Looking Back.....the 70s

 I was born in 1969 which seems like eons ago...but a great time to be born.  I was a child of both the 70s and the 80s....learned to be an adult in the 90s and 00s.  (No...the adult part is not open to debate...hee).

I suppose I am no different than anyone else looking back at my age in thinking that the eras of my growing were so much better than what kids go thru today.  But it's my time.  I am going to do it.

I remember playing outside.  It was the best thing and the worst thing ever.  My mom would send me outside with a pitcher and a cup. I could get water from the spigot outside so I wouldn't be running in an outside and letting all the flies in.   Modern day child abuse I suppose....but hey....I am still here and relatively unscathed from spigot water with all its impurities, exposure to the elements, endless amounts of UV rays radiating my body, and possible abduction by strangers.  Hee.  I think the strangers might have had to pay my mom to take me back.

Some of the horrible bad things I did were run the spigot water too long so I could make a puddle to splash in.  When the water got low, I would let the mud squish thru my toes because it felt good.  People pay big money to get mud put on their bodies in a Spa these days.  Had I only known to capitalize at the time.  There is a muddy 70s kid out there making some change from what we both know to be a total pleasure. 

I remember my mom cooking all the time.  She had to do it.  No microwaves back then.  And this is going to sound so funny....but I was actually excited when my mom had to give us TV dinners.  The came in little tin foil trays that went in the oven....FOR TWENTY minutes!!!!!  It was the quick no fuss meal.  Hee.  My favorite was the Swanson turkey dinner.  It had mashed potatoes...stuffing.....turkey....and a dessert of some unnameable fruit that one should never eat.  Thhhpt.  If you got the 'man sized meal' TV dinner....you got peas and carrots.  Hee.  If you ate the carrots and saved the peas.....you could shoot them like marbles outside later....or shoot them thru straws.

 Coke....soda....pop whatever you call it.  That was a special occasion.  It came in a 2 liter glass bottle.  If I remember right, this was about the time we were trying to change the country over to the metric system (and 'new math').  It went over like a 'Le(a)d Zepplin'  (whole other article....wooot!)   So back to the coke.  You got a glass.  And that was  major special....saved for a movie night.....like when a Peanuts Special or Wizard of Oz or The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe came onto TV.  You got to stay up a little later....and if you were in our house you got a SPECIAL treat.  Jiffy pop and apple slices.  If you don't know what Jiffy Pop is....lemme 'splain.  Again....no microwaves.  It is like an aluminum pie plate filled with popcorn kernels and then covered with foil.  You put it on the stovetop.....it would pop up and puff up and be beautiful.  Coke, apple slices, jiffy pop and the peanuts.....I wish some would ask me on a date like that today.  Someone might 'get lucky' then.

 Remember when it was just that?  Getting lucky?  I was too young to get lucky during the 70s....and too young to know what it meant....but it surely sounded good as jiffy pop.  But wow.  'Getting lucky' is sooo much better than 'hooking up'....in my opinion.  It was something you surely had to wait for.....like learning to tie your shoes.  Try and try til you get it as close to perfect as you can get.  Anticipation....it's making me wait  (snaps to Heinz and Carole King).  Sometimes the anticipation paid off....sometimes it did not....but it was like Christmas and Birthdays that way.  I am not trying to take anything from the 'hooking up' crowd....but truly....there is a skill and a sense of pride when you learn to tie your shoes......more so than when you Velcro on and off your tennis shoes.  You get the cool sound.....for a second....but then you're off....and anybody could have done that.

Something else I thought was kind of cool when I was a kid.....is that I do not remember much plastic surgery.  You had to work with what you got.  It is kind of empowering to know that the lips you kissed were yours....different than anyone else's...not bought to look like hers or hers.  And that goes for your breasts, your face, or any other part of your body.  Not perfect....but yours.  And people on TV who actually did have plastic surgery....did not admit to it.  And messages were positive.  'God don't make no junk'  'I love you just the way you are' (thank you Billy Joel pre Uptown Girl) 

I used to hate those cheesy positive messages.  My mom used to crossstitch up all that positive propaganda and display it all over my room.  Pictures of Holly Hobby....nice little girls.  Sugar and spice and everything nice. Hang in there!! We have those 'inspirational posters' today....pasted up all over the workplace.  But they feel separate of my life experience.  I feel like that scream at me....CONFORM!  CONFORM!  Here is your goal....keep reaching, sister!  But the cheesy stuff my mom crossstitch....said...I was good.  And keep being the best me I can be.  Because doing that....contributes to a peaceful me....which contributes to a peaceful world.....one of which that I was a part....that loved me just the way I am.  Love is..... 

 So the weird thing is....my mom stitched up cheesy propaganda.  But even weirder thing is......it stuck.

 Now I know that we all one day will look back on our growing up times with rose colored glasses.  I am not so sure that it isn't a bad thing.