There are a lot of dangers in the world these days. Maybe, as a kid, I was unaware of such things. But it sure feels like a more menacing place in our current times. Like the Coronavirus, surfacing on the morning news, tallying the latest victims. We wish these things would go away, but they don’t.
It seems to me though, for my generation, if we got past growing up during the ‘50s and the ‘60s, we could just about get through anything. First off, our mothers were pregnant with us in those years. It was socially acceptable to smoke and drink during pregnancy. A lot of women did. That was the first obstacle we overcame. Just getting out of the womb in some state of normality.
By the time we started crawling around, especially if we weren’t the first children, our parents didn’t pay much attention to things, like when we climbed inside the cupboard under the kitchen sink and started playing with the Drain-O bottle. There was no child-proofing back then.
Yes, those were the years when we were “underfoot” and our mothers couldn’t wait to get us outside and out of the way. So when we seemed old enough to run around completely unsupervised, out we went. Where I lived, in Dayton, we were like packs of wild dogs running around the neighborhood, all of us together, in swarms from place to place. Playing touch football in the street, yelling out “CAR” when one was coming down the road. From dawn to dusk, out trolling the neighborhood, in games of tag, and hide-and-go-seek.
When we finally learned to ride a bike, there were no helmets or knee pads. We rode on side streets, busy streets, any street, to get where we were going.
Of course, we had to fit school in there somewhere. Which, if you were Catholic, could prove to be every bit as dangerous as the great outdoors. There were spankings, and ruler slappings, head knocks. The physical assault depended on which nun was giving it. “Habits of Fury” would be my name for the movie, if I were producing one.
Kids chewed gum with sugar. Ate cereal with sugar. Had sugar, on their sugar. No wonder our mothers were always pushing us outdoors. We were most likely sugar-buzzing so intently that we were sure to break something if we stayed in the house. We did what we did. We walked home from school alone, jumped on trampolines, swam on our own, and we never heard of sunscreen. Behind tall fences, we would prick our thumbs and become blood brothers. All the adults smoked around us, and we rode in old cars without seatbelts. Cold water from the garden hose was a delight on a hot summer day.
If ever there were times when we’d come into the house with a spike in our foot, or the skin missing from the side of a leg, our mothers would open the medicine cabinet, and pull out the dreaded dark red bottle of….
… Mercurochrome.
The Mercurochrome Sting. That burn, like no other. It was far worse than the injury itself. We went through many bottles when I was growing up. In fact, I wore the stains of mercurochrome, most summer days. As it turned out, it wasn’t so good for us. The FDA started looking more closely at this magic elixir. They figured out that it contained mercury which is quite harmful, especially if you use enough of it. Mercury could adversely affect the brain, and the kidneys, and probably more.
Which might explain an awful lot in my case.
I started to say that it is a dangerous world out there today. But in comparison?
I’d say we got this.
==========
“When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”
― Herman Wouk
=========
“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
― Primo Levi
=========
“And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.”
― C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
=========
