The busy signal is already dead. Back in, I think, 2000 Qwest replaced the “beeeep beeeep beeeep” busy signal with advertising. “The line is busy. For $.50, Qwest will keep trying and notify you when it is no longer busy. Press *blah to use this feature.”
I still hear people get called “neurotic.” I think it’s just become a more generalized term; we have specific names for things like OCD now.
(On preview) I do sometimes get busy signals, Alereon. I get the ads sometimes, too. I think it depends on what provider the person you’re trying to call has.
How about 8 track?
Actually, I’m one of the young ones and have absolutely no idea what they are. I just hear about them when I watch That 70’s Show :smack:
Same with a beta max. All I know is that it was some kind of competitor to VHS and lost. :smack:
fender skirts
curb feeler
Dictaphone
Soviet Union
British Empire
Ping Pong
hootenanny
hayride
Sadie Hawkins
swimming hole
Blue laws
Set-ups
A friend of mine said she felt old when she had to explain to her younger boyfriend how to use “those big black things” to play music on her “record player”.
“diaper pin”
“No deposit, no return” and related glass bottle terms are pretty much gone.
Waiting for the “evening news” to find out what’s going on in the world.
“Top 40 AM Radio”
Looking through the “Sears & Roebuck catalog” and going to pick your order up when it arrived. Still around to some degree I guess, but nothing like it was.
“General store”, “five and dime store”, or, even older “dry goods store”. But “feed and tackle store” kind of holds on.
“We now conclude our broadcast day, please join us again tomorrow…and now our national anthem.”
“Fax machine” is fast on the way out.
Cooking Jiffy Pop popscorn over the stove is considered quaint.
How long until “getting your pictures developed” and holding on to the “negatives” bewilders the kiddies?
One I’ve been surprised lately to find out that some people still know and use - “government cheese”.
How about the phrase “Playing outside.”? No child seems to do that anymore.
Psychopachik Vampire
curb feeler – good one!
hat pin (which my mother actually used as a crude personal protection weapon)
Good thing that “blue laws” are disappearing too . . .
The curtain stretcher was for back in the pre-permanent press days. Curtains would be washed and shrink – unless you put them on a rack that held them in place whilst they dried.
Subway token (especially now that they’re obsolete in NYC)
Thanks for the curtain stretcher explaination, Mooney.
Fender skirts? Curb feelers? Set-ups?
Intellivision
Colecovision
Rubik’s Cube
Haki Sack
Dual Cassette Deck
New Wave
Datsun
Weebles
I see you don’t hail from the South.
FWIW-Blue laws are still alive (sadly) and well in the North.
How about:
Test pattern
Tube testers
Vibrator radios
‘B’ batteries
Speed Graphic cameras
flash bulbs
phonograph needles
ticker tape parades
hand operated well pumps
knob and tube wiring
hand operated mixers
milkmen
playing mumbly peg
“We interrupt this broadcast…” (remember-only 7 stations then)
enough-I’m starting to feel old
Case in point - -
We were playing charades one day, and it is my niece’s turn. She holds up one hand and punches it with her finger. I thought ‘calculator’ until she put her hand up to her ear. Oh, ‘phone’, no need to say cordless. I am sure I would have gotten a 
.
Juanita, fender skirts were (usually after market, but sometimes OEM) body panels that attached to you rear wheel wells and gave your ride a swoopy look. Often seen in the company of a Continental Kit, which allowed you to mount your spare tire outside, rear and center, behind the trunk. If you’d gone that far, you might have also added teardrop spotlights (which today would only make people think you’re driving an old cop car).
And you didn’t have to be in the dress-up game to have curb feelers, which were spring-lookin’ things, about 10-12" long, with a little metal ball on the end. You attached them to your fenders near the base of the wheel wells, and the metal ball made a skritchity sound when it touched the concrete curb - sort of training wheels for parallel parking.
Product liability laws evolving as they have, another handy-dandy automotive accessory, the suicide knob, is probably gone forever. That was a spinning knob that attached to your steering wheel and allowed you to do all your steering with one hand, including hard corners, provided all went well.
Set-ups date from an era when liquor-by-the-drink was illegal in places (Texas being one) where it was legal to bring your own bottle to a restaurant or club. They’d often offer free set-ups, which meant a cup and ice, and sometimes a mixer.
flash bulbs! I remember those! For some reason I thought they were so cool.
Red Rover
Giant Step
Red Light Green Light
Kick the Can
(All games you played outside)
The Twilight Zone
Polaroids seem to be almost gone
Quarter of three (or anything past the half hour, referred to in that manner. My kids have no clue what I mean. I have to translate it to 2:45 - digital time. )
Bookmobiles
Radios with tubes
saddle shoes
mary janes
I am twenty years old.
Thanks to this thread, I now feel absolutely ancient. I haven’t missed a single reference. Do kids these days really not know?
When I want to use a hand gesture to mean “phone,” I make a fist, extending the thumb and pinky, and hold that hand to the side of my head while making dialing motions in midair with my other pointer finger. This gesture is probably already waaaaay obsolete.
How about “eating the tape” - a once-common problem with stereos and cassettes?
Does anyone still have a Rolodex?
Celluloid.
I must be old-fashioned. I know all the terms in this thread, own and use the two above (and 4x5 Polaroid sheet film in the camera), and I’m only 21. When was the last time anybody (not including professional photographers) saw film bigger than 35mm or Polaroid that you had to pull through the rollers and peel apart yourself?
Real black and white film (as opposed to the new color-process BW, which is miles from the real thing quality-wise) is starting to go the way of the dodo, as well.
For that matter, Gun, I think the phrase “going the way of the dodo” is going the way of the dodo.
How about talking to someone on the Ameche? My grandparents would say Ameche instead of phone and I had no idea that was completely obsolete.
Discs instead of beta or vhs.
Viewfinder toys.
And my students don’t know about Calvin and Hobbes. sigh
I had to explain “45’s” and “33’s” to a twenty-year-old at work. He sort of got it when I reminded him, but he didn’t have even a faint clue when I told him I collect “78’s”!
Imagine if I’d told him about Victrola rolls!