Comments on I blame my parents...

Go to The Riffs Room Re-upholsteredAdd a commentGo to I blame my parents...

Strat
That was a marvelous post, you really are a very special writer. We were raised alike, and I too have been a law abiding parent and father of five. Now I raised 5 successful, law abiding citizens, and I very seldom hear from them.LOL Greed is what is out there, you are so right.

posted by WileyJohn on March 31, 2010 at 8:31 PM | link to this | reply

Strat, my friend, I hear ya. I loved my childhood.
As an adult I've had a somewht colorful life, but have alwasy been happy. It takes gratitude for the simple things in life, of which I always have been. oxox

posted by hazel_st_cricket on March 31, 2010 at 1:53 PM | link to this | reply

Hey, Tim-Bo! Great to see ya!
Funny, I'm still waiting for the several gazillion I inherited from that dead fourth cousin who worked for First National of Nigeria.

Between us, we should be able to throw a hell of a party....

posted by strat on March 31, 2010 at 1:14 PM | link to this | reply

strat
I would love to comment on your blog, but I have just found out that I may have inherited gajillions from the King of Zamunda.

posted by TIMMYTALES on March 31, 2010 at 12:27 PM | link to this | reply

Strat.....
Amen to that....many of us were punished with such diabolical parents......how we survived is a miracle in itself!

posted by Corbin_Dallas on March 31, 2010 at 4:27 AM | link to this | reply

Indeed, how could they!? lol sam

posted by sam444 on March 31, 2010 at 4:19 AM | link to this | reply

Good grief!
Your parents sound a lot like mine!aint we lucky?

posted by Whacky on March 30, 2010 at 5:52 PM | link to this | reply

This is a great tongue-in-cheek post.
But I guess in reality, you are privileged to have the gains of inner satisfaction which no money can buy!

posted by Straightforward on March 30, 2010 at 3:42 PM | link to this | reply

I figured you and I were raised by the same clones, Guy.
What's really scary is, I remember virtually everything in that last post of yours. It was great, though. Scary, but great!

posted by strat on March 30, 2010 at 7:46 AM | link to this | reply

I know, Kabu...
darn them, anyway...

posted by strat on March 30, 2010 at 7:45 AM | link to this | reply

I know, right, Ari?

posted by strat on March 30, 2010 at 7:44 AM | link to this | reply

Something I posted when you were "sleeping," only a few months back.
Strat,
      The part about home life with Dad, "back in the day," rang a bell. You'll spot it, I'm sure. This piece is pretty long, but I think that if you haven't seen it yet, You'll find it pretty funny.
             Guy

I... THOUGHT YOU MIGHT ENJOY THIS ...

'Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'

'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him.

'All the food was slow.' 

'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'

'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained. !

'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'


By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it :

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore   Levis, never set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country or had a credit card.

In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck.

Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.


My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow)

We didn't have a television in our house until I was 16.

It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6 a..m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.


I was 21 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.'

When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.


I never had a telephone in my room.

The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers --my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6AM every morning.

On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.


If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.


Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

MEMORIES from a friend :

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it.. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

How many do you remember?

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.
Real ice boxes.
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards. 
Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals. 

Older Than Dirt Quiz :

Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about.

Ratings at the bottom.

1. Blackjack chewing gum
2.Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water 

3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles 
5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke  boxes 
6
. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers 
7. Party lines on the telephone
8 Newsreels before the movie 
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax 
11.. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (there were only 3 channels... [if you were fortunate]) 
12. Peashooters 
13. Howdy Doody 
14. 45 RPM records 
15. S& H greenstamps 
16. Hi-fi's
17. Metal ice trays with lever 
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packards
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns 
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Wash tub wringers 

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older
 
If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age
If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!


I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.

Don't forget to pass this along!!
 
Especially to all your really 
OLD friends....

posted by northsage_45 on March 29, 2010 at 6:44 PM | link to this | reply

I have the same complaint My childhood was so happy and simple
it is too awful not to be able to blame my parents for everything that happenend to me. They gave me every opportunity to grow up decent and honest.

posted by Kabu on March 29, 2010 at 1:16 PM | link to this | reply

I'm with you and Ariala on this one, Pal!
Strat,
      My parents were cut from the same authoritarian cloth as yours were. They heartlessly neglected my own and my siblings upbringing, by turning four natural-born selfish, willful brats, into selfish, petulant, hardworking, fiscally responsible adults, against our kicking and screaming wills. Most of us anyway. What could they have possibly been THINKING?
      I was so brainwashed that I did my very best to raise my son the same way I was, although luckily for him, I failed miserably in his case. Marilyn failed to raise her son improperly too. My guess is that the natural inclinations of many or perhaps MOST of our generation's children, overcame our flawed tutlage, and grew up exactly as they wished to, in spite of our misguided attempts to teach them to be severely, stupid, hardworking, responsible, non-theiving, altruistic grownups, just like we are and our parents were raised. Where did we go wrong?
      It'll serve us right when our kids put us in charge of raising their kids too. Since the good sense to find ways to coast along through life sucking the very lifeblood from American society, apparently cannot be taught by themselves, (irresponsible behavior must skip every other generation,) our children are cutting out the middle man (themselves) This is confusing me to such a degree, that I wonder how our parent's, parents succeeded in cutting out their middle man, in order to raise us in their own image. My grandparents didn't raise ME! DAMN! Cheated AGAIN! Now I've got a throbbing headache. Thanks to YOU, Strat. I blame my parents, AND you!
            Guy

posted by northsage_45 on March 29, 2010 at 11:51 AM | link to this | reply

If only they had done worse for you...how dare them!

posted by Ariala on March 29, 2010 at 9:08 AM | link to this | reply