Leave it to Beaver

I just received another perky missive about how simple life was when my generation was younger. You know the email I’m talking about. How we all survived bouncing around in the back of a pickup truck and drank from a garden hose and how our “June Cleaver” moms used to cut chicken, vegetables and bread on the same board without cleaning it between uses and no one got sick; or at least no one attributed the vomiting to the contamination. How we didn’t have computers or electronic games to amuse us mindlessly because we had a little wooden paddle with a small red ball attached to it by an elastic band to entertain us for hours. We were the generation who skipped rope, rode our bicycles, swam in ponds, built forts in the back yard and played tag in the park long after the sun had set on our “Leave it to Beaver” towns. School lunches were wrapped in waxed paper and stewed and steamed in our lunch boxes for hours before we sat at our desks and scarfed back our bologna with mayonnaise on pulpy white bread. In our warm and fuzzy memories of “yesteryear” no one was allergic to peanuts, bee stings or vaccines. If we got a cut, a scrape or road rash, someone cleaned it with the “family washcloth,” Sunlight soap and water (brought directly to us through lead pipes) and put the hurt right with a smear of Ozonol on piece of toilet paper, held in place with white adhesive tape. If we were lucky, Mom had iodine in the medicine cabinet and we howled as she dabbed it on with the “dabber” attached by a wire stick to the cap of the bottle. The dabber never got cleaned off before putting it back in the bottle for the next mishap. I’m surprised there is a generation who remembers how great it used to be.

Shucks, I remember at least three kids at our small school who “survived” polio. Polio is one of those diseases that keeps on giving throughout a victim’s life. Each one of them wore leg braces and spent recesses and field days sitting it out. I was a youngster when the oral vaccine for polio was created. There was no question about lining up for our dose, knowing we wouldn’t be doomed to a life in the medieval “iron lung” or sentenced to the sidelines in leg braces.

There were two other kids who watched from the edge. One had been riding on Dad’s tractor, fallen off and lost his forearm under the blades of the harrow. The other had been thrown from the back seat into the windshield when his Mom braked a bit too hard. Let’s hear it for the kids who survived bouncing around in a vehicle of any kind. Back in my day, when kids got measles, mumps or pertussis, it was serious. Still is.

Homes in our neighbourhood were quarantined during outbreaks. My parents came from the generation who knew how deadly those “childhood” diseases could be. I spent two weeks at home recovering from a nasty bout of “blood poisoning” when I was 10. Nobody really knows how it happened, but everyone knew how serious septicaemia could be. I fell while playing in the school yard. The school nurse didn’t have much of a medical kit on hand, so it was iodine, gauze and tape to make it all better. Except that “all better” didn’t happen. A kiss on the booboo would have been as effective and I had been immunized, so I didn’t get tetanus.

Being the immunized fuddy-duddy I am, with the scars from the school yard mishap, I bristle when I read about a new generation of parents and caregivers who don’t want to vaccinate their children because “the good old days” were so great. I suggest you do a lot of serious research before you make a decision for a person who doesn’t have a choice.

The words “childhood diseases” make it all sound so playful and carefree, don’t they?

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca