to buy a soda pop and candy. ~ Don't forget to wind the clock before you go to bed.
• Getting your oil checked and windshield cleaned was always included when your gas was "pumped for you" at the gas station, without asking, all for free, every time! You didn't pay for air either! Plus, you got trading stamps to boot!
• Nobody owned a pure bred dog. ~ Wearing pants with patches on the knees.
• 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.
• All the girls had ugly gym uniforms. ~ Don't go outside with your good school clothes on!
• When 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.
• Don't cross your eyes, they'll get stuck that way! ~ Reaching in the mud for a penny.
• Do You Remember summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling, visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar?
• Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger.
• 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.
• When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home.
• How about Candy cigarettes, Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside, Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles and Coffee shops with table-side jukeboxes.
• Do You Remember Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Doody and the Peanut Gallery, the Lone Ranger, Only the Shadow Knows, Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger or Buttermilk?
• When a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races.
• Your Mom wore nylons, one for each leg and worn with a garter belt.
• Do You Remember "home" milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers or Newsreels before a movie or P.F. Fliers?
• What about Blackjack, Beemans, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum.
• Or Telephone numbers using a word for the prefix...(Raymond 4-601) or party lines!
• It took five minutes for the TV warm up.
• Do You Remember Peashooters, 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 or The Fuller Brush Man?
• High school kids actually went steady. ~ When a quarter was a decent allowance.
• What about Penny candy, Jiffy Pop popcorn and 35 cent a gallon gasoline.
• Do You Remember Reel-To-Reel tape recorders, Tinkertoys, Erector Sets, The Fort Apache Play Set, Lincoln Logs or 15 cent McDonald hamburgers?
• Or 5¢ packs of baseball cards with that awful pink slab of bubble gum in the wrapper.
• Pouring the cream off the top of the milk when you open the new bottle.
• Do You Remember the last time you heard "I-double-dog-dare-ya" or when a "triple-dog-dare" was the ultimate challenge?
and savor the slower pace and share it with the children of today?
• A foot of snow was a dream come true.
• It wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends".
• The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties".
• Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures.
• Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot.
• Catching fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening.
• "Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense.
• Water balloons were the ultimate weapon.
• The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team.
• Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles.
• Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle.
• Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin.
• War was a card game.
Ha Ba De Da!