Gotta Be Over 40 to Understand

[Corals]

Originally Posted by UglymanCometh

hmph.

I'm 25 and can relate to that list...

The new 25 eh?????? LOL

[Samoon]

Laughing with Corals at Sebastian....lmbo!

[Mr Gumbo]

Man I'm 35 and remember some of that. The candy lady had them cold cups as we used to call them.
My memories:
- You walked everywhere, cars were out of the question
- Penny candy ah the good ole days where a dollar was alot of money for me
- Atari/Intellivision/Comodore 64 was some new age out of this world stuff
- Short Sets
- Cassette tapes where the new wave of the future

[Baba Ahmed]

One mo' 'fo I go: everywhere my crew went it seems there was one or a few bald headed bruthas, in suits and bow ties. Beaming faces as they called us my little Black brutha! Always made us feel like little men. We had to in the inner cities! But then they were called "slums." Didn't have to walk far for a doctor, lawyer, engineer, school teacher, corner grocery store, dry cleaners, movie "house"/live stage acts that featured Be-bop, swing, R&B quartets, stand up comedians, a "master of ceremonies" city "street cars" and buses with back doors. Schools in your 'hood: elementary to universities.
All Black teachers, staff and administrators! Damn, I had mamas all over. Hardly any place to put on our bad boy images. Mamas didn't take no mess.
And corner "pops" might jack u up for saying a "bad word...."

Saw few white folks; mainly cops/firemen, prosecutors, judges and juries and larger dept. store owners. No wonder our folk in Alabama created a Little Africa in Mobile!" That still exists today!!!

[MadameX]

Originally Posted by Baba Ahmed

One mo' 'fo I go: everywhere my crew went it seems there was one or a few bald headed bruthas, in suits and bow ties. Beaming faces as they called us my little Black brutha! Always made us feel like little men. We had to in the inner cities! But then they were called "slums." Didn't have to walk far for a doctor, lawyer, engineer, school teacher, corner grocery store, dry cleaners, movie "house"/live stage acts that featured Be-bop, swing, R&B quartets, stand up comedians, a "master of ceremonies" city "street cars" and buses with back doors. Schools in your 'hood: elementary to universities.
All Black teachers, staff and administrators! Damn, I had mamas all over. Hardly any place to put on our bad boy images. Mamas didn't take no mess.
And corner "pops" might jack u up for saying a "bad word...."

Saw few white folks; mainly cops/firemen, prosecutors, judges and juries and larger dept. store owners. No wonder our folk in Alabama created a Little Africa in Mobile!" That still exists today!!!

Speak on it Brotha Kwame. More communities like this need to be in existence.

[MzKwietStorm]

I can definitely relate to that list. My grandmother was the candy lady and we used to call the kool-aid in the cups "lick ups" and we sold them for .25 cents.

[Baba Ahmed]

A "candy lady" I didn't meet until moved to Atlanta...candy stores and "bootleggers" existed...after hours or whenever one didn't wanna walk to a liquore store or just wanted to kik it with a rap buddy. I was a kid, but have seen the insides of a few - one in particular run by one of my crew's mama and daddy (we were like 10, 11 or sumptin). She was incomparable in kind treatments to our lil crew. Would whup any of our butts if she even thought one of us thought about drink'n anything stronger than a Coca or Pepsi Cola. He taught us how to "shoot craps," and win. No joke. That she didn't know.

[MzPhynixRyzn]

Originally Posted by LadyDivine

My ears were pierced with a needle and I had black thread hanging in them.

Gurl, my Granny put pieces of straw from the broom in my ears

[Mr Gumbo]

Originally Posted by Baba Ahmed

A "candy lady" I didn't meet until moved to Atlanta...candy stores and "bootleggers" existed...after hours or whenever one didn't wanna walk to a liquore store or just wanted to kik it with a rap buddy.

Yeah we had the bootlegger's, after hours and some gambling shacks where I was from too. Didn't wanna miss the liqour store and have to hit the bootleggers crib up cause he'd be taxing you on the price. He made a killing.

[Ettenyl56]

Originally Posted by Samoon

:) :) (This could have been posted in the Humour section, but I thought that this would give us youngins some real insight and the old heads (no disrespect intended!) a minute to, "pause, grin and remember WHEN!" Read on.... :)

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 get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat a bite rawsometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper, in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember anybody getting e.coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

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....

Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the National Anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything, and she could even give you an aspirin for a headache or fever.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah..and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 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.


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. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a "dysfunctional family". How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T---- SORRY FOR WHAT WE MISSED. AND I BET THAT THOSE WHO LIVED THROUGH THIS ERA WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING! All, be well. :)

Just wanted to add, practically every other kid we knew also had a Momma, and a Daddy living together under one roof and we all actually knew our neighbors!