<p>For some reason, salad for us was only iceberg lettuce. I’m pretty sure that was all they sold in our small town stores. But I lived in a major farming area. Did no one grow in the area grow any other kinds of greens? I was 17 before I encountered a spinach salad…I had only seen canned spinach before.</p>
<p>I remember the first ranch dressing…Hidden Valley that you mixed yourself. And I remember a time before chocolate chip cookie dough and cookies & cream ice cream.</p>
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<p>They bothered me. I remember getting dog poop on my shoes as a child, over and over again – sometimes on the way to school so that I smelled all day. That doesn’t happen now. Pooper scooper laws are a wonderful invention.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it was entertaining when two dogs got up on the stage during a huge college biology lecture and copulated in front of the class.</p>
<p>Literally running home from school (no car rides from Mom to go one mile) to watch *Dark Shadows *on TV with Mom.</p>
<p>Smoking sections at the movie theater.</p>
<p>Practically living at the neighborhood public pool during the summers.</p>
<p>As mentioned earlier, excitement building for weeks to watch The Wizard of Oz or the Charlie Brown specials. We always had a great early dinner, or better yet, dinner on TV trays, with a special menu or homemade popcorn or one of Mom’s great desserts as a tribute to the special TV show.</p>
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I remember being forbidden to watch it because it was Satanic.</p>
<p>I remember when we first got kiwi fruits.</p>
<p>I don’t think I ate pizza until I was 12 and bagels were much later. I had Chinese food for the first time in college. We didn’t even live that far out from the city but all the restaurants near us served meat and potato type dinners with as Missypie said, iceberg lettuce salads. I don’t remember eating any other greens either.</p>
<p>Playing jump rope for hours and hopscotch. I had to teach my kids how to play. Nothing like an over weight 48 year old woman playing hopscotch. What did the kids think those things on the playground are for?</p>
<p>My oldest is taking a recess class in college. I thought great. It is about time you learned how to play. Also, a good thing I am not paying any extra for the class.</p>
<p>Renting a beeper when I was 8 months pregnant so I could be sure of reaching my husband.</p>
<p>Our tv growing up had a remote - with two buttons. One button was channel up. 2nd button was volume down/power off.</p>
<p>We didn’t have AC or a color TV until I was in HS. (But my mother reports listening to the Rose Parade on the radio!!!)</p>
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<p>Your comment made me remember that my H’s family claims that his uncle was responsible for bringing Kiwi fruit to the US. I looked it up and while he wan’t actually responsible, his company was part of the introduction into the US.</p>
<p>[How</a> Kiwifruit got it’s name.](<a href=“http://www.calharvest.com/hock.FriedaCaplan.htm]How”>http://www.calharvest.com/hock.FriedaCaplan.htm)</p>
<p>“moms threatening to “wash out our mouths with soap”, when they wanted us to behave or use less profanity (only got the soap in mouth treatment once)”</p>
<p>Sadly, this isn’t gone. I’ve seen kids I care about get soap in the mouth from their parents. Hot pepper, too.</p>
<p>Did anybody leave school to go home for lunch? Anyone who lived within a certain radius of the school (probably about 3/4 mile) went home for lunch. They walked home, ate, and then walked back for recess. Alas, I lived too far to make the round trip at noon. All the moms stayed home back in those days.</p>
<p>ALL the moms did not stay home. My mother worked. Before I was born, my parents owned a transcription business and after I was born, my mom worked from home. One of my first toys was an old typewriter - way before electric or selectric. Then she worked as a secretary at the public school and after that, starting when I was about 9, she worked in the city as a secretary. I was quite the curiosity, an early latchkey kid, and I know it affected me - I could barely wait to get back to work after my maternity leaves and the thought of being a SAHM is not at all appealing to me. Unlike most of my age cohort, I did not have a SAH role model. Ironically, where I live, a large proportion of moms do not work. My D once asked me what they did all day! I told her I had no clue.</p>
<p>Sorry so late to this party (how did I miss this thread) but for those of you who are Dark Shadows fans (like me; rushing home after school to watch), Tim Burton is remaking a Dark Shadows movie starring Johnny Depp next year as Barnabas Collins…</p>
<p>[Dark</a> Shadows Movie (2012)](<a href=“http://www.reelz.com/movie/233735/dark-shadows/]Dark”>http://www.reelz.com/movie/233735/dark-shadows/)</p>
<p>^^^^Okay, well that would be cool. Mom is still alive, but after multiple strokes, doesn’t recognize me. Would have been a fun thing to do together…</p>
<p>Mansfield - I lived down the street from my grade school (that’s what it was called then), and went home for lunch almost every day. On the rare occasion that my Mom wasn’t home, I got to eat in the cafeteria which I liked because then I was with a lot of my friends. For some reason I was allowed to buy hot lunch on those days, but the principal would not let me bring a lunch from home because I “lived too close to the school”. I attended a school with a lot of very odd rules. </p>
<p>I lived in a small town and remember corner grocery stores and basement “beauty shops”. We had a milkman deliver the milk and the pharmacy delivered. I remember our doctor making house calls. There was a bus that ran to a larger town a few miles away which had a downtown with a lot of stores. We only had one car, but really only needed one.</p>
<p>Just remembered that I wasn’t allowed to wear pants to a public elementary school until they changed the rule when I was in 3rd grade (this was in Maryland). Seems really strange now!</p>
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<p>OMG, I remember those but haven’t thought of them since those days! They had a big vacuum hose that went into the bonnet, and it never really got that hot. The end result was always less than spectacular.</p>
<p>Coffee cans as rollers to straighten long wavy hair.</p>
<p>Deviled ham sandwiches.</p>
<p>“Peace” and “Vote” tee shirts.</p>
<p>Posters with glow in the dark graphics.</p>
<p>Army Navy pea coats.</p>
<p>Bouncy “moon shoes.”</p>
<p>I remember one year the “big thing” was this rubber circle type thing that went around your ankle. It had a ball attached to the ring by a string. You would sort of play “jump rope” with the ball. Spent hours and hours with that thing. No wonder I was so skinny.</p>
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I used to go home for lunch everyday in elementary school. We lived just a few minutes walk. At my school, only kids who didn’t have a stay at home mom ate at school (and there weren’t too many - we didn’t even have a cafeteria, just a “lunch room” and you had to bring your lunch.) My mom watched “Jeopardy” every day at noon; when we heard the tune for “Final Jeopardy”, that was our signal to run out the door to get back to school in time. It was a HUGE treat if we got to eat lunch at school; I think I only did it a couple of times in my 6 years there!</p>
<p>You could sing into one end of the hair dryer hose and put the other end at your ear and no one could hear you. Not that I did that for hours and hours in front of the mirror.</p>
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<p>I must be older, because girls weren’t allowed to wear pants to school until a year or two after I had already graduated from high school. The preliminary breakthrough came my senior year of high school when girls were first allowed to wear culottes to school.</p>
<p>We could wear pant suits my junior year of high school. We all looked like 17 year Hillary Clintons but it was progress.</p>