# 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:** 42
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2021, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/823 "2021-12-23T18:24:12Z")
Used them for bookshelves. One at each end and a board on top. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2021, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/824 "2021-12-23T20:20:25Z")
> [@digs](#): > > My “something from childhood” persisted until the late 70s: a city that only used four digits for phone numbers. > > And this was a good-sized town. It was the county seat and a college town About 25 years ago, a good college friend was ordained in a tiny, historic Universalist church in the equally tiny town of Canon, Georgia, population 804. Driving in felt like stepping back in time 50 years; the church, a one-room white clapboard building with tiltable casement windows, puncheon floor, and oak pews, did not have air conditioning. So the pews were scattered with paper fans, donated by and advertising the local funeral home. I noticed that the phone number omitted not only the area code, but the exchange - it was simply four numbers. I felt like I had somehow entered Maycomb, from _To Kill A Mockingbird_, save for the odd fact that this historic 19th c. building was a _Universalist_ church. Had you merely glanced, you’d assume it was a Primitive Baptist or Wesleyan Methodist congregation. ---
**Author:** ![Ricc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/73ab20/32.png) [@Ricc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ricc)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/825 "2022-03-14T03:51:23Z")
I remember buying a 128 Meg. Hard drive, the electronic clerk said “you’ll never fill this one up” Not to be bragging, but I had 8 megs of RAM in that computer at 50 bucks a Meg. Lol ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/826 "2022-03-14T10:20:22Z")
A nice cup of Sanka. ---
**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:** [March 14, 2022, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/827 "2022-03-14T15:58:17Z")
Postum! And Ovaltine. – just checked. Apparently both of them are still available. And so is Sanka. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/828 "2022-03-14T17:24:56Z")
> [@Ricc](#): > > I remember buying a 128 Meg. Hard drive, the electronic clerk said “you’ll never fill this one up” > Not to be bragging, but I had 8 megs of RAM in that computer at 50 bucks a Meg. Lol I’d get that 40MB hard disk but only a sysop would need that much space and I ain’t running the WWIV BBS. If I need extra space I’ll run my MFM drive off of my RLL controller. But it is nice that those IDE drives park your heads for you so you don’t have to park them yourselves. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/829 "2022-03-14T18:23:13Z")
Heh. First computer had 30MB. It had a number of programs on it. To use them, you would have to zip down one and unzip the other. ---
**Author:** ![Pabitel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbce88/32.png) [@Pabitel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pabitel)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/830 "2022-03-14T19:26:51Z")
Turning the dial on the antenna rotor control to move the antenna on the roof into the right direction for the TV channel you are trying to watch. ---
**Author:** ![Pabitel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbce88/32.png) [@Pabitel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pabitel)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/831 "2022-03-14T19:34:30Z")
On a similar note, knowing you stayed up really late because the national anthem starts playing and then the channel goes off the air. ---
**Author:** ![Cardigan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardigan/32/187_2.png) [@Cardigan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardigan)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/832 "2022-03-14T19:35:17Z")
Cigar boxes were once quite common and were handily re-used as containers for storing all sorts of things. ---
**Author:** ![BrickBat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@BrickBat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrickBat)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/833 "2022-03-14T20:13:36Z")
> [@Pabitel](#): > > On a similar note, knowing you stayed up really late because the national anthem starts playing and then the channel goes off the air. I remember that well as a small child. The transition from the end of the national anthem to the harsh static and “snow” screen was quite jarring. ---
**Author:** ![Briny\_Deep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/briny_deep/32/17188_2.png) [@Briny\_Deep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Briny_Deep)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/834 "2022-03-14T21:25:39Z")
Oh yeah, and Brussels sprouts were objectively terrible. Someone should do a thread on how foods have changed in 25 or 50 or 100 years – not recipes and styles, but the ingredients themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/835 "2022-03-14T21:34:50Z")
There was a book, containing the full name, home address and phone number of everyone in the city or region. Everyone in the region was given a copy of the book containing everyone else’s name, address and phone numbers. If you didn’t want to be in the book, you had to ask to be left out. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/836 "2022-03-14T22:09:21Z")
I was told to change the channel\*. And jiggle or hold the antenna. \*ETA: as in get up off the floor/couch, go to the TV, and turn the knob. ---
**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:** [March 14, 2022, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/837 "2022-03-14T22:18:36Z")
> [@Briny\_Deep](#): > > Brussels sprouts were objectively terrible Brussels sprouts were perfectly fine, in fact delicious, as long as two conditions were met: 1) the person eating them wasn’t a strong taster of the particular chemical involved (there’s a good bit of individual variation) and b) they were harvested after a good hard frost, which would bring the sugar content up in the sprouts as antifreeze, and seriously reduce the bitterness. ---
