"When I was young, running water was ...me, running back and forth, carrying a heavy bucketful from the well into the house. When I was young, I used to walk 5 miles to school, uphill both ways. When I was young, we heated bricks to keep our feet warm in the horse-drawn buggy. When I was young, we ate everything on our plate, because we knew what it felt like to go hungry. When I was young, girls didn't wear jeans to church. When I was young, toilet paper was a page from the Eaton's catalogue. When I was young, all I got for Christmas was one box of crayons and an apple. When I was young, we didn't talk back to our parents...children were seen and not heard. When I was young, we shared our bathwater with seven other siblings. When I was young, we did our school lessons by the light of a coal-oil lamp."
Many times, I heard my parents make statements such as these. Each one surely could have been the opening line to a wonderful story. But I wasn't interested. Now I wish I would have said, "Tell me more about it" instead of rolling my eyes and thinking... "Here we go again...I've heard that a hundred times before".
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1 comment:
Funny thing... those are statements my mom still says about her growing up years, and she's just in her 50's.... she grew up on a very poor farm in Northern Ontario, and learned how to make much out of practically nothing.
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