# 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:** 5
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/82 "2021-10-25T12:47:44Z")
It occurred to me that I can’t remember the last time I saw a cigarette vending machine. Used to be everywhere. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/83 "2021-10-25T13:29:57Z")
Whites-only beaches and train carriages Not having TV, of any kind. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/84 "2021-10-25T13:44:26Z")
If you were really fancy, after the gas station guy filled up your car, you might pay with your “gas card.” Which you would hand to the attendant, who would put it into a little mechanical gizmo, put some carbon paper on top of it, and slide a lever over it to make an imprint of the card. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/85 "2021-10-25T13:44:32Z")
We used to (recently) have a modern programmable thermostat that everyone hated and was constantly messing up. For uninteresting reasons, I needed to replace it and decided to get a simple [dial thermostat](https://cdn.valleyairconditioning.com/wp-content/uploads/FR_A_009-1-iStock-502131168-copy.jpg) like from my youth. Back in the day, they had mercury switches inside but now it’s a little circuit board but what I really wanted was simplicity that no one could mess up. I installed it, left the next day for work and came home to learn that no one in the house could figure out how it worked. It was like those Youtube videos where kids try to figure out how a cassette recorder works and they’re poking at it like monkeys and you’re thinking “This has to be fake…” ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/86 "2021-10-25T13:48:05Z")
Whiteout. ---
**Author:** ![brotherlouie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5e9695/32.png) [@brotherlouie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brotherlouie)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/87 "2021-10-25T13:51:24Z")
a man and his change purse ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/88 "2021-10-25T14:31:37Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > > [@digs](#): > > > > College registration, too. But those boxes were four to ten blocks away in each separate department. Well, the UW-Madison’s campus isn’t consolidated, it’s scattered around a downtown and an isthmus, so often the classrooms you have to walk between are over a mile away from each other. > > Lawdy, those registration days at Madison in the '80s were brutal. Nothing more frustrating than sprinting across campus, only to find that the class you needed was already closed. And it was always about 95 and humid or -20. Always. ---
**Author:** ![TRC4941](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trc4941/32/6792_2.png) [@TRC4941](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TRC4941)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/89 "2021-10-25T14:35:58Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > Listening to multiple new classic rock songs every week in moms kitchen or in Dads car on the new FM radio. Then waiting for shows like Ed Sullivan, the Midnight Special or American Bandstand in order to actually see your favorite groups. There were some groups/singers that I had no idea what they looked like unless they were on AB or MS because some of them didn’t have their pictures on their albums. The Steve Miller Band was one of them. I don’t think I ever saw them until I Googled them one day. How about song lyrics? You would hope and pray that the album you bought would have the lyrics to the songs on the inner sleeve. I remember listening to a song over and over, trying to decipher the lyrics and writing them down. 45 records for under a $1 My high school’s student smoking area was called The Chimney. Which was actually by the school’s chimney. A can of Shasta for 25 cents My mom would be handed a big piece of cardboard with a number on it after her groceries were bagged. Then she’d drive over to a conveyor belt thing outside of the store, hand the numbers to the kids working and her groceries would magically come down the conveyor belt in numbered bins. The kids would load them into the car and she would tip them 25 cents. I babysat for 50 cents/hour My sisters and I would fight over who got to stand on the hump in the backseat. That way, if we were in an accident, we would be launched directly out the front windshield. Pets rarely went to the vet. I think our city had 2 vets. Spaying and neutering weren’t done very often. We always got male dogs so we wouldn’t have to worry about puppies! Here’s a horrifying bit of history - when my dad thought our dog might have worms, he gave him gunpowder mixed in lard or Crisco! 😲 ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/90 "2021-10-25T14:36:48Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > up!” Still a thing in NJ. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/91 "2021-10-25T14:43:32Z")
> [@TRC4941](#): > > A can of Shasta for 25 cents Or an ice cream cone. When we’d visit my grandpa, he’d sometimes give us each a quarter to get an ice cream cone at Baskin-Robbin’s (and we could). ---
**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:** [October 25, 2021, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/92 "2021-10-25T14:54:39Z")
Having a glove compartment full of maps, and having to figure out how to get to some place you hadn’t been to before. There was a month and a half when hard wired remote controls were a thing. I felt bad for the families that bought a new VCR with a hard wired remote, then wireless came out. ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/93 "2021-10-25T14:57:55Z")
