# Without saying your age, what's something from your childhood that a younger person wouldn't understand? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 25, 2021, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138 "2021-10-25T01:08:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 22
**Author:** ![jaycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat/32/3015_2.png) [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/423 "2021-11-01T01:09:48Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Have we mentioned typesetting with paper tape? The keyboard punched the paper tape, which was then read by a typesetting device. Initially, there was no way to edit a tape, except manually, with splices and a “chicken plucker” punch. And there was no monitor. Everything had to be figured in your head. Amazingly, I typeset a math textbook this way. I did that, both at the Brookline (Mass.) Chronicle and the Wall St. Journal. The ‘device’ was called a Photon machine. The punched-out dots fell into a plastic trash can, and you could fish them out and tape over a ‘typo.’ ---
**Author:** ![Didi44](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47c2d/32.png) [@Didi44](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Didi44)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/424 "2021-11-01T01:19:22Z")
Always been here in Hawaii. And I stand corrected, it must have been 7 -10 or 11pm HST. Local news was at 6pm, with network news earlier. This is pre-satellite, so shows where flown in, so often, we wouldn’t see the program until the following week. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/425 "2021-11-01T01:46:46Z")
I don’t remember my teachers having great musical taste, but that might explain the recitals of _Frankly, Mr. Schankly_ ---
**Author:** ![sinjin1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@sinjin1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sinjin1)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/426 "2021-11-01T03:24:49Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > water Crawling under so you don’t have to pay! ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/427 "2021-11-01T03:29:27Z")
Crawling under water to avoid paying? I don’t remember that. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/428 "2021-11-01T07:40:14Z")
[quote=“Tibby, post:404, topic:953138”] Besides the milkman, we had the egglady who delivered eggs to our house weekly. She was married to the eggman, but he had a different route, so we only saw him once, when his wife was sick. I always wondered if their kids were scrambled up. [/quote]A local poultry farmer came by to sell us eggs every week, with a truck full of live chickens. My mom would go out and, by some means, choose the chicken she wanted. The farmer would kill it, remove the head and the feathers, and give her the chicken. My job was to reach inside the still-warm carcass and pull out the innards. > [@jaycat](#): > > The punched-out dots fell into a plastic trash can, and you could fish them out and tape over a ‘typo.’ And it was so much fun to get those dots dumped out over your head. ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Mark\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/429 "2021-11-01T11:32:13Z")
1960’s-1970’s - Canadian TV stations would often show US prime-time series an hour or two (sometimes a day or two) ahead of the US showings. e.g. in early 1966, the “Beverly Hillbillies” would show on CBS Wednesdays at 8:30; CBC would have the same show at 7 pm the previous Saturday. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/430 "2021-11-01T11:49:07Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > Being unbeatable at Electronic Quarterback and Head to Head Hockey. I mastered Electronic Quarterback - years later, I encountered a little kid who had the game, and who unwisely challenged me to a match. Turns out I had retained my skills. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/431 "2021-11-01T12:03:03Z")
> [@carrps](#): > > …and it accidentally fell over and spilled all the cards. The cards were not able to be sorted by machine. Uh oh. I took one class with punch cards. A trick was to stack the cards together, and score a diagonal line across them. That helps get them back in order. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/432 "2021-11-01T12:26:09Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > Using sexually derogatory words as a greeting to your buddies. Ah yes, the old, “hey, peckerbreath, what’s up”. Weird how one day it just stopped being a thing. ---
**Author:** ![Bonum\_Legatum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bonum_legatum/32/6183_2.png) [@Bonum\_Legatum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bonum_Legatum)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/433 "2021-11-01T12:38:13Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > I took one class with punch cards. A trick was to stack the cards together, and score a diagonal line across them. That helps get them back in order. I remember there being a few “garbage” columns at the far right of punchcards that we were told to sequentially number, by tens (00010, 00020, 00030). There was a machine that could sort cards from those columns. (Numbered by tens so you could insert a few cards if you needed to alter the program.) Which reminds me of going to the student punchcard room. Rows of punchcard machines. The peculiar clickety-clack—pock sounds of those machines feeding cards in and taking them out. There was a vending machine that would sell a few cards for a quarter. (Much more expensive than the price at the student stationary store. And a lot of students had parents who had access to cards from their companies - so you’d often see stacks of cards with company logos on them.) And after punching the cards, you had to turn them in at a counter. Then you had to wait at the next counter for the printout to see if your program needed further work. How about a student being assigned a certain account on the college mainframe, with a set limit of programming minutes (sometimes shown as dollars and cents)? P.S. Stereotypical 1970’s sweatshirt: “_I am a human being. Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate_.” Now explain THAT to a younger person. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/434 "2021-11-01T13:23:31Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > In fact that’s why Cassandra Petersen had to dye her hair black because Vampira had red hair and they didn’t want to get sued again I gotta ask for a cite on this. In all the pictures I’ve seen of her Vampira had black hair. Many of the images I’ve seen (like the footage in **Plan Nine from Outer Space** ) is black and white, but she would’ve had to have REALLY dark red hair for it to register as black as it did. > **[Vintage Geek Culture | Classic horror movies, Vampira, Vintage horror](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/480618591485411029/)** > > Aug 17, 2019 - Maila Nurmi (Vampira), 1954. Cassandra Peterson wouldn’t have to dye her hair, in any case – she wears a wig made by “Elura” [https://shop.wigsbuy.com/Elura-Wigs/](https://shop.wigsbuy.com/Elura-Wigs/) (In the movie **Elvira’s Haunted Hills** she gives the name of an ancestor as Lady Elura Hellsubus – an inside joke) ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/435 "2021-11-01T14:05:08Z")
I’m kind of late looking at this thread so it could be either of these were mentioned some time ago, but these are daily things from my time as a K-12 student (through 1988) that my kids never knew anything about, with the oldest one beginning in 2004, a gap barely more than 15 years: **The purplish-blue look, hot waxy feel, and paint-thinner smell of a hot off the mimeograph quiz or handout**. Sometime between 1988 and 2004, mimeographs completely stopped being used. Probably closer to 1988, hah. I spent a fair amount of time in libraries as a kid, both doing research for papers in high school and the “just for fun” kind of random walk of information perusal that Wikipedia and Google now provide instantly, any time, any where (if your bullshit filter is keen enough). My kids have barely ever gone to a library for schoolwork reasons with so much information being online now, and so my kids have never known: Using **that coin-fed, pay-per-page copy machine at libraries with the heavy black rubber lid.** I used those so many times to photocopy pages from reference-only material so I could continue to use them at home. And I never saw that rubber lid on a copy machine except at a library (like later, when I got older, and ran copies in an office environment). They may or may not have had to learn to use **a card catalog** for finding older material; they definitely still had them against the walls when they were growing up but I don’t think they’ve ever used one (much less have to think about **WHICH SET of cards to use, name or reference?** ). Using **a microfilm machine to view tiny photostats old periodicals**. How else would you find out what the New York Times reported the day after the Apollo 11 moon landing, and so on? Well by now those have all been scanned and converted to PDF or JPG some other digital format; do they even still have microfilm machines at libraries? **Seeing the name and date of the previous person or people who have used a book before you** via the little card at the back, and occasionally getting a thrill of recognition. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/436 "2021-11-01T14:20:58Z")
Names, addresses, and phone numbers, linked together, were routinely published in books delivered to everyone. (Yes, they still are, but most people are no longer in them.) Nobody thought about “identity theft.” However, our diaries were PRIVATE. Nobody but you was supposed to read your diary. Some of them even came with little locks on them. And the only ones entitled to know your social security number were your employer and the SSA. It wasn’t supposed to be used for anything else. And if you’d never been employed, you wouldn’t have one; people got their SSN when they got their first job. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/437 "2021-11-01T14:50:54Z")
