Remember when..............LIKE HELL I DO !!!!

From: cmoore@start.com.au (mooman)
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Mon, Jul 30, 2001 9:58 PM

i got so sick of receiving sickening-cutesy pie "Remember
when.........." type emails that I just had to start replying with my
own version. Beleive me this could've been a lot longer.

Praise BoB

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Dave,

Thankyou for the fond childhood memories by Mr Mike Choo.
Unfortunately, by remembering the past like he told me to, I uncovered
all kinds of memories that I would have preferred to kept repressed
thank you very much. Here are a few that came flooding back;

Remember watching Sesame Street and seeing the orange with the rubber
band mouth that sang opera. And how you were absolutely terrified
because you were at an age before you had the sorted out the whole
reality/make-believe thing and the fact that pieces of fruit could
just start rolling around the table screaming stuff at you made you
hide behind the couch in terror every time that sketch came on the
telly.

Remember being yelled at and humiliated in front of all the other kids
by a sixty year old Jesus-freak in Sunday School, because you
mentioned that your geologist father told you that the world is a lot
older than 6000 years.

Remember learning to read, but only half understanding things. Like
your Gran’s tacky beer tray with the sad looking guy flushing
himself down the toilet saying “Goodbye cruel world”. But
because you didn’t understand such adult concepts such as
pathos, suicide, sick jokes etc, you put two and two together and
thought that when you flush the dunny, this man comes up from the
sewer and kills you. So you spend the next two months going to the lav
as little as possible and doing the “flush and run like hell
before the scary man kills you” routine. Finally the terror gets
too much so you tell the adults, only to see them rolling around the
floor, pissing themselves laughing.

Remember sneaking out to the lounge room in the middle of the night to
watch the telly while everyone is asleep. The late night news shows
footage of starving and dying kids the same age as you, and strange
bamboo warehouses containing mountains of human skulls in a place
called Kampuchea. Terrified, you slink back to bed, unable to tell
anyone ‘cos you’ll get in trouble. So you just lie awake,
knowing that as soon as you go to sleep, the nightmares will begin.

Remember being babysat by your teenage aunty, who is trying to get rid
of you so she can smoke dope with her panel-van owning boyfriend, so
she tells you that she is bionic like The Six Million Dollar Man on
the telly and will crush you like an aluminium can if you don’t
piss off (she demonstrates with a VB can). You brag to all your
friends at school on Monday that your aunty is bionic, they tell the
teacher, and everyone laughs at what a moron you are, teacher
included.

Remember being pushed off the monkey bars by the tough kid, hearing
the SNAP and looking down to see your forearm dangling at a 45 degree
angle with bones sticking out of it. Then spending the next three
hours in excruciating pain in the sick bay while the teachers have a
big screaming fight in the corridor. They use strange words like
“liable” and “negligence” and argue over who
is going to take you to the hospital, which is two blocks away.

Remember playground politics, where everyone gangs up and picks on the
poor kid, the weak kid or the slow kid until they are reduced to
crying wrecks. Sometimes you find yourself so churned up inside about
how screwed the situation is you try going against the peer group and
stick up for the victim, only to have the pack turn on you. You spend
the next week of play-lunches in the sandpit alone.

Remember the classroom, where the poor, the weak and the slow are
picked on until they are reduced to crying wrecks BY THE TEACHER.
Sometimes you find yourself so churned up inside about how screwed the
situation is you try sticking up for the victim, only to have the
TEACHER turn on you. You spend the next week of play-lunches writing
lines outside the headmaster’s office.

Remember having to fight older and bigger kids for calling your
adopted sister a “dirty boong”.

Remember finding out for the first time that the entire world could
end at any moment by a thing called “Nuclear War”. You are
told this by an aging hippy who travels from school to school with his
magical puppet show. He ends his “edu-tainment” session by
getting everyone to chant “Progress is Bad ! Progress is Bad !
Progress is Bad.............”

Or is that just me?

Mooman

PS Nostalgia is memories with the bad bits taken out.

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Dave wrote

Hey guys -
remember these ...

REMEMBER WHEN Go back in time.... Before the Internet or mobile
phones. Before semi automatics, heroin and crack Before SEGA or
Super Nintendo...Way back........ I'm talking about hide and seek
at dusk.

