Back In The Day

My good friend Zack posted this comment on facebook the other day:

“When I was a kid I didn’t have an xbox, wii, ps3, or cell phone. I had a bike and a curfew a.k.a the street lights. I lived outside, not inside. If I didn’t eat what my mom made then I didn’t eat. I didn’t dare tell my mom “no,” or talk back. Life wasn’t hard, it was life. And I survived! Repost if you drank water out the hose and hand sanitizer didn’t exist, but you COULD get your mouth washed out with soap.”

I remember growing up in LaGrange Park, Illinois (a collar suburb of Chicago) and how different life was growing up in the 1950′s than it is now.  Here’s an example…

When I was about 6 or 7 years old I ran away from home.  See, my Mother caught my brother Jim and I playing with matches in the basement, and she had my brother take off his belt and proceeded to whoop him with it.  Mom said I was next, so I ran away.

I didn’t know where to go, so when I wound up in front of the Police Station, I sat down on the curb and bawled my eyes out.  A policeman came out to find out what was wrong, so I told him the whole story — the matches, the belt whooping, all of it.  He held out his hand and told me to come with him.  We went around to the parking lot of the Police Station and climbed into a squad car…

…and he drove me right home!  Telling me all the way there that I *deserved* a belt whooping for playing with matches.  He handed me back to my Mother, told her where he found me, and then LEFT.

Can you imagine that happening today?  I would have been “saved” from abuse, along with my brother, and placed in foster care;  my Mom would have been arrested for “child abuse”, and I would have NEVER LEARNED THAT LESSON…

How times have changed!  Last night I went into our kitchen to get a cup of coffee, and I found about 20 burnt matches on the island counter.  When I asked where they came from, my oldest boy T. admitted that he did it.  His response to “Why?” was simply “Because it was fun…”

I said, as stern as I could, that “We don’t play with matches in this house.”  He replied “I do…”  Heather does NOT believe in corporal punishment, and T. is autistic so he wouldn’t connect the dots anyway — so I couldn’t slap his hands like I wanted to.  Instead, I got *close* to his face, raised my voice a bit, and repeated “No…  We do NOT play with matches in this house!  Understood?“

I then proceeded to explain in a normal tone of voice how dangerous that form of “fun” could be, commenting that he could wind up burning down our house and losing his family and stuff in the process.

I wonder if he will remember that lesson TODAY, let alone 54 years from now?

Like Zack, I SURVIVED.  Was I spanked?  Yep, when I deserved it.  Was I whooped with a belt?  Sometimes, when my “crime” was especially heineous, like playing with matches.  Do I feel like I was “abused” by my parents?  Hell, no.  I was *taught* life lessons by them.

Before anyone misunderstands, my childhood was NOT lived in fear.  I did not fear my parents, I loved and respected them.  I did not fear my community — I used to Trick-or-Treat BY MYSELF — well, OK, with my brother — but we didn’t have to take our parents along.  I rode my bike *miles* away from home, often going to the Brookfield Zoo alone on free days.

Television was a *rare* passtime — usually when it was raining too hard to play outside.  But the summer was spent outdoors, and even in the dead of winter, there were snowmen and snow forts to make, and snowball fights to wage with my friends.

Like I said earlier, times were different then.  Mail was delivered TWICE a day to the mail box on our front porch except Saturday was only once.  Milk was delivered daily to the little silver box by the back door — and my Cocker Spaniel Cindy and I used to get to ride along with the Milkman in his open-door truck down our block (imagine what the Health Department would say about THAT today…).  The “fog truck” would crawl down the street spraying for mosquitos, leaving huge, billowing clouds of DDT that all the neighborhood kids would run through.  We were told it was dangerous, but NOT because DDT was bad for us, but because the cars couldn’t SEE us.  My lungs are shot now, and perhaps that shares part of the blame…

Ah, to live again, Back In The Day…

These are my words and opinions,

Jerry Stephen Sedlock™