My nephew (5 years old) to my sister:
“Mommy, why do you say ‘Roll down your window’?”
Overheard:
“Dad, what does ‘winding a watch’ mean?”
What’s that? Or, it’s close cousin, “Why do we “dial” a phone?”
When my son was about 5, he ran up to the jukebox, looked very confused and said, “Mom, look at these big black CDs!”
Dial phones. Heh-heh.
I converted the cord on an old dial phone to modular and had it plugged in to a line in our basement in the house we lived in about 15 years back. One of my son’s friends needed to call home and I told him to use the one downstairs. Poor kid didn’t have a clue how to use it!
Anybody else still use “crank your car” when telling someone to turn the key in the ignition?
I’ve actually hand cranked cars, and a few airplanes, but not recently.
Why ‘still use’?! Some of us use that one up despite never having cranked a car ourselves, nor witnessed it, except for vintage vehicles. So I suppose it’s in the same catagory as ‘dialing’ a phone.
Similarly, nearly every year my mom, a teacher, comes home feeling quite old when they start talking about circles in her grade one/two class. Because nearly every book/worksheet they use is quite a bit older than the kids, and in the pages of objects that are circular there are… class?
“A pizza!”
“A pie!”
“A frisbee!”
“A CD!” :smack:
Turn up the volume.
Fighting about who will sit in the front seat.
I call shot-gun!!!
When we bought our house, there was a heavy pink dial phone in the basement hardwired in. We got the modular connectors and installed it in my pottery studio. I don’t care if it gets covered with clay (it’s easy to clean off) and it’s easy to grip with the ickiest of hands. And it’s pink - what’s not to love?!?!?
We had a problem with our phone line recently and had a POTS (plain old telephone set - pushbutton, not dial) out to test at the network interface box. My 2yr old pointed to it and asked, “What’s that?”
I told her it was a phone. She looked at me like I told her it was a cat.
In her world, phones are cordless and fit in one’s pocket.
Every time one of my students (fifth graders) asks for a pencil, I remind them that I put lost ones I find in the “chalk tray.” I’m not trying to be cleverly anachronistic…it’s just too cumbersome to say “dry erase marker tray.” I get looks now and again.
Radio!
How many more months will it take before kids say “Huh?” when you refer to a checkbook and the act of writing a check?
It will probably be an even shorter time for kids to have no concept of rewinding tape of any sort
i never got the dial the phone one… i grew up with a rotary phone and when we got a push button one i didnt even notice the phrase. now i have a cell. you still dial a phone just with a different mechanism. Although I have met people who heard a commerical for a cheap ISP that still used dial up and when they heard the connecting sound they didnt know what it was.
My three-year old daughter, after questioning me about grampa’s ham radio set-up said “he COULD call his friends on the phone!”
My son noticed a few years ago that I have a very little printer, one that I don’t have to turn on, but it only prints one letter at a time. Right after I type it. Or right after he types it.
Me: “It’s called a typewriter. I have an electric one, too, that types with a little ball.”
I also have a Diablo daisywheel printer and a Brother nine-pin–what did they call these? Dot matrix? does not sound quite right–printer. Along with the currently used inkjet, the 1993 inkjet, and the laser printer. Maybe I should start a musum of Old Writing Tools. (Yeah, I know. I need to move and get rid of these dinosaurs.)
Dial phones? I remember as a kid picking up the phone to be greeted with a nasal, “Number please?”
I agree that cheques are getting less and less common, however I think they will be around for quite some time to come. For example, if you want to give someone who is not a company a significant amount of money, how do you do it?
This kid (38) felt old when he realzed that all of the 80’s catch-phrases he uses with his wife is exactly analogous to all that “old stuff” his parents joked about when he was younger.
Not to derail the thread, but I remember categorizing things as ‘new’ (created after I was born) and ‘old’. I found myself looking around the homestead, all my cool techy stuff will be categorized by my children as ‘old and busted’.
all you kids who have never seen a rotary phone or an LP - GERROFFAMYLAWN!!! 
for those who were around in the days of dial it yourself rotary phones, how many of you remember exchanges with letters or even words? Murray Hill 6. Gramercy 5! Where’s Allan Sherman when you need him?