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HOW DID WE SURVIVE?
From the Desert Rat in Tucson

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes too, but I can't remember getting E-coli.

Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. We often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, Army, cops and robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or my BB gun was not available. We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never overweight; we were always outside playing.

We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all. Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), the term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

I can't recall any injuries, but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now. I guess PE must be much harder than gym. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

Schools didn't offer 14-year-olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway), but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started  getting the sniffles.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations.

I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers that could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant lot, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger.

He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm. I could have been killed! Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butts spanked (physical abuse) here, too, and then we got our butts spanked again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (remember why Tonka trucks were made tough? It wasn't so that they could take the rough berber in the family room.), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.

Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive.

It was a neighborhood run amuck.

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How did we survive?

AGE-ACTIVATED ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER (AAADD)

If this wasn't you today, it will be tomorrow!!

Recently, I was diagnosed with A.A.A.D.D. - Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. Here's how it manifests itself:

I decided to wash my car. As I start toward the garage, I notice that there is mail on the hall table. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the trashcan under the table, and notice that the trashcan is full.

So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the trash first. But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I take out the trash anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.

I take my checkbook off the table, and see that there is only one check left. My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go to my desk where I find the bottle of soda that I had been drinking.  I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the soda aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over. I see that the soda is getting warm, and I decide I should put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.

As I head toward the kitchen with the soda, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye--they need to be watered. I set the soda down on the counter, and I discover my reading glasses that I've been searching for all morning.  I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I'm going to water the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table. I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, we will be looking for the remote, but nobody will remember that it's on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers.

I splash some water on the flowers, but most of it spills on the floor. So, I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.

Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.

At the end of the day: the car isn't washed, the bills aren't paid, there is a warm bottle of soda sitting on the counter, the flowers aren't watered, there is still only one check in my checkbook, I can't find the remote, I can't find my glasses, and I don't remember what I did with the car keys.

Then when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all day long, and I'm really tired. I realize this is a serious problem, and I'll try to get some help for it, but first I'll check my e-mail.

Do me a favor, will you? Forward this message to everyone you know, because I don't remember who I've sent it to!