WOW... boy do I count myself as lucky... I think I can honestly say I grew up right on the hairy edge of the end of that era. I can remember doing a lot of those things myself JMM, and I wasn't even born until 82
I grew up around video games and computers, but I had and played with a rubics cube, and the two or three other [censored] in the neighborhood around us, we all played with plastic swords and dart guns, and toy action figures and played some sports. We would get into lots of trouble all the time. And while my father did work, he worked at home. So there was no "Wait until your father gets home!", my punishment was waiting for me as soon as I walked through the door, and whats worse I would get it again when my mother got home that evening!
I can remember my father letting my play around in his electronics shop at home while he worked, and just wandering around, playing with an old spare Oscilloscope he had (like I really even knew what it was for
), looking at all the old and seemingly ancient electronics trying to imagine what they were, and what they did, and who might have used them before they became parts in my father's spare parts stock.
I can remember being so excited every week when it was time to mow the grass cause it ment that I could get my allowence and go buy a new toy or game or candy. And I can remember enjoying doing the physical activity (boy there's a term that needs to be used more often
) of mowing the lawn. That was one of many highlights of the week cause I got to drive the riding mower and there was 2 acres to mow. And doing the week whacking round the trees to trim the grass around them was the same way.
I can remember picking up hedge apples around the property for a penny a hedge apple and being more than happy to do it, even though most times I maybe got $5 from an entire afternoon.
I can remember watching Empire Strikes back and Return of the Jedi when they aired it on TV. Watching movies like The Last Starfighter, Tron, Star Trek 1-3 (I can remember seeing 4 in the theaters) and crying my eyes out when Spock died ( I still get choaked up when I see that capsule going into the torpeado tube and hearing Scotty playing Amazing Grace on the bag pipes).
I can remember watching the Disney 2000 Legues Under The Sea as a kid and thinking how cool Captin Nemo and the Nautilus were. I can remember watching Terminator as a kid! T2 was the first R rated film my parents let me see. They had a habbit of recording almost any movie that ever aired on TV, so a lot of my days as a little kid were spent watching the sci-fi movies and fantasy movies that we had.
I can remember watching The Dark Crystal and being conviced that the characters were really people. I can remember watching the Disney Robin Hood (the one with the animals) and thinking that it was the greatest movie ever.
I can remember watching Alien at the age of ... 8-10 and REALLY feeling afraid. (It to this day is the only movie that will STILL make me jump). And then seeing Alien 2 and thinking how cool Ripley looked in the loader at the end.
I can remember seeing the Princess Bride for the first time on TV and thinking THAT was the coolest movie ever.
I can remember playing Four Square and doing hot potato, Cherry Bombs, frogsies, and many others. Can remember having to do Addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, fractions, and simple powers with out calculators even though we had them in class
. Doing Science fair projects. Being in the school plays. All sorts of stuff.
I can remember trying to play base ball with 4 people, (Me, my brother, my father, and my mother) and never really having it work, but was still fun as heck.
I can remember when heck was a naughty word!
I can remember when Pepsi AND mountian dew were in glass bottles. And I can remember the bottle return and carrying the carttons of bottles in every time we went to the grocery. Goin to the Dairy Queen for a coney and drink on a cool summer evening. Waking up to watch the care bears, The Popples, Droids, The Ewoks, Dungeons and Dragons, Transformers, TMNT, Reboot, Captian N, Merry Melodies at 11:00 AM to noon every saturday on ABC.
I can remember when fried ballogna sandwiches WERE lunch and hot dogs WERE dinner. And on saturday and sunday were family night where we had a big sit down meal together as a family, and watching Life Goes On.
Waking up every morning and being so excited when 11:00 AM rolled around, because my father would come in from the shop for lunch and we would watch The Price Is Right every Monday through Friday while we ate lunch.
Ah that was fun.... Thanks for bringing up all that old stuff. I enjoyed that.