Reminders Of Simpler Times For Kids

This is certainly not an original and has been shortened for time constraints but for some of you it will clearly put a smile on your face:

Go back…before the Internet or PC or the MacBook.  Before semi-automatics and crack…before PlayStation, SEGA, Super Nintendo, even before Atari.  Before CD’s, DVD’s, voicemail and email.  I’m talking about hide and seek at dusk, red light, green light, playing kickball and dodgeball until street lights came on.  Ring around the Rosie, London Bridge…Hot potato, Hop scotch, jump rope, YOUR’RE IT!  Parents stood on the front porch and yelled for you to come home, no cell phones.  Take one giant step…may I?  Seeing shapes in the clouds, endless summer days and hot summer nights with the windows open because there was no AC.  Running through the sprinkler.  Kool-Aid was the drink of summer and so was a swig from the hose.

Cereal boxes and Cracker Jacks with great prizes at the bottom.  Ice pops with two sticks you could share with a friend.  Watching Saturday morning cartoons.  Christmas morning, your first day of school, good night kisses.  Climbing trees.  Laughing so hard that your stomach hurt.  Work meant taking out the garbage, cutting the grass, washing the car or doing the dishes.  Your first crush…your first kiss (the one that you kept your mouth closed and your eyes open).

Giving you friends a ride on the handlebars with baseball cards rubbing against your spokes.  Wearing your new shoes on the first day of school.  When being sent to the principal’s office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited you at home. Basically we were in fear for our lives but it wasn’t because of drive by shootings, drugs or gangs.  We simply did not want our parents to get mad at us.

Let’s go back to when decisions were made by going “eeny-meeny-miney-mo,” mistakes were corrected by simply saying “do over.” The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team.  Water balloons were the ultimate weapons.

If you remember this you grew up during a more pleasant and simpler time.  Share it with those that missed out on a golden era.