Don't you just wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace, and share it with the children of today?

HOW'S THIS FOR NOSTALGIA?

It took three minutes for the TV to warm up? If you even had one it went off at midnight with the National Anthem and a waving flag.

Nobody owned a purebred dog? 

When a quarter was a decent allowance made with real Silver! ? With that you could get into the Saturday movie and still have something left over for a candy treat.

You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny? Made with real copper! Looking to see if it was a 1943 copper penny!

Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces? If you were a girl you felt really grown up when you were old enough to get your own pair of stockings even if you had to put up with a garter belt.

You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time? 

And you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot? You felt entirely grown up when you could take the family car for a fill-up.

Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box?

Not to mention Cracker Jacks! 

It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents? Most of those old restaurants are long gone .

They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed...and they did it! 

When a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car .. to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady.

No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked? Sometimes that wasn’t such a good idea.

Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, 'That cloud looks like a...'? 

Playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game? Playing on the school yard which was the center playground for everyone in the neighborhood. Where have the neighborhood schools gone to?

Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger? 

And with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace, and share it with the children of today. 

When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home? If you knew what the principal’s office looked like you had been in trouble more than once. Do you remember the name of your elementary school principal?

Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! All the adults in the neighborhood kept watch over all of the children too. But we survived because their love was greater than the threat. 

Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say,  'Yeah, I remember that'? 

I am sharing this with you today because it ended with a Double Dog Dare to pass it on. To remember what a Double Dog Dare is, read on. And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care. 

Send this on to someone who can still remember Howdy Doody and The Peanut Gallery, the Lone Ranger, The Shadow knows, Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk. 

Candy cigarettes 

as well as summers filled with bike rides, Hula hoops, and visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar. 

Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside. 

Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles.  Coffee shops with Table Side Jukeboxes.  Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum.

Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers. 

Newsreels before the movie. 

Telephone numbers with a word prefix...( Yukon 2-601).  Or, some of us remember when there were just 4 numbers with no word prefix at all. And, nearly everyone had a party line.

Peashooters 

Hi-Fi's & 45 RPM records. 

78 RPM records! 

S&H Green Stamps. 

Mimeograph paper. 

The Fort Apache Play Set. 

Do You Remember a Time When...  Decisions were made by going 'eeny-meeny-miney-moe'? 

Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, 'Do Over!'? 

'Race issue' meant arguing about who ran the fastest? 

Catching The Fireflies Could Happily Occupy An Entire Evening? 

It wasn't odd to have two or three 'Best Friends'? 

Having a Weapon in School meant being caught with a Slingshot? 

Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures?

'Oly-oly-oxen-free' made perfect sense?

Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles? 

The Worst Embarrassment was being picked last for a team? 

War was a card game?

Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle? 

Taking drugs meant orange - flavored chewable aspirin? 

Water balloons were the ultimate weapon? 

If you can remember most or all of these, Then You Have Lived!!!!!!! 

Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from their 'Grown-Up' Life.

I Double-Dog-Dare-Ya!