Thursday Thirteen (Vol. 17)

A quick update...Casey is being released from the hospital on Thursday!!! She continues to get a kick out of hearing from my blog readers, so, if you want to drop her a note, click on the link above to read about her and e-mail her at: BasketCase1095@mac.com.

Moving right along, past the faux holiday that was Valentine's Day, there will be no hearts and flowers in this TT! Getting in touch with my inner middle aged woman (why did my Mom seem middle aged to me when SHE was 44 and I bristle at that term?) Let's look at 13 things I have explained to children in the last few weeks:

1. When I first learned to drive, there was no such thing as self-serve. A guy came up to your car, asked what you needed, filled the tank AND cleaned the windshield!
2. They used to have price tags on things in the grocery store and the cashier had to enter each price manually on a cash register. There were no bar codes or scanners. (Anyone who has lived in their house for a long time, check your spice cabinet...if there are any jars in there with no bar code, throw them away, NOW.)
3. There was no 411. You dialed "0" for Operator and talked to a real person who gave you the number and it was FREE!
4. Dittos? You don't know what dittos are? Kids used to fight to be the one to go down to the office and run off the teacher's dittos because you could slowly walk back to the classroom inhaling the delightful aroma of fresh blue ink.
5. This is a typewriter. If you wanted to make two copies, you used carbon paper and there was no backspace or Ctrl-X to correct mistakes. I made a fortune in college charging $1 per page to type term papers. (Kudos to Mom...best thing she ever made me do, take typing...it has served me well.)
6. When Daddy was little, he was the remote control! Grampa Hal would sit there on a Sunday afternoon when football was on two of the four channels available and tell Daddy, "Turn to 6, Turn to 2, Turn back to 6..."
7. There used to be actual commercials for smoking, not just not-so-subtle product placement in movies and ads showing beautiful people smoking and having fun in magazines.
8. The '80s are NOT the old days!!! The old days are when MY parents were young!
9. That's called an "Album" not "one of those big CD's".
10. When I was in high school, if you lost your friends at a concert, you were SOL (Stacy, call me, don't ask Casey what that means). You couldn't call them on your cell phone and tell them to meet you under the Bud Light sign.
11. When I was in school, no one was "gifted". If you happened to be a good reader or good at math, once in a while you would have a special teacher who would give you extra work. In first grade, when I was finished with my work, the teacher had me help the "slow" kids...and it was OK to use that term. And believe me, when the reading groups were called the "Cheetahs", the "Horses" and the "Turtles"...it was painfully obvious where you stood in the reading echelon...but no one really cared.
12. Parents didn't know where we were every second, but they didn't have to because they knew we were safe. (Besides, the moms were busy having Friday afternoon wine parties, right Mom?) When it was dinner time, moms could come out on the front porch and yell out their kids' names and they would come running. (I still remember the sound of our neighbor across the street "JoeyDonnaSallyEddieTheresaJohnnyMary"...yup, 7 kids...you gotta know those kids raced home because if they didn't there might not be anything left!)
13. Birthday parties were held at your house...paper hats, noisemakers, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and homemade cake were the height of birthday entertainment!

I really must be middle-aged if I have 13 things about which to be this nostalgic...and trust me, there are some not included because they might get me in trouble with my mother or my daughter!!!!

Di