Then friendly wave back when you let someone cut in front of you in traffic.
This on doesn’t fall in the time frame but I am SO glad it went away: RINGTONES!! [Or clips of people’s favorite songs whenever their damn phone rings]
Alcohol was much more prevalent in the workplace and popular media until around the advent of MADD and drunk driving awareness.
Community associations are not nearly what they used to be. I didnt say they were dead or even dying, but a far lesser percentage of the population belong to them.
Showering in oublic schools used to be a thing. Swimming naked in public pools used to be a thing.
What about smoking? In the '70s, there were more places one could light up a cigarette then where smoking was prohibited. One of the last cigarette commercials on TV was for a brand of “100s”, which were so stunningly long that the elevator door closed the tip of the cigarette off. That was in the early '70s, when, apparently, on could still smoke on an elevator. And, a little more recently, I heard someone lamenting that it has become much more difficult to spot small cabin leaks in the rear part of the fuselage.
Put you zip code into www.mailboxmap.com and it’ll show you a map of nearby mailboxes. Click on them and it shows pickup times.
Adjusting Vertical Hold on your TV set.
Busy signals. I heard one yesterday for the first time in years.
About the smiling thing: I smile at almost everyone I pass on the street. I notice people who seem to be over 40 smile back much more often than younger folks, who rarely make eye contact. It was just about 40 years ago that the whole stranger-danger, kids-on-milk-cartons hysteria started. I think we scared the smiles out of 'em.
That site can be wildly wrong. Checking locally, besides mislabeling at least two street names, it shows/lists one mailbox about 6 blocks from where it actually is, and doesn’t show one mailbox that I use frequently at all. So beware.
Waiting in line at the bank to deposit your paycheck and get cash for your pocket, and having to do so between 9 or 10 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. Now paychecks are automatically deposited, you can use a debit card instead of carrying cash, and you can get cash out of ATMs.
I think this has a lot more to do with people hating the way their bodies look, as opposed to any notion of being naked is shameful, or prudery.
This was my experience with the funeral of both of my grandmothers, right down to the Packers logo, except that not even the minister was wearing a suit.
Lets see, in the last 10 years, there have been the two funerals, a wedding (preacher, groom, and groomsmen wore suits also), 3 court appearances, at least one of which I beleive my wearing a suit had a favorable impact for my side, since the judge verbally noted that I was the only one wearing a suit (who wasn’t a lawyer or court officer) and one meeting with my attorney, myself, my exwife and her attorney. He hilariously kept insisting that I MUST have just OODLES of money because I wore a 3 piece suit to the meeting. He simply would not beleive that the suit was a gift from my wife and her sister, was a decade old and had been worn a grand total of 8 times including that meeting. I wore a suit! Nevermind that it’s the only one I have, I wore it and they were going to find and take half of that money I had hidden.
Such is the power of a suit these days.
Wearing pantyhose and knee-high nylons looks to be pretty much extinct. That is, except for dinosaurs like me. I don’t wear dresses anymore, but I do like the knee-high socks that are made of pantyhose fabric for when I wear dress slacks.
I’ve stopped wondering why folks would like to go bare-footed inside their shoes. The time or two I tried that, my feet would get sticky and damp and gross, and stick to the insides of the shoes. Gah.
The whole ritual of college acceptance has changed wildly with the internet. Back in the 70s, you anxiously awaited snail mail to find out if you’d gotten into the colleges you applied to. We all said, “You’ll know before you open the envelope - if it’s thick, it’s an acceptance with lots of papers for you to fill out reserving your place, and if it’s thin, it’s a rejection letter.” The thought of having to wait for notification to come via the post office seems quaint now.
Come to think of it, the entire college application process has changed a lot. Back when I prepared for college applications, the idea of taking an SAT prep course bordered on ludicrous; you just went in and took the test cold (test prep services existed, but were considered rather dubious and certainly not an essential part of the middle-to-upper-class experience). And there was no Common App, nor did there need to be.
Anybody have a phone book? Or Yellow Pages?
I just took my 2019 4Runner in for it’s required (by Toyota) service. The 10,000 mile check up on a new car. They changed the oil. This was the cars FIRST oil change. If I recall, it used to be a good idea to get the oil changed on a new engine more like at 1000 miles.
Oh, and the oil? Not your standard 10-30w or 10-40. It’s zero weight oil. 0w. Must be like water. Got some seriously tight tolerances going on there.
Can’t you put outgoing mail in YOUR mailbox for the postal worker to pick up? (I believe you live in the country, but you do have a mailbox, right?)
I’m asking because a friend of mine (my age-- almost 70) thought you had to go to the post office to mail anything. :eek: While visiting her in St. Louis a few years ago, I had something to mail, and I put it in her mailbox. She had never heard of this and actually said to me, “I hope the mailman knows what to do!” What did she think the flag on the mailbox was for?
Since that incident happened, I’ve been wondering-- is this not common knowledge, i.e., that you can put outgoing mail in your **own **mailbox and put the flag up, or clip the outgoing piece to the letter slot cover, and the postal worker will pick it up and take it to the post office for you? 
That’s exactly what I have always done.
No, I still see plenty of confirmation bias.
That’s exactly what I have always thought. But when I lived in Los Angeles, I had one postal worker claim he wasn’t supposed to pick up mail at a residence; he would only do it for me to be nice. Perhaps he was just a disgruntled postal worker who was on his way to a breakdown.
Most houses in the suburb where my parents live have those mailboxes you can’t get your hand inside, so that wouldn’t work. I’m grateful to live in an apartment with an outgoing mail slot.
I was born in 1983, so I don’t remember much from that time period, but I do remember frequently being unsupervised in public (not just in my neighborhood) with my friends as an older child. Starting around when we hit double digits, we’d get dropped off at the mall, the beach, or Disneyland* for hours. We had watches and a plan for when and where to get picked up, and change for a pay phone in case of an emergency, but our parents had no way to reach us. Now Disneyland doesn’t allow that anymore, malls are shuttering left and right, and I seriously had to defend a parent in court for allowing her child to get sunburned at a water park.
*Back then, the cheapest annual pass was less than $100; several of us got them as our big-ticket birthday or Christmas gift every year. It also only took about 20 minutes to get there from almost anywhere in Orange County.
I’m friends with an immigrant family who have all become naturalized U.S. citizens. When I accompanied one of them to the ceremony, I was not only the only person there in a suit, but in the bathroom, a man with an African accent asked me if I was a lawyer.