You know, things sure have changed a lot since I was a kid (and no age jokes here please. Pretty please??). This is a picture of my brothers, yes of course that's them dressed up in their nifty cowboy outfits, my 2 cousins from Alabama and myself with our Mom and our Gran. We were at our Gran's house. This surely had to be a photo op because we were never usually allowed to actually eat inside at this table. We usually had to eat on her outside porch when we were all together like this. As you can see my cousin's are dressed alike. They're not twins so I have no clue why my auntie used to dress them alike. The other picture is us all piled up and sitting on our Papa. He was a blast our Papa. He always used to actually get us into purpose on trouble and then laugh about doing so.
When we were growing up one year we got bicycles for Christmas. You see then, mostly you got a bike and you just learned to ride it on your own. There was none of this bicycle-helmets-knee-pad rubbish. Our Dad held it up long enough for us to get on the thing and off we went. Now, we definitely had a few bumps and scrapes but we learned how to ride our bicycles like pros. I like the way we learned to ride. Our dad just knew that we would learn and he let us without hovering over us. There was never the assumption that we WOULDN'T be able to ride and we all rose to the occasion and passed with flying colors. Within a week we were riding in the street (yep.....right down the middle of it) with no hands.
We also were never, ever, as in just didn't happen, allowed to sit inside all day long and watch television (there were no video games until 'Pong" came along and proudly we had the first one in our neighborhood) or sleep half of the day away. Our mom would wake you up to make you go outside into the sunshine. I surely didn't appreciate that then. I do appreciate that now.
We were allowed to play with toy guns in our house and yet none of us have been arrested for murder or any violent acts or been convicted of any felonies (unless there is something my brother's and those cousin's aren't telling me........).
We played lawn darts and none of us lost an eye. We had wood burning kits and science lab kits with real chemicals in the box. None of us were ever burned and we never blew up anything too terribly big. I don't count my little brother's little hut in our back yard as "too terribly big". I had an Easy Bake oven that I was allowed to use with no supervision, and I mean absolutely no supervision. I used to make little cakes for my sweet dad to eat all the time. He always lovingly ate every single crumb and applauded my culinary skills. My dad also used to buy me those pink Barbie Party-All-Night plastic high heels to play dress up in. To this day, I am a shoe hound and love a good pair of heels though I have graduated from plastic these days.
One time when we were really young...so young that I couldn't venture to guess our ages, it actually snowed a little tiny bit at our house. My neighbor's mom had us to collect a bowl of snow and she made Snow Ice Cream. It had raw eggs, sugar and vanilla in it and in my minds eye I remember it being terrific. These days no one, including me probably, would ever dream of eating such a thing as snow off the ground and raw eggs. Somehow we survived though I blame my dislike of eggs on the snow ice cream incident.
Things really have changed tremendously in just my lifetime. I understand the reasoning behind most things, but other's I'm a little lost on now and again. I just know, what I know, what I know.......a little dirt ain't gonna kill ya.....even if you eat it. Please don't eat dirt though okay?
*****"My name is Michael, I've got a nickle, I've got a nickle shiny and new. I'm going to buy you all kinds of candy, that's what I'm going to do" (sic)*****
~~~~Playground In My Mind~~~~~~
Steady On
Reggie Girl
