We played outside from the time we got up - which was EARLY by the way - we were never allowed to sleep until 2:00 in the afternoon - and we didn't come back in the house other than to eat lunch until it was dark outside. It wasn't air soft guns and trampoline kind of playing either. In fact looking back I wonder what in the world we did play. The only warfare that we participated in was throwing dirt clods and green apples at each other while the sound of mother's voice echoed in the background yelling "you're going to hit someone in the temple!" Well my Lord that was some serious stuff we thought if that happened one of us was going to drop dead right there! We didn't have a $750 state of the art swing set made out of treated lumber, canvas and plastic. We had the genuine twine string swings that you took your life in your own hands swinging on because at any minute one of those strings was going to break! And the only hand to eye coordination that we required was using a jump rope or playing Red Rover - it certainly wasn't Black Ops or NBA Basketball on a flat screen TV. We played for hours in the woods catching crawdads in a creek not laser tag or shopping at the mall.
It was Friday nights sitting up watching TV - The Dukes of Hazard and Dallas with Mom and Dad. The only reality TV was the 6:00 news and if something like Honey Boo Boo was to have been on my Dad would've said it was trash and Granny would've thought it was sign of the end of time.
I think about my kids and how it is like asking them to cut their arm off some times when I ask them to help with the laundry or clean the bathroom. We had a list of chores a mile long and we did them or we didn't go play! By the time I was in the 7th grade I could iron clothes like a professional and had already been taught far more than just the basics of cooking. But we didn't mind - we knew we had to do them and we did them or we DIDN'T go outside and play and most of the time carried the mark of some hickory tea on our legs if we didn't get them done.
I remember going to the prom in high school in the gym! Can you imagine that??? We decorated it and everything! In fact I'm quite certain that for years there was a surge in the stocks of Kleenex and chicken wire from all the tissue flowers we made. We certainly didn't go to Pigeon Forge and spend the night in a cabin. I even flinch at what would've happened if I had even had the audacity to ask my parents to do something like that. My first prom dress was made by my boyfriend's mom out of red satin and weighed at least 53 pounds! The only thing daring about it was the tissue that stuck out in the photo from where I had stuffed my bra to make Thelma & Louise look bigger than they actually were for some reason.
We went to work as soon as it was the legal age to do so and we paid for our own cars. Wow our parents were some slave drivers weren't they? I didn't drive a souped up $25k Mustang and my brothers didn't have a Toyota Tundra decked out with $600 wheels. In fact I drove my mom's replica of a German tank to work at WalMart until I had saved up enough to get my own car.
If we wanted to talk to our friends we called on the phone or walked to their house if they lived within a 5 mile radius. We didn't text, snap chat or facebook. In fact the only cell phone that we ever had was when us kids were almost to the age of moving out and that was the one in a bag that my dad bought my mom. We thought we were some hot stuff because our mom had a bag phone in her car that was the size of a loaf of bread after you pulled the antenna out of it.
Now don't get me wrong I'm glad that my kids have all this technology to make their lives fun. But I sure wish they could have been raised like we were. I would love to be able to give my kids what my parents gave me like weekends camping in a pop-up camper and fishing all night. We didn't have Ipods, Ipads and Kindles - but we had so much more than that. We have memories in our minds of what life was like and not on memory cards. Our lives were pretty much as simple as most of the people around us and I think all of us kids from that era pretty much grew up to be responsible and most of all happy adults.
