Thinking Back

Freezing in sub-zero-like weather yesterday waiting for the bus, junior asked me when I was his age, what my favorite season was. I told him the fall. He asked why. I told him because I loved getting my back-to-school clothes together. I explained to him how I would match up my shirts, jeans, sneakers by color and pick out my own outfits and have them lined up for the first week of school. He looked at me like "what?". Then I realized, he's brought up in the era of "the uniform". Since kindergarten, all he's ever known was a uniform. When I was going to school, my friends and I would actually wear our own clothes. I remember after school I had to take off my 'good clothes' and change into my 'play clothes'. Don't let me play on the floor on my knees in my 'good clothes', boy I would be finished! Finito! Done! While changing into his 'play clothes' is something that I have junior trained to do, he's unfamiliar with anything but going to school in a uniform.

I thought of how things are so different now:

Back in the day, I used to love Colorforms. For those of you who don't know what it is, it would be a picture background (for example if it were Spider-Man) of an alley, city street, etc. and you'd have these 2 dimensional one-sided sticky pictures of Spider-Man, Peter Parker, Aunt May, J.J.J., and his enemies in various poses, with cars, trucks, trees, passerbys, and you would create your own scene and use your imagination. Try that now. If it doesn't flash, has buttons, plug-in, take batteries, the kids aren't interested.

Back in the day, I used to come home to home-cooked meals (almost) every day. If my grandma (who was a teacher) had open school night or wasn't coming straight home, my grandfather, who can cook, but often didn't, he would treat us to McDonald's. (That was when I fell in love with the 'Big Mac'). I know there were Swanson TV dinners around, but we rarely had them. In our household we were eating home-cooked meals at the dinner table, with no TV.

Also back in the day, breakfast consisted of Cream of Wheat, oatmeal or my favorite-yellow cereal with butter, milk, cinnamon and sugar. Especially on a cold winter day, that would hit the spot and sustain me until lunch. To get bacon, eggs, pancakes, that was a treat. I would maybe get that on the weekend. Now there are dozens upon dozens of companies with their version of a quick breakfast. I admit sometimes I do get lazy and don't want to cook, but once I get started it's fun and I can see what's going into the meals and make sure we all get a balanced diet. Tonio doesn't think twice about breaking out the culinary skillz and cooks morning, noon and night. I admire him for that. He's inspired me to get my cook on.

Yes, the more I think about, the more I'm kind of glad I grew up in the era that I did. It was simple and it worked.


FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Have you ever thought about your life growing up and how things have changed for kids in the last 10-15-20 years? Did you enjoy growing up back then or think you would have liked it more growing up in this day and age?