I think you’ll enjoy this. Whoever wrote it could have been my next-door neighbor because it totally described my childhood to a ‘T.’

Black and White TV – You could hardly see for all the snow. Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go. ‘Good Night, David.  Good Night, Chet’

 Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs, and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn’t seem to get food poisoning.

Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter, and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can’t remember getting E. coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE… and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked’s (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can’t recall any injuries, but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option… Even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can’t recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations

Oh yeah… And where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played ‘king of the hill’ on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn’t sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it’s a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $99 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn’t act up at the neighbor’s house either; because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off.  Little did his mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a jerk. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family.  How could we possibly have known that?

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes.

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn’t even notice that the entire country wasn’t taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA; AND TO ALL WHO DIDN’T, SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN’T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING!

#1 In more than half of all states in the United States of America, the highest paid public employee in the state is a football coach.

#2 It costs the U.S. government 1.8 cents to mint a penny and 9.4 cents to mint a nickel. Interesting links

#3 Almost half of all Americans (47 percent) do not put a single penny out of their paychecks into savings.

#4 Apple has more cash than the U.S. Treasury.

#5 The state of Alaska is 429 times larger than the state of Rhode Island.  But Rhode Island has a significantly larger population than Alaska does.

#6 Alaska has a longer coastline than all of the other 49 U.S. states put together.

#7 The city of Juneau, Alaska, is about 3,000 square miles in size.  It is actually larger than the entire state of Delaware.

#8 When LBJ’s “War on Poverty” began, less than 10 percent of all U.S. children were growing up in single parent households. Today, that number has skyrocketed to 33 percent.

#9 In 1950, less than 5 percent of all babies in America were born to unmarried parents. Today, that number is over 40 percent.

#10 The poverty rate for households that are led by a married couple is 6.8 percent.  For households that are led by a female single parent, the poverty rate is 37.1 percent.

#11 In 2013, women earned 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees that were awarded that year in the United States.

#12 According to the CDC, 34.6 percent of all men in the U.S. are obese at this point

#13 The average supermarket in the United States wastes about 3,000 lbs. of food each year.  Meanwhile, approximately 20 percent of the garbage that goes into our landfills is food.

#14 According to one recent survey, 81 percent of Russians now have a negative view of the United States. That is much higher than at the end of the Cold War era.

#15 Montana has three times as many cows as it does people.

#16 The grizzly bear is the official state animal of California.  But no grizzly bears have been seen there since 1922.

#17 One recent survey discovered that “a steady job” is the number one thing that American women are looking for in a husband and discovered that 75 percent of women would have a serious problem dating an unemployed man.

#18 According to a study conducted by economist Carl Benedict Frey and engineer Michael Osborne, up to 47 percent of the jobs in the United States could soon be lost to computers, robots and other forms of technology.

#19 The only place in the United States where coffee is grown commercially is in Hawaii.

#20 The original name of the city of Atlanta was “Terminus “.

#21 The state with the most millionaires per capita is Maryland.

#22 One survey of 50-year-old men in the U.S. found that only 12 percent of them said that they were “very happy”.

#23 The United States has 845 motor vehicles for every 1,000 people.

#24 48 percent of all Americans do not have any emergency supplies in their homes whatsoever. Even fewer have fire extinguishers.

#25 There are three towns in the United States that have the name “Santa Claus “.

#26 There is actually a town in Michigan called “Hell “. (I wonder how far down the road from Detroit that is?)

#27 If you have no debt and also have 10 dollars in your wallet…you are wealthier than 25 percent of all Americans.

#28 By the time an American child reaches the age of 18, that child will have seen approximately 40,000 murders on television.

“To get back to my youth I would do anything in the world, except exercise, get up early, or be respectable.” – Oscar Wilde 

“The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.” – Will Rogers 

“We must recognise that, as we grow older, we become like old cars – more and more repairs and replacements are necessary.” – C.S. Lewis 

“Old age comes at a bad time.” – San Banducci 

“Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened.” – Jennifer Yane

“Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard there is nothing you can do about it.” – Golda Meir 

“I’m so old that my blood type is discontinued.” – Bill Dane 

“The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.” – Mark Twain 

“Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes, age just shows up all by itself.” – Tom Wilson 

“Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your retirement home.”- Phyllis Diller 

“I don’t plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face-lifts until my ears meet.” – Rita Rudner 

“I’m at that age where my back goes out more than I do.” – Phyllis Diller 

“Nice to be here? At my age it’s nice to be anywhere.” – George Burns 

 “First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down.” – Leo Rosenberg 

“Old people shouldn’t eat health foods. They need all the preservatives they can get.” – Robert Orben 

“I have successfully completed the thirty-year transition from wanting to stay up late to just wanting to go to bed.” – Unknown 

 “As you get older three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can’t remember the other two.” – Sir Norman Wisdom 

“It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.” – Andy Rooney

“I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they’re cramming for their final exam.” – George Carlin 

“I don’t feel old. I don’t feel anything until noon. Then it’s time for my nap.” – Bob Hope 

“I’m 59 and people call me middle-aged. How many 118-year-old men do you know?”- Barry Cryer 

“All men are the same age.” – Dorothy Parker 

“By the time you’re 80 years old you’ve learned everything. You only must remember it.” – George Burns 

“Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.” – Maurice Chevalier 

“Getting older. I used to be able to run a 4-minute mile, bench press 380 pounds, and tell the truth.” – Conan O’Brien

“I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don’t have to.” – Albert Einstein 

“Grandchildren don’t make a man feel old, it’s the knowledge that he’s married to a grandmother that does.” – J. Norman Collie 

“You know you are getting old when everything hurts, and what doesn’t hurt doesn’t work.” – Hy Gardner 

“When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.” – Mark Twain 

“You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.” – Joel Plaskett 

 “I’ve never known a person who lives to be 110 who is remarkable for anything else.” —Josh Billings 

“Old age is when you resent the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated because there are fewer articles to read.” – George Burns 

“The idea is to die young as late as possible.” – Ashley Montagu 

“You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.” – George Burns 

“People ask me what I’d most appreciate getting for my eighty-seventh birthday.

I tell them, a paternity suit.” – George Burns 

“Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.” – Anonymous

Carol was not the best student in Catholic School.  Usually she slept through class.

One day her teacher, a Nun, called on her while she was sleeping in class. “Tell me, Carol, who created the universe?”  When Carol didn’t stir, but little Johnny who was her friend sitting behind her, took his pencil and jabbed her in the rear. “God Almighty!” shouted Carol.

The Nun said, “Very good!” and continued teaching her class.

A little later the Nun asked Carol, “Who is our Lord and Savior?” But Carol didn’t stir from her slumber.  Once again, Johnny came to her rescue and stuck her in the butt. “Jesus Christ !!!” shouted Carol. And the Nun once again said, “Very good,” and Carol fell back asleep.

The Nun asked her a third question:  “What did Eve say to Adam after she had her twenty-third child?” Again, Johnny came to the rescue.  This time Carol jumped up and shouted, “If you stick that damn thing in me one more time, I’ll break it in half!”

The nun fainted

That’s the value of a Catholic education and a #2 pencil