Remember when

Your parents got away with beating your ass and not getting CPS called on them

 

… as it should be.

 

CPS would show up and beat your ass too.

 

It's not that the P's got away with it, it was expected, back then it was called discipline.

Hell by the time I was 11 or 12 I could break a wooden spoon with my ass in less than 4 swats.

 

I remember threatening to call them because my mom was taking away my toys or something. She said "go ahead, I'll even dial the number for you!" I definitely wasn't getting my way.

 

There was no CPS when I was a kid.

Parents would threaten you with death as a matter of course . . . .

<voice=my.mom>
<volume=9.5>

“I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it!”

“If you kids don’t quit fighting I’m gonna tie you together hand and foot until you beat each other to death!

“If you kids made a mess of my stove again I’m gonna murder you two!”

</voice>

 

One of my friend's 3 daughters threatened to do that because he grounded her. He went, brought her the phone, offered to dial the number and said "before I do..think about this. If they agree with you, they'll take you away and you won't see your sisters ever again. But if you still think you have it so bad, I'll dial"

You bet that phone didn't get used that night.

 

Remember "response cards" in the back of magazines? You'd circle a number that correspond to an ad, send it in with a check for maybe a buck or two, and then a few weeks later you'd start receiving brochures mailed to you from the advertisers. Often times with a typed out price list. We've sure come a long way -- now it's all about instant gratification.

 

Unless you were really bad it only took one or two times it was the threat that kept me on the straight and narrow.

Though it sure felt like about 12 years of boot camp.

 

One reason for societal entropy can be summed up with three words: Piss Poor Parenting.

 

We learned to do basic math without a calculator.

Even calculus and differential equations were solved with a pencil or chalk.

Even the “shop kids” (d students) learned basic math so they could build a birdhouse.

They learned enough about Electricity to hotwire a car & after that they all lost interest.

How many kids today can even find the Jack and the lug wrench?

I changed a lot of inner tubes and patched a lot of tires with a bicycle pump & tire spoons.

 

Tire levers..or is the spoon something else?

 

Hear about the constipated mathematician? He worked it out with a pencil.

 

Hey now, I took some shop classes, and I wasn't a D student.

 

Remember when Scared Straight was real and a field trip to the cross bar motel? Florida State Prison otherwise known as Raiford Prison in Northern FL

 

Same thing. A bit broader on the tips than some levers.

I took them too. Taking shop classes doesn’t make you a “shop kid”. But that is where those kids peaked out. I got straight A’s in everything, plus I took shop classes.

I can tell you, I was a hated man. Plus I talked funny and was from waaaay out-of-state, having come from Phoenix to Duluth.

I was a skateboarder, I was top in my class in the hundred yard dash, but I could not play ice hockey. You can imagine that there were a number of fist fights. It was hockey land on steroids.

Talking about steroids, my next-door neighbor used to play for the Philadelphia Flyers until he blew out his knee. I have a shitty knee from football, and I push a skateboard at the age of 67, for physical therapy.

Anyhow, I taught this hockey bruiser how to ride a skateboard, because he had never done it, and there’s just no ice here.

Life is so funny.

 

Oh yeah….

Remember those really bad grade school jokes? And the silly riddles!

Why do ducks have flat feet?

why do elephants have flat feet?

What is gray, has big ears and a trunk?

What’s big and red and eats rocks?

What goes up a chimney down but not down a chimney up?

How do you get five elephants in a Volkswagen?

What’s red and white on the outside and gray and white on the inside?

(It’s not fair to post the answers if you have to look those up!)

 

Remember when all kids could eat peanut butter?

 

I remember eating so much of it that I quit eating it for many years and eventually I learned to like it again.

 

I still like peanut butter.