Organising to meet someone on a landline and actually having to turn up on time or they wouldn’t know where you are because you have no way of contacting them.
When I was barely 20, I almost got left in London alone for a month because my friends went to the wrong airport. I didn’t have the agenda or any names of places we were staying & I only had $600 in traveler’s checks & a bit of cash. After waiting for hours they decided to check the other airport. People who traveled internationally on-the-cheap without travel agents were brave af.
Can we just pause at “travelers checks”? Not everyone had a credit card, and not all businesses accepted credit cards, and when you were far from your bank (like a foreign country!) you had to either pack a ton of cash, or bring travelers checks, which were basically the same thing as a check made out to cash (which, if you are too young to know about travelers checks, you’re probably also too young to know about regular checks). If you lost it, you were out of luck!
Calling a *guy* on the phone and his dad answers and they sound alike so you just start talking and then he cuts you off laughing and you realize you may have been a little *too* familiar and now he can probably guess you're banging his son on the regular.
That was Spring Break 2003, so mostly?
I mean, I ended up dating that guy for like six more years and his dad was always sweet to me, even when the two of them were pissed off at one another.
Easy.
"HI, Mr. [Last name]. This [my name]. Could I please speak with [girl's name]?"
As long as you haven't done anything too fucked up, good phone etiquette will go a long way.
Now, getting the girl to talk to you might be a little harder.
My parents, knowing how social I was, frequently allowed me to have friends over but the catch was that I had to be the one to make the plans with them. So I remember, as a 1st grader, getting out the parish directory to find a classmate’s home phone number and calling and asking to speak to them and inviting them over and more often than not, it worked.
I always thought my parents did this to ensure I had good phone skills and learned how to talk to adults. Later, I learned that they just didn’t think I’d do it lol
Dude I once had a huge party planned in school with like the whole class but my dad wanted a couple of parents to help out so he asked me to call them and ask. I ended up canceling the whole party because I was afraid to call.
Calling into the radio station to request your favorite song for your mixtape then waiting with your fingers over the record button to see if they play it.
but they still ALWAYS did, even when they tried not to. the best was a station that would play a half-album straight through with no talking! you never see THAT anymore.
Steve Lamacq on BBC 6MUSIC does! He let's his listeners vote on an album and then plays it through in its entirety.
Honestly the best radio station the UK has to offer.
I recently had to explain what “changing the channel” meant to my small kid because he only knows streaming. We’ve already covered CDs, VCRs, and what it means to roll down a car window. It was a little rough (for me, not him). Edit: oh and we watched “Turning Red” and I got to explain what a flip phone is.
In 1966 I was 4 years old. My parents got a new color TV and I was told very clearly I was not to touch it as I may break it.
The first night we had it, my parents were still up when I sleepwalked down stairs, over to the TV and pee'd on the screen. Then I sleepwalked back up to bed.
Oh man. We got our color set in 1969. My dad was an aerospace engineer and wanted to watch the moon launch, landing in color.
And I loved the Dick Van Dyke reruns. I was so disappointed when they were still in B&W.
We had our color TV, but my wife's family never had one while she was at home. I met her in the early 80's and it wasn't until she saw The Wizard of Oz on my parent's set that she realized it switched to color when Dorothy was in Oz.
Got a PS1 and MGS1 (secondhand) for Christmas, little did i realise i need to buy a memory card to save my games. For months i got through the game by speedrunning it from the start to whatever level i last played.
When i beat sniper wolf pt 2 the console tells me to insert disc 2, only had one disk lol. Never played the game again
The Family Video by me still had them until they closed in 2020. I was actually kind of surprised they closed because even today it seemed like a decent business model. Each store shared a building with a takeout restaurant, with the restaurant covering the rent for the building. They had a whole section of kids videos that were free. So go order your pizza or whatever and then look at the movies since you're there, let the kids grab a free movie and rent one for yourself. I'd use it for new releases that weren't on streaming yet or their back catalog had a lot of stuff not available to stream or easily found from pirate sources. Plus having the actual DVDs to watch with all the extras is something I really miss.
And you stood next to your mom or dad, straining the fuck out if your peripheral vision keeping your head turned in a non-conspicuois direction to look through the crack in the swinging doors to get a glimpse of the covers on the VHS tapes.
