Quiz Show!
That movie sure was something.
You know, that reminds me of a spinoff thread we could have “Things that used to be a big deal but would be shrugged off today.”
I got one: cable TV. Having 20 channels used to be mind-blowing.
Something that would not get done today:
“Hi, I’m [whateverhernamewas], Fly Me!”
Something that would be extremely unlikely to get greenlighted today:
Back in the 1980-83 period, at Johns Hopkins U, the Senior Class Film Series (one of 3 that would go on thru the school year), would always have one weekend a year when they’d show Deep Throat, or Debbie Does Dallas, or some such “classic”.
FWIW, as freshmen in JHU in '79, my dorm hall won some sort of competition where the prize was a keg of beer.
And yeah, here’s another kid who was pretty much on his own recognizance. I remember the microscope kit I got in the 6th grade – complete with quite sharp dissection tools.
elshatan, I positively feel like applying for an AARP card…
jrd
Oooh, I used to ride in the “trunk” of my mom’s station wagon, Old Betsy. It was the best-I’d stick my tongue out at the people behind us.
My aunt had a station wagon, only it had seats in the back, facing the back-with seatbelts and everything. That was nice.
My dad told me his grandfather used to take him and his sister to the bars with him-they’d get soda pop and pretzels.
(I’m guessing, though, that these “bars” were more like pubs, taverns-a much nicer atmosphere than your dives and all that)
I remember when it was a BIG DEAL that we got a vcr. And we didn’t even have cable then.
The favors at my high school Senior prom were beer steins :eek: with the school seal and “Class of '82” on them. We all left the prom and went to parties where we promptly filled them with beer.
That wouldn’t fly at all today.
Putting on school plays (you know, the kind that every homeroom in elementary school puts on at some point during the year) that were based on the Bible. Yeah, public school, and this was in the late 1960s, even the early 1970s.
The kids across the street had mini-bikes, little almost-motorcycles that they rode on the suburban streets and on the dirt paths. They also had go-carts built out of wood and lawnmower engines.
I had a tree house and the other kids would come over and we’d climb up the rope ladder and pull it up after us.
I did have a knife in my right pocket all through elementary school. I did not have a house key because I didn’t need one, our house wasn’t locked if it was only going to be a few hours during which no one was home.
In one elementary school I attended, the boys had one part of the playground they were allowed to play on, and the girls were given a much smaller area. The boys got the part with the jungle gym (aka monkey bars) and swing sets and slides; the girls got an area with hopscotch squares marked off, and they could check out jump ropes for recess.
In junior high, our english class was invited to an evening at a private roller skating rink. The teacher said we could go to it this year instead of bowling because this year we did not have any black people in the class, and the owners of the roller skating rink would not let black people in. She said if we had had any black people in our class, that would not be fair, but since we didn’t she didn’t see any harm in it. This was…1972!
Educational movies on the Bell and Howell reel to reel movie projector. Oh, and film strips that you advanced when the record on the record player made the “beep”.
Witnessing in home room. Small groups of kids coming to other kids’ homerooms in the morning, with the teacher’s permission, and addressing the other kids and telling them all about being “SAVED”.
I remeber that when i was a kid, Our family car was a red zephyr(sp?) with no seatbelts ,my dad cut them out.
Also I have heard stories from my dad about stuff that definately would not be allowed today, one that struck me as odd but acceptable was that the boys would chase around the girls and steal the baked goods they had made in home ec. That always shocked me and i dont know why
The first part:
When I was in elementary school, we always had a “Christmas Concert” and we sang religious songs. Things like “Silent Night” and “Joy To The World,” along with Santa Claus and Rudolph songs.
These days, the schools have to call it a “Winter Concert” and it usually takes place in January. They can’t even do “Winter Wonderland” or “Frosty The Snowman” anymore. Not PC at all.
The second part:
I teach Nursery School. We have lots of book sets that come with a cassette tape and a film strip. The kids are just amazed when we get one out to watch. They’re 4 year olds, BTW. These 21st-century kids raised on computers and videos and DVDs think filmstrips are something new!
On the other hand: the Thursday before last my nephew, a 12-year-old kid with some physical and mental handicaps from a car accident, was knocked to the ground and kicked unconscious by the opposition team and their coach during a soccer game between his high school and a high school from another town. Back when I was his age there would have been teachers present to prevent that kind of thing from happening.
Regards,
Agback
I remember riding in the bed of pickup trucks. It was no big deal. I remember hot summer days in southern Oregon at my grandparents’ place. They lived 14 miles from the nearest town (Applegate) off of a dirt road. Well, mostly dirt; Grandpa had paved the bit that ran in front of his property.
A little hot, a little humid. Gnats buzzing in the still air. Into the pickup for a drive… somewhere. Into Applegate? Fishing? Seeing the dust fly up behind, and feeling the wind. Smell the summer. Summer had a different smell then. Or maybe it’s just that I havent’ been out of this accursed city for so long that I just assume summer smelled different. Maybe I just need to go to it. But of course I don’t have a pickup and it seems to be illegal now to ride in the bed of one.
