REMEMBER WHEN.......

...the prom was in the gymnasium and we danced to an orchestra, and all the girls wore pastel gowns and the boys wore suits for the first time and we stayed out all night.

When a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady and girls wore a class ring with an inch of wrapped dental floss or yarn coated with pastel frost nail polish so it would fit her finger.

And no one ever asked where the car keys were 'cause they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked. And you got in big trouble if you accidentally locked the doors at home, since no one ever had a key.

Remember lying on your back on the grass with your friends and saying things like "That cloud looks like a... "

And playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game. Back then, baseball was not a psychological group learning experience - it was a game.

Remember when stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals 'cause 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 the 80's and 90's ..

So send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel & Hardy, Howdy Doody and The Peanut Gallery, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Belle, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk...as well as the sound of a reel mower on Saturday morning, and summers filled with bike rides, playing in cowboy land, baseball games, bowling and visits to the pool...and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.

When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited a misbehaving student at home.

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!  But, we all survived because their love was greater than the threat.

Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, Yeah, I remember that! And was it really that long ago?

Count your life by smiles, not tears. Count your age by friends, not years.

Added October 21, 2001