Estimates about the exact number of deaths and causalities during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) vary widely. Likewise, there is still not a complete picture of the extent of internal displacements to say nothing of those that quit the country permanently due to the war. Nevertheless, despite the sometimes contentious exchanges about the compiling of such statistics few would dispute the notion that the war brought great pain and suffering to many. However, despite the shocking loss of life and moments of intense, even grotesque, violence there were often long periods of relative calm; countless newspaper headlines from that decade and a half proclaimed the "the return of ordinary life" after a particularly heavy episode of bloody fighting. Inevitably pictures of smiling children eating ice cream, sunbathers on the Corniche or shoppers jamming street markets adorned the front pages of these newspapers. My paper offers a glimpse into the life of some of these "ordinary people" over the course of the Civil War. A series of questions about everyday life animates this paper. How did people manage their lives and realize some sense of normalcy even during times of intense fighting and near anarchy? How were the routines of work and home maintained and/or disrupted by the war? What kinds of social, economic and physical/spatial compromises were people obliged to make? My paper is based a combination of archival material and on oral histories about the lives of school teachers, fruit venders, college students, and low-level government employees. I draw these portraits together to show ways in which ordinary people became acclimated to the Civil War. Taken together these stories do not simply recount narratives of militias, invasions, car bombings and snipers. Rather they tell us much about other social forces whose importance has yet to be fully delineated in the many histories of the Lebanese Civil War