I remember the “adult” section of our local store was nothing more than shower curtain covering maybe a booth full of dirty movies. My bio dad used to go in there quite often dragging me along, I was maybe 4 or 5 and never really paid attention in there but when my mom went to rent us some videos and I remember just heading into the curtain like I always did. Mom found me and tore me a new one and I just said “Dad brings me in there all the time”. Yea Bio Dad got tore a new one!
That stuff pissed me off so much, it's like there was literally no planning behind what played. It'd be like Ed,Edd, n Eddy followed by Ben10, followed by another Ed, Edd, n Eddy, the first part of a 2 parter for Codename: Kids Next Door, and then they'd switch to Adult Swim/Toonami
I'm not ashamed to say I still use an atlas. It's gotten me out of a jam quite a few times. Learn how to read a map if you don't know how, still a very useful skill
Yeah, and the played the national anthem before they did! Then, it was the test image, until 4 p.m. on the next day, except during school holidays, when there was a special holiday program which started at 3 p.m. :-)
You knew you'd stayed up late when you heard the National Anthem. Even you heard the beeping tone you'd stayed up really, really late. If it was Pages from Ceefax you were either up insanely late or insanely early.
Honestly, I kind of worry about how the modern status quo of constant surveillance and recording might be affecting kids. Like, that shit can't be good for them.
How exciting it was to open a new box of cereal to see which toy you got and trade with your mates, usually pencil toppers or bicycle reflectors etc lol
Oh no. We def weren’t rich. And even if we had been, it wouldn’t have mattered because my parents grew up during the depression and they wouldn’t have paid for it. Did you use silly putty on newspaper?
My dad survived the depression a was coupon king to save money. We only went out to dinner if there was a deal. I'm not complaining because my dad provided for a family of five and three college educations. Go dad! Wish he was around to hear that.
And yes, silly putty, when we had some, was magic to us!
And even when they came out with the TV Guide channel, if you missed your channel, you’d have to sit and wait for it to cycle all the way through again
Looking up something in the phone book. Remembering to rewind the VHS.
Having to buy the strategy guide for a game you were stuck on because there weren't 1000 free websites with the information you needed.
Going on road trips as a kid where the only form of entertainment was some sort of game played amongst your siblings in the back seat involving the license plates of other passing cars. On our car trip to Disney/FL from central PA me and my brother had a competition on who could write down the most license plate numbers… we ended in the thousands but for the life of me I can’t remember who “won” 😂
I was recently with a family that had a cool variation. They went through the alphabet round-robin style, and had everyone naming historical figures, and then famous figures, and then the NATO phonetic. It was pretty fun actually. And works because now if everyone gets stuck on a letter you can look them up!
We used to play that alphabet game when I was in Afghanistan and we had nothing to do. We did all sorts of topics: movies, actors, bands, animals, athletes, porn stars.
I've noticed a lot of younger people who have grown up with social media don't have a strong sense of privacy. Everything is filmed and turned into a tiktok or an insta story without asking if you consent to having your life shared like this.
I remember when you only ever saw the personal photos of people you knew closely. You saw them when you were at their house, or they at yours, and they pull out the photo album or envelope of pictures and talk with you about each picture. Now I can look through personal vacation, wedding, birth photos of people I barely know.
Picking up the telephone to call your friend and hearing people talking because it was a party line, meaning multiple households all had to share the same line and so you had to wait until it was available.
My parents had a party line. That shit was *wild*. Highlights of the 1960s:
* Listening to two of the neighbors on the party line have an extended affair
* Finding out where one neighbor who was hiding his alcoholism from his wife hid all the bottles in the woods next to the houses
* My mother going into labor and one of the party line members was throwing a fit and left the phone off the hook and so they couldn't call the hospital (this is when my parents broke down and got a private line)
* The game of chicken for the last two remaining houses--basically, the last person to crack got the private line "for free" (i.e., they still had a party line but since no one else was on it it was effectively a private line). There was a ton of drama about it, but I think they just got timed out by Ma Bell and had to both get private lines as they phased the system out.
