Without saying your age, what's something from your childhood that a younger person wouldn't understand?

[Princhester]

@thorny_locust

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.

Oh. They were unpluggable in Australia.

@Andy_L

I’ll bet kids don’t scrounge through the neighborhood any more looking for glass bottles to turn in for a nickel.

There was a bottle/glass dump at a local catholic school near us. We found that heaps of profligate people just dumped returnable bottles there, along with the non-returnable bottles the dump was intended to accept. So for a while we could get $2 or so (phwoar!) any time we wanted by going to the bottle dump and picking out the returnable bottles. Conveniently, the corner store where you could return bottles also sold confectionary.

Then the local catholic priest noticed us doing this and put a lock on the bottle dump. He had no plans to return the bottles himself, you understand. He was just a cranky old asshole.

[jaycat]

Darkrooms
Halftones
Blocks of wax (to put in the waxer and melt, for “cut and paste.”)
Compugraphics and Varitypers.
Developer and fixer.
Cutting rubies.

[Galactus]

If I wanted to play video games I had to go to an arcade.

[GuanoLad]

@mbh

My schools used mimeographs and ditto machines

We called it a Gestetner.

[Andy_L]

Bench seats in the front, so a kid could sit between Mom and Dad in the car (no seat belt, natch!)

[Procrustus]

@Andy_L

Bench seats in the front, so a kid could sit between Mom and Dad in the car

Or if you just wanted to snuggle up to your girlfriend/boyfriend while driving.

[Andy_L]

I’m not quite that old.

[thorny_locust]

@burpo_the_wonder_mutt

Japanese beetles and lightning bugs (Fireflies).

We’ve still got both.

@Princhester

They were unpluggable in Australia.

Ah. You were ahead of the USA.

(Or aren’t talking about the 50’s and 60’s.)

– Scabby knees and sunburns were normal. Complaining about them, if you were older than about 3, would get you called a crybaby (whatever gender you were.)

[kitap]

@phs3

@MrAtoz

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

Known in the industry as “knuckle busters” or “zip-zap machines”. And finally vanishing for realz as cards stop being embossed.

My hotel still has one in case the power goes down or there is a prolonged computer outage, like the server being moved.

[elfkin477]

*Pshhhkkkkkkrrrrkakingkakingkakingtshchchchchchchchcch *ding *ding ding"

[kenobi_65]

@thorny_locust

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.

In the U.S., the old AT&T/Western Electric wall phones, like this one, were usually hardwired:

But, at least when I was a kid in the '70s, a lot of desk phones, like this one, were plugged into the wall with a cord, which could be unplugged:

The plug looked like this:

And the wall outlet looked like this:

https://www.oldphoneworks.com/images/P/DSC_0051-04.JPG

[thorny_locust]

@kenobi_65

at least when I was a kid in the '70s, a lot of desk phones, like this one, were plugged into the wall with a cord:

In my recollection, also, phones that could be unplugged started showing up in the 70’s (along with phones that had buttons instead of dials). But I was talking about the 50’s and 60’s.

[kenobi_65]

@thorny_locust

But I was talking about the 50’s and 60’s.

Ah, gotcha! My apologies.

[Keeve]

@kenobi_65

The plug looked like this:

Whatcha got there, just to educate the young 'uns, is actually a semi-modern adapter plug. Note the jack on top where a modern networking type plug could go. Prior to that, there would be a cord going from a desktop phone directly into that plug.

[DCnDC]

Mix tapes in general. There was something special about making, and giving, or receiving a mix tape. Somebody took at least that amount of time to create it for you, because it was all analog and real-time recording. I don’t really know, but I don’t feel like “Hey I made this playlist for you” carries the same cachet.

[TreacherousCretin]

@elfkin477

*Pshhhkkkkkkrrrrkakingkakingkakingtshchchchchchchchcch *ding *ding ding"

Is that a dial-up modem? (Dave Barry compared it to “a duck choking on a kazoo.”)

[Princhester]

@thorny_locust

Ah. You were ahead of the USA.

(Or aren’t talking about the 50’s and 60’s.)

Well my memory only goes back to very early seventies but if they had been unpluggable earlier, they must have made a concerted effort to upgrade everything, because I never saw a hardwired phone or the remnants of one.

[SuntanLotion]

You could buy laundry detergent that had a towel in it!

[gnarator]

Me too. I started at 11, though.

[phs3]

@kitap

My hotel still has one in case the power goes down or there is a prolonged computer outage, like the server being moved.

Better point out that more and more cards are no longer embossed, suggest they get a phone-based solution as a backup.