"Remember the Good Old Days?" - Jacqueline

[ladypuglover]

The good old days were still around when I was tiny. The hospital wanted my parents to sign away their rights and put me into an institution because they SAID that I would never function beyond a 3-year old.. if they were LUCKY. The only problem I had was the fact I became deaf after a high fever that possibly, could have, caused SOME brain damage.

Luckily, my parents decided to opt for the more rational route and see what was available for children with hearing loss in the 1980's. They were surprised to find that they could have sent me to a school for the deaf, or heaven forbid, a nearby Day school with a program. My grandmother eventually confessed to my parents that she had a brother they had locked up back in the 40s/50s, and by the 1980s they eventually had him tested and found out that the only problem the poor guy had was that he had been born profoundly deaf. By then it was way too late, and he died shortly after, anyway. I think my parents' experience made my grandma feel so guilty about her brother that she told my parents about it.

I think I much prefer my hearing aid compared to a life locked up, thanks.... :)

My parents were also asked to sign me away as I was born slightly deaf due to middle and inner ear infections present at birth. They were told I would never be able to live in the hearing world and could cause them embrassment in their political life. Thankfully my ped doctor came in and escorted the well meaning doctors out and told them to stay the hell away from me and my parents. My mother wanted blood but my doctor talked her into proving them wrong. Today I wear no hearing aids and even though I have some slight speech problems and a slight hearing loss, I am able to function as a hearing adult. :D

[Letgo]

I hate the 50s.

Hey now! I was born in the 50s. I liked them; there was penny candy and candy bars and Lifesavers cost 5 cents. :D And Rock 'n Roll was born in the 50s, too!

[DistantStar]

Nobody knew there was anything off with me until I was nine months old and nobody ever asked my parents to sign me away, but they did try to put me in special ed in elementary school. That got shot down real fast. There was no reason at all for me, of all people, to be put in that class. (I am not dissing well-run special ed programs!)

[dawn9476]

If this was the good old days, Josie Duggar wouldn't be alive.

Also boys born in the early fifties would have been sent off to vietnam in the late sixities and early seventies. These girls who write these blogs longing to have been born in the fifties would have seen their brothers or husbands shipped off to war because of Vietnam at the end of the sixities.

If you want to go back earlier to the early forties, women wouldn't have had time to care for a dozen or more kids because they would most likely be working long hours in a factory because their husbands or potential suitors would be away and fighting in WWII. If you had several kids to feed and a husband capable of fighting in a war, chances are you were left on your own to become the bread winner of the family, which in many cases meant going to work.

[O Latin]

If this was the good old days, Josie Duggar wouldn't be alive.

Also boys born in the early fifties would have been sent off to vietnam in the late sixities and early seventies. These girls who write these blogs longing to have been born in the fifties would have seen their brothers or husbands shipped off to war because of Vietnam at the end of the sixities.

If you want to go back earlier to the early forties, women wouldn't have had time to care for a dozen or more kids because they would most likely be working long hours in a factory because their husbands or potential suitors would be away and fighting in WWII. If you had several kids to feed and a husband capable of fighting in a war, chances are you were left on your own to become the bread winner of the family, which in many cases meant going to work.

Is this really different, though? Granted, we don't have a draft, so everyone who is in the military at least chose to be there, but there are still women (and men) watching their loved ones go off to war and struggling to continue on with life in their absence. I suppose you could argue that it's easier now because things like email make communication easier and that sort of thing, but having a loved one in the military is hard no matter what century you live in.

[FuManchu]

I wonder how she thinks thrift stores would operate if they didn't have normal buy-new stores to undercut and get their items from...

And I can't help but wonder what form the "rich conversation" over snapping beans would take. I mean, conversation doesn't just happen, it's based on everyone's personal experiences. If you ensure that girls don't have any interesting experiences - they haven't gone anywhere, seen anything, been shown anything - exactly what do they have to talk about? (1) The Bible. (2) Er... (3) That's it.

[jaelh]

And I can't help but wonder what form the "rich conversation" over snapping beans would take. I mean, conversation doesn't just happen, it's based on everyone's personal experiences. If you ensure that girls don't have any interesting experiences - they haven't gone anywhere, seen anything, been shown anything - exactly what do they have to talk about? (1) The Bible. (2) Er... (3) That's it.

(3) Mr. Darcy.

[outrunningzombies]

And it just isn't Alzheimers that is a problem. I take care of some pretty acute residents. I have seen the results of family members trying to care for them. Out of control diabetes, wounds that aren't healing, pressure ulcers, hypertensive crisis that goes unnoticed until it's too late. And I would say 8/10 times it isn't the families fault, it is just they don't have the knowledge, education or capabilities to care for acute family members. A previous poster had it right: Sometimes the most loving thing to do is put them a good facility where they can get the care they need. After all, if the caregiver has a heart attack from all the stress, how much good is s/he going to do the elder?