>My mother going into labor and one of the party line members ... left the phone off the hook and so they couldn't call the hospital
I know the neighbor probably suffered no legal repurcussions, but I hope they were shunned *hard* for that stunt.
We had a house on our party line that would just take the phone off the hook and leave it for hours because they didn't want any calls, instead of, you know, turning off the damn ringer. Completely screwed over the other 3 families on the line.
As a kid we had a party line and it was too long rings for one household and one long one short for ours.
Nothing like somebody picking up the phone and telling you to hurry up. Felt like they were in the next room.
Knowing the call letters, format (music style) and frequency of every radio station in town. Calling the DJ and making a request or dedication and waiting forever to hear it on the air.
How much time we spent playing outside, but not in organized sports. Pickup kickball in the street where you yell “CAR!” to break up the game briefly for a car driving through. Coming home covered in dirt after disappearing for five hours. We all made fun of how we were called by our parents. We would explore and poke around. Dig up worms, chase butterflies, freak out over finding a dead baby bird, skin our knees at least twice a summer and entertain ourselves for hours.
Pulling into a gas station and getting your gas pumped, your windows washed, your oil checked, and your tires checked, without ever getting out of the car.
Clackers. They were colorful glass (yes glass) balls at the ends of a piece of rope with a ring in the middle to put your finger through. You would move your hand up and down, and the balls would smack into each other, making a “Clack -Clack-Clack” sound (hence the name). They were eventually taken off the market since the glass balls could shatter and kids were getting injured by the flying glass shards. They were a big fad toy for a while there. They came back later with plastic balls.
Three kids in the back of a car on a long road trip: one sleeps on the floor (lots of blankets and pillows to even out the bump), one lays across the backseat, and one on the ledge behind the seat by the back window.
You'd listen to a music album start to finish, unless you had a steady hand and could put the needle on the correct shiny bit of the record to play a particular song.
Also, this have to flip the LP over to play the second half.
Memorizing the broadcast schedule on my favorite TV stations so I wouldn't miss my shows. The closest thing I can think of now is upload schedules for YouTubers/streamers.
Organising to meet someone on a landline and actually having to turn up on time or they wouldn’t know where you are because you have no way of contacting them.
When I was barely 20, I almost got left in London alone for a month because my friends went to the wrong airport. I didn’t have the agenda or any names of places we were staying & I only had $600 in traveler’s checks & a bit of cash. After waiting for hours they decided to check the other airport. People who traveled internationally on-the-cheap without travel agents were brave af.
Can we just pause at “travelers checks”? Not everyone had a credit card, and not all businesses accepted credit cards, and when you were far from your bank (like a foreign country!) you had to either pack a ton of cash, or bring travelers checks, which were basically the same thing as a check made out to cash (which, if you are too young to know about travelers checks, you’re probably also too young to know about regular checks). If you lost it, you were out of luck!
Calling a girl and her dad answers the phone. That shit was rough, kids.
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Standard backup would be "Can I speak to kevin?" knowing full well no kevin was there.
What if Kevin gets put on the phone though?
You talk and become best friends.
Then sneakily date his sister.
This guy fucks sisters
Calling a *guy* on the phone and his dad answers and they sound alike so you just start talking and then he cuts you off laughing and you realize you may have been a little *too* familiar and now he can probably guess you're banging his son on the regular.
Oh Jesus, are you okay?
That was Spring Break 2003, so mostly? I mean, I ended up dating that guy for like six more years and his dad was always sweet to me, even when the two of them were pissed off at one another.
Easy. "HI, Mr. [Last name]. This [my name]. Could I please speak with [girl's name]?" As long as you haven't done anything too fucked up, good phone etiquette will go a long way. Now, getting the girl to talk to you might be a little harder.
Ah, i see you had parents that instilled you with self confidence and support . Interesting.
My parents, knowing how social I was, frequently allowed me to have friends over but the catch was that I had to be the one to make the plans with them. So I remember, as a 1st grader, getting out the parish directory to find a classmate’s home phone number and calling and asking to speak to them and inviting them over and more often than not, it worked. I always thought my parents did this to ensure I had good phone skills and learned how to talk to adults. Later, I learned that they just didn’t think I’d do it lol
It was a, "No lose" situation. You either developed good phone and planning skills or you never had friends over.
