How were things different when you were a kid?

In My Humble Opinion
41

You had to be able to work on your own car. Now it’s pretty much impossible. But cars are much more reliable now, thank og.

I would target shoot my .22 out of my bedroom window (we had 5 acres).

Bike helmets didn’t exist.

Fast food was a real treat. My mom would occasionally have a McD’s staying warm in the oven when I came home from school for lunch.

Smoking of course. In the 80’s (well that started my career in mapping) I worked for mapping companies, you couldn’t smoke in the office though. Maps tend to be pretty delicate. And oh yes, rapidograph pens on mylar, oil paint on linen. A map could take weeks to complete. Now we spit them out in about 20 seconds.

Bill Gates: “No one will ever need more than 512 k of RAM”

Tractor paper dot matrix.

43" monitor? 65" television, um no. More than one television, um no.

8 track tapes (ca chunk). I Made a 2000 mile drive with one. One 8 track tape. I know the words to ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ very well.

That breaks my heart.

42

When I was a kid, if you wanted to go to the movies you looked in the newspaper for showtimes (later it changed to a phone system you could call Into to get a recorded message).

You also used the phone to register for college classes. There was an automated system where you’d dial a code to make your selection (a big step up from waiting in line - at the University of Florida, where I attended, it was called Telegator)

43

I’m turning 64 in a few weeks. Grew up mostly in a small rural town in southern Iowa. And like many others here I was fairly free-range but only after chores were done. In the summer there was always the vegetable garden to weed and grass to be mowed. In winter there was snow to be shovelled. And there would be snow on the ground from late mid-November to early March. In the summer there were farm jobs to be had such as picking up hay and walking beans. One kid in my school lost an arm and another a mangled arm due to farm accidents.

Our games console was Pong. You’d connect to the TV’s antenna input and turn to channel 3 to use it.

44

When I was a kid, cars came with two keys: one for the ignition/doors and one for the trunk. And you needed to stick the ignition key into the car to make it work.

45

Yeah this is definitely how I think of it, during my childhood it really seemed like the world was getting better, and you could see the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice, with the collapse of the iron curtain, the end of apartheid, etc. I don’t get that feeling anymore needless to say :frowning:

46

As with many health related things my mum was way ahead of the curve on this. She got helmets for us in the 80s when such things were unheard of, though at that time bike helmets were basically only for professional cyclists. So there was no way we’d afford them, so she got us cheap ice hockey helmets. Needless to say this didn’t help with the whole bullying thing.

47

I was born in 1953, so I’m 73 right now. Jeopardy first aired in 1964, and I have fond memories of occasionally watching it with my Grandma, who had physical ailments, but was still mentally sharp as a tack. When Jeopardy first started, the first round clues were 10-20-30-40-50 dollars, and Double Jeopardy clues were 20-40-60-80-100 dollars. I just verified this by the Jeopardy Wiki page.

Art Fleming was the host, and I can still hear him saying after the Jeopardy round was over “We’ll be back with Double Jeopardy, where the amounts are doubled and the scores can really change!” (or something to that effect).

48

I was born in 1964. My life was different than most of the kids I knew, because my family farmed for a living. I also lived half a mile from the nearest neighbor and much further from the nearest kids my age, so because my siblings were at least four years older or five years younger I was on my own when it came to playing.

We had 3 channels until we got a big Channel Master antenna when I was in 4th grade. Our ABC affiliate was a UHF station, so I never saw any ABC shows until then. PBS had educational shows; writing, math, music, and science. Sometimes the teacher would have us watch them when she needed a break. We also got to watch Sesame Street and Electric Company. There were no planning periods (no PE or art teachers, no music class until I was pretty far along, so teachers would sometimes just leave the room for what seemed like half an hour. I would have been fired if I walked out for a couple of minutes on a regular basis. Someone earlier mentioned help wanted ads divided by men and women. In our paper it was male and female, but that changed when I was pretty young. There was also the Trading Post, which came out weekly and had want ads of all kinds for the entire region. I remember there being personal ads even when I’d finished grad school in the early nineties, but there would be a lot more ads from men than from women.

In school we didn’t want adults to know our business; now kids will talk about anything where adults can hear. Corpal punishment was the norm, and it was mostly the same kids who got it over and over. They were the poor kids, most of whom never graduated from high school.

