Times sure were simpler back then, when the world was black and white!
A few days ago my six year old son, Benjamin, asked me…..”Dad, what was it like when you were a kid and everything was black and white?” I asked him what he meant and he said…”You know, like on that show with Sheriff Andy Taylor and Barney Five……wasn’t it kind of boring back then?” I then realized that he actually thought that the world was black and white when I was a kid.
I explained to him that when television and motion pictures first came out they didn’t have the ability to film in color and that color televisions didn’t really become popular until the early 7o’s, when I was a little boy. I think Ben understood, even though he’ll still look at me and grin when we’re watching The Andy Griffith Show.
For some reason, ever since that conversation last week, I’ve had a hard time getting it off of my mind. You know how, sometimes, children will say things that are really profound and can have so many different meanings without them even understanding what they are saying? Well, this was one of those times.
Times were easier, in a lot of ways, back then. I certainly like the television shows from that era and in my opinion, the music was much better in those days. You could get on an airplane without being molested. If you got in trouble at school, you got it twice as bad when you got home which led to a healthy respect for your elders. We were outside playing from the time the sun came up until the street lights came on at dusk. It might not have been very safe, but we rode in the back of dad’s truck, all over town…and dad never got reported to CPS. Holding a girls hand was a BIG DEAL…..and we would have never dreamed of sending inappropriate pics of ourselves or that the technology to do so would ever come about in our lifetime. We were rarely glued to the television set except for Sunday nights to watch The Wonderful World of Disney…..and watching tv back then would actually be considered a work-out today because we had to get up to change the channel or turn the volume up or down. You only got a trophy when you excelled and did your best and not for just being on a team…which really instilled the value of working hard for something that you really want.
I could go on and on but I am sure that you have a lot of memories that you could add to the list as well.
I’m really thankful that we can still catch reruns of Andy, The Lone Ranger and so many others. Those shows take me back to simpler times and beautiful memories. The coolest part of this whole story is that Ben’s innocent little questions have such a huge impact on me and spur me on to strive to give him the same kind of simple, black and white, life like I had.
I really miss those times, when things were black and white.