One Potato, two potato, three potato, four Red light, green light.
The corner shop. Hopscotch, catch and kiss, jacks, cockey lora
1,2,3. Hula Hoops, elastics, Rubics cubes Running through the
sprinkler Wax lips and milk moustaches An ice cream cone on a warm
summer night - chocolate, vanilla or strawberry. But
Wait......There more! Watching Saturday morning cartoons... short
commercials, Hey Hey its Saturday, Marty Monster, Fat Albert, The
groovy goolies, Gigantor, The Road Runner, Penelope Pitstop and
Bugs Bunny

A million mosquito bites around your ankles. Cops and Robbers,
Cowboys and Indians, Zorro. Climbing trees and building cubby
houses. Building your own go-carts. Your first pair of
roller-skates. Walking to school (no matter what the weather).
Running till you were out of breath. Laughing so hard that your
stomach hurt. Jumping on the bed. Pillow fights, slumber parties.
Spinning around, getting dizzy and falling down was cause for
giggles. Being tired from playing.... Remember that?

The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team. Sleeping
in your first tent (in the back yard)! Water balloons, sling shots
were the ultimate weapon. Baseball cards in the spokes transformed
any bike into a motorcycle. I'm not finished just yet... Eating
Milo from the tin

Remember when... there were two types of sneakers for girls and
boys and the only time you wore them at school, was for P.E. It
wasn't odd to have two or three 'best friends.' When nobody owned
a purebred dog or cat. When a twenty cents was decent pocket
money, and another twenty cents a miracle. When milk went up one
cent and everyone talked about it for weeks? When you'd reach into
a muddy gutter for two cents. When you got your windscreen
cleaned, oil checked, and petrol pumped, without asking, for free,
every time.

When nearly everyone's Mum was at home when the kids got there. It
was magic when dad would 'remove' his thumb. When it was
considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real
restaurant with your parents. When any parent could discipline any
kid, feed them anything or use them to carry groceries, and
nobody, not even the kid, thought a thing of it. When they
threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed ....and did!
When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to
the fate that awaited a misbehaving student at home? Basically, we
were in fear for our lives but it wasn't because of drive-by
shootings, drugs, gangs, Our parents and grandparents were a much
bigger threat! And some of us are still afraid of them!!! Didn't
that feel good? Just to go back and say, Yeah, I remember that!

Remember when............ Decisions were made by going
'eeny-meeny-miney-mo.' Race issues meant arguing about who ran the
fastest. Money issues were handled by whoever was the banker in
Monopoly. Worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was
'germs'. Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a
slingshot. Nobody was prettier than Mum. Scrapes and bruises were
kissed and made better. Taking drugs meant orange-flavoured
chewable vitamin C. Ice cream was considered a basic food group.
Abilities were discovered because of a double-dare. Older siblings
were the worst tormentors, but also the fiercest protectors. If
you can remember most or all of these, then you have LIVED!!!!
Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from their 'grown up'
life. I DOUBLE DARE YA!!
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Subject: Re: Remember when..............LIKE HELL I DO !!!!
From: "Rev. Magdalen" <magdalen@home.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Tue, Jul 31, 2001 1:05 PM
Message-ID: <kzB97.38235$oh1.13571471@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

Sheesh. Tell ol "Dave" that I say:

"Thanks for providing yet ANOTHER glimpse of a world I NEVER knew, having
been born after all that was destroyed. And what the hell are YOU
complaining for, ya pansy, it's YOUR damn fault that all that got busted up!
YOU were supposed to stop the chaos and preserve the principles of
kindliness and generosity, but you fucking DIDN'T. You've got only yourself
to blame. If you weren't there at whatever the UK equivalent of Kent State
is, then FUCK YOU.

"And as mooman and countless others have pointed out over and over, it
wasn't as great as you say. "Race relations" most certainly did exist, but
they weren't part of your little insulated world because y'all didn't even
GIVE a damn what happend to pakis and negroes, so long as they stayed off
yer street. And them kids carryin groceries, well just as many of em were
gettin molested back then, they just were raised to KEEP a damn SECRET, so
they did! Nobody told em their "bathing suit areas" were their own, and if
someone touched em, to tell a cop. Nobody talked about bathing suit areas
at all because it was an unspoken agreement that that part of the body was
dirty and bad.

"So ok, that world had to come to an end, there was a bunch of stuff wrong
with it. We're tryin to figure out a new way to live right now, and lots of
people are getting hurt and killed in the process, and pretty much everyone
is hopeless that any good can come from any of it, but we've got to push on!
Isn't that what Britain is all about? The Stiff Upper Lip? So shut up
already and go shout at world leaders in the street if it hurts you so bad
to miss all that good stuff."

You tell ol Dave I said that, and you gotta say it in a Texas accent, too.

And record it and put it on alt.binaries.slack as a mp3. Nothing's funnier
than UK people doing Texas accents.

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Original file name: Remember when..............LIKE - converted on Thursday, 20 December 2001, 03:30