49

When I was a kid, Jeopardy! contestants selected the lowest-valued clues first and then worked their way to the highest-valued clues.

Actually, they did the same thing for a while when I was a young adult.

50

Oh God. I’ll bet.

I was one of about four tallest guys in junior high. This little kid kept picking on me. Calling my mother names. I could have pounded him like a nail.

I didn’t take the bait. Turned out he had a freaking .45 in his locker. He got expelled.

I lived and am happily prison free.

51

I’m 60.

Televisions were crappy black and white things. Only rich folks had color TVs. And there were only 5 channels, ABC, NBC, CBS, an independent station, and PBS. Cartoons were only on Saturday mornings.

Color TV and cable with a bunch of TV stations didn’t come around to most of the folks in my neighborhood until I was a teenager.

The world was a mess (people who think everything was better back then are deluding themselves). There were race riots, protests against the war (Vietnam), death and body bags on TV every night, protests against authority, protests against darn near everything. The world was crap, but at least the younger generation was working hard to fix it and make it better.

Then when I was a teenager, everything from the “hippie” generation was tossed out. Free love (which I was way too young to experience), drugs, long hair, all of it was tossed. In place was a more polished look (Alex P. Keaton), and instead of everyone working to right injustices and make the world better, everyone focused on greed and themselves. People focused on profits instead of the environment.

When I was a kid, we played with guns (cowboys or army) that looked real. There was no big orange marker on the end to make it clear that it was a toy. Paranoia about guns wasn’t a thing. Lots of adults had guns and people weren’t hyper-focused on gun violence.

We played outside. There were no phones or computers to occupy our time.

Information was not readily available. There was no google, no internet. If you wanted to know something, you took the bus to the library, looked up the topic in the card catalog, and found a book about it. If the library didn’t have the book they could possibly borrow it from a partner library, which would take a week or so for them to transfer the book over. There were no youtube videos telling you how to fix things or make things. You learned how to fix things from the old men in your neighborhood, and you learned by doing.

Stores closed around 8 or 9 pm and were closed on Sundays. If you needed something at odd hours you were just out of luck. There were convenience stores carrying a limited supply of stuff that were open later (usually until 11 or 12) and were also open on Sundays.

Instead of ordering things from Amazon, you had mail order catalogs. Things took 4 to 6 weeks to arrive at your house, and easy returns were not a thing.

Schools and businesses didn’t close unless there was an absolute blizzard. The idea of closing for 4 inches of snow was silly.

People were just expected to handle things. There were no “safe spaces”. If someone bullied you, you were expected to fight back. If you couldn’t fight back, well, that kinda sucked. But people who could fight back would often fight back for you. People were expected to lose their temper occasionally and get into fights. If it got really bad the police might come and break it up, but nobody would be arrested. Just getting angry at each other and having a fight wasn’t considered “assault”. The term “assault” was reserved for attacking someone who didn’t do anything to deserve it.

Air travel was exciting and fancy. They didn’t pack you in like cattle. The airlines treated you with respect. Getting on a plane was fun. The golden age of air travel is definitely long gone.

People were respectful in theaters. You didn’t have people talking over the movie, and of course cell phones didn’t exist so you didn’t have the distraction of folks on their phones either. Movies were affordable, even if you were a poor kid like me. The snacks were also reasonably priced.

Football games and other sports events were also affordable. Teams, fans, and players had much more loyalty. Players didn’t hop from team to team according to whoever gave them the best contract. There was much less commercialism and sponsorship. Stadiums had real names and weren’t named for their biggest advertising sponsor. The focus was on the game, not on advertising.

52

I came to the US in late childhood or early adulthood, depending on where you draw the line. I’m assuming this is a US Centric discussion (maybe Canadian too).

In the mid-late 1980s, my earliest years here, smoking was still ubiquitous. In the store I worked at, employees could not smoke on the shop floor, but could in the break room and stockroom. Customers could smoke in the store. When I came back for a summer job in 1990, the same chain did not allow smoking anywhere in the building. Recently I visited a casino for the first time in 25 years. I saw indoor smoking for the first time in 25 years (in the US).

