This piece was written for the weekly Six Sentence Story with the prompt of Clip.
In my old world, nits were removed with kerosene. Mothers bored into your ears to stop the potatoes growing in there and rubbed at your face with their spit on a handkerchief. Fathers twisted your ears as they dragged you to the scene of your latest sin and the local copper handled juvenile delinquency with the toe of his boot. Teachers clipped your ears to instil learning. I tell my grandson but he just scratches his head. Now where did I put that kerosene?
Six Crooked Highways 
Loved this Doug 😀. My Mum (93 now) talked of a time when they gargled kerosene to treat/protect against whooping cough 😉 but she also reminded me recently that she learned to swim in the River Murray with a rope around her belly and chucked out of the boat (she was 6)
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Got to get rid of those nits. A little spit on a handkerchief may work wonders.
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Keeping the communication open and clear between the generations isn’t always easy. I have googled some expressions now used by teens just to find out what they really meant. I would have understood had they just said it was “cool.” HaHa
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Yikes! Kerosene? Kind of amazing what once was commonplace and acceptable would now be considered unsafe and harmful 😀
Welcome to Six Sentence Stories, Doug!
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Some things were done better then, and some worse. Mostly we survived.
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How it used to be doesn’t always work for me! Good reminders. Goodnusenofnthe cue.
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…good use of the cue…
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Good stuff. A lot put in between six periods. Love the circularity.
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An excellent story, Doug. Humanity has certainly lost its way.
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Oh wow, this is well done…intense!
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Until you’ve had your hair washed in kerosene the word ‘intense’ lacks context. It’s up there with having your mouth washed out with soap for swearing (and, yes, I’ve experienced that as well). 😉
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Brutal.
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I’m with Mimi (above)… while I value the hours spent memorizing the multiplication tables, I don’t miss wooden-ruler-cracked knuckles or the pulled-hair come-alongs that were favored by the Sisters of Mercy,*
*alas! had I but the maturity then to appreciate the irony of the Order
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Thanks, clark. Even if you’d appreciated the irony there would have been little you could do about it. 😉
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Good post. Brought back many memories, and not all pleasant.
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It would seem not from the comments, Hobbo 😉
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Yikes. We had the nit nurse, who would periodically occupy the school to delouse us all.
A good and itchy six 🙂
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Brilliant turn! 🤯
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Thank you 😊
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This sure was a brilliant time capsule!
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Many thanks, Lisa.
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This is terrific! I remember my great aunt telling me potatoes would grow in my ears if they weren’t washed!
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