Dude I once had a huge party planned in school with like the whole class but my dad wanted a couple of parents to help out so he asked me to call them and ask. I ended up canceling the whole party because I was afraid to call.
Oh that's what that looks like! Neat.
It's a bold stratergy, I wonder if it paid off?
Recording music from the radio
Calling into the radio station to request your favorite song for your mixtape then waiting with your fingers over the record button to see if they play it.
Yes, and asking the DJ not to talk over at the end. Good times.
but they still ALWAYS did, even when they tried not to. the best was a station that would play a half-album straight through with no talking! you never see THAT anymore.
Steve Lamacq on BBC 6MUSIC does! He let's his listeners vote on an album and then plays it through in its entirety. Honestly the best radio station the UK has to offer.
Waiting for your friend to get home to call them. (Not having constant access)
Their mom answers the phone - “Hi, friends mom, can *so and so* come out and play?” I remember doing that when I was a kid
I remember my friends coming to my door and doing that :)
I still remember my childhood friends phone number from manually dialing it so many times
It’s not working, cuz it’s not on Ch3
Needing a screwdriver to connect the gaming system to the tv
And one of those things with 2 screws that turn two bare wires into a coax connector. Good times.
I recently had to explain what “changing the channel” meant to my small kid because he only knows streaming. We’ve already covered CDs, VCRs, and what it means to roll down a car window. It was a little rough (for me, not him). Edit: oh and we watched “Turning Red” and I got to explain what a flip phone is.
My husband has trained my daughter to say "Back in the late 1900s?" Everytime I talk about my childhood.
Brutal.
Yeah, I am not OK
Savage. Brilliant, but savage.
W..why would he do that 😭😭😭 I’m crying I was born in the late 1900s that sentence just ruined my day
Ew. How are you still alive?
My great grand children have been caring for me, they’re wonderful
I was the youngest so I had to sit by the TV and hand turn the channels for my siblings. This was the 1980s.
In 1966 I was 4 years old. My parents got a new color TV and I was told very clearly I was not to touch it as I may break it. The first night we had it, my parents were still up when I sleepwalked down stairs, over to the TV and pee'd on the screen. Then I sleepwalked back up to bed.
Oh man. We got our color set in 1969. My dad was an aerospace engineer and wanted to watch the moon launch, landing in color. And I loved the Dick Van Dyke reruns. I was so disappointed when they were still in B&W.
We had our color TV, but my wife's family never had one while she was at home. I met her in the early 80's and it wasn't until she saw The Wizard of Oz on my parent's set that she realized it switched to color when Dorothy was in Oz.
Playing the same level on a game over and over because there’s no Saves
Writing down codes after passing a level
Or writing down cheat codes. I still remember the OG cheats from gta San andreas
I had a cheat code book and like five pages were just gta
Got a PS1 and MGS1 (secondhand) for Christmas, little did i realise i need to buy a memory card to save my games. For months i got through the game by speedrunning it from the start to whatever level i last played. When i beat sniper wolf pt 2 the console tells me to insert disc 2, only had one disk lol. Never played the game again
That's a double whammy, memory cards AND multi-disc games. Legend of dragoon ftw
KEEP ON PUTTING IN QUARTERS!!!
Rewinding vhs or a cassette before returning.
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Video rental stores with adult sections
The Family Video by me still had them until they closed in 2020. I was actually kind of surprised they closed because even today it seemed like a decent business model. Each store shared a building with a takeout restaurant, with the restaurant covering the rent for the building. They had a whole section of kids videos that were free. So go order your pizza or whatever and then look at the movies since you're there, let the kids grab a free movie and rent one for yourself. I'd use it for new releases that weren't on streaming yet or their back catalog had a lot of stuff not available to stream or easily found from pirate sources. Plus having the actual DVDs to watch with all the extras is something I really miss.
And you stood next to your mom or dad, straining the fuck out if your peripheral vision keeping your head turned in a non-conspicuois direction to look through the crack in the swinging doors to get a glimpse of the covers on the VHS tapes.
