I love the 70's

My oldest child was born in 1983 and the youngest was born in 1995.  I grew up in the 60's and 70's..  All of you out there know that it was the best time ever to grow up.  Families were families.  It was safe to go outside.  I used to walk or ride my bike everywhere!  We would spend the summers outside playing.  Baseball, football and basketball games would start spontaneously at the school during the summer.  People had integrity.  Kids were allowed to be spanked.  In fact, my brother vividly remembers being spanked by the counselor, Mr. Francois  in Junior High.  If you got in trouble at school, you knew you were going to get it worse once you got home. Today, if you get in trouble at school, you berate the teacher and call your lawyer!

The music was awesome!  You know it is true, because the present generation is starting to remake all of our songs.  I can remember my father complaining about the music that we listened to.  He did not have to put up with the rap music that our kids listen to.  And it isn't the beat of the music (there is absolutely no melody) that bothers me, it is the words.  Now, I wouldn't be honest if I didn't admit that a lot of the hard rock bands in the 70's lived hard lives with alcohol and drugs.  But we also had the Carpenters, Bread, Billy Joel, Elton John, the Bee Gees, the Association, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder.  The list goes on and on!  I refused to have my kids miss all of that.  We listened to 70's music!  I played it in the car wherever we went.  In fact, I got crazy enough to buy the Sounds of the 70's CD set!  We loved it!  To this day, when a song is on the radio, my kids can bust out the words to those songs!

TV was even better.  There were no tampon commercials or commercials for Viagra or Cialis, or condoms.  You didn't talk about those things in public.  Those were private matters!  You didn't have to worry about the content of the shows.  They were censored.  So, you guessed it - my kids grew up on TVLand and the SciFi Channel.  We watched Lost in Space, Star Trek, Dick Van Dyke, Gilligan's Island, and all the oldies that were wholesome and fun to watch.  If we wanted to get a little crazy, we watched Dark Shadows! We spent time watching Turner Classic Movies and my kids loved things like Miracle on 34th Street, Little Women, It's a Wonderful Life, Harvey and Arsenic and Old Lace!  I told them all about Saturday cartoons like Bugs Bunny. 

Of course, I couldn't keep them living in a box forever.  Eventually, they developed their own taste in music, television, and movies.  They like a variety of things, including old movies, classical music, and even Frank Sinatra.  I do know that they have good memories of their 70's experiences because we still talk about it.  Now they buy me boxed sets of those memories to watch whenever I want and I do still have and listen to the Sounds of the 70's!  I was lucky.  My kids were lucky.  I hope their children are lucky too.