Remember high school? Borrowing dad’s truck and having your friends pile in the back? We were shooting a super-8 film once, and the old Courier was packed. Riding in the rain in the back when a friend’s car broke down. They got to stay dry in the cab with dad. I got to ride in the wild weather. It was fun.
But we mustn’t be allowed to take responsibility for our actions. If we do, then someone else might try to emulate us with no intention of being responsible. What’s happened? It used to be that if we cut a finger on a knife while making dinner, we’d curse our clumsiness. Now we want to sue the knifemaker because the knife is sharp.
Staying home from work when you were ill untill you were well.
In the factual book ** With Love From Karen ** the author Maria Killilea goes to see an ob/gyn because she is 43 and pregnant. She has had 10 pregnancies, resulting in 6 miscarriages, one child that died shortly after birth, and a daughter with cerebral palsy. As she is sitting in the doctor’s office, * she takes out a cigarette and the ob/gyn lights it for her *.
The mind reels.
Here’s one I was just thinking of recently: when I was a little girl of about 5 or 6, my parents were students in a seminary and, not only was I allowed to wander the campus and visit with the students in the common room of the dorm for single men, I was allowed to accept an invitation to go out to dinner with one of them. Nowadays, that man would have been poorly thought of to ask a little girl out to dinner.
Wham-O Air Blaster.
Whoa, there’s a lot of nostalgia going on! I can definitely sympathize with missing the freedom that kids used to have, but I think other things have improved in a lot of ways.
My mom and my aunts had a very touchy-feely neighbor when they were growing up. He wasn’t a pedophile, but once they became teenagers, they had to avoid his groping. He had a reputation in the neighborhood as a ladies’ man that was basically winked at. It’s hard to imagine a kid not going to her parents about that today.
Likewise, my mother and one of her sisters were both propositioned by their professors when they were in college in the 1960s. I know that still happens, but it seems to be much rarer today.
In general, I think issues like child abuse and domestic violence are viewed as a much bigger deal than they used to be, for which I can only be grateful.
Is America really so insane that kids have to be under permanent 24 hour supervision? Cuz it just ain’t like that here in Australia.
Kids wander the streets. Kids shop seperately to their parents in department stores and malls. If there was bushland in my city, kids would play there alone.
I’m having trouble believing things are that different.
Or is it that some dopers are reading a bit too much into media reports?
American kids are very heavily supervised these days, it’s true. Whether it’s really neccessary or not is debatable.
The last Army post I lived on, children through age 11 had to be supervised at all times. What exactly they would do to you if they found your kid playing by himself, I don’t know, 'cause I don’t have kids.
I have friends who lived on post whose neighbors called the MPs (the cops) on them because their baby was crying. Yes, because their baby was crying.
My nightmare scenario is being someplace public with my kid (which I don’t have) and the child to start crying because I won’t buy him an ice cream, at which point some “good samaritan” calls the police on me. Heaven forbid I ever lose my temper in public, or where hidden cameras are located.
Now hang on here… kids riding in the back of pickup trucks are hardly responsible grownups making choices. I don’t see any real need for seatbelt laws for grownups, since they offend my libertarian sensibilities, but I have nothing but disgust and disdain for a parent who lets his/her child ride in a car without a seatbelt.
Which is not to say that I’m some loony overprotective nutbar who would never let a child out of my sight even for a moment, but putting on a seatbelt is a simple way to drastically increase your child’s safety. It’s all good fun until someone is horribly and gruesomely killed.
(And I feel the same way about bicycle helmets).
The lesson to teach kids is not “you can never be exposed to the teensiest bit of risk, oh my precious angel-poo”, but “when there are simple and only-vaguely-inconveniencing things that you can do to make yourself a LOT safer, you DO THEM”.
I remember being upset that all my buddies got pellet guns for Christmas and I didn’t. They would go and shoot crows and other small animals. Great fun. Kill the little creatures.
In grade school, during recess, boys had to play on one side of the school, girls on the other. We once had a school assembly and the sixth graders (in our 99% white school) did a Minstral show in black face.
I don’t think my father’s first two cars even HAD “safety belts” (name was changed to seat belts in the 60’s by the airline industry because people got nervous when you said “safety” belt.) I can remember when people used to throw empty bottles and cans out of the window of cars onto the side of the road, as if that were where they were supposed to be thrown away. They thought nothing of throwing them into lakes and rivers too.
And in case the above isn’t enough to make you un-nostalgic for the crappy old days, girls who may (or may not) have had sex with a boy were deemed a slut for their entire high school career simply because a guy claimed she did. Pregnant girls were sent off to special homes for unwed mothers and the families would lie and say they were at a private school in Europe. Coaches would call homosexual boys “sissy” in front of the class and mock them.
I am sure there are some who like to look back at the warm, fuzzy moments - but there has been a lot of change for the good over the years as well.