Response to an E-Mail

The f0llowing two pieces arrived in my email Inbox this morning. I have been receiving these sorts of things for the better part of a decade now, one of the benefits of being the youngest of a couple of decades of cousins, I guess. Normally, I chuckle and move on, counting my blessings as the youngest of my generation, but this time I was struck by the underlying premises and thus feel compelled to comment. If you're not interested in my comments, just ignore the interspersed italics and enjoy the pieces.

Black and White (Under age 40 - You won't understand.)

You could hardly see for all the snow,
Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go
Pull a chair up to the TV set,
"Good Night, David . Good Night, Chet."

Depending on the channel you tuned,
You got Rob and Laura - or Ward and June .
It felt so good. It felt so right.
Life looked better in black and white.
I Love Lucy , The Real McCoys,
Dennis the Menace, the Cleaver boys,
Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train,
Superman, Jimmy and Lois Lane .
Father Knows Best, Patty Duke ,
Rin Tin Tin and Lassie too,
Donna Reed on Thursday night! --
Life looked better in black and white.

I want to go back to black and white.
Everything always turned out right.
Simple people, simple lives.
Good guys always won the fights.

Now nothing is the way it seems,
In living color on the TV screen.
Too many murders, too many fights,
I want to go back to black and white.

In God they trusted, alone in bed, they slept,
A promise made was a promise kept.
They never cussed or broke their vows.
They'd never make the network now.

But if I could, I'd rather be
In a TV town in '53.
It felt so good. It felt so right.
Life looked better in black and white.

I'd trade all the channels on the satellite,
If I could just turn back the clock tonight
To when everybody knew wrong from right.
Life was better in black and white!




Another Goody For The Oldtimers

My 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 seem to get food poisoning.

While I generally share this cavalier attitude, some of my guests and friends wish I had a different attitude. The fact that the speaker has survived does not mean that others have not felt the negative effects of such carelessness. What's more, mass production has increased the risks of food contamination. We no longer get our chickens, eggs, or their byproducts from the henhouse and our own kitchen. Rather, those lovely bacteria have ample opportunity to hitch rides cross country and across country lines, never mind county lines. During their travels, they have ample time to incubate, breed, and further disseminate their equally industrious offspring. Add to that the ever increasing efforts of antibacterialization leading to ever stronger surviving strains (survival of the fittest and all that), and what we have are less cast iron stomachs and greater risks of preventable food poisoning. As a further aside, my mother, the youngest of her clan as well, never wrung a chicken's neck in her life, though evidently most of her siblings did have that dubious privilege.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting ecoli.

Okay, my mom used to defrost everything on the counter, and I still eat raw stuff, probably more often than I should. I, too, had the lovely wax paper sandwhiches in brown paper bags, which I used to love popping to punctuate the end of lunch. In fact, I can vaguely remember forfeiting some quality recess time for indulging in that privilege... but I digress. I also remember practically twisting my mom's arm to invest in the novel plastic baggies that my friends' parents were using so that I wouldn't be the only one eating hard, stale crust while everyone else was playing with their food, making fingerprints in their super soft sandwiches. What's more, I remember someone in my class throwing up every single year of elementary school, at least once a year, usually more often than that. At the time, it was considered a sign that flu season had arrived. Now, I'm not so sure. What's more, if an ice pack cooler makes packing a more healthful lunch more practical, I'm all for it. Chips and other junk foods, after all, were simply a way to provide a nonperishable snack in warm weather when they first appeared on the landscape. Now, unfortunately, they appear to be considered staples, and that is just so wrong.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

Now that many of us have had a chance to see lake and river water under a microscope, is that still a popular choice? Personally, I prefer the natural purification of sea salt water over chlorinated pool water, but again, humankind has made that choice a bit iffy as well. When there hasn't been an oil or sewage spill recently, the ocean is still the best choice by far, except, of course, during man-of-war season...

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..

Hah! What kind of weenie wrote this one? Every single year someone twisted or sprained an ankle, broke an arm, fell out of a tree or monkey bar or jungle gym, got concussed by an errant ball or elbow, and now there's plenty of work for all kinds of podiatrists and chiropractors and other medical specialists because of damage begun in the early years of our lives that went undiagnosed and therefore untreated until they were good and serious.

Flunking gym was not an option...even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Well, yes, it is. Those who actually conduct physical education classes, as opposed to merely supervising a glorified play period, offer information as well as opportunities for large motor activities, and tests involve not just physical performance but paper responses as well. It doesn't sound as though the originator of this quip got much out of his/her educational opportunities, which is perhaps why the writer does not understand or appreciate what modern day educators are attempting to offer this next generation.

Speaking of school, we all sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

If this is so, why do so few people seem to know the lyrics these days, even among those over fifty? You can't seriously blame aging for all those unmoving lips at ballgames, can you? As for whether or not detention carries a stigma these days, I have to say that that depends on how and where it is conducted, sadly.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

Well, yes, if you're still willing to believe everything authority figures tell you without question, then yes, you do have some conspicuous psyche damage. When do you figure you'll be old enough to think for yourself?

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

Okay, this one I have to agree with, dangling preposition be darned. (Needles, anyone?) I have to agree that in attempting to instill a sense of self-worth, we as a society have perhaps gone a little too far in developing unmerited pride. As our sense of self-worth has increased, however, our sense of national pride seems to have decreased, which seems a sad trade-off to me.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

I can, but that's because I wasn't allowed out of my front door. Once Mom began to make sure I got to the library at least once a week and was allowed to check out as many books as I could carry, however, I was okay. The sad truth is that it just isn't as safe to let kids play by themselves outdoors as it was in the Golden Age of Childhood right after WWII. I'm not sure it ever was, even then.

Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

And there are sufficient case studies of children and adults who did, you arrogant ass.

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.

Clearly the Mercurochrome has affected whatever clear thinking of which you might once have been capable, if ever. Of course, you could buy penny loaf bread then, too, but now you can get a bottle of hydrogen peroxide for $.98 and it stings even less than that lovely orange stuff. If, however, someone wants to play on a gravel pile these days, trespassing is required. Most construction sites are now surrounded by chain link fences to prevent just such incursions.

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 our butt spanked again when we got home.

Yes, I remember this. It's a fine tool for parents who can actually separate discipline from revenge for public humiliation. That's a fine line, though, and what's up with the double dose?

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.

And how is that "goof" doing these days? Is he a well-adjusted contributing member of society? Had he been forewarned or was he just expected to know better? Has he grown up to be a creative individual or an absolutist bounded by rules he doesn't understand? Did he die in Vietnam trying to make his folks proud of him? Did he run away from home? Where's the rest of the anecdote?

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?

What difference would it have made?

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?

It wasn't. And to hear you tell it, you didn't survive, at least, not as you might otherwise have done.

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!

Too true. You wouldn't trade it for greater equality, for more equitable opportunities, for a more even footing with those who have less than you do. That would be communistic, wouldn't it? That would never do. Keep it simple. Keep things black and white. Don't notice that there are so many other colors and possibilities in life, that there are other people. Sure, sharing the world's resources will inevitably take a bite out of your privileges, but that is actually the right thing to do. You did mention that your heroes always did what was right, didn't you?