Things About Your Childhood That Would Baffle Younger People Of Today

[LTS3]

I though my parents' house was the only weird one with an antenna in the attic

I remember typewriters. We had an 1960-ish heavy avocado green typewriter that had it's own bulky hard travel case. I'm pretty sure my parents still have it buried in a closet.

Mom tried to teach us how to use an abacus once to do math because we didn't have a calculator. It was too confusing The abacus is still in use today but no kid would know how to use it or even know what it's for.

 

[Stinky15]

Hilarious!

 

[LuxBear]

Born in early 80s here. A few things that come to mind:
• Drinking from the water hose outside in the summers.
• Chasing the street sweeper on bicycles around the whole neighborhood.
• Being outside all day in the summer. Come home for lunch, dinner and when the streetlights come on.
• Buying a whole bag of candy at the newsstand for $1.
• Picking up cordless phone conversations on walkie talkies.
• Spending the day at the community pool.
• Cool prizes in cereal boxes.
• Saving Koolaid points to mail in for stuff.
• Saturday morning cartoons.
• Those Reebok pump shoes.
• Eating homecooked dinner as a family at 5pm every night.
• Going to the arcade at the mall and spending all your quarters.

 

[GaryT]

We actually did walk up to 8 miles to school, depending on whether it was grammar school, junior high school or high school we were going to.

My grandma used to say, "I walked 20 miles to school, in the snow, and uphill both ways!" LOL

 

[GaryT]

Born in early 80s here. A few things that come to mind:
• Drinking from the water hose outside in the summers.
• Chasing the street sweeper on bicycles around the whole neighborhood.
• Being outside all day in the summer. Come home for lunch, dinner and when the streetlights come on.
• Buying a whole bag of candy at the newsstand for $1.
• Picking up cordless phone conversations on walkie talkies.
• Spending the day at the community pool.
• Cool prizes in cereal boxes.
• Saving Koolaid points to mail in for stuff.
• Saturday morning cartoons.
• Those Reebok pump shoes.
• Eating homecooked dinner as a family at 5pm every night.
• Going to the arcade at the mall and spending all your quarters.

Same applies here but, I was born in the mid 50's. My how fast things changed!

 

[NY cat man]

I though my parents' house was the only weird one with an antenna in the attic

I remember typewriters. We had an 1960-ish heavy avocado green typewriter that had it's own bulky hard travel case. I'm pretty sure my parents still have it buried in a closet.

Mom tried to teach us how to use an abacus once to do math because we didn't have a calculator. It was too confusing The abacus is still in use today but no kid would know how to use it or even know what it's for.

What is weird about it? We don't have to worry about roof leaks around the anchor screws, or wind damage, or getting hit by lightning. Besides, we get 57 channels as it stands now.

 

[GaryT]

Outhouses. We only had a single but the next door neighbors had a two seater. This allowed us kids to go in and hold hands while we did our business to protect each other from a kids biggest outhouse fear - falling in.

And burning our trash in barrels in the back yard - no such thing as waste pickup. And lighting the fire seemed to be a kids job.

YEP! I remember the outhouse out on the edge of the yard in my first childhood home. The only running water in the house was the kitchen sink! Lived there til I was 7. The first house with a shower was a marvel to us!

 

[NY cat man]

YEP! I remember the outhouse out on the edge of the yard in my first childhood home. The only running water in the house was the kitchen sink! Lived there til I was 7. The first house with a shower was a marvel to us!

You're lucky. The only running water we had was in the cow barn.

 

[GaryT]

You're lucky. The only running water we had was in the cow barn.

My childhood home and hometown was destroyed in late '50s to about mid-1963 by NYC for the water. 50 cents on the dollar condemned and torn down. You couldn't say no. Cannonsville, NY. (defunct)

A few passages from a song I wrote about it, "Oh, Cannonsville"
Gary H. Teed - Oh, Cannonsville presented by IndiemusicPeople.com

"They came from NY city,
To the land where beauty lies.
And what they did to people here,
Would make a grown man cry....

They wanted our water
So they pushed us all aside.
They took away our livelyhood,
And the county slowly died...."

Oh, Cannonsville I see you ,
Thru the teardrops in my eyes.
Tho you lie beneath the waves now,
In my heart you'll never die...."

 

[susanm9006]

Our antenna still is in the attic- we don't have cable or a dish or streaming.

I just found my attic antenna last year - Still usable and gets great reception.

 

[susanm9006]

Any farm kids out there that remember the taste of milk straight from the cow? For the rest, it doesn’t taste like milk. It smells and tastes like cow.

 

[GaryT]

Any farm kids out there that remember the taste of milk straight from the cow? For the rest, it doesn’t taste like milk. It smells and tastes like cow.

I wish I could get it here! I grew up around farms and that was where we got our milk. My grandpa had a 450 acre farm before NYC took it away. But we always lived around farms and bought our milk from the farmers. Grandma had chickens so we had eggs. And a HUGE garden!

 

[NY cat man]

Any farm kids out there that remember the taste of milk straight from the cow? For the rest, it doesn’t taste like milk. It smells and tastes like cow.

We drank it all the time. We had a small herd of Holsteins, and we drank what we didn't sell.

 

[Kflowers]

Arriving at the emergency room to get and x-ray. Attending doctor says, "That arm's broken. You stay put, I'll call the orthopedist. Orthopedist comes in looks at the x-ray. Nurse mixes the art room smelling stuff, and the orthopedist realigns your bones, the pain eases, and with a few jokes about lion's arms and casts, the orthopedist puts the cast on you right there in the emergency room. No waiting three days in pain to go to the orthopedist's office.

 

[Stinky15]

35 records and only AM radio.... No stereo.

 

[Hlee]

Not being allowed to play on the monkey bars unless we put pants underneath our skirt.
Running behind the machine at the park and playing in the chemical cloud of bug spray it was spraying. I think our parents even encouraged us

 

[ArchyCat]

Test patterns on the tv.
Vertical & horizontal hold controls & contrast controls on the tv.
Good Humor ice cream truck. Pop-cycles (sp?)from the Good Humor
playing baseball and football in the suburban street,
Mercurochrome and iodine.
taking your bag lunch to school.
Walking to school. Later riding a bicycle to school.
School playgrounds: merry go round, jungle gym, and slides.
Duck and cover drills at school.
Slide rules.
Mowing the yard with a reel mower.
Homemade grilled cheese sandwiches.
punched cards for data entry and computer programing code.
polio. Measles, mumps, and chickenpox.
Automobiles with standard transmissions.
German measles parties for /by women of child bearing age, particularly those wanting to get pregnant.

 

[susanm9006]

Backyard fallout shelters

 

[ArchyCat]

Plus, I had relatives that lived in the country.

Going to the outhouse, checking the floor and to sitting area for snakes and spiders. Then sitting down and then looking up and seeing active wasp nests in each corner of the ceiling.

 

[DreamerRose]

We waited every day in the summer for the Good Humor truck to come by at 3 p.m. Popsicles were 5 cents and an ice cream bar was - woo hoo - 10 cents. There's a truck that comes through my neighborhood now playing nursery rhymes right at 5:30. I'll bet the parents love the timing. I'll have to go out there some day and find out how much the Popsicles and ice cream bars are now.