Now politically incorrect past times of childhood…

Pepper said:
How ridiculous. Never met anyone, ever, who thought saying or hearing Merry Christmas to be an insult. Way overblown nonsense. Political and conspiratorial too.
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I've never met anyone who felt insulted, including Jewish friends. Annoyed perhaps, but not insulted.

Time and experience taught me not all people celebrate the same events. Indeed, it's incredibly presumptuous to suggest they would or should. Therefore, unless I know for sure what they celebrate, I wish people "Happy Holidays." After all, the point of wishing someone joy isn't about me, it's about them.

Childhood games? Of course I also loved playing Cowboys & Indians, but my own kids didn't. Their generation was more about Ghostbusters, Superman, Batman and their evil villains. My grands haven't played with pretend weaponry beyond water guns and space age light sabers.

Does anyone else wonder how Native American children dealt with TV & movies casting them as ruthless savages who were always on the losing end of the battles against the "good guys" aka White men? I shudder to think.

Political correctness and being woke are derisive terms for evolving and having empathy. I don't understand why it's considered bad or wrong to notice where other people's toes are and avoid stepping on them.

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As a boy growing up in a small town in the 50's, for some reason we all thought it was cool to 'spit'! We were too young to get chewing tobacco, and we would have gotten sick if we did. But, still spitting was cool!? So, when walking around outside we would just spit whenever we wanted to... I knew it was crazy, but that is what was cool at the time, so we did it. One danger we learned is that if you got used to spitting, sooner or later you would do it mistakenly in school and/or at home. Either way if someone saw you it did not go well...

So, I learned to stop spitting rather suddenly...
 
Spitting in those days was very masculine, and very cool. We probably learned it from our male elders spitting their tobacco juice. The hippest was spitting between your front teeth. Very stylish...:cool:

In the '50s some poolrooms still had spittoons!
 

StarSong said:
Political correctness and being woke are derisive terms for evolving and having empathy. I don't understand why it's considered bad or wrong to notice where other people's toes are and avoid stepping on them.
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While supposedly it began that way, it quickly transformed to mean people who believe it's ok to marginalize selected scapegoat groups and to shame, terrorize, and discriminate against them. I suppose the idea is to punish them for real and imagined excesses of people from the past who seem to look like them and may or may not be their ancestors.

In other words they become exactly what they claim to despise: bigots.
 
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If you were raised on Disney films, there’s a lot of stuff in them that would never pass muster today, some of it subtle, others quite blatant!

 
I’m not sure that it’s now politically incorrect, but it’s at least less common than It was when I was a kid. I played a lot with little green army guys, hard rubber figures maybe two inches tall of American soldiers that I’d divide up and engage in fantasy pitched battles with one another…

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Now there were other soldier figures that were larger, maybe 5”-6” tall, that were available for different national WWII armies. I remember there being American, German, Japanese, and I think even some Russian figures. They were because of their size more finely detailed, and were engaged in actions like shooting, throwing hand grenades, or in the case of one Japanese figure, attacking with a sword! This may not have eased post-war tensions and stereotypes any… 🙀

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I can remember getting a pair of chrome six guns and double holster for them when I was about six years old. Of course they were cap guns and after about the first week of having them I drove the rest of my family crazy with all the banging so I got told that I was only able to have them for a little while each day, OUTSIDE! Then I was told that I had to find a way to buy my own caps. Back then glass pop and milk bottles were always worth something so I would be on the look out everywhere.
 
So many good memories have been elicited by these responses. I have fond memories of cap guns and candy cigarettes. I found candy cigarettes several years ago online and ordered them for my own kids.
MarkinPhx said:
Whenever my parents took me out with them for dinner they would order me a Shirley Temple while they enjoyed their vodka on the rocks. And anytime we went on a road trip they would buy me candy cigarettes whenever we made a stop at Stuckey's.
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I used to love Stuckey's! There aren't many left. In 2015, before my older two daughters graduated high school, I drove my three kids down to give them a tour of my alma mater, the University of Missouri, and we came across one. I was beyond thrilled. I think the kids at first thought I was being a little odd, but they soon agreed it was a great, fun store.

I have fond memories of cap guns and candy cigarettes. I found candy cigarettes several years ago online and ordered them for my own kids.

And @gruntlabor, we played King of the Mountain too! I grew up in a house across the street from a church. The plows would create enormous mountains of snow in the parking lot. It was so much fun.