**Author:** ![Briny\_Deep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/briny_deep/32/17188_2.png) [@Briny\_Deep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Briny_Deep)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/838 "2022-03-14T22:28:58Z")
I was under the impression that there’d been a great advancement, in the last 25-50 years, in terms of the common variety grown, or in planting and harvesting methods. Incidentally, I think most people also got a bit better at cooking all vegetables in the same period – not boiling them to death, specifically – but in the case of Brussels sprouts I thought the vegetable itself had gotten better. Given that the strong taster factor probably wouldn’t have changed, if nothing else it must be that the technique of harvesting after a frost became more common, do you think? ---
**Author:** ![Briny\_Deep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/briny_deep/32/17188_2.png) [@Briny\_Deep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Briny_Deep)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/839 "2022-03-14T22:31:47Z")
> [@Pabitel](#): > > Turning the dial on the antenna rotor control to move the antenna on the roof into the right direction for the TV channel you are trying to watch. And here I thought I grew up in privilege because we took the TV Guide (the real one) every week. 🙂 To move the antenna, someone had to climb up on the roof. ---
**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:** [March 14, 2022, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/840 "2022-03-14T22:35:59Z")
“Sanka.” “You’re Wilkins.” ---
**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:** [March 14, 2022, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/841 "2022-03-14T22:56:32Z")
> [@Briny\_Deep](#): > > I was under the impression that there’d been a great advancement, in the last 25-50 years, in terms of the common variety grown, or in planting and harvesting methods. Incidentally, I think most people also got a bit better at cooking all vegetables in the same period – not boiling them to death, specifically – but in the case of Brussels sprouts I thought the vegetable itself had gotten better. Given that the strong taster factor probably wouldn’t have changed, if nothing else it must be that the technique of harvesting after a frost became more common, do you think? For produce in general, if anything flavor’s been going downhill, as yield in weight per acre, shipping ability, and storage ability have been prioritized over flavor. Sometimes flavor’s been ignored entirely – I remember in particular going to one growers’ meeting years ago at which a company was talking with great enthusiasm about their tomatoes. After listening to this for a while I raised my hand and asked what the flavor was like, as that hadn’t been mentioned. The presenters hadn’t the faintest idea, and seemed astonished to have been asked the question. For brussels sprouts in particular, it gets more complicated. [In the 1990’s, they sorted out the compounds, and started breeding to reduce the bitter factor](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/30/773457637/from-culinary-dud-to-stud-how-dutch-plant-breeders-built-our-brussels-sprouts-bo); so most modern varieties are now less bitter than the ones being grown in, say, the 1980’s. However – note, in the article cited (and in others) the information that in order to do that breeding they hunted through older varieties no longer commonly grown by the 90’s, and indeed found strains that were less bitter to breed from. So it seems to me that they’d been breeding for years for yield, not for flavor (shipping ability is less of an issue for brussels sprouts, which ship and store pretty well anyway as long as they’re kept cold); and so the flavor had probably been getting worse over the years before it started getting better. I think if anything the technique of harvesting after a frost has probably become less common. The idea of a vegetable being grown only in climates that will produce such frost at the right time, and of timing harvests only for the relatively limited length of time before first hard frost and the arrival of weather cold enough to damage the quality even of brussels sprouts (how cold that is also varies with variety, and the length of time between those two temperatures will vary considerably both with region and with the year), doesn’t fit well with the modern ideas that everything should be available all year and should be grown where the most sunshine is available. ---
**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:** [March 15, 2022, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/842 "2022-03-15T00:19:58Z")
> [@Briny\_Deep](#): > > Incidentally, I think most people also got a bit better at cooking all vegetables in the same period – not boiling them to death, specifically – but in the case of Brussels sprouts I thought the vegetable itself had gotten better. Given that the strong taster factor probably wouldn’t have changed, if nothing else it must be that the technique of harvesting after a frost became more common, do you think? Never liked Brussel Sprouts. People said they were like little cabbages, but I _like_ cooked cabbage. I don’t (generally) like Brussel Sprouts. Then, I had them at a local restaurant that roasted them with balsamic vinegar, garlic, some other ingredients…but most importantly roasted them until the leaves were edged in black. That dish I’ll eat. Also, it’s the most ordered dish at the restaurant. Nearly every table orders it as an hors d’ouevre. ETA: Thanks @thorny_locust ! Valuable information. [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=41) [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=43)