In 5th grade (c 1974) I saw an older friend light magnesium strips (?) on fire, which burn really brightly. I had to do a science demo and thought, what if I burn those strips with other chemicals (eg, some kind of copper powder) that I had in a kids’ chemistry set, to see if they created different colors.
I did all this on a table in front of the whole class, and after reading the post above, realized I (and the teacher) had zero idea if I wouldn’t blow up the entire school.
Not sure my kids would be allowed to go to school with all that potentially explosive stuff, and light it in a classroom
In 1983 or so I and a friend went to summer camp. Someone got stung by a bee so the counselor asked my friend if they could give the girl one of my friend’s prescription Benedryl. My friend was fine with it.
The counselors did give us our meds at breakfast/lunch/dinner/night, which is why they knew my friend had Benedryl.
I’m in Switzerland. The church bell sounds at :15, :30, :45 and on the hour, plus extra for services and to announce the new pope (March 13, 2013). Siren tests are normally once per year, on the first Wednesday of February.
Dallas still tests at noon on the first Wednesday of the month.
I flew unaccompanied on international flights in the mid 80s. I’d have been around 10-ish or so. It was a non issue, each adult was right there at the gate on either end, and once on board a plane and strapped into my seat it’s not like I could go anywhere else anyway.
Plus they let you see the cockpit and ogle all the buttons.
We had a 5:00 pm whistle. It was the fire alarm at the local fire station. It made sense back in the day when people had no ready access to clocks, such as labor working in fields or outbuildings or workshops. You could hear it miles away.
That bit of tradition continued until about 10 years ago, where it was never on time. It might be a few minutes early or a few minutes late, depending on who set the alarm, I guess. That was kind of amusing.
It was more accurate at the time when it was more important, but it became more casual in its accuracy as it became a relic. Now it’s gone. I don’t miss it. That thing was loud, especially if you were nearby. If you were within a quarter of a mile of that thing, you couldn’t talk over it.
On whistles, our small town in the NYC exurbs had one. Old fashioned rotating ( non electronic ) siren as big as a 55 gallon drum mounted on top of the volunteer firehouse. Did one continuous howl for 10 or 12 seconds at 5PM every day, and one at 8PM on fridays only. I used to try to see how long I could still hear it as it wound down; lower and lower pitched and fainter and fainter volume. It’s main purpose would be to run up and down continuously to summon the firefighters for a fire/emergency.
In the still of the night when you heard it it imparted a sense of graveness, and had a mournful tone. After three or for runs, we’d hear our across the street neighbor ( one of the firemen ) get in his car and hear the roar of its V8 and squeal of its tires as he took off for the firehouse. It gave comfort to know “they’re on it”.
1955-65: The extreme psychological and physical abuse my peers and I were subjected to by Catholic Elementary School nuns (in our case, the School Sisters Of Notre Dame). Today their depravity would result in prosecution.
My small town in Connecticut still has an emergency siren. You can hear it for miles. It’s sounded to alert the volunteer firefighters and emergency reponders in our town that there is an emergency. A few months ago our first selectman put a poll on Facebook asking people if we should continue doing this, since all of the emergency responders now have cell phones. The poll was overwhelmingly in favor of continuing the use of the siren.
They also sound it every Saturday at noon to test it. The upshot is that it goes off a lot.
We also have a church in the center of town that rings bells every hour. The church has three clock faces on the square tower (facing north, east, and west, but not south), reportedly because the citizens on the south side of town didn’t come with the money a century or so ago to pay for a clock face on their side. The tower used to have a steeple, but it blew off in the hurricane of 1938, and they haven’t replaced it yet.
First, I’m a guy. I just posted about my nickname in the thread about the story behind our usernames.
Second, I’m sure some may have no issue with partial nudity within the famil.
My sisters are 9 and 10 years older than me. When I was young, probably when I was 8-10, my oldest sister would sit topless and I’d peel the sunburned skin off her back, trying to get the biggest pieces possible. It didn’t dawn on me until I was much older that there was huge mirror on the dresser she sat at, I while I was peeling her back and talking to her I was looking directly at her topless.
