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Close your eyes, and go back . . .

• Before the Internet or the Mac,
• Before Uzis and crack.
• Before Nike and Reebok, before the NBA.
• Before Sega or Super Nintendo.
• Before burglar proofing and KFC.
• Before soca, dub and chutney
• Before children's rights and women's lib.

Way back...

• I'm talking about hide and seek at dusk.
• Looking through the window, sitting in the gallery,
• Licking your lips over hops and condensed milk.
• Going to Saturday afternoon confession.
• Drinking chocolate tea and cocoa tea and green tea and shining bush tea.
• Carrying sandwiches in a brown paper bag to school.
• Eating chilibibi and press with green and red syrup, with or without
• milk.
• Bathing in cold water from a barrel with a calabash.
• Hopscotch, butterscotch, hoop, Jacks,
• Police and Thief, Rounders !
• Pass-out cricket in the road with a lime
• Lying on the floor reading Mandrake and Katzenjammer Kids and Mutt and
• Jeff.
• Borrowing books from the library.
• Hula Hoops and jawbreakers and kaiser balls.
• Bathing in the rain under the guttering.
• Going for walks on Sunday afternoon.
• Band Concerts. Window shopping.
• Wearing old pants to the beach and collecting sea shells and pretty
• stones.

Wait. . .

• The excitement of catching candle flies in a jar and batimamselles.
• Putting the ti-marie to sleep.
• Killing birds with sling shot, cooking and eating them.
• Pitching marbles, running jockey in the canal.
• When a calypso on the radio in Lent would have caused a scandal.
• When going to town was a major outing requiring serious preparation.
• Spending holidays by your grandmother and aunts.
• Castor oil and senna pods at the end of August to clean you out!
• Eating caimite and mammy seepote and downs and sapodilla and sugar apple
• and tying up your mouth with lalay.
• Climbing trees,and skipping rope and eating a bucket of long mango.
• Making a Christmas tree from a guava branch with cotton for snow.
• You thought apples and grapes only grew at Christmas time.
• Cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, keeping an eye out for soucouyant and la diablesse.
• Sliding down the bannister, jumping on the bed.
• Pillow fights.
• Having a pet chicken, duck, rabbit or goat and crying when it became a meal.
• Being tickled to death.
• Running till you were out of breath.
• Laughing so hard that your stomach hurt!
• Being tired from playing....remember that?
• Going to the Chinee shop for Trebor and a penny sweet biscuit.

There's more . . .

• Scratching your mother's head.
• Fighting for the bowl when your mother made a cake.
• Churning coconut or custard ice cream on Sunday and licking the palette.
• Peeling cane with your teeth.

Remember when . . .

• When there were no sneakers, only softmash, watchekongs (washicongs) and you washed them every Saturday and whitened them.
• When you consumed Penny bread, boil-een soup and Mespo strawberries
• When you knew nothing of Rottweilers or pit bulls, only pot hounds.
• When a penny was a decent allowance, and another penny a huge bonus.
• When you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny.
• When fashionable young ladies wore crinoline and boleros.
• When your mother wore stockings that came in two pieces and had garters.
• When all of your male teachers wore ties and female teachers had buns.
• When you had to be rich to have a car or a radio.
• When there was no TV and you went to sleep at seven o'clock.
• When there was no designer water.
• When laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside
• the box.
• When any parent could discipline any kid, or feed him or use him to carry groceries, and nobody, not even the kid, thought a thing of it.
• When it was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents.
• When every kitchen had a safe with wire mesh.
• Milk came in rum bottles and had to be boiled and the cream was a great treat.
• When they threatened to keep kids "down'' if they failed...and they did!
• When your mother used to say that your licks hurt her more than it hurt you.
• When you got a cut-ass and you bawled out “oh God Oh god!
• When adults spoke in code or spelled words so "little ears'' wouldn't hear.
• When bad behavior news got to your parents faster than the internet
• Basically, we were in fear for our lives but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, or gangs.
• Disapproval of parents and grandparents, godparents, tanties... was a much bigger threat!

If you can remember any of these things, well, I swear you must be my age!!!!!!

Author Unknown