When I was a Kid, we still had cords on our telephones. I remember rotary dial phones, Atari, arcades. Hell, I even remember playing on surfaces that would be deemed potentially lethal by today's standards. When I was in elementary school, they filled the voids under the monkey bars with gravel so jagged, it was just shy of broken glass. We survived.
Kids today are pussies. We played dodge ball, kickball, full contact football (which always seemed to degenerate into "Kill the carrier" when I got the ball) and we were better for it. There was nothing better than playing dodge ball on a wet fall afternoon and hearing the crack of that ball as it shot through space and bitch-slapped the kid across from you in the face. And you better believe that if the teacher wasn't looking, we always aimed for the face. When it was your turn, you did your best to laugh that sting off in order to save face in front of your buddies who would relish any opportunity to laugh at your pain. Your eyes would water and the letters V-O-I-T were clearly visible on your face, but you sucked it up and got back in the game. We didn't wear knee pads or helmets, and we built jumps for our bikes with pieces of plywood and cement blocks. I remember riding my bike next to a friend one time; I managed to fall off and my hand found it's way into his spinning spokes. Naturally, my buddy kept peddling as the skin was peeled off my hand and my finger nail was ripped off. My hand looked like I stuck it in a blender. So we went to this older couples house that my buddy knew just a few houses back on the road and the lady was kind enough to let me wash my hand off in her kitchen sink. Then out came the Bactine. That's right, we put Bactine on our boo boos in those days. For those of you who don't know, using Bactine was the equivalent of pouring Clorox mixed with rock salt into a gunshot wound. Shortly thereafter, we arrived back at my house where my Mother took one look at my mangled hand and yelled at me for bleeding on the carpet.
We didn't have cell phones, and we knew it was time to come inside when it got dark. We played with toy guns that looked like the real thing, and they were even cooler if they actually fired a projectile. There was no such thing as ADHD, back then we called it a sugar high. We got that because we drank soda and ingested pixie sticks, most often together until that Mikey kid blew himself to pieces by eating pop rocks and Coke at the same time. That shit was serious. We liked cool cars from TV shows like the General Lee, K.I.T. from Knight Rider and Magnum's Ferrari. Now the more your car sounds like a genetically mutated monster mosquito the more bad ass you are.
Kids were just tougher back then. I remember Johnny (Last name redacted for fear he is still out there somewhere), the toughest kid in school. I was in Kindergarten and he was in 5th grade. He smoked cigarettes on the school bus, listened to Quiet Riot and would punch you in the stomach just for looking at Him the wrong way. It was understood among all the neighborhood Kids that he lived alone, in a old brick house in the neighborhood, we always surmised that He had killed his Parents. I once promised him 10 packs of bubble gum if he would spare me a beating. True to form he showed up a my house later that day to collect. I was so afraid that I asked my Dad to answer the door, and Johnny wanted to fight my Father.
We gave each other Charlie Horses, Frog Eyes, and Snake Bites. We played in the mud, rain, and even went outside without sunblock. When we fought, we didn't "Use our words" we used our fists and when it was done we shook hands....we didn't go to counseling. We rose for the pledge of allegiance and sang America the beautiful when I was a Kid. Life seemed to be so much less complicated back then.
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