The following reminiscences were sent to me by the husband of a childhood friend.

Not everything from the “good old days” were good, but they are old.

The observations are the anonymous writer's view of the past and are in bold face type. Some I agree with and some I see in my own way, which I did not hesitate to give my version of the good ole days.

See what you think.

*My mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

True, but chickens were raised differently then, and weren’t fed all kinds of things that may be promoting the harmful effects we see now. The Europeans don’t seem to have the same chicken-related health problems that we do.

And every time I mess with chicken, I wonder why we even invite food that might be contaminated into our kitchens, and if it’s really that bad and that dangerous, how come people aren’t dropping dead all over the country from bad chicken? Very few cooks are scrupulously clean when preparing chicken, especially not the ones seen on TV.

*My mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice-pack coolers, but I can't remember getting E-coli.

The above comment applies here, too.

*Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring)-- no beach closures then.

I, on the other hand, loved to go to the lake, but hated wading or swimming in it. “Too mush hair,” on the lake bed as the little me would always say.

 Yuk. Walking on all that slimy, squishy grass was not my idea of a fun thing to do, any more than getting tangled in smelly seaweed in the Pacific, or coming home from the beach with tar stuck all over my feet.

No one made a big deal over the contamination flowing into the Pacific from costal oil wells and ships, which they should have.

*Remember when we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

I don’t ever remember saying prayers in either Michigan or California schools…as it should be. Never said prayers, that is, unless you count silently praying: Don’t call on me! Don’t call on me! Don’t call on me!

*The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

I thought pagers were the kids who ducked out of a “learning” class by taking an elective that allowed them to work in the school office, leaving them free to duck behind the gym for a quick smoke between delivering those “paging” pink slip messages to kids in the class room that summoned them to the office to talk to mom on a land line phone, see the principal, or pick up their forgotten lunch in the brown bag and not on ice.

*We all took gym, not PE, and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries, but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

I took both gym and P.E., depending on which part of the country I was living in at the time. P.E. is a West Coast thing.

Gym shoes -- today’s athletic shoes. How they love to change the nomenclature to make things sound so much more important. We got along fine with tacky old gym shoes, and I still get along fine with my laceless $29 Ked’s no mater what I’m doing. Their scare tactics of “you must buy our $150 shoes made in China, which should sell for $25, or your back or feet will die.

And, by the way, why are all those fancy Dan shoes so damned expensive? They’re made in China or some other country where they pay slave labor wages. Could it be all the shipping costs and/or all that expensive advertising?

*Flunking gym was not an option, even for stupid kids! I guess P.E. must be much harder than gym.

As a wussy girl who was born athletically deprived. I would have flunked P.E. if I wouldn’t have had the guile to “schlump” when our posture was checked for Corrective Class eligibility. Miraculously, my curved back, stooped, rounded shoulders, one hip higher than the other and pigeon toes were instantly cured the second I was picked as the prefect Corrective candidate.

On the two gloriously magnificent days a week we didn’t have to dress for gym, we went out to the archery range where I became Deadeye Sandy, and learned a skill I never used again.

*We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

*I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

Now every student gets a gold star, deserving or not. And what’s with all the graduation ceremonies, where no one walks away without a commendation of some sort. Besides, they’re not graduating from anything; they’re simple moving to the next grade.

It’s no wonder we have so many underachieving employees who think they don’t have to do a damn thing to succeed. Constant praise from mothers and teachers taught them nothing on how to succeed in the real world.

*I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

I for one wish we would have had those things back then in the hope that it would have helped me become computer literate in today’s world.

*Where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

When I was stung by a bee picking up a apple on the ground in Mrs. Langer’s back yard and shrieked for the entire world to hear, she came running out, told me to shut up, pulled out the stinger and said I should go back to playing with Kirk and I’d live.

*Remember when kids played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out a $.48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

Only $49? That’s getting off cheap.

*We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt-spanked again when we got home.

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 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?