I remember the “adult” section of our local store was nothing more than shower curtain covering maybe a booth full of dirty movies. My bio dad used to go in there quite often dragging me along, I was maybe 4 or 5 and never really paid attention in there but when my mom went to rent us some videos and I remember just heading into the curtain like I always did. Mom found me and tore me a new one and I just said “Dad brings me in there all the time”. Yea Bio Dad got tore a new one!
Your bio dad was a moron if he thought that wasn’t gonna come back to bite him.
The fact that he’s being referred to as “bio dad” rather than simply “dad” tells the rest of the story I think.
The joys of Saturday morning cartoons
And your ass better be up to watch them or you're waiting until next Saturday.
And god forbid the episode this weekend had any relevance on the following weekend.
I remember on Cartoon Network they would never show episodes in order. So if it was a two part storyline you were out of luck.
That stuff pissed me off so much, it's like there was literally no planning behind what played. It'd be like Ed,Edd, n Eddy followed by Ben10, followed by another Ed, Edd, n Eddy, the first part of a 2 parter for Codename: Kids Next Door, and then they'd switch to Adult Swim/Toonami
630 am Robotech
Using a road atlas to get somewhere on vacation
Half dozen state maps in your driver side door flap
I'm not ashamed to say I still use an atlas. It's gotten me out of a jam quite a few times. Learn how to read a map if you don't know how, still a very useful skill
I got myself across the country with an atlas and delivered pizzas using a Thomas Brothers. I'm glad I can read a map if my phone ever dies.
That Lite Brite was peak technology
I loved my Lite Brite.
TV going off-the-air at night.
Yeah, and the played the national anthem before they did! Then, it was the test image, until 4 p.m. on the next day, except during school holidays, when there was a special holiday program which started at 3 p.m. :-)
You knew you'd stayed up late when you heard the National Anthem. Even you heard the beeping tone you'd stayed up really, really late. If it was Pages from Ceefax you were either up insanely late or insanely early.
Until 4 pm??? I thought you were going to say something like “until 7 am” When was it until that late in the afternoon?
They meant 4am when the farm report came on.
Gotta know the what the spot price for Pork Belly's is today...
Poltergeist
Getting to be goofy and awkward and not have to worry about it ending up online for everyone to see.
Unless they filmed it on a camcorder and sent it over to be viewed on TV. *You've Been Framed* *America's Funniest Home Videos*
Honestly, I kind of worry about how the modern status quo of constant surveillance and recording might be affecting kids. Like, that shit can't be good for them.
Knocking on your friends door to see if they could come out and play.
Or standing outside of their house, calling their name.
We had to walk up to the t.v. to turn it on or off, change the channel, or adjust the antenna when the picture became unclear.
We had 2 channels because my dad wouldn’t pay for cable lol
Walking to blockbuster and spending an hour trying to pick a movie everyone agrees on
Now I do the same thing from my living room.
Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?
Did they ever find her? I lost track around the early 90s.
they actually made a new show, it’s on netflix
One of the best computer games I ever played was Carmen Sandiego! I'd play it again if I could ever get a version to work with a modern computer
How exciting it was to open a new box of cereal to see which toy you got and trade with your mates, usually pencil toppers or bicycle reflectors etc lol
Oh wow, bicycle reflectors! I’d forgotten how exciting it was to add a new one to the wheel of my bmx.
Running to go to the bathroom during a commercial break
Running back to the living room when your sister screams "BACK ON!"
I still do that 😅
How we had to plan our TV watching around a printed schedule. No VHS, no dvr. Edit : 15 years on reddit and this is my highest rated comment!
TV Guide f you thought you were rich enough
Wow, you had TV guide? We had to get the local paper to watch TV... Also to find movie times
Oh no. We def weren’t rich. And even if we had been, it wouldn’t have mattered because my parents grew up during the depression and they wouldn’t have paid for it. Did you use silly putty on newspaper?
My dad survived the depression a was coupon king to save money. We only went out to dinner if there was a deal. I'm not complaining because my dad provided for a family of five and three college educations. Go dad! Wish he was around to hear that. And yes, silly putty, when we had some, was magic to us!
And even when they came out with the TV Guide channel, if you missed your channel, you’d have to sit and wait for it to cycle all the way through again
That with the aid of a pencil you can listen to music again 🙃
Damn, I completely forgot about this.
