The worst possible thing that can happen to a child today, (and I might add, parent) is a rainy Sunday afternoon. Rain on a weekday can mean a picture show, or bowling but what does a kid do these days when it rains on Sunday. Well, he has to entertain himself. Perish the thought. Kids today don't know how to start. When I was a kid, (there is a line that makes the young fry boil), a rainy Sunday was no problem. We'd get a shoebox, cut a hole in the lid for a sky light, another hole to peek through, and then we’d create from newspaper cut-outs, small scenes inside the box that could be viewed by looking through the peeking hole. We called them Peep Shows. Remember them? Or we'd take one of fathers old Haig and Haig bottles, cut out pretty paper in odd shapes, then glue the paper to the bottle and finish it off with a coat of shellac. Presto, a vase. Or we'd get an empty thread spool, nicked the edges with a razor blade, put an elastic band through the hole in the spool, Cap the spool with a bit of wax, fasten the elastic at the end with a match and make a tractor which would run across the living room rug. Remember them? We might even drag out the old photograph albums and have a good laugh at the hairstyles and dress lengths our mothers wore 20 years ago. Today, all these pastimes have vanished and if the TV happens to be out of whack on a rainy Sunday, heaven help the poor parents. No doubt about it, things were different when I was a boy. (There’s that awful phrase again)
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