September 19, 2011

Childhood Differences: a LISTICLE!

It's Monday and I'm feeling back to my normal self again so you know what that means?  Listicle time!! :)



I'm sooo very excited to feeling like I can jump back into this so here goes...

Childhood differences from then (70s) and now:

1. Sibling rivalry. I was the youngest of three, born in the early 70s; Lovie is our one and only and there are no plans to have any others. This will probably be the biggest difference in our childhoods. She won't know what it's like to be teased and ridiculed, yet always protected by her siblings. It kind of makes me sad when I do think about it, but I know she's going to get the best of us, her parents, all the time so that kind of makes up for it, I think. (At least that's what I tell myself.)

2. Close-knit family. This is another sad difference to me. Growing up, we always were visiting with family or they us. Every single weekend (it seemed) was spent with grandparents and/or aunts and uncles and cousins. Every single weekend. Even some summers weeks were spent with them. Now, it's not anything like that. My nephews and nieces are all grown and my husband doesn't have any nephews and nieces so Lovie has no cousins (my BFF is one of my cousins). And while we try to visit with family at least every other weekend, it's super hard to do since we live in the city and most everyone else lives an hour away. That, and our parents are aging. It's sad really. Family meant everything to me growing up. Everything (even when my parents split when I was 9). And I just am not sure Lovie will ever feel the same. And that, to me, is incredibly sad.

3. Materials things. For me growing up, we didn't have much as far as material objects. Of course back then, I wanted more; but now, as an adult, I'm so glad I didn't have more. It kind of made me use my imagination more, made me want to get on out there and actually play and do things. And I also believe it made me really appreciate things when I did get them. Today though, holy crap is there a ton of stuff most kids have! I've talked about this before here, but Lovie is an exception to this. If I could remember back to when I was 20 months old, I'd guess that Lovie has more toys than I did, but compared to most other kids (that I know) today, she's got very little. And I'm totally OK with this (most days) and don't plan to change this up any time soon.

4. Food and drink. Back in the day, we'd stop off at McDonald's nearly every weekend on our way home from visiting with the grandparents. It would be late in the day on Sunday and we'd always hit up the drive-thru and bring home our cheeseburgers and fries and chow down. It just wasn't a big deal. And once a month or so, my dad would bring home bottles of 7up (back when the 16 oz bottles were sold 8 to a pack- anyone??) or Dr. Pepper for us to drink on a Saturday afternoon.

via google images
It just wasn't a big deal. We didn't live on junk food and pop, but we didn't avoid it like the plague or like a lot of new parents seem to do today. And "organic" surely wasn't a part of our vocabulary.

5. Movies. Now this was a big deal: going to see a movie. We didn't have cable, we had to get up off our asses to manually change what little TV channels we had on the TV, and kid-watchable movies never aired on TV. We actually had to leave the house to go to the movie theatre to see a movie. I remember seeing Bambi with my cousin and her dad when I was very young, and then when I was a bit older, I remember seeing Rocky in the theatre with my brother and sister. Today?? Pssshaw. I hear of kids Lovie's age glued to the TV watching DVD movies. I'm not saying Lovie doesn't watch TV because she most certainly does, but I have yet to pop in a movie for her.  To me, it's kind of like the materialistic thing... if you give too much now, there's less appreciation for it later on down the road. But maybe that's just how my mind works.

10 comments:

  1. It's funny how our perception of food and drink has changed. My dad tells me stories of the ice truck coming down his street and getting a block of ice and I have vague memories of our milk being delivered by the milk man when I was two. McDonalds was relished but also something that equated to eating in a five star restaurant these days. Now it's more commonplace to spend the few bucks on a fast food meal, but with the mindset of 'this is completely bad for me,' which makes us enjoy it a lot less :)

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  2. Movies were such a big deal back then!

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  3. I agree with so much you have posted. From the surplus of toys to the cable tv & technology on demand, it's all too much!

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  4. Oh, I remember what a HUGE deal it was to go to the movies! We looked forward to it so much! And I love those glass bottles of pop...Coke was my favorite...mmmmm :)

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  5. I agree with all of that, however I want to point out a quote that I read somewhere recently."Organic food is what our grandparents used to call food." Or something like that. Not to sound like a total treehugger, but there are a lot more chemicals in food, toys and everything else now than there were back in the day.

    And yeah, there's nothing wrong with being a minimalist - within reason, of course. Kids that grow up being given everything grow up to believe they should be driving a Ferrari to their McJob. Lame!

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  6. I remember the 6 pack of those 7UP bottles. Similar feelings about the days of yore on my end too. I loved reading your list, and your daughter is lucky to get the best of both of you. (-:

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  7. I love this list. You are such a great mom and every time I read about your life with Lovie I can feel how much you both dreamed of her!

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  8. I remember seeing Bambi at the drive in... well, most of it. We (my little bro and I) fell asleep in our sleeping bags in the back of the station wagon. I remember Rocky Horror Picture Show too!

    Sometimes I think that our memories for these events are so strong because they were special, rare. Not commonplace and thus forgettable.

    Great list!

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  9. It's almost like we copied each other. The thing I'm starting to wonder is, why are we doing what we are doing? I wonder if we can let our kids just be kids?

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  10. I really love your list. I guess now we're the ones telling the stories about how things were back in the day, huh? ;)

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