How Did We Children of the 60s Survive?

Those of us who were born in the 60s really know how great it was being a kid during that decade and into the 70s. When I reflect back on the childhood my siblings and I had, I can't help but wonder how in the world we survived! Let's stroll down memory lane and maybe you can figure out how we managed to live long enough to become parents ourselves.

I remember my mom giving me those delicious orange baby aspirins when I had a fever. We'd never heard of Reye Syndrome, and we never contracted it. Neither did anyone we ever knew. Every household had baby aspirins. Now we must alternate between ibuprofen and acetaminophen, giving a dose of one then two hours later, a dose of the other. Our moms took our temperature under our tongue with a glass thermometer. We didn't have thermometers for our butts, armpits, foreheads and ears, but our parents always managed to get a reading on what our temperature was.

We didn't have cable TV (what deprived children we were). This meant more time playing outside, which meant more scraped knees and elbows. Mom would put mechurichrome on all my cuts and scrapes. We dreaded seeing that little dark-colored bottle with its plastic wand applicator covered in that orange liquid, because it stung like the dickens (but iodine stung even more). Moms swore by it and it was another staple in every household in America where kids lived. Now there's hundreds of anti-stinging potions on the market so when we do put medicine on the boo-boos, it won't sting. Kids now won't wear bandages unless they have a cartoon character on them, and that must be followed up with a Boo-Boo Bear that's been kept in the freezer. I don't know about you, but the sting of mechurichrome never killed me and never lasted long enough to have any impact on my play time for the rest of the day. We were used to seeing our friends with orange elbows and knees, and no one ever made fun of them.