Warning! This May Bring A Tear To Your Eyes

Do You Remember When You Were Young?

Those were the days! Take a break right now and reminisce.

Close your eyes…And go back…Before the Internet, the palm pilot or the MAC, before semi automatics and crack. Before SEGA, Playstation or Super Nintendo…Way back… I'm talking' about hide and go seek at dusk. Flashlight tag, staying out late on a summer evening…At least until the streetlights came on. Sitting' on the porch, sharing a double-stick Popsicle with a friend.

Red light, Green light. Chocolate milk. Lunch tickets. Penny candy in a brown paper bag. Hopscotch, butterscotch. Chinese jump rope, jacks, and dodgeball. Playing kickball in the street and shooting basketballs through a bicycle rim. Mother May I? Red Rover and British bulldog and Hula-Hoops. Sunflower Seeds. Jolly Ranchers. Banana Splits. Wax lips and mustaches. Running through the sprinkler. The smell of the sun and licking' salty lips…Wait…Watching' Saturday Morning cartoons: Fat Albert, Road Runner, The Jackson 5, H.R. Puff-n-Stuff, Sylvester, Tweety, and Bugs. Catching lightening bugs in a jar. Swinging so high your stomach tickled.

When around the corner seemed far away, and going downtown seemed like going somewhere.

Bedtime. Climbing trees, an ice cream cone on a warm summer night. Chocolate or vanilla or strawberry or maybe butter pecan. A cherry coke from the fountain at the corner drug store. A million mosquito bites and sticky fingers. Cops and Robbers, Sitting on the curb. Jumping down the steps. Jumping on the bed. Pillow fights. Running till you were out of breath. Laughing so hard that your stomach hurt. Being tired from playing.'…Remember that?

Eating cookie dough for the first time. Remember…When nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got there. When two dollars was a decent allowance. When you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny. When a penny would buy something. When you got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, for free, every time. And, you didn't pay for air. Saving Green Stamps in those little paper booklets was exciting. When it was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents. When they threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed…and did! When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited a misbehaving student at home.

Basically, we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! And some of us are still afraid of' em!

Didn't that feel good? Just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that!" I want to go back to the time when…

Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-mo." Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, 'do over!" Money issues were handled by whoever was the banker in "Monopoly." Being old referred to anyone over 20. The net on a tennis court was the perfect height to play volleyball and rules didn't matter. Putting a coin on the arm of the record player stopped it from skipping and picking a TV station was easy.

The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was cooties. It was magic when dad would "remove" his thumb. It was unbelievable that dodge ball wasn't an Olympic event. Nobody was prettier than Mom. Scrapes and bruises were kissed and made better.

It was a big deal to finally be tall enough to ride the "big people" rides at the amusement park. Getting a few inches of snow was a dream come true. Stringing popcorn for the Christmas tree was a family production. Christmas tree lights were ten times larger and the words artificial and tree never went together.

Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute ads for action figures. "Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense. Spinning around, getting dizzy and falling down was cause for giggles. The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team.

War was a card game. Water balloons and the garden hose were the ultimate weapons. Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle. Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin and ice cream was considered a basic food group. Do you remember when you were young?