> [@Didi44](#): > > How special TV dinners were because you had to wait for them to be heated up in the oven, and the anguish of mashed potatoes still frozen solid in the middle. I remember a parody image of the packaging for a TV dinner, possibly in Mad Magazine, listing the contents of the TV dinner as: - Salisbury steak in tomato sauce - Green beans in tomato sauce - Mashed potatoes with gravy in tomato sauce - Brownie in tomato sauce ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/438 "2021-11-01T15:54:00Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > Comic books went from 10¢ to 12¢ Quick comics tangent: I saw an ad from a guy who buys old comics. It said “Paying big for 10¢ and 12¢ comics. And pretty well for 15¢ books. Need a few 20-25¢ books, but over 35¢, forget it.” I’d always seen comics divided by years, or “ages”… like Golden, Silver, Bronze, Copper, Iron, Mercury, Platinum and Tin (an uncertain and anxious age). But hey, cover price works pretty well, so I’ve been using it to do a quick organizing of my comics. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/439 "2021-11-01T18:36:44Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > They may or may not have had to learn to use **a card catalog** for finding older material; they definitely still had them against the walls when they were growing up but I don’t think they’ve ever used one (much less have to think about **WHICH SET of cards to use, name or reference?** ). To reserve a book at the library, you went in person to discover that the book wasn’t on the shelf, filled out a postcard at the withdrawal desk, and waited until the postcard came to you to tell you that the book was now waiting for you. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/440 "2021-11-01T19:11:59Z")
> [@Keeve](#): > > _Everyone_ drew a nice clear diagonal line across those cards, specifically to help out in cases like this. This either happened soon after he completed writing the program (so he didn’t yet have a chance to draw that line), or he was such an old-timer that this procedure was not yet common when the story occurred. I didn’t know about that. Smart. Fortunately, I didn’t have to deal with punched cards except for the printer booting I mentioned! ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/441 "2021-11-01T19:18:27Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > And the only ones entitled to know your social security number were your employer and the SSA. It wasn’t supposed to be used for anything else. And if you’d never been employed, you wouldn’t have one; people got their SSN when they got their first job. And my company used ssn’s as the employee number – yikes!!! They finally converted to a random employee numbers in the 90s. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2021, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/442 "2021-11-01T19:19:33Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > **Names, addresses, and phone numbers, linked together, were routinely published in books delivered to everyone.** (Yes, they still are, but most people are no longer in them.) Nobody thought about “identity theft.” > > However, **our diaries were PRIVATE.** Nobody but you was supposed to read your diary. Some of them even came with little locks on them. > > And **the only ones entitled to know your social security number were your employer and the SSA**. It wasn’t supposed to be used for anything else. And if you’d never been employed, you wouldn’t have one; people got their SSN when they got their first job. I was just talking about the first bit with my wife the other day, how in the days before days, with the big yellow and white phone books, nearly everyone in town was listed in there by their last name because _the whole point of having a telephone was so someone could look you up and call you_. Crank calls were a thing, but scam/junk calls were somehow not. I mean they must have existed, but were much harder to “get anywhere” unless you were targeting a specific person with a tailored line of patter, because “random phishing” couldn’t really get you money because “reading bank or credit card information” over the phone was also basically not a thing people did. As for “diaries being private”, I wondered what you were contrasting that with (aren’t diaries still private?) until I realized that in the age of blogging, vlogging, FB, Instagram, and livestreaming, much of what people used to diarize is done with “push notification”, eh? I assume someone has parodized Thoreau’s _Walden_ as a series of blog posts? Sure would’ve made it easier to skip his chapters dealing with accounting and balancing his checkbook or whatever it was where I stopped reading, LOL. And the third one has an interesting twist: for the brief time I was in college, 1988-1992, it was after it was deemed acceptable (in the USA) to post students’ grades by name, yet before students widely had or used email. I did, yes, but I was a CS major. So for all of my classes, a day after the final exam, the class grades were all posted on the professor’s door or on a big bulletin board for the academnic department… _by Social Security Number_. Technically this was called a “student ID number” but whatddyaknow, it was the same value. A bunch of us close friends with the same major who were almost always in the same core track classes all knew each other’s SSN pretty soon from comparing grades, LOL. By the late 1990s they were using just the last four digits to post the grades (which I noticed via my girlfriend, later my wife, having continued on for graduate school and then working as a post-doc), and soon not even that - they just email everyone their grades now. My college-aged kids say there isn’t even any way to see a list of all the grades awarded in a given class in a public way. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138.md?page=21) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138.md?page=23)