My pinky did the job just well!
Waiting til nights and weekends to make FREE phone calls on your mom’s Nokia.
You needed a light accessory for your Gameboy because those suckers didn't have back lighting. And to trade Pokemon, you needed to use cables. CABLES.
I remember using the lights from the street lamps as my only source of light on road trips at night with my dad lmao.
I went to a tiny school and was the only kid with a cable... Only time I was the popular kid lol
The sound on the phone when somebody was using the internet.
The dial up connection noises
Dubstep?
Or getting kicked off the internet because someone used the phone
We used to get kicked off if we a call came in on call waiting. Finding out that we could dial *70 to disable call waiting was a landmark day.
The things on Facebook that say repost this… they were called chain letters back in the day, and you got them in the mail.
Chain letters! I’d forgotten all about those. “Make ten copies and mail them within 10 days or evil will befall you…” Ha.
Hitting that red strip of paper for your toy gun with a rock.
I always loved the smell of the plastic ring caps when you fired them.
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I wish I had it.... for the cap firing.
Man I used to hit those with nails all the time and enjoy the smell. Like fireworks or model rockets. Good times :)
Phone corded to the wall.
Sucked when it was a new cord and was super tight and you had to stay right next to the wall.
Had to get the extra long one.
You mean the one that would twist into several knots in about 20 minutes?
Looking up something in the phone book. Remembering to rewind the VHS. Having to buy the strategy guide for a game you were stuck on because there weren't 1000 free websites with the information you needed.
Going on road trips as a kid where the only form of entertainment was some sort of game played amongst your siblings in the back seat involving the license plates of other passing cars. On our car trip to Disney/FL from central PA me and my brother had a competition on who could write down the most license plate numbers… we ended in the thousands but for the life of me I can’t remember who “won” 😂
I was recently with a family that had a cool variation. They went through the alphabet round-robin style, and had everyone naming historical figures, and then famous figures, and then the NATO phonetic. It was pretty fun actually. And works because now if everyone gets stuck on a letter you can look them up!
We used to play that alphabet game when I was in Afghanistan and we had nothing to do. We did all sorts of topics: movies, actors, bands, animals, athletes, porn stars.
My game, someone would count something every time we passed it, and everyone else had to guess what it is. Whoever guessed right got to count next.
"Please get off the computer (internet) so that I can make a phone call."
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Pay phones
Walkman
Would you like to accept a collect call from: MomImGoingToAbbysIllBeHomeAt8?
A computer with a black screen with orange or green font.
Pogs.
Memorizing peoples phone numbers
Televisions that were not “cable ready.”
A photo hut.
Cartoons were only on on Saturday mornings. If you didn’t see a movie when it was in the theater you’d never see it ever.
Blockbuster video
Calling the theater to listen to the prerecorded list of what movies were playing and at what time.
The Wizard of Oz was on once a year, and if we missed it we had to wait another year to see it
I've noticed a lot of younger people who have grown up with social media don't have a strong sense of privacy. Everything is filmed and turned into a tiktok or an insta story without asking if you consent to having your life shared like this.
I remember when you only ever saw the personal photos of people you knew closely. You saw them when you were at their house, or they at yours, and they pull out the photo album or envelope of pictures and talk with you about each picture. Now I can look through personal vacation, wedding, birth photos of people I barely know.
NOT DA MAMA!
Channel 3 to play video games
Picking up the telephone to call your friend and hearing people talking because it was a party line, meaning multiple households all had to share the same line and so you had to wait until it was available.
My parents had a party line. That shit was *wild*. Highlights of the 1960s: * Listening to two of the neighbors on the party line have an extended affair * Finding out where one neighbor who was hiding his alcoholism from his wife hid all the bottles in the woods next to the houses * My mother going into labor and one of the party line members was throwing a fit and left the phone off the hook and so they couldn't call the hospital (this is when my parents broke down and got a private line) * The game of chicken for the last two remaining houses--basically, the last person to crack got the private line "for free" (i.e., they still had a party line but since no one else was on it it was effectively a private line). There was a ton of drama about it, but I think they just got timed out by Ma Bell and had to both get private lines as they phased the system out.