I was just about to post something along the lines of this. Nursing home residents get 24/7 care. Even a stay at home wife can't give 24/7 care, since she need to sleep, bathe, go grocery shopping, make dinner.... Nursing home employees do their shift and then go home to destress. They get days off. They go on vacation. They are not contracted to the nursing home for an undetermined length of time--will Grandpa die in 6 months or 6 years?

My parents took care of my dad's parents for a few years before they had to use a nursing home. Even with my mom working part time and with people coming in 5 days a week to help with bathing and such, it was still incredibly hard--and Nana's Alzheimer's wasn't very bad yet. She still knew who we were and didn't try to wander out the door. My mom and dad have already decided that they will not live with my sister or I and would prefer to live in assisted living when needed. My husband and I put his dad in assisted living at the end of his life without any guilt. We were too busy to take care of him like he needed and he didn't want to leave the city he was living in to live with us.

[LucySnowe]

I wonder how she thinks thrift stores would operate if they didn't have normal buy-new stores to undercut and get their items from...

Well, exactly. Thrift stores have the stock and selection they do because we now have so many clothes (SOME OF WHICH WERE BOUGHT FROM THE MALL) that you can give them away and buy new ones rather than having to darn holes or simply put up with something because it fits.

[prairiemuffin]

Re: thrift stores

I love a good bargain, and I love thrift store shopping, but I'll tell you what-up here in Minnesota thrift store shopping has blown up in the past couple of years, and it's become almost impossible to find the really good stuff any more. They've even done several tv spots on local newscasts, interviewing people who have "just discovered" thrift store shopping due to the economy (MORONS).

Ahhh....how I long for the good old days, when I could score a genuine Kate Spade bag at the Goodwill ;)

[Sax Russell]

Even when I was a kid, my reaction to talk about the good old days was basically, "Weren't black folks treated pretty badly then?" Nowadays my reaction is, "You really want to give up modern medicine and the Internet?" My other reaction is, "I'm glad I live in a post-1965 world." I can't explain why, but a lot of my friends are children of immigrants. I can't imagine life without them.

For me, I guess the good old days are the 1990s, when I was growing up. I didn't have any responsibilities and I didn't feel too much pressure on me. The world was getting better all the time, or at least it seemed that way. Rocko's Modern Life was on every day. Now I'm a young adult and it feels like the world (or at least the US) is collapsing around me. So it goes. On the plus side, I can always watch cat videos on Youtube.

[JesusFightClub]

Cat videos may prove to be civilisation's constant ;)

The world had to collapse around us at some point (I am similar age to you.) I hate the effects but I feel like we're coming into revolutionary times, which I welcome with all my heart.

A line I know "Until we destroy, we'll only have ruins..."

[dairyfreelife]

If this was the good old days, Josie Duggar wouldn't be alive.

Also boys born in the early fifties would have been sent off to vietnam in the late sixities and early seventies. These girls who write these blogs longing to have been born in the fifties would have seen their brothers or husbands shipped off to war because of Vietnam at the end of the sixities.

If you want to go back earlier to the early forties, women wouldn't have had time to care for a dozen or more kids because they would most likely be working long hours in a factory because their husbands or potential suitors would be away and fighting in WWII. If you had several kids to feed and a husband capable of fighting in a war, chances are you were left on your own to become the bread winner of the family, which in many cases meant going to work.

My grandmother married out of high school in her husband was shipped off to war (Korean). My grandfather came back and never once spoke of that war. He was labeled a hero for saving another's life, but he never spoke of it. He hated being a part of war. He wanted to completely forget about it.

Also, bolded mine. Very, very true. Not to start a debate on vaccines, but I discovered something in my family history that I thought I would share. My grandmother got pregnant at the beginning of the 60s (61, I think was the year) and early on she contracted an infection related to mumps, but not actual mumps. She had a baby and it seemed fine at first, but then she started having breathing problems. The doctors thought it was asthma. One day, she started to gasp for air, they took her to the hospital, but she passed at four months of age right after they arrived. She was determined later to have Endocardial Fibroelastosis. It was rare then, like 1 in 5000 babies or something, but that condition is almost non-existant now. This is believed to be because of the mumps vaccines. So there you go-vaccines save babies's lives. The vaccine didn't exist then, but babies today don't die from what killed my grandparent's infant thankfully. Modern medicine is not something to shun imho, but he glad for. Ask my grandparents and great-grandparents if they were alive, they will tell you to be happy for it. They lost children to curable or non-existent illness today.