laura ingalls and the good old days

**semi Big Love Spoiler alert**

So we were waiting for the series finale of Big Love to come on the other night, (Can you believe how that ended??!  I was appalled.  Alex couldn't sleep, he was devastated.  We had to rewind a few times so I could convince him that Bill was actually dead, not just in prison.  We also had to discuss the ending for the past few days.  We were very invested obviously.)  and before the show came on, there was a preview of some new period show.  Not as in menstrual period, I mean like time period.


So of course Alex was like, I want to watch that!  And I was all, whatevs hon, go for it.  He loves those kinds of shows -- the ones where it was the olden days and people had snarly hair and rotten teeth and wore bear skin and killed each other with bows and arrows and stuff.


So I asked him if he could go back in time to live in any period, which would it be.  And he took his time thinking.  Because he is very thoughtful like that.  He doesn't just blurt out a not well though out response usually.  Unlike me.  Which is something that can occasionally get me in trouble.  And made fun of.

 So while he was thinking, I said that I wanted to live back when Laura Ingalls lived.  I want to live in a shack with Pa.  And run down hill in a field with my sisters and make quilts and go to a one room school where the teacher smells like lemon verbena.  Ah.  The simple life.


Then he was all like, "Didn't Mary get sick and go blind?  I  would never be able to live in a time where there wasn't medicine.  Imagine if I got strep throat back then?!  And my allergies and asthma?  I'd be dead."

And he raised a good point.  As much as I love the Laura Ingalls live off the land time period, medical stuff was pretty much reduced to the quacks who drove around their little carriages from town to town selling "medicine" to the poor gullible people.  Wait. I think I am kind of mixing memories of Pete's Dragon with Little House on the Prairie.  Anyway. I think those medicine quacks must have been the first generation of scammers!  And I'm pretty sure none of those scammers sold Prevacid. 

Speaking of Little House on the Prairie, I was so excited when we went on our last road trip, because I got the DVD set of the first few seasons of the show.  I was going to force my kids to watch it, because they were going to be locked in the car for the next twelve hours.  We didn't even make it through the first episode before they were all like, really Mom?  Those lame-o brats don't know good TV when they see it.

So the point of this windy story was to tell you that Alex decided he wanted to live in the 60's.  And of course I got side tracked, because that is what I do.  Sorry.  So I was all, what?  Why would you want to live in the 60's?  That's boring.  I practically did live in the sixties.  I was one year away from living in the sixties and it looked pretty boring from my stroller.  And he was all, there weren't any wars starting up, everyone was trying to be peaceful.

That's so Alex.  Peaceful, non-confrontational guy that he is.  But I think he forgot about a few key non-peaceful and highly confrontational things that happened in the sixties.  *Like Cuba and the Bay of Pigs, and that little issue between the US and the Soviet Union.  Then of course there was the incident where the President of the US was assassinated, followed by the assassination of Malcom X and MLK Jr.  And hello, Vietnam was still going strong!  Maybe the history major meant to say the seventies.  Except he did live in the seventies.

The more I think about it, living in the sixties would have been pretty scary.  I guess I would rather chance it with Laura Ingalls and no medicine for my freaking redonkulous heartburn.

Doesn't Pa look black in this picture?

*I was going to pretend that I came up with all of those historical incidents in my own head because that would have made me look really smart and educated.  Didn't I so sound like I knew what I was talking about guys??  But I am here to admit that I googled non-peaceful events in the sixties so I could tell Alex he was a dumbass for picking the boring old sixties and he should pick another time period.  See how honest I am?  PS:  I still think that he should have remembered about all of those things because he is way smarter than me.  And he happened to get his undergrad degree in History.