I grew up in Derby England at a time when everyone treated each other with respect. We didn’t eat a lot of fast food. We drank water and tea and loved a frozen drink callers Jubblies. We ate lunch meat sandwiches, beefpast sandwiches, jam and banana sandwiches. We always had home made meals home made Hash or corned beef.
We grew up during a time when we would gather glass bottles to take to the store and use the deposit money to buy a penny candy. (We even got a brown paper bag to put the candy in). You sure could get a lot for a penny. We went outside to play games, rode bikes and jump rope skipping with someone’s mums clothes line.
One and racing against siblings and others played hide and seek.
Red Rover, Red light green light, mother may I?
We used tin cans to play kick the can and yes the games got more daring as we grew…There was no bottled water, no microwave or cable tv, no cell phones, no hair straighteners…
We ate cereal at the breakfast table and toast before going to school. We walked to and from school in the rain, sleet, snow & sun.
We did our homework and a chore or two and went out to play ball or other games with friends after school. We went to the cinema to watch some cartoons on Saturday morning.
If you were bad in school, you got in trouble there and when you got home you got in trouble again because they magically already knew. Smacking was allowed in school and you behaved yourself or else.
We would ride our bikes for hours all without a cell phone or electronic games.
You LEARNED from your parents instead of disrespecting them and treating them as if they knew nothing. What they said might as well have been gospel.
If someone had a fight, that’s what it was…a scuffle and you were back to being friends shortly after. Kids that had guns were WATER PISTOLS or CAP GUNS and never thought of taking a life.
You had to be close enough to home to hear your Mom yelling to tell you it’s time to come home for dinner. We ate around the dinner table and talked to each other. School was MANDATORY. We listened to our teachers. We watched what we said around our elders because we knew If we DISRESPECTED any grown up we would get our behinds busted, it wasn’t called abuse, it was called discipline! … We held doors, carried groceries and gave up our seat without being asked to.
You didn’t hear curse words on the radio or TV, and IF you cursed you did it away from the public or you got your mouth washed out with a bar of soap. “Please” and “Thank you” were part of our daily dialogue!
Re-post if you’re thankful for your childhood and will never forget where you came from! Wouldn’t it be nice if it were possible to get back to this way of life?
Thank you for reading this and will you comment or share?
