“While on Grumpy Grandpa child-minding duty recently and playing the board game Monopoly Dogs with my four-year-old grandson, watching him count out the play-money got me wondering,” notes (geddit?) Neville Pleffer of Rooty Hill. “Will future Monopoly games come with charge cards, EFTPOS machines and the encroaching card surcharge? Or has it already happened? Oh, the joy of counting those paper notes.”
“My Baby Book (C8) had a space for quaint sayings,” says Robyn Lewis of Raglan. “I remember asking my mother why the page had no quotes. She explained there was not enough space to write ‘all the interesting things’ I said to the family or her friends.”
“Please tell me the practice of eating brains (C8) ceased with the advent of publicity about Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD)?” implores Jo Rainbow of Orange. “Only zombies like brains.”
Rhonda Ellis’ yarn on air-rifle combat (C8) certainly got Tony Winton of Mosman fired up: “At Sirius Cove in the late 1940s, the kids on the western side had Daisy air rifles, and on the eastern side we had German-made Diane air rifles, which were brought from Germany after WWII. There were lots and lots of bangs and nobody was ever hurt, except me, who received a dart to my right thigh. All this friendly action was to stop when the Mosman police arrived and we all disappeared. Even as kids we thought that our shooting fun had better stop.”
“My brother, when about 10, organised and held the inaugural BB gun championship of suburban Bexley in the 1960s,” recalls Janice Creenaune of Austinmer. “He painted one pellet gold as the prize and encased it in a little container. Sharing armoury was essential, and practice minimal, but serious backyard shooting ruled (if maybe not legal). A winner was eventually found and little Ralphie went home quite chuffed.”
“So when a bird flies into an engine at the new Nancy Bird Walton Airport, the headlines will read ‘Bird stops bird on Bird’?” asks George Zivkovic of Northmead.
“The Australian government is this year distributing the highest amount of free money ever (in the form of welfare payments),” notes Bill Leigh of West Pennant Hills. “Meanwhile, the National Parks and Wildlife Service ask us, ‘Please Do Not Feed the Animals’. The stated reason being ‘the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves’. Funny how that works.”
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