Booster seats and time travel

I woke up this morning, groggy and stiff... like I usually do..., stumbled out to the living room with a stop off to tap the coffee maker button and turned on the TV. Since Faye is sleeping, I do a little two step procedure with the TV. Instead of turning on the TV using the DVR remote, I grab the TV's own remote and turn it on. I then turn down the sound, way down, and then turn the set off again. I can then use the DVR remote without worrying about the sound blasting through the house and waking the bear lovely Faye.

I suppose I don't need to turn on the TV but I do it anyway. I don't need to get my news from the TV, I get most of that through the internet. I don't have any favorite programs at this time in the morning. It's just force of habit and an unwillingness to put up with the silence.

Soon after the TV is on, I see a public service ad for children's booster seats full of Disney references. The ad tells us that children should use booster seats until they reach a height of 4'9". When I was in high school in Orlando... this would be pre-Disney Orlando when it was a small rural city where 4H and the FFA were big social clubs... I knew several 16 year old girls who were shorter than that. We rarely used seat belts then, much less booster seats, so it wouldn't have affected them. But I still have to wonder about that height limit. Some of these girls had cars. Would they have needed a booster seat behind the steering wheel? Maybe those wooden blocks that were sometimes attached to a small child's bike glued to the car's gas and brake pedals?

Orlando wasn't a magical town back then (1963), it was a hick town. Full of dirt roads, some brick streets, and lots of farms. Dairy and citrus groves, mainly. Aside from something called "teen night clubs", there was little for teens to do back then. I was an outsider, having moved from the Miami area just after school started that year. Teenage girls were my main focus in life at that age so I noticed that very few were much over 5'. This made me seem tall in comparison at 5'10". And, being that "outsider" from the exotic Miami area, I had no problem being accepted.

In truth, I loved and hated Orlando.

Still, whenever I see that public service ad for booster seats, I am transported back to those days in that town. I miss them... as I do my teenage years.