Most everything I could list has been covered — including the 2 p.m. Wednesday air raid siren test and the smell of mimeograph sheets — but: When you wanted to change the TV channel to one of the two or three others, you had to _get up and walk across the room_ (you wouldn’t be anywhere close to the set, because that would ruin your eyes). > [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > … Kids these days also don’t know about vertical and horizontal hold. Likewise brightness and contrast. And later, the color knobs (when a particular news commentator came on, it was customary at our house to turn him purple). ---
**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, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/94 "2021-10-25T15:04:17Z")
> [@Beelzebubbly](#): > > Also, they couldn’t be turned off. You couldn’t own them, you had to rent them from Bell Telephone. > [@Princhester](#): > > They didn’t work too well when not plugged in though They didn’t unplug; they were hardwired. You could leave the phone off the hook, but after a while it would start making noises at you. > [@Ulfreida](#): > > duck and cover drills. Now reinstated as hide from the shooter drills, aren’t they? > [@doreen](#): > > I think that depends on what size jug you are using - my parents had something similar to this [URL deleted] but without the spigot. They brought paper cups whether it was a trip to the beach or a picnic or a baseball game - because no matter where that jug went, it was kind of difficult to drink directly from a two gallon jug What was passed was usually a gallon jug or smaller. (And, eventually, wine bottles and joints.) ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/95 "2021-10-25T15:43:23Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > Oh yeah. Remember such things as this: > > _I can see paradise by–KA-CHUNK–the dashboard light_ > > Glad that 8-tracks have gone. Or, I’m listening to the _One Barrel Chase_ track from the **Jaws** soundtrack (at the beach, of course, I’m a fun guy) – the music builds up, and builds up, and fades out _KA-CHUNK_ and fades back in. Arrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh! > [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](#): > > I remember playing with the gaslights in my father’s buggy whip factory. That, and wearing an onion on my belt. You got five bees for a quarter? ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/96 "2021-10-25T15:46:22Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > long short short Our ‘ring’ was long short. It was contained in our phone number, which was 104-01. ‘104’ was the number of our party line, while ‘01’ denoted long (0) and short (1). Our neighbor’s ring was long short short; their number was 104-011. Grandpa’s ring was also long short, and his number was 123-01. His party line was ‘123’. Our local phone company upgraded to dial phones when I was 10. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/97 "2021-10-25T15:48:12Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > It occurred to me that I can’t remember the last time I saw a cigarette vending machine. I saw one about six months ago in a casino that just opened a few miles down the road. A pack of smokes was 12 bucks. Of course, it didn’t take cash, only plastic. ---
**Author:** ![pullin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@pullin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pullin)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/98 "2021-10-25T15:48:18Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I travelled across the country, in my 20’s, on my own. I found a phone about once a week and called my parents to let them know I was still alive. There were days, sometimes multiple days, when nobody who knew me knew, or expected to know, within a thousand miles where I was. This is one of the hardest parts for my kids to grasp. Back in the day, workers on pipelines and/or offshore rigs would be out of touch for long periods. My kids were astonished that I would leave to journey halfway round the world, and their mom might not hear from me for over a month (~1 week of travel, then 2-3 weeks for a letter to arrive home). Contrast this to: “The app says his plane landed in Paris 10 minutes ago – why isn’t he answering my texts?” ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/99 "2021-10-25T15:48:36Z")
Map books and triptiks from AAA. Relying on your passenger to give you directions. ETA: Holy-moly, AAA still offers Triptiks! ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanubv.2/32/3260_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUBv.2)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/100 "2021-10-25T16:00:02Z")
Disneyland used to have tickets to get on rides. They were categorized by letter, A through E, with A being the kiddie rides and the good rides like Matterhorn being E tickets. “E ticket” even became an expression meaning something is exciting. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_was\_in\_Saudi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b77776/32.png) [@Paul\_was\_in\_Saudi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_was_in_Saudi)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2021, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-saying-your-age-whats-something-from-your-childhood-that-a-younger-person-wouldnt-understand/953138/101 "2021-10-25T16:04:48Z")
We used to have ashtrays all over the house. Do they still make ashtrays? [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=4) [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=6)