# 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:** 3
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/41 "2021-10-25T03:16:14Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > It was not only possible but ordinary to be out of contact. Totally so. And, relatedly: Calling the neighbors and your parents’ friends to try to track down where your mom or dad is. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/42 "2021-10-25T03:18:11Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > You had to turn the TV to channel 3 to play video games. And you had to have a diverter switch attached between the antenna and the tv to switch from the broadcast signal to the game signal ---
**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:** [October 25, 2021, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/43 "2021-10-25T03:21:11Z")
Even people who never smoked had ashtrays in their houses. Because it would have been horribly rude to ask anyone not to smoke in your house. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/44 "2021-10-25T03:25:53Z")
> [@CastletonSnob1](#): > > This seems to be a pretty popular little game on places like Twitter. It’s popular at least in part because social media hackers are looking for ways to determine people’s age demographic - for the purpose of targeted advertising - without asking them directly. Same with “tell me where you are from without telling me where you are from” and similar sorts of questions. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/45 "2021-10-25T03:32:00Z")
I wish this wasn’t true, but when I realised that the “porn name” meme is also the answers to your secure login questions, I had to accept the truth of it. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/46 "2021-10-25T03:43:39Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > WIWAK, street repairs were marked not with blinkers but [with black smoke in the day and open flame after dark](http://delmarhistoricalandartsociety.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-highway-torch-or-smudge-pots.html?m=1) I remember seeing those. Since I was also familiar with [anarchist bombs](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bombthrowinganarchist.gif), I figured that’s where they got them. Hmmm. [Civil Defense shelter](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/vP17BJRzbWOCaCJLTYKSLcLiV2wQIe7Oo0owZxaIJ1Z8rgeOhrIANjs9CNyplCfJXxYrBe3YaR7aAlxOcJUb_6_lMV6GS-IlVRctDzV9RswhM7A). > [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](#): > > Jukeboxes that have physical records inside and are not connected to the internet. One of my mother’s first jobs was jukebox operator. The patron would put a nickel in the slot, pick up a phone handset which would ring Mom in a central location. They would request a song, she would find the record, plug a record player into that line, and drop the needle on the record which would play through a speaker at the location. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/47 "2021-10-25T03:47:27Z")
Facebook is totally full of them. The latest I saw was “name an old fashioned name”. 90% of people are going to give a grandparent’s name. And most names have a specific period of popularity. If I’d answered I would without question have given my grandmother’s name and that would mean there is little chance I was born after 1980. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/48 "2021-10-25T03:48:41Z")
The smell of mimeograph paper. There was a movie (_Fast Times at Ridgemont High_ maybe?) where a teacher handed out mimeographs to the class, and everyone held it up to their face to smell it. Probably a majority of people wouldn’t understand that gag today. ---
**Author:** ![GESancMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gesancman/32/2923_2.png) [@GESancMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GESancMan)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/49 "2021-10-25T04:02:05Z")
I think he meant it became really fast when push button phones came out. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/50 "2021-10-25T04:21:45Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Signing out library books by writing down the title and author of each book on a library form, along with your name and the date. > > Using a card catalog. knowing when a book was due by looking on the inside cover of a book because they stamped te dates there (these days they cive you a printout of when your books are due) when it took 2-4 (or more ) hours to download the first 8-bit MMORPG that you had to have aol for … and you prayed to the PC gods it didn’t get corrupted or anything or yo started all over again Being a nude entertainer/adult film star wasn’t a mainstream career choice ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/51 "2021-10-25T04:39:05Z")
This is the phone we had, on our party line. We had to listen for our ring in Morse Code\*, that the Operator would perform by hand. [https://antiquephones.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/IMG\_0038-300x200.jpg](https://antiquephones.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/IMG_0038-300x200.jpg) \*_D - long short short_ ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/52 "2021-10-25T04:42:27Z")
> [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](#): > > Any TV channel higher than 13 required setting the top dial to “U”, then rotating the bottom dial to the approximate channel you want. Our TV was so old, it didn’t even have a UHF tuner, only VHF. Converters were available to let you tune in UHF, but we never had one. ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/53 "2021-10-25T04:54:21Z")
When I was a kid, if I wanted to get on the Internet I had to wait for Al Gore to be born. ---
**Author:** ![Biotop](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biotop/32/321_2.png) [@Biotop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biotop)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/55 "2021-10-25T05:34:11Z")
Fill up your gas tank and the station would give you a free drinking glass. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/56 "2021-10-25T05:35:04Z")
Be kind, rewind. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/57 "2021-10-25T05:41:45Z")
The first car racing computer game I played was on a line printer. Before you started playing, you could ask for a given track to be printed out, in ASCII. To race, you input a percentage, either positive or negative, for acceleration or braking respectively. The software then replied with your race position, speed and the distance to the next corner. And of course whether you had crashed or finished and if the latter in what place. I can’t think that we ever got around the track without crashing. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/58 "2021-10-25T05:43:59Z")
The remote control was a little box with tuning forks in it. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/59 "2021-10-25T06:08:29Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > If your TV wasn’t working properly, you’d open up the case, pull out some parts (the vacuum tubes), bring those parts to a hardware store, and use [a self-service electrical tester](https://www.edn.com/wp-content/uploads/contenteetimes-images-01mdunn-benchtalk-tube2.jpg) to figure out which part(s) needed to be replaced. You’d then buy those parts, bring them home, and re-assemble your TV. Walking home from school there would always be at least one house with a TV repair or appliance repair truck or van in front of it. Stuff went on the fritz a lot then and people actually got them repaired rather than tossing it and getting a new one. > [@lum\_s\_husband](#): > > “Run into the store and buy Dad a pack of cigarettes.” Yep. No age to buy cigs or to smoke. There was a designated smoking area at my high school called “the smoking pit”. And it was official. Was even mentioned in the .school handbook. I could legally drink most of my senior year in high school. The age was 18. 8-track tapes. Jebus Gawd they were awful. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/60 "2021-10-25T06:16:06Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > For us, it was a Thrify drugstore of all places Going to the drug store for an ice cream cone would probably elicit some strange looks from people only a few years younger than myself. Watching filmstrips and slideshows in class where the audio was played separately and there was a beep to tell the teacher to press a button to switch to the next slide. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/61 "2021-10-25T06:31:57Z")
[quote=“Smapti, post:60, topic:953138, full:true”] > [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Watching filmstrips and slideshows in class where the audio was played separately and there was a beep to tell the teacher to press a button to switch to the next slide. Can you even have film developed into slides anymore? My Dad had about 10K pictures all on slides. You have to load this crummy magazine in a projector. Sometimes the metal slide frame would get stuck inside the projector and it was a major pain to get it out, [![](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/b5/73/acb57385c5118716f60c48eef0ccc324.jpg) ](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/b5/73/acb57385c5118716f60c48eef0ccc324.jpg) [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=2) [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=4)