Remember When

We are having a service for my brother on Sunday. I just finished going through old photos in order to take pictures of him along and I found this. I shared it somewhere back in 2002 but I want to share it again here so that it will be recorded somewhere, I love it and I hope you enjoy it. Mostly I hope you were lucky enough to live it.

Remember when....

If you're close to my age, stroll with me ...close your eyes...and go back...before the internet...before bombings, AIDS, herpes, before semiautomatic guns and crack...before SEGA or Super Ninetendo...way back! I remember.

I'm taking about sitting on the curb...about playing hide-and -seek, or kick the can outside in the street until your porch light came on. And mother may I, red rover, Simon says and red-light-green-light. Lunch boxes with a thermos, chocolate milk and penny candy from the store, hopscotch, skates with keys, hula hoops, wax lips and mustaches, Mary Janes, saddle shoes and Coke bottles with the names of cities on the bottom. Christmas morning, your first day of school, bedtime prayers, goodnight kisses, climbing trees, getting an ice cream of the ice cream truck, or a donut from the bakery one

Remember when it took 5 minutes for the TV to warm up and it went off the air each night.

When nearly everyone's mom was at home when the kids got home from school?

When we went to Sunday School every Sunday morning and Vacation Bible School every summer.

When a quarter was a great allowance, when you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny. 

When all your male teachers wore neckties and ladies got there hair done every week and wore high heels. When we wore nylons that were in two pieces. 

Remember running through the sprinkler, playing in the rain, bobby pins, Mickey Mouse Club on Sunday evenings, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Kookla Fran and Ollie, Betty Boop, and when The Wizard of Oz was something to look forward to each year. Remember American Bandstand, and seeing it all in black and white.

When going around the corner seemed far away, and going to town seemed like going somewhere.

Climbing trees, making forts, backyard shows, lemonade stands, cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, jumping on the bed, pillow fights, ribbon candy, tinsel on the Christmas tree that mom insisted should be done one at a time. Jackie Gleason, white gloves, going to the movie theater for a double feature complete with cartoons, a balcony, and intermissions,  running till you were out of breath, laughing so hard that your stomach hurt, being tired from playing...your first crush...remember that?

Koolaid was the drink of summer or drinking water right out of the garden hose, toting your friends on your handle bars, wearing new shoes on the first day of school, Easter morning and class filed trips

Not stepping on a crack or you'd break your mother's back, paper chains and popcorn chains at Christmas, gum wrapper chains at other times, silhouettes of Lincoln and Washington, the smells of school, of paste and plaster of Paris, of memiograph copies.

Remember when there were only two types of sneakers for boys and girls-Keds and PF Flyers. Remember girls ugly gym uniforms.

When you got your windows cleaned, your oil checked, and gas pumped without asking_All for free and you got trading stamps too!

When laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box.

When it was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your family.

When the worst thing you could do at school was flunk a test or chew gum, or wear to short a skirt, and the prom was in the gym or the lunch room. When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate the student awaited the student at home. We lived in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs or gangs. Our parents were a much bigger threat. But we survived because their love was so much greater than the threat. Remember heading out on Halloween with a pillow case to run free with no supervision? Remember waking up on Saturday morning to the sound of a real lawn mower and the smell of fresh cut grass blowing in through your open window , when summers were filled with play, bike rides and swimming in the pool of the one neighbor who had the means to have one, and endless outdoor games even after dark.

Remember when a '55 Chevy was the dream car, and you sat close to your boy friend while he drove with one hand because his arm was around your shoulder, when we went steady. and girls wore his class ring her finger with yarn wrapped around it so it would fit her finger.

Remember lying on the grass with your friends looking at the clouds and saying things like "That one looks like a...".

Scrapes and bruises were kissed and made better, spinning around, getting dizzy and falling down was a cause for giggles, the worst embarrassment 

was being picked last for a team,  and older siblings were the worst tormentors, but also the fiercest protectors.

Remember when stuff at the store came without safety caps, and hermedic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger."Race issue" meant arguing about who ran fastest, money issues were handled by whoever was banker in Monopoly. Being old referred to anyone over twenty and the worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was cooties.

With all our progress, don't you wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace and share it with the children of today? So send this to someone who can still remember Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Doody, The Lone Ranger, and Mr Magoo. 

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