*When little Donny from next door come over and did his tricks on the front step, just before he fell off, his Mom know that she could have sued and owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amok.
Same with my neighbor, Penny Mac, who I met for the first time after her son, Corky, leaned up against my back yard gate backwards and my dog bit him in the butt.
Instead, she called. I apologized and told her I’d pay for any medical bills. No problem. We met for coffee after analyzing the situation and found that the Cork had no more than a tiny bruise on his butt, and we became the best of friends before they moved away three years later.
Conversely, Corky and Maxie did not become best friends.
*We didn’t know we were from a dysfunctional family. We blindly thought we had occasional family trouble like everyone else.
We thought it was normal for everyone to have a crazy Aunt Ellen in the family skeleton closet, and if we didn’t have one, we felt deprived and didn’t have anything to gossip about.
*We didn’t needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes. We were obviously so duped by so many social ills that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!
To all those who survived this sublimely naïve era, do you long for the good old day, or do you remember it differently?