These responses have elicited so many fun memories.
 
We used to travel every year from Florida to NC to visit relatives. Not only did we not wear seatbelts, I remember taking a nap in the backlight of the car (the shelf right below the back window) because it was warm back there. This was in my dad's huge Chrysler.

As far a Cowboys and Indians, I belonged to a group (like the Boy Scouts) called Indian Guides. For our meetings, I wore a vest with my "Indian" name... Eagle Heart... and a headdress. I won a bicycle at a school Dental Week contest for creating a poster showing an Indian and saying "Take care of your teeth. You'll need 'um to eat." It was all purely innocent but it wouldn't and shouldn't happen today!

All of us kids used to play on a deserted lot where a house would eventually be built. We took shovels and dug an "underground fort" in the soil and put a huge box over it for shelter. While we were doing it I stepped in an anthill and had red, swollen legs and feet for days but I'm sure I went back and did it again.
 
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Muskrat said:
@MarkinPhx ….remember drag racing??? Mattress hill? Tubing the rivers?
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My high school girlfriend and I attended a retreat during our senior year. I convinced her to go down a hill in an inner tube. She wiped out at the bottom and knocked out one of her front teeth. We still keep in touch 50 years later and she still has problems with the replacement tooth.
 
jujube said:
Well, the boys played Cowboys and Indians. If the girls tried to play, they were rejected with scorn...."girls can't play Cowboys and Indians!!!!"

The girls played dolls. Heaven help any boy who wanted to play dolls.....or dress-up. I had a neighbor boy who LOVED to play dress-up or as we called it, "Fashion Designer". He was welcomed by us because he was really good at it, but was constantly in danger of getting beat up by any boy who caught him at it. He grew up to be a fashion designer and, I assume, made a good living doing it.
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Actually, I played cowboys and Indians with my brother and I am definitely female. I used the pistols with the caps. On another note, I was also the hockey goalie when we played hockey in the snow on the street in Montreal. This was with my brother and his friends. And we had the candy cigarettes.
 
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ChiroDoc said:
Spitting in those days was very masculine, and very cool. We probably learned it from our male elders spitting their tobacco juice. The hippest was spitting between your front teeth. Very stylish...:cool:

In the '50s some poolrooms still had spittoons!
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I use a spittoon in my practice room. Got it as a gift from a friend years ago. It's been used pretty thoroughly, so the disgusting factor is fairly elevated -- hey, it goes with the territory. :p


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LoveTulips said:
At school, I remember bullies (boys) being rammed into the lockers by some teachers, fine by me. These boys were not nice. I was absolutely terrified of one of them. Heaven help any teacher who even touches a child today. Today the children are bullying the teachers.
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At one prior high school there was a massive gathering of Caucasian vs Black boys in the parking lot, itching for a riot. A stocky power lifting teacher waded right through the middle picking up boys and tossing them back into the crowd. Go back to class!
 
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Gee, isn't war fun?
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CallMeKate said:
I can't think of any for myself personally, but my brothers had those cap gun with the rolls of red "caps"... I still remember that exact smell they made all these decades later. Ah yes, back when we could be normal kids and not everything anyone did "offended" someone. :cry:
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I had them and loved them. I also made bows and arrows and played cowboys and Indians. It was great fun.
 
I had cap guns and BB guns. We played cowboys and Indians and I'm glad I did. I'm a better person for having done this. Kids knew how to have fun those days without buying expensive electronic toys and standing around in hoodies and starring at them all day without talking to anyone.
 
We used to dress in our mother's old clothes and shoes and play what we called dress up. It was fun and my mother would laugh and my brother would roll his eyes up. We also ran through the sprinklers in the yard when it was hot. I do not think kids today would consider this a fun time for them.
 
All these posts bring back a lot of memories and my childhood was quite the same. I have to add some to it.
Summertime we could be anywhere as long as we showed up for chores or meals. My folks didn't seem to worry about where we were.
I learned to drive a tractor at age 8. I started hunting at that time too.
I started using the truck to plow snow at age 12. Dad even told me to take the truck and get a load of sand which was a couple of miles away.
I could drink and smoke at gatherings at 14. They always figured, if you work with the adults, you can enjoy these things with the adults. No cussing was tolerated though. No chewing tobacco though, they could keep that crap.
We still acted our age, until it was time to work.
 

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