So Monday I went to get my teeth cleaned. It is a torture I endure with amazing regularity. I have a new teeth cleaning lady so we visited a minute. Now you should know she is a sweet young thing and has no idea what the good old days were really like. I told her how I had been wearing tri-focal glasses for most of my adult life, but since I quit smoking I no longer need glasses for anything except to read fine print. She was amazed as most people are. She asked when I started smoking and I told her that I had started at the tender age of 16, so it was a habit I had for most of my life and I had been devoted to the art of blowing smoke rings and all kinds of stuff. I told her that I had probably been smoking in the delivery room when I had my first baby. She of course laughed because everybody knows you can not smoke in the hospital.
Ah! but there had been a time when you could. I recall that in the hospital in the top drawer of the little dresser by your bed was an ashtray and a book of matches. We had to furnish our own smokes and after delivering a baby one really wanted a cigarette. The nurse would bring the tiny little baby in all wrapped up and she would hand the baby to me, the new mother who lay there with a cigarette in my fingers and the head of the bed raised for comfort. Nurses were very concerned about the newborn and always cautioned the mother to "Try not to drop hot ashes on the baby."
I know there are you people out there who are aghast at this and think it is something I made up, but as God is my witness, this is true. We smoked every where back in the day. Doctors endorsed cigarettes and said "Throat hot? Smoke Kools". If we were in a room all fogged up with cigarette smoke and someone complained, it was there job to relocate, not ours. We were smokers and we ruled the world. Cars came with a cigarette lighter and an ashtray. I noticed that is not happening any more either. When I started smoking a pack cost 14 cents. When I quit a pack cost $3.00 if you bought them by the carton. Today they are $5.00.
I also told her that diapers have not always been disposable. Everyone of my kids had thier tender little fanny diapered with a cloth diaper that was washed in Ivory Snow because it was " 99.44% pure. It Floats!" Course many years later I discovered that this was all a myth. It floated because the man in charge of stirring it until it "traced" had left the mixer on and left the soap and gone to lunch and the soap had started the "trace" and air was incorporated into the soap and that was why it floated.!"
Diapers came in two styles. The first was about 30" long and 12" wide. These were folded in half and then in half again so you ended up with a diaper 7 1/2" wide and 12" long. The other style was square and you folded it so it ended up triangular. Men always liked cloth diapers because when the last baby was through with the diapers he had a barrel full of the "best damn grease rags" in the world. Men never ever under any conditions ever touched a diaper before it became a grease rag. Men just did not do that sort of thing. That was women's work.
So now we are living in a world, where children must never ever under any conditions ever be exposed to smoke and the days of smoking any where near any place a hospital might be located is banned. It is banned almost every where except in your home and then it is forbidden if you have a child. Oh, and no smoking in your car if there is a baby in it and if no baby and you smoke you have to keep your windows rolled up so the only one you are choking to death is you.
Men change diapers now. They cook and clean and do all kinds of womany things. Hell, I think they even use deodorant! I could be wrong, but I think so.
So, kiddies, our world is changing and we better go with the flow. I am thinking that if it keeps changing as fast as it did the last 50 years, I may just let loose of my tentitive grip on reality and spin off into space.
But for now, I am off to bed to dream of another time and place where there were unicorns and sugar plum fairies!
Ah! but there had been a time when you could. I recall that in the hospital in the top drawer of the little dresser by your bed was an ashtray and a book of matches. We had to furnish our own smokes and after delivering a baby one really wanted a cigarette. The nurse would bring the tiny little baby in all wrapped up and she would hand the baby to me, the new mother who lay there with a cigarette in my fingers and the head of the bed raised for comfort. Nurses were very concerned about the newborn and always cautioned the mother to "Try not to drop hot ashes on the baby."
I know there are you people out there who are aghast at this and think it is something I made up, but as God is my witness, this is true. We smoked every where back in the day. Doctors endorsed cigarettes and said "Throat hot? Smoke Kools". If we were in a room all fogged up with cigarette smoke and someone complained, it was there job to relocate, not ours. We were smokers and we ruled the world. Cars came with a cigarette lighter and an ashtray. I noticed that is not happening any more either. When I started smoking a pack cost 14 cents. When I quit a pack cost $3.00 if you bought them by the carton. Today they are $5.00.
I also told her that diapers have not always been disposable. Everyone of my kids had thier tender little fanny diapered with a cloth diaper that was washed in Ivory Snow because it was " 99.44% pure. It Floats!" Course many years later I discovered that this was all a myth. It floated because the man in charge of stirring it until it "traced" had left the mixer on and left the soap and gone to lunch and the soap had started the "trace" and air was incorporated into the soap and that was why it floated.!"
Diapers came in two styles. The first was about 30" long and 12" wide. These were folded in half and then in half again so you ended up with a diaper 7 1/2" wide and 12" long. The other style was square and you folded it so it ended up triangular. Men always liked cloth diapers because when the last baby was through with the diapers he had a barrel full of the "best damn grease rags" in the world. Men never ever under any conditions ever touched a diaper before it became a grease rag. Men just did not do that sort of thing. That was women's work.
So now we are living in a world, where children must never ever under any conditions ever be exposed to smoke and the days of smoking any where near any place a hospital might be located is banned. It is banned almost every where except in your home and then it is forbidden if you have a child. Oh, and no smoking in your car if there is a baby in it and if no baby and you smoke you have to keep your windows rolled up so the only one you are choking to death is you.
Men change diapers now. They cook and clean and do all kinds of womany things. Hell, I think they even use deodorant! I could be wrong, but I think so.
So, kiddies, our world is changing and we better go with the flow. I am thinking that if it keeps changing as fast as it did the last 50 years, I may just let loose of my tentitive grip on reality and spin off into space.
But for now, I am off to bed to dream of another time and place where there were unicorns and sugar plum fairies!
