Retired: Do you think much about the good old days? (grandparent, community)

[Hillman]

Oh wow 17 getting Married in my $5 Suit.Just getting started too Bad can't start over again knowing what I know now.



hillman

[Minervah]

Some day even those born this year will look back on their "good old days." It's all relative.

[Towhee]

Originally Posted by Minervah

Some day even those born this year will look back on their "good old days." It's all relative.

That's probably true...it looks like things are continuing to get worse and worse!!!!

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by Weekend Traveler

Now that you are retired, older and lived life and seen things from a mature perspective, give us an honest answer. Do you miss the good old days?

Missing and thinking about them isn't the same. I had a mentally ill, abusive mother so I don't miss growing up in that environment.

I remember my 4 years younger sister used to tease the cat, pull its tail. Right before she got home from kindergarten/first grade, the cat used to jump on the dishwasher (it was on wheels) and look out the kitchen window to wait for her. As soon as he saw her coming up the driveway, he'd jump on top of the refrigerator and as soon as she walked in the door, he'd jump on her from above. He used to hide behind doors and wait for her to pass by and then jump on her leg and hold on while she screamed. It was payback. It was funny. Interestingly, she's in her 50s and has 3 cats, now.

I do miss the way the country was in the early 60s, late 50s. But, I was very young then and didn't know what was really going on from a national perspective until I actually got out of my neighborhood and saw it. Does that make it better for kids to be so informed before they are 13?

The early 60s/late 50s (pre-Beatles) was my favorite musical period, too. I still listen to that music but it's not on 45s or a record player. I still play that music in my car but it's downloaded off the Internet and I burn my own CDs. Sure miss the record sleeves for the 45s.

I liked getting on my bike and riding when I was a kid not for exercise, which never crossed my mind, but because it felt like freedom and because that's what kids did. They played and did things for fun, not because it was good for them or made them smarter. I didn't wear a helmet, either, and I did fall. Big deal. My car has substituted for that bike freedom feeling, now.

I remember playing in an old building lot a few times a week with friends --- walking on cement walls with rusted spikes, overgrown weeds, and old rusty construction equipment with my pre-teen friends and never giving a thought to safety issues. One fell and had to get a tetnus shot and stitches. We were back out there a week later.

I don't even remember when we first started to wear seatbelts and kids never sat in child seats. We even rode in the backs of trucks. If you jammed something in a socket, you got a shock. No capped outlets back in the day. No knee pads and helmets for roller skating. Don't get me started on the overprotected little wusses of today and how that ties in to the nanny state they want.

I remember choosing up sides and playing to win. Now it's all about the teamwork process. You should see them in the workforce where it's more important how they do something than how effectively they accomplish it.

I don't remember any parents coming to school unless they were summoned to pick up their troublemaking kid. I remember the old female assistant principal (public school) used to rip out hems on short skirts and call parents to come to school with a change of clothes or take the kid home and don't let her come back until she dressed properly. As I look back on it today, the point was aimed at the parent, not the kid. Today the same assistant principal would probably throw a blanket over the kids and the parents would sue to allow their kids to "express themselves."

I remember the only people who rode in big cars (station wagons) were nuns. And no teenage boy would be caught dead in a big vehicle if he wanted to go on dates. It wasn't some gas mileage reason. It was the looking good for chicks reason.

I really did walk, what kids today would consider, a long way to school. When I was in Junior High, you had to live more than 3 miles from the school to get the school bus. I was about 2.5 miles. And it did snow. And school wasn't canceled when the first snowflake hadn't touched the ground, yet.

The snow really was a lot higher when I was a kid, it wasn't that I was shorter. I remember it piled up to the bottom of the lamp on the lampost in my yard. We all shoveled the driveway.

I liked to go to school when I was little. I'm still going to school as a retiree but it's not challenging to sit through lectures. I actually miss writing papers/reports. I liked to read a lot when I was a kid for escapism. I still read a lot now but it's all nonfiction.

I remember the nuns at the childrens mass yelling when we didn't sing loud enough. I especially remember not kneeling straight up in the pew and getting yelled at by the nun (they sat in like every other row so nothing got by them). Nowadays, if I kneel down I can't get up.

I used to listen to baseball on the radio when I was a kid because not all Yankee games were televised. I didn't think I was missing anything. I remember my cousins teaching me how to flip baseball cards. Although the memory is fond, we sure pissed away a fortune in those cards. I remember one of my now 60 year old cousins had a duplicate Mickey Mantle on his bike spokes. I'm thinking that's not a fond memory for him.

[auntbee]

I don't think I would really want to go back to my childhood. I had a military Dad who was way too strict and didn't think kids should have much fun. I got married young and I don't regret that because I'm still married after 47 years. There are things in my life I would like to do over though.

[Ketabcha]

These days are the good ol' days to me. I love retirement. I've been retired since September 2007 and so far this is the best time in my life.

[stillkit]

Oh, sometimes I look back with fondness on my childhood years (1950's), but I don't think it was as "good" then as we'd like to remember. For me, it was more a case of being a child and unaware of a lot of stuff I know about now.

Even as a child, though, I recognized some things were definitely NOT good. For instance, my Dad used to regularly beat up the whole family and, in our little Oklahoma town, so did nearly every other Dad. Nobody noticed or cared because it was a "mans right." If you could find a cop to call, they'd tell you he could do whatever he wanted on his own property and laugh.

The "colored folks," lived in their own part of town and went to their own schools. We regularly used the "N" word without thinking because nobody had ever told us it was wrong, not until Martin Luther King came along.

The world became a very, very frightening place when Sputnik flew over. Suddenly, we were vulnerable and the regluar atom bomb drills took on new importance.

As the 50's morphed into the 60's, and I reached adolescence, it was a terrible, terrible time to be alive. Civil unrest, murders, assassinations, the "counter-culture," hippies, drugs, the sexual revolution, riots in every major city every summer. The Cuban Missle Crisis sent we kids off to school every day not knowing if we'd be vaporized before we saw Mom and Dad again. The Kennedy assassination turned the world upside down and we sat glued to the drama on our TV's, confronting mortality at an early age. It was a time of turmoil, a time when everything you thought dear and important was challenged and somehow found lacking; a time with no direction, no purpose, no future. Revolution was in the air! The social order was on the verge of collapse.

And, backdropping the whole era was a war which did not make sense and which was not going away. It clouded the futures of us all and the closer we got to graduation, the more immediate it became because we faced a tremendous decision, one which even we teenagers' knew had lifelong implications: Go, dodge the draft or flee the country. It even affected the girls, who were not subject to the draft, because their futures were on hold to until we guys sorted it all out.

The 60's as the good ol' days? Good Lord, I just cringe when I hear someone say that!

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by stillkit

The 60's as the good ol' days? Good Lord, I just cringe when I hear someone say that!

I think the early 60s were still a good time even with the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missle Crisis, et al, but they couldn't really compete with the 50s even with the Korean War, the atom bomb drills and early space race.

My good childhood memories far outweigh the bad ones until my own coming of age, the Vietnam War, and my own, voluntary entry into the military in the mid-60s.

By all means, life was far from ideal, racism was institutional and government-sanctioned, as was descrimination. The mentally ill and deevelopmentally disabled were still warehoused in institutions, smoking was prevalent and small-town America was beginning to fade because it was being bypassed by the new super highways.

Still, as a child growing up it could be a magical time because we were free and encouraged to grow relatively unfettered, to explore, to use our imaginations. At the same time we were taught to be respectful to others and considerate. We were responsible for what we did and what we didn't do and that was enforced by our parents who wouldn't even think of blaming a teacher or anyone else for our bad behavior, unlike today's helicopter parents. Little League and Pop Warner were about team work and winning was nice but it wasn't everything. No parent would think of screaming at their own child, someone else's or worse, a coach or official. By the way, the losers and bench warmers didn't all get trophys anyway and our little psychies weren't irrepairably damaged. We just tried harder the next time.

[TuborgP]

It is both possible to love and miss the good ole days and to love the good now days equally. If you have a rich life the good ole days were great the good now days are great and you have high hopes for the many days to come.

[Huckleberry3911948]

i did not get to this wonderful place by looking at old pictures did so by keeping my hands on the plow. i did look back recently to see who was left from my former life. most are in the cemetary many younger than me.