Showing My Age

 I am sharing this with you today because it ended with a "double
 dog dare" to pass it on. If you remember what that means, you understand.   (Aw....the good old days...)
 
If you don't know what that means read on and see what you missed. And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and young enough not to care. How many do you remember?

1. Candy cigarettes

2. Wax coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside.  Both 1. and 2. bought at the corner store for a penny a piece....put in those little brown paper bags.  A quarter would last a week.
 
3. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles. We would collect those bottles and return them for the deposit to buy even more penny candy.

4. Coffee shops with table side juke boxes
 
5. Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum ( I miss Teaberry gum!!)

6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles, with cardboard stoppers. *and in the winter the milk froze, popped the cap, and made a "tower'.

7. Party lines.
 
8. Newsreels before the movie and cartoons.

9. P. F. Flyers
 
10. Butch wax (this I have no clue of...LOL...before my time, maybe)

11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix ...(our was BR-4)  Before, that we actually had an operator that connected us....yeah, I'm really showing my age.
 
12. Pea shooters.
 
13. Howdy Doody, Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy in black and white.

14. 45 RPM Records
 
15. Green Stamps
 
16. Hi-fi's
 
17. Metal ice cube trays-with levers
 
18. Mimeograph paper

19. Blue Flash Bulbs
 
20. Beanie and Cecil
 
21. Roller skate keys
 
22. Cork pop guns
 
23. Drive ins
 
24. Studebakers
 
25. Wash tub wringers
 
26. The Fuller Brush man
 
27. Reel-to-reel tape recorders
 
28. Tinker toys
 
29. The Erector Set
 
30. The Fort Apache Play set
 
31. Lincoln Logs

32. 15 cent MacDonald hamburgers
 
33. 5 cent packs of baseball cards...with that awful pink slabof bubble gum

34. Penny candy

35. 25 cent-a-gallon gasoline

 A TIME WHEN ...
 
* Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-mo."
 
* Mistakes were corrected! by simply exclaiming "do over!"

* "Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest.

* Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening.
 
* It wasn't odd to have two or three "best" friends.
 
* The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was 
"cooties".

* Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot.

* A foot of snow was a dream come true.
 
* 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 were the ultimate weapon.
 
* Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a
 motorcycle.
 
* Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin.
 
* If you can remember most or all of these, then you have
 lived!!!!
 
My comments......I have lived through the good and the bad and treasure every moment....it's made me who I am today.......I used to fear aging but now that I'm mid-life, I'm finally getting a clue.  Aging brings a certain amount of freedom and definitely a huge amount of wisdom.  I'm starting to realize just how smart my mother always has been...LOL  Thank the good Lord for hair color and Loreal wrinkle reducing make-up....it helps a lot to age gracefully.......

To my young friends in J-Land....I love you all....and hope my journal lifts you up and inspires you to keep truding along as my motto still continues to be..

Whatever doesn't kill you will make you stronger....spoken by me...a survivor of many, many kicks in thebutt........and....love yourself; if you don't love yourself, no one else will...........God doesn't make mistakes; only humans do....

chris