Things that would never happen today that used to not be a *big deal*

In My Humble Opinion
101

My kids (9 and 12) are both, at this very moment, out playing at the park with friends from the neighborhood. They have to be home by 6:30, but that’s because they need to have dinner and baths and such, not because anyone’s afraid. If it were summer, they’d be allowed to head back out after dinner and play until the streetlights came on. Most of the kids in the neighborhood are allowed to do the same, and all their parents know each other, so we feel they’re at least as safe as we were at their ages.

As a special treat, my children are sometimes allowed to ride their bikes to McDonalds (during daylight only, and with their helmets on). It’s about 10 blocks away on all residential streets.

Our elementary school does have a Winter Program instead of a Christmas Pageant, but the kids sing Christmas songs. They also sing Hanukkah and Kwanzaa songs, and if anyone knew any Ramadan songs (are there Ramadan songs?), I’m sure they’d sing those, too. Easter isn’t celebrated, but it’s not ignored either, and parents are welcome to come into classrooms (after coordinating with teachers, of course) to explain some of the traditions, including religious traditions, of their cultures to the students.

102

Diving boards? What happened to diving boards?

103

We live in a Colorado city of 120,000 or so, and our milk and orange juice isare delivered every week to our front porch in nice glass bottles.

104

NurseCarmen mentioned dogs roaming the neighborhoods. Someone made that old tired joke this morning about what’s the dog going to do if he actually catches the car, and I realized that it’s been twenty years or so since dogs chased cars down the street anywhere that I’ve lived.

105

Man, Ringo, you should visit me! I live in the city, and there are a couple of little yappy ones on my street who always dart out and chase my car or try and nip my ankles when I walk by. I’m terrified to going to hit one of them one day. That’s not the good ol’ days; that’s irresponsible pet ownership.

106

I’m a little curious about this - what if your religious traditions are pagan? Would you be as welcome as people of “mainstream” religions? Has this ever come up at your children’s school?

(Simple curiosity, not looking to pick a fight.)

107

Birthday spankings came up today at work.

108

I remember going Trick-or-Treating for hours on Halloween, all around the neighborhood to people’s houses that my parents didn’t know. I don’t think many kids do that anymore - at least my nieces and nephews don’t.

109

Wow! Memories. . .this brings back so much. But here’s something I remember that’s not so good. I was sexually abused from the time I was 8 til I was about 15, by a man who lived with my family (rented a room). When I was 13, I told my school counsellor what was going on, and all she did was to advise me to discuss it with my mother. Do you know how many agencies would be called in if that happened today??? I’d have been removed from the home, Child Protective Services, the courts, the whole nine yards!

110

I don’t know how far-reaching this one is, but gone are the days my mom (or dad, what have you; my dad never set foot in the kitchen except to get the dogs’s food ready) could make a plate of cupcakes or cookies or something to share with the class on my birthday. Now, from what I’ve heard from parents with young kids, any baked goods must be purchased, and still sealed in their plastic or cardboard to ensure safety and cleanliness. No more home-baked goodness.

111

I hope you’re being sarcastic, because that one in particular is disturbing enough to make me really appreciate having been born in the eighties. :eek:

Anyways…
Come on, Runadoc, I think those are just peculiar to any small town USA place. People still say hi to their neighbors, and teenagers were just as rowdy in your day as they are today, you just didn’t notice it back in the day.

112

Playing with mercury in science class in 7th grade.

Tibs.

113

I did that in science class in 7th grade too, and I’m a regular little whippersnapper.

114

A chemistry teacher friend of mine still has mercury in his chemical closet. He can’t use it and really should get rid of it, but his undying love of cheating death makes him keep it.

115

Part of that may be that allergies today are much more common. I’m a teacher and I have a peanut-allergic child in my class, and I have an Epi-Pen in the room for him.
My parents are allowed to bring in home-baked treats for birthdays and holidays, but they know about the peanut allergy and know not to include peanuts or peanut butter in anything they bring in. I had to send home a note in the beginning of the year specifiying brand names (like M&Ms) of things that might include peanuts. Most of them just make cupcakes.

116

Yeah, I remember the milkman too. He would drive around in a weird looking delivery truck and drop off glass quart bottles of fresh milk every morning at my grandmas house.

I remember playing tag with BB guns when I was a kid. We would have a couple of teams of guys with BB guns stalking each other through peoples backyards, hoping to score a hit.

And speaking about backyards, remember when kids could take shortcuts through peoples yards without people bitching?

