People Were Happier In The Old Days When my old days are talked about to the kids, who are by the way middle aged now, they love to say I wrote on stone tablets and walked to school in my bare feet for miles and then they all laugh and ask me how many dinosaurs I saw on the way. While they get a good laugh at my expense, I realize how lucky I am to have such a loving family who worries about me and is in constant contact with me either by visiting or by phone. I really feel sorry for those who have no one. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be totally alone for all this time during a pandemic when you live in a state which is locked down. I have to say I believe things were a lot better when I was young, we certainly didn’t have all this political conflict and if someone had a different opinion than you, you listened and usually didn’t get angry at them but if you got annoyed you didn’t want to destroy them. We used to do things like play a lot of sports. We never sat in the house all day as many of the kids do today while they play with their video games. By the way I have said this before and will say it again, video games influence the actions of kids. Some are influenced more than others and I believe virtual reality makes it even worse. Another point I would like to mention is social media. Social media brings out the worst in some people because they believe their identity is protected and this gives them license to say some really terrible things. It is a form of bullying. It is usually done by those who wouldn’t stand a chance trying to do this physically. Social media is great in some ways, but it certainly has its down side. We didn’t have social media, all we had was the telephone and many didn’t even have one in their home. When we wanted to talk to our friends we got together somewhere. As I said sports were a big thing. We would play basketball, football, baseball and many other sports. Many times, we would get together and have an impromptu game. It was fun and the kids today don’t realize what they are missing. When we played organized sports, we didn’t get trophies just for playing, we only got them for winning which taught us to try harder and appreciate it more when we did receive a trophy. It was a life lesson and stayed with us no matter what field of employment we entered. Most of us always tried to do our best. Today there are not a lot of places kids can hang out in. The lack of places is probably because no one is going out, they are too busy on their computers. We had dances we could go to where we made friends and met girls. Yes, we actually met girls in person. There were places all over New York City we could go to socialize and it was fun. The computer craze is directly responsible for these things disappearing. When we went out, after our socializing was finished, we usually landed up in a restaurant. One of our favorite was a kosher deli which had great pastrami and French fries. You could buy an order of French fries in those days for 25 cents. There was nothing like getting a pastrami on rye with mustard, French fries and a Doctor Brown cream soda. I still love it to this day. We would go out a lot in our cars and try new places. As we got older, we were allowed in bars at 18 years old in those days. We never drank a lot, but had one or two drinks and again met a lot of people. We had found a place on Staten Island we liked. Half the place was filled with bikers, but we never had any fights there and everyone was very friendly. There was also another place in Queens, New York which was named the Holiday Inn. It was not was in now the motel chain. It was a great place to meet people. It had a very unusual bar which was a huge oval with a dance floor inside the oval and we met a lot of girls there too. I was never a good dancer and one time while I was there, I asked an attractive Spanish girl if she wanted to dance. The band was playing a rumba. She said yes and we got onto the dance floor and in a minute, she asked me what I was doing. I had no idea how to rumba but said I was doing the rumba. She said, “not with me you aren’t” and left me standing there. There was one person in our group however who would drink too much when he was with us. He wasn’t driving so I guess he felt it was okay. Anyway, one night we were at the Holiday Inn and he was on the dance floor with a drink in each hand. As a girl walked by, he she screamed at him for pinching her. We were never able to figure out how someone with a drink in each hand could accomplish this. We lived near a very large wooded park which had winding roads and when one of us would get a car we always tested it out by seeing how fast we could take those turns. It was not the smartest thing to do, but we always made it without flipping a car over. We all got married in our early twenties and moved out from our parents homes. In this respect things are a lot different today. College was expensive, but not super expensive as it is today. None of us accrued educational debt like the mind numbing debt many of the students have today. I can’t help but think life was a lot better in those times and people were a lot friendlier. Something has happened to us in the way we live and the ideas we have. Most of us were in much better physical shape in those times. I had read that only about one third of those trying to get into the military are in good enough shape to be accepted. This is a sad thing indeed if true. We didn’t have much money in the old days, but it seems we were a lot happier.
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