Here is something that is being reposted on Facebook:
My curfew was the street lights and my parents didn't call my cell, they yelled "time to come in".
I played outside with friends, not online.
If I didn't eat what was made for me, then I didn't eat.
Hand sanitizer didn't exist, but you COULD get your mouth washed out with soap.
You got up before 8 am, otherwise you were burning daylight.
Re-post if you drank water out of a garden hose and survived!!
It goes along with some of the major things I remember about my life – the awesome stuff anyway!
I don’t know what our financial status was growing up. I’m guessing upper middle class? We never did without, but we also did without.
Some things I remember are pay cash for everything but your home, never buy a cemetery plot since you don’t know where you will end up, buy only what you can afford, buy the best you can afford and if you can throw money at it to fix it – throw money at it. I don’t remember ever going hungry or not having health care when I needed it. I also remember not having anything and everything that I wanted, either. I knew people that had money. They were pretty obvious about it. I believe we did, too. My parents just weren’t frivolous.
Sodas were a treat and we didn’t go out to eat often. We did only on Sunday afternoons and for special occasions. On those special occasions we wore our nice clothes and I think our parents were gradually testing our ability to behave in nice restaurants/public and our knowledge of what fork to use during a specific course. Yes, some of these restaurants were very nice.
Okay so that ‘throw money at it’ still baffles me. Probably because I, personally, rarely have money to spend on regular stuff much less throw money at problems to fix them. I, unlike my parents, have no financial sense.
Some of my favorite memories of childhood involve riding bikes, climbing trees and playing with the neighborhood kids in our yard.
Mom always kept popsicles in the freezer out in the storage room. She said she did it so the kids would gather there and she would always know where her kids were. Smart mommy.
We had the trampoline, jungle gym and the best yard for football in the neighborhood! {all before suing your neighbor became a problem when someone got hurt}
I was the middle child. Not such a bad thing when your siblings are brothers and you are a tom-boy.
We would go to Arkansas and camp out. Eventually we ended up with a trailer on the property. The long walks down to the creek to swim (and bath – brrrrr). Mom and dad would challenge us to see who could catch the first crawdad. Yep, they were sneaky in how they got us to just jump in that cold creek! Mom said she thought that the cold water surely would kill whatever the soap didn’t!
Family time! Omgosh! We had more fun. I actually, living in Tennessee, knew my Texas family so well. Either we were in Texas, or they were in Tennessee or better yet, playing with us in Arkansas.
My father coached football and my older brother played. I didn’t mind going to games because I would just play in the dirt or on the school playground. Never really got into the game itself, although I did go to Memphis State games with my father (now it’s the University of Memphis) and my older brother’s games.
In appreciation of my father working with the youth sports, he was gifted a professional outdoor basketball goal. It was an exciting day when they came out with a huge crane and other equipment to install it at our home. From then on, if we weren’t playing kick the can, riding our bikes or playing tackle football in the yard we were playing basketball in our driveway.
We swam at the YMCA. Eventually, due to my father’s love of golf, we joined a country club. I don’t think that lasted too terribly long. My family didn’t fit the Country Club scene, but boy did we enjoy swimming lesson, the diving pool and the ride in the back of the pickup there! Yes, we rode in the back of the pickup.
I learned to drive that truck. I learned first in an old Volkswagen semi-automatic. No silly peoples, not a gun, a car! You had to shift it, but it didn’t have a clutch. Then I moved up to the truck. Dad believed that if you could drive a stick (standard shift) then you could drive anything. This was a wise move on my father’s part since I had been put in more than one situation where I needed to drive a stick (2001, 24’ moving van…).
I don’t remember accomplishing anything major during my 16 years of life. I did survive. Survived playing in the woods, playing in creeks, climbing trees, riding bikes and my parents survived me learning to drive.
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