DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN?
All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?
It took five minutes for the TV to warm up?
Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home
from school?
Nobody owned a purebred dog?
When a quarter was a decent allowance?
You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?
Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?
You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas
pumped, without asking, all for free, every time? And you didn't pay for air? And,
you got trading stamps to boot?
Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels
hidden inside the box?
It was considered a privilege to be taken out to dinner
at a real restaurant with your parents?
When a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car, and to cruise,
peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady?
No one ever asked where the car keys were because they
were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?
Lying on your back in the grass with your friends, saying
things like, 'That cloud looks like a... '?
Playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the
rules of the game?
Stuff from the store came without safety caps and
hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?
And with all our progress, don't you just wish, just
once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace? Share it with the
children of today?
When being sent to the principal's office was nothing
compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?
Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't
because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents
were a much bigger threat! But we survived because their love was greater than
the threat.
Send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy
Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Dowdy and the Peanut Gallery, the
Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger and
Buttermilk.
Summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, Hula
Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.
Didn't that feel good? Just to go back and say, 'Yeah, I
remember that'?
I am sharing this with you today because it ended with a
double dog dare to pass it on. To remember what a double dog dare is, read on.
And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know
better and too young to care.
How many of these do you remember?
Candy cigarettes
Wax, Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside?
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles?
Coffee shops with table side jukeboxes?
Blackjack, Beemans, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum?
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard
stoppers?
Newsreels before the movie?
P.F. Fliers?
Telephone numbers with a word prefix? (Raymond 4-601 or
Pennsylvania 6-5000?)
Party lines?
Peashooters?
Howdy Dowdy?
Hi-Fi's & 45 RPM records!
78 RPM records!
Green Stamps?
Mimeograph paper?
The Fort Apache Play Set?
Do you remember a time when: ?
Decisions were made by going 'eeny-meeny-miney-moe'?
Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, 'Do Over!'?
'Race issue' meant arguing about who ran the fastest?
Catching fireflies could happily occupy an entire
evening?
It wasn't odd to have two or three 'Best Friends'?
The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was
'cooties'?
Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a
slingshot?
Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials
for action figures?
'Oly-oly-oxen-free' made perfect sense?
Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was
cause for giggles?
The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team?
War was a card game?
Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a
motorcycle?
COWBOY RULES
These are the Cowboy Rules in effect for: Arizona, Texas,
Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho and the rest of
the Wild West.
1 - Pull your pants up. You look like an idiot.
2 - Turn your cap right, your head ain't crooked.
3 - Let's get this straight: it's called a "gravel
road. I drive a pickup truck because I want to. No matter how slow you drive,
you're gonna get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.”
4 - They are cattle. That's why they smell like cattle. They
smell like money to us. Get over it. Don't like it? I-40 & I-80 go east
and west, I-25 & I-15 go north and south. Pick one and go.
5 - So you have an $80,000 car. We're impressed. We
have $350,000 combines that are driven only 3 weeks a year.
6 - Every person in the Wild West waves. It's called
being friendly. Try to understand the concept.
7 - If that cell phone rings while a bunch of
geese/pheasants/ducks/doves are comin' in during a hunt, we WILL shoot it outta
your hand. You better hope you don't have it up to your ear at the time.
8 - Yeah. We eat trout, salmon, deer and elk. You
really want sushi and caviar? It's available at the corner bait shop.
9 - The 'Opener' refers to the first day of deer season. It's
a religious holiday held the closest Saturday to the first of November.
10 - We open doors for women. That's applies to all
women, regardless of age.
11 - No, there's no '"vegetarian special" on
the menu. Order steak, or you can order the Chef's Salad and pick off the 2
pounds of ham and turkey.
12 - When we fill out a table, there are three main
dishes: meats, vegetables, and breads. We use three spices: salt, pepper,
and ketchup! Oh, yeah, we don't care what you folks in the North East call
that stuff you eat. IT AIN'T REAL CHILI!!
13 - You bring "Coke" into my house, it better
be brown, wet and served over ice. You bring "Mary Jane" into my
house, she better be cute, know how to shoot, drive a truck, and have long
hair.
14 - College and High School Football is as important
here as the Giants, the Yankees, the Mets, the Lakers and the Knicks, and a
dang site more fun to watch.
15 - Yeah, we have golf courses. But don't hit the water
hazards - it spooks the fish.
16 - Turn down that blasted car stereo! That
thumpity-thump ain't music, anyway. We don't want to hear it anymore than we
want to see your boxers! Refer back to #1!
A true Westerner will send this to at least 10 others and
a few new friends that probably won't get it, but we're friendly so we share in
hopes you can begin to understand what a real life is all about!!!
LEGAL DEFINITION
A lawyer runs a stop sign and is pulled over by a
sheriff's deputy. He thinks that he is smarter than the deputy is because he
is a lawyer from New York and is certain that he has a better education then
any cop from Houston, TX. He decides to prove this to himself and have some
fun at the Texas deputy's expense.
The deputy says, 'License and registration, please.'
'What for?' says the lawyer...
The deputy says, 'You didn't come to a complete stop at
the stop sign.'
Then the lawyer says, 'I slowed down, and no one was
coming.'
'You still didn't come to a complete stop, Says the
deputy License and registration, please!'