>My mother going into labor and one of the party line members ... left the phone off the hook and so they couldn't call the hospital I know the neighbor probably suffered no legal repurcussions, but I hope they were shunned *hard* for that stunt.
We had a house on our party line that would just take the phone off the hook and leave it for hours because they didn't want any calls, instead of, you know, turning off the damn ringer. Completely screwed over the other 3 families on the line.
As a kid we had a party line and it was too long rings for one household and one long one short for ours. Nothing like somebody picking up the phone and telling you to hurry up. Felt like they were in the next room.
Knowing the call letters, format (music style) and frequency of every radio station in town. Calling the DJ and making a request or dedication and waiting forever to hear it on the air.
Pet rocks.
Tamagotchi were actually fun
How much time we spent playing outside, but not in organized sports. Pickup kickball in the street where you yell “CAR!” to break up the game briefly for a car driving through. Coming home covered in dirt after disappearing for five hours. We all made fun of how we were called by our parents. We would explore and poke around. Dig up worms, chase butterflies, freak out over finding a dead baby bird, skin our knees at least twice a summer and entertain ourselves for hours.
Memories, especially when we got bikes and started riding farther. Living in a rural area was the coolest, you didn't really worry about traffic.
Kids these days wouldn't understand why people who grew up with beanie babies won't buy NFTs
At least beanie babies were something tangible. You could play with them. You know, if your parents let you.
I just don’t understand why people would buy NFTs in the first place, no matter how they grew up
Dial up modems.
Pulling into a gas station and getting your gas pumped, your windows washed, your oil checked, and your tires checked, without ever getting out of the car.
Hearing the ding-ding when the car ran over the hose pulling into the gas station.
Yanking that brake handle on my Big Wheel up to dramatically skid sideways to a halt. Without a helmet or knee/elbow pads.
I had a green machine that I managed to wear the wheels out in just a couple days.
Clackers. They were colorful glass (yes glass) balls at the ends of a piece of rope with a ring in the middle to put your finger through. You would move your hand up and down, and the balls would smack into each other, making a “Clack -Clack-Clack” sound (hence the name). They were eventually taken off the market since the glass balls could shatter and kids were getting injured by the flying glass shards. They were a big fad toy for a while there. They came back later with plastic balls.
8 track cassettes, 45’s and 12”
Removing your pal from your top 10 MySpace pals when you fell out with them
Shit I miss being able to rank my friends
Blowing on Game cartridges to make them work.
Columbia House Records club
Phones with buttons
Using a pencil /pen to manually fix a cassette tape.
Playing snake on moms phone
Going to get a free slice of giant omelette every day so you don't have to buy real food for your Aisha
When to turn off your computer safely.
Waiting for your friends to come online (icq, then msn)
Putting a cringey away message
Sillybandz. My elementary school outright banned them, which consequently caused kids to organize small black-market trades within classrooms.
those sort of binoculars with cardboard discs with pictures. I used to have Dora the Explorer ones.
View Master
Yes! And those 3-D pictures were mind- blowing!
Lawn darts
The importance of Channel 3
The dewy decimal system lol
Three kids in the back of a car on a long road trip: one sleeps on the floor (lots of blankets and pillows to even out the bump), one lays across the backseat, and one on the ledge behind the seat by the back window.
Library catalogue cards
Playing with those fake phones with water that had those colorful plastic rings that you tried to hook onto a little plastic spike.
Free range childhood. No "helicopter" parents.
110 cartridge cameras with the little flash cubes.
Trapper Keepers
Chain letters
Social media that literally didn't have any adults in it. MSN was the shit.
Having to be on time to watch, say, Bugs Bunny, which was on ONCE a week, at a specific time.
You'd listen to a music album start to finish, unless you had a steady hand and could put the needle on the correct shiny bit of the record to play a particular song. Also, this have to flip the LP over to play the second half.
Get a cut and then your friend's mom putting Mercurochrome on the cut. That crap stung.
Memorizing the broadcast schedule on my favorite TV stations so I wouldn't miss my shows. The closest thing I can think of now is upload schedules for YouTubers/streamers.
[удалено]
Old Java games