While some painted by numbers, my mom cooked by the smoke alarm – Part Two

We grew up knowing we had to compete for trophies; they weren’t handed out to everybody to help foster their self-esteem. We knew it was win or lose and we accepted it. The only mood altering drugs were the ones Cheech and Chong made look cool to take in their movies and records. You had aspirin, baby aspirin, cough syrup, iodine, band-aids, a shaving pencil to stop the bleeding on double-edged razor blades, liquid Ben Gay, and Phillip’s Milk of Magnesia in your medicine cabinet and that was it. No Zoloft, no Prozac and certainly no Viagra. When the sex was over, it was over. There was no such thing as ADD or hyperactive kids – they sent home an orange card and then asked your parent’s permission if they could keep you after school for punishment. No parent said no back then – that was free, unscheduled sex time! “Coffee, tea, or me?” was the motto of the day.

It was nothing to give a kid a model airplane kit with toxic glue that you could get high off of, and Sharpie markers weren’t around – we had Marks-A-Lot that smelled like awful black licorice. Your target high was Elmer’s Glue in the squeeze bottle; the paste didn’t work no matter how much you tried. It was better for eating.

The schools screened your vision, your back for scoliosis, and your hair for lice. They left you alone after that, unless you didn’t do your homework, then they sent home a yellow card to be signed.

When I look back on the seventies, I must admit I had more freedom than the kids today. I could stay out in front of the house late at night and never feared anything (except the stray rock with my name on it). I mixed Pop Rocks and Coke, trying to see if it would make my stomach explode, like “Mikey”, the kid who had sold the Life cereal on TV for years (he wasn’t dead, it was an urban myth).

Kids today have cell phones, and when I was their age, I wasn’t allowed to dial the phone, but I knew my home number and address if I got lost. There were stickers in windows for “safe” houses, in case you were afraid of “Radio Joe”, the Vietnam vet who walked around with an AM transistor radio up to his ear, flashing the peace sign at us. He never did harm anyone, and we were too young to understand his situation.

Only after a few years after the eighties were ushered in, did I start having to take precautions, and that was carrying fifty extra cents for the pay phone, in case of an emergency.

Times certainly have changed.