The lawyer says, 'What's the difference?'
'The difference is you have to come to complete stop,
that's the law. License and registration, please!' the Deputy repeats. Lawyer
says, 'If you can show me the legal difference between slow down and stop, I'll
give you my license and registration; and you give me the ticket. If not, you
let me go and don't give me the ticket.'
'That sounds fair. Please exit your vehicle, sir,' the
deputy says.
At this point, the deputy takes out his nightstick and
starts beating on the lawyer and says, 'Do you want me to stop, or just slow
down?'
TOOLS EVERY MAN MUST HAVE
DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for
suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you
in the chest, and flings your beer across the room, denting the freshly-painted
project which you had carefully set in the corner where nothing could get to
it.
WIRE WHEEL: Cleans paint off bolts and then
throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also
removes fingerprints and hard-earned calluses from fingers in about the time it
takes you to say, "Oh, dang!"
SKILL SAW: A portable cutting tool used to make
studs too short.
PLIERS: Used to round off bolt heads. Sometimes
used in the creation of blood-blisters.
BELT SANDER: An electric sanding tool commonly
used to convert minor touch-up jobs into major refinishing jobs.
HACKSAW: One of a family of cutting tools built
on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked,
unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the
more dismal your future becomes.
VISE-GRIPS: Generally used after pliers to
completely round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also
be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.
OXYACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for
lighting various flammable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for
igniting the grease inside the wheel hub out of which you want to remove a
bearing race.
TABLE SAW: A large stationary power tool commonly
used to launch wood projectiles for testing wall integrity.
HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering an
automobile to the ground after you have installed your new brake shoes,
trapping the jack handle firmly under the bumper.
BAND SAW: A large stationary power saw primarily
used by most shops to cut good aluminum sheet into smaller pieces that more
easily fit into the trash can after you cut on the inside of the line instead
of the outside edge.
TWO-TON ENGINE HOIST: A tool for testing the
maximum tensile strength of everything you forgot to disconnect.
PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER: Normally used to stab the vacuum
seals under lids or for opening old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splashing
oil on your shirt; but can also be used, as the name implies, to strip out
Phillips screw heads.
STRAIGHT SCREWDRIVER: A tool for opening paint
cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable
screws and butchering your palms.
PRY BAR: A tool used to crumple the metal
surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50
cent part.
HOSE CUTTER:
A tool used to make hoses too short.
HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war,
the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate the most
expensive parts adjacent the object we are trying to hit.
UTILITY KNIFE: Used to open and slice through the
contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly
well on contents such as seats, vinyl records, liquids in plastic bottles,
collector magazines, refund checks, and rubber or plastic parts. Especially
useful for slicing work clothes, but only while in use.
WORTHLESS PIECE OF JUNK: Any handy tool that you
grab and throw across the garage while yelling "worthless piece of junk"
at the top of your lungs. It is also, most often, the next tool that you will
need.
RETIREMENT
My broker called me this morning and said, "Remember
that stock we bought and I said you'd be able to retire at age 55?"
"Yes, I remember," I said.
"Well," my broker continued, "your
retirement age is now 108.
MINOR INFRACTION
While I was in the Navy, my ship was bound for Japan. Because
of a minor infraction, a shipmate of mine was busted one rank, fined and given
extra duty for three weeks.
Looking forward to celebrating his 21st birthday on July
22, he consoled himself every night during his extra duty by reciting: "They
can bust me, they can fine me -- but they can't take away my birthday."
As July 22 approached, his excitement increased. When he
went to bed on July 21, he happily repeated: "They can bust me, they can
fine me -- but they can't take away my birthday."
The next morning, he found out that the ship had crossed
the International Date Line -- and it was July 23!
DEAF WIFE
A man feared his wife wasn't hearing as well as she used
to and he thought she might need a hearing aid.
Not quite sure how to approach her, he called the family
doctor to discuss the problem.
The Doctor told him there is a simple informal test the
husband could perform to give the doctor a better idea about her hearing loss.
Here's what you do," said the Doctor, "stand
about 40 feet away from her, and in a normal conversational speaking tone see
if she hears you. If not, go to 30 feet, then 20 feet, and so on until you get
a response."
That evening, the wife is in the kitchen cooking dinner,
and he was in the den. He says to himself, "I'm about 40 feet away, let's
see what happens."
Then in a normal tone he asks, “'Honey, what's for
dinner?"
No response. So the husband moves closer to the kitchen,
about 30 feet from his wife and repeats, "Honey, what's for dinner?"
still no response.
Next he moves into the dining room where he is about 20
feet from his wife and asks, "Honey, what's for dinner?
Again he gets no response.
So, he walks up to the kitchen door, about 10 feet away. "Honey,
what's for dinner?"
Again there is no response.
So he walks right up behind her. "Honey, what's for
dinner?"
"Ralph, for the fifth time, CHICKEN!"
CHRONIC PAIN
The junior executive had been complaining to his wife of
aches and pains. Neither one could account for his trouble. Arriving home
from work one night, he informed her. "I finally discovered why I've been
feeling so miserable. We got some ultra-modern office furniture two weeks ago,
and I just learned today that I've been sitting in the wastebasket."
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