Drinking and driving was also ubiquitous. Campaigns like MADD’s were considered something of a fanatical, puritanical crusade. But again, things were changing. But still societal views of drunk driving were that it was far from criminal. Antisocial maybe. People had multiple DUIs and were not in danger of losing their licenses because even if the law prescribed a suspension, judges weren’t inclined to enforce it, so prosecutors worked around it.

Video rentals and 99 cent second run movie theaters were our entertainment treats. Cable TV and $3.50 movie tickets were for rich people. I guess $20 movie tickets are still for rich people, but now I am definitely “rich” in the eyes of church Mouse of 1987.

Greek food was available, but exotic. Thai, Japanese and Vietnamese food was only available in ethnic enclaves, or maybe the very biggest cities. Indian food was even less widely available. But these cuisines, where available, were much more authentic. Chinese food on the other hand was strictly Chinese American. I don’t think anyone even served dumplings or scallion pancakes at the time. Now in that same working class suburban area I can get food from literally dozens of countries. Including something as specific as Salavadoran/Nicaraguan food. Jamaican, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Peruvian, Afghan, many regional Indian and Pakistani in addition to generic Indian Restaurant type, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Iranian, Lebanese, Iraqi/Syrian, Turkish, Moroccan, Armenian, and on and on.

Baseball was much more front and center than football. And I lived in an area with a very successful NFL team at the time. College football was huge. NBA and NHL were definitely a lower tier than MLB and NFL (I lived in a four-major metro). I think now the NFL is the dominant sport in the public consciousness, baseball seems to have fallen off quite a bit.

53

When I look back (I am 68) it feels like I lived in a foreign country.

54

Dirty Dragon ran for President, on WGN.

55

(My emphasis)

I took a class on the history of drug control In college, and it talked about two eras in America when cocaine was sort of looked at casually as a party drug. The first was the 1920s, and the second was the 1970s. Both ended due to some high profile cocaine overdoes, and other problems, but after the hippies of the 60s and early 70s there was a time when it was sort of chic to do blow

(I recall that McDonalds used to offer really long spoons for their coffee. They became popular for snorting cocaine, and so were discontinued)

I recall my dad complaining to me that he was given a hard time at the airport because he was trying to bring me a toy gun that he had in his carry-on luggage. He had to check it before he could get on the plane. (The thought that he might have gotten in trouble was never considered)

You said you grew up in the 1990s. I would have sworn that the U.S. ended the use of leaded gas decades earlier, but I see that it wasn’t banned until 1996!

The American and National Leagues were different. One used a designated hitter; one required pitchers to hit. And they only played each other during the All Star game or World Series. This was signifcant.

56

Were there any overpriced memory lane crap tours back then? The way I remember it (I was born in 1977), back then most musicians, and for that matter the popular style of music, only stuck around a few years and then faded away*. Barring a small handful of the most popular acts (Elvis, the Rolling Stones), there wasn’t any memory tours because by the 80s the musicians that were popular in the 60s and 70s had mostly retired from performing. Certainly the groups shown on MTV in my youth were new, not groups that had their peak back in my father’s youth.

*. As opposed to today where all kinds of musicians that were popular 30 plus years ago are still going strong.

57

I remember those spoons. They were really long and the “spoon” part was really small, so small that they were good for stirring coffee but you couldn’t really use them as a spoon. They also had a McDonalds “M” logo at the top.

I had no idea they were associated with cocaine and that’s why they were discontinued.

Interesting!

Speaking of McDonalds, there was no McDonalds when I was a kid, at least not in our town. If you wanted a burger, we had two Burger Chef restaurants.

Restaurants in general were much more limited. You had nowhere near the variety that even a small town has today.

Transportation was slower back then too, so the idea of having fresh seafood in West Virginia was a completely foreign concept. We were simply too far from the coast. If you wanted seafood, you got frozen crap. And it was expensive.

58

Were there fewer pervs hanging around mall restrooms waiting to abduct/molest children?

59

What is this “mall” thing you speak of?

We didn’t have any malls until I was a teenager.

60

I think it’s the opposite. When I was a kid, 20 somethings seemed like mature, responsible people who knew what they were doing and had it all together. These days 20 somethings seem like they’re still kids in a lot of ways that the 20 somethings of the 1980s didn’t.