The most unPC thing I can think of that used to be common would be “Operation Wetback”. It was an official government program back in the 1950s which ended up deporting hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens. Hell, nowadays,if a person even uses the word “wetback” in public, people throw a conniption fit. Back then,it was the official name of a government operation.

117

Just remembered something else. I think someone mentioned Dangerous Playground Equipment earlier, but I don’t think anyone’s gone over the wonders of playground tires. At my elementary school we used to have a tire mountain, tire cave, tire bullfighting ring, tire hill…heck, 85% of the playground was made up of used monster tires. When I was in fifth grade a little kindergarten girl was playing on the monkey bars where she shouldn’t have been in the first place (long story involving distracted teacher) and fell off. She had to go to the hospital to get stitches. This being America, her parents decided to sue the school for negligence. Long story short, the next year all the tires were replaced with a Soulless Gymnasium. A’course, by that time I was in middle school and didn’t care anymore. But STILL! That tire mountain was the best place for playing Ghostbusters.

118

I’m pretty sure they still do. Or at least they haven’t taken up the old ones at the pools I’ve been to.

119

I also remember the milkman (and the breadman, too), a doctor who came to the house, and sleeping in a puppy pile with my brothers in the back of the station wagon (that’s a deeply embedded quintessence of security for me, I think, the rocking movement of the car, darkness outside, warm bodies all around and the soft, unintelligible voices of our parents talking quietly in the front seat. Womb-like, now that I think of it.).

Not so good things:
Being required to wear a skirt to school even if it was 10 degrees F out. Even if we had to put pants on under our skirts to walk back and forth, we had to take them off when we got to school and put them back on when we left for the frigid trek home.

I was not allowed to take shop in high school. I had to take home ec, even though I already knew everything they wanted to teach me. Not only did nobody (except me, apparently) think it was a big deal that I was not allowed, but they couldn’t begin to comprehend why I’d even want to, because after all, I was a girl. I think they thought I had some insidious motive, like wanting to be there because the boys were there. Those boys didn’t interest me in the least. Now, the power tools…!

In any case, I got a bit of my own back when we had a home ec assignment to “make a toy for a child.” The other girls dutifully got out their sewing things and started on their little soft toys. I designed a fire engine for my little brother and insisted on making it out of wood. In the shop. The shop teacher was practically incapacitated with indignation and I suspect him of thinking, and possibly wishing, I would cut my boobs off on the band saw and prove how ridiculous it was for a girl to be in the shop.

I’m glad my daughter can go into the shop at her school and wield every tool in their with competence and aplomb.

For those who are feeling old, she is only sixteen and is still subject to this phenomenon. She sighs with regret when we pass her old pre-school, where the tire swing and the monkey bars and the big rocks have been replaced with tiny, padded safe stuff. Those poor kids. No fun at all. I’m glad her elementary school allowed (and still allows) the kids to climb the big banyan on the playground (though they paint a line and say, “No further.”). She also misses being able to go to school barefoot. They make 'em put shoes on in 7th grade.

As for knives, she’s got a couple, as a Girl Scout and having been raised in the SCA. Of course, she doesn’t bring them to school. I carry a Swiss Army knife at all times and I pulled it out in bio lab this week to cut up a potato for an experiment (they had given us this useless manini single edge razor to do the job and I figured it was safer) and my lab partner boggled slightly that I was “carrying a knife to school.” I shrugged. I carry band-aids, too. Big deal.

120

We got the Bibles in grade school (I was born in 1972). We also said the Lord’s Prayer after the Pledge.

I used to roam all over town. My Mom would send me to the pharmacy app. half a mile from my house weekly to pick up my prescriptions when I was 9 or so. I also went to the library on my own, which was about a mile or so away.

When I was 12 my Mom would send me to the corner store to buy cigarettes for her. She’d give me two ones, I could use the change to buy something for myself.

Corporal punishment was still an option for me when I graduated high school, but we could opt to have detention instead. Last time I got spanked in school was middle school.

In high school, during lunch, a bunch of kids would gather in this one open area off the cafeteria and near the lockers and throw quarters and other change, and a bunch of black kids would scramble to grab it, and fight each other for it (especially if it was a wadded up bill). Some kids would put the coin on the end of a spoon and heat it up with a lighter before throwing it.

Times changed near the end of my school career. My senior year we had a huge race riot in my school and we installed metal detectors and started having cops on campus all the time.