It's My Birthday!/Lucky To Be Alive!

I had written, in longhand, (in a Composition Book, because I'm all cool and retro like that) a post about Expectations. (I do longhand when I'm in bed and get a burst of creativity...or crap.) Did I say it was long? Oh yeah, I said in longhand, I also meant in looooonghannnd. Yeah, it was long. It was also kind of dark. So I ditched it. I'll save it for another day when I'm in the mood for a pity party.

Cause this ain't no pity party! Oui, Oui, Oui! Oui, Oui, Oui! (Doin' the birthday dance!)

So instead of Expectations, I decided to change my Birthday Theme to "Lucky to be alive". What? You're saying that's kind of dark too? No, not really. It's just a commentary on how times have changed and how someone of the ripe old age of 48 (did I type that?) is lucky to be around considering all the shenanigans we got into as kids and considering all the new fangled safety devices that are around to protect our children today.

As a child:
We never wore seat belts. Not required. Most cars didn't have them.
We never wore bicycle helmets. What helmet?.
We never had any anti-bacterial soaps or cleaners.
We never had hand sanitizer.
We drank tap water without a second thought.
We drank from the garden hose all summer long. Every summer!
We ran wild through the neighborhood, or the next few over and our parents were none the wiser as long as we were home on time for lunch and dinner.
We trick-or-treated by ourselves and ate most of our candy before we got home.
We used insect repellent products containing 100% Deet or some more deadly carcinogen.
Rambunctious toddlers ran loose and our parents didn't have a care in the world. There were no toddler leashes or GPS Nanny Devices. Speaking of nannies, we didn't have nannies or governesses unless we were British royalty or our names were von Trapp.
We didn't have to worry about "R" rated movies. There were either movies everyone could watch, or XXX movies. And us kids didn't know about those, unless we had some pretty cool teenage friends.
We raced on our bicycles chasing the ice cream truck like starving orphans, without any regard to other vehicular traffic. And it came every single summer day.
Mr. Rogers was our neighbor and he came into our living rooms every day and no one thought that was the slightest bit odd, this kind of man-child who played with puppets and trolleys in the neighborhood of make-believe.
If our parents were smokers, they smoked literally everywhere. At fast food restaurants, bars, grocery stores, airplanes. Just about anywhere but church. There was no consideration for secondhand smoke. It was smoke em if ya got em.
There was no stranger danger.

Think of it.

How is it we survived? And how did so many of us survive?

I'm so glad you did, so you can join me in celebrating my birthday!

Thank you for stopping by.

As per the usual, everything is hush hush around here.

Our son keeps teasing me with, "I know what we're doing for your birthday". (In kind of a sing song taunt. Don't you hate that? Wait until his birthday!)
I respond, "No you don't!"
He replies, "Well...yeah...so!"

Good answer! Lol! Anastasia is keeping her lip zipped, so we'll see what happens. If nothing else, I know where a big ol' bottle of Strawberry Margarita Mix is stashed.

Lola's Diner
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