My second sister’s favorite nightgown was completely sheer and she only worn panties under it.and she’d sit in the living room watching TV with it on. I was about about 11 when my Mom told her she should stop wearing it because my brother was a teen (he’s 7 years older) and I was headed into become a teen. I never dawned it me that there was anything wrong.
When I was in my mid teens, I’d watch TV in her room (it was the only TV in the house) and when she’s come home, she’d change clothes down to her panties. Again, didn’t think about it then. It’s only as I got older did I even think it was odd.
I’ve posted these stories before in other threads.
In grade school in the 60’s my classmates would come to school, black and blue and there never was any cry of child abuse. One of my friends had a broken arm that he claimed he got from a fall, but thinking back, now I’m not so sure about the cause. The only discussion we had was whether it was “lickens’” or “dirty lickens’” and whether Dad or Mom was drunk at the time.
There was also a grade school classmate, who looking back, no doubt was a victim of child abuse. Every day she’s pee herself at least once, and there were stories that she would pull down her underwear behind the cafeteria and let the boys look. Later there were stories that she’s sometimes let the boys touch her. I don’t know if she was in my class for just one year or two, but one day she just disappeared and I have no idea what happened to her.
Yes, in my HS, girls had to wear skirts, altho they wore them pretty Mini.
We had “Bermuda days” on some fridays where both sexes could wear shorts. My buddies and i came to work in dress shirts and ties on those days. Best silent protest ever, the Principal and the Vice knew what we were doing, but couldnt say a word besides “Nice tie”.
Yeah. I was in west L.A., but my junior high yearbooks were full of “have a bitchin’ summer!” kind of messages, and my mom was really upset about it. She had a lot more serious things to be upset about when I got to senior high.
Oh, even if you were accompanied, it was a thing to take little kids into the cockpit to ogle all the buttons and switches. And the flight attendants (“stewardesses”) gave us little wing pins to wear.
I don’t know when it stopped-- abruptly after 9/11, or if it had faded out before that.
Oh, yeah: kids would come to school with marks on their backs, or faces. I remember one kid came to school with a scab in the middle of a bruise on her face, and the teacher asked what happened-- she said she got cut by her mother’s ring when she hit her. The teacher said OK, just making sure it didn’t happen after she left the house that morning. You know, in case the kid showed up at home after school with a mark the parents didn’t know about, and they thought it happened at school. As long as the parents knew where it came from, the teacher was unconcerned.
One thing that kind of bugged me about mandatory reporting, was that it applied to teenagers-- and I was a teenager when it was implemented. It always seemed to me that someone who was 16 or so could decide to ride out an abusive home for a couple more years, seeing as they’d been there so long already with no one doing anything. And what would anyone do for a teen anyway? A lot of times mandatory reporting meant that someone came to the house and basically narced on the kid, making the parents even more abusive (happened to two different kids I knew). And they’d give the parents information on places “to contact for help.”
But that didn’t mean that a kid in a screwy home didn’t want to occasionally talk to someone just to get a reality check. Mandatory reporting put an end to kids doing that.
I had a really bad experience with mandatory reporting as a teen. First off, I asked about confidentiality ahead of time to try to cover my own ass, and I was told that because I was a legally emancipated minor, I had full confidentiality. That wasn’t true because my abuser had other children. So after I told a therapist what I thought was privileged information, she called me that night to tell me she had called social services. The police came to my door, family disowned me, the whole shebang. I was thoroughly unprepared to deal with my family around this issue - much less the police! - and I was further traumatized as a result. It’s been 20 years and it still gets me sometimes. Fuck mandatory reporting.
It’s not even that effective. I took a class on child welfare policy in grad school and learned that only a tiny number of mandatory reporting results in a substantiated claim of abuse. Most of the reports are worthless and waste the time of the state. It’s one of those things people do that sounds like it makes kids safer, but it doesn’t make much difference at all.
