I was thinking how different my kid’s lives are than mine was and then I thought about how different things are generally. There are so many things I experienced (I’m 40) that kids today don’t including:
1) Dodgeball in gym class.
2) Making ashtrays in art class for your parents.
3) Dressing up as hobos for Halloween
4) Public school teachers saying “God bless you” and not have to call their union rep to save their job.
5) Buying chocolate cigarettes.
6) Wrapping your lunch in tinfoil and put it in a paper bag.
7) “Green” was just a color in the crayon box, not a way of life.
8) Carrying around a Swiss Army knife everywhere you went.
9) Learning that America is a great country.
10) Saying the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.
Bonus: Playing war with finger guns in the schoolyard and not getting suspended.
Playing outside all day and your parents having no idea where you were as long as you were back for dinner.
You got any to add?
October 25, 2010 at 8:32 am
Wow, I relate so much to this. I have a teenage boy and I'm always thinking how different it was when I was growing up. The internet and cell phones (by the way, don't use them-research it) have changed everything.
My story: getting yelled at by Sister Stanley for my "disco hairdo."
October 25, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Sledding on the streets, paper routes, having one staircase at my high school that was only for seniors (and woe to the underclassman who ascended or descended it), the original cast of SNL, and getting ready to go visit our relatives in the South and listening to my parents carefully plan the route using the Rand McNally atlas because if we would be traveling on Sunday there would be very few, if any gas stations open. Oh, and traveling by Greyhound bus to visit my paternal grandmother with my brother – 7 hours, one change of bus, no parents – I was 12 and he was 10.
October 25, 2010 at 1:15 pm
1. Having one tv in the house and it only got channels 4,5,7,9,20 and 26. That's it. And it only got 20 and 26 by putting tin foil on the antennae and getting it "just so".
2. No VCR, you wanna watch something? Be there on time AND convince your family to watch it, hard to do if you're youngest.
3. Movies stayed in theaters for weeks, as long as they were making money. Star Wars hung out a while.
4. Being out all day playing in a large neighborhood, taking shortcuts through long stretches of woods, just had to be home for dinner. I know it's been said but it's a huge difference.
5. Calling "Time and Temperature" to find out either.
6. No weather radar.
7. No gps, just a map, maybe directions from a friend.
8. Phone cords that could stretch from the kitchen wall, around the corner to the dining room for "privacy".
9. Eating leftovers cold or room temp. because we didn't have microwaves and some things just don't reheat in a pan well.
10. Hiding behind trash cans from the "bug man" who came in the neighborhood spraying bug spray (DDT probably) in the summer. Everyone was required to go into their homes until the pesticides settled but we kids didn't want to go inside. We'd hide behind cars and bags of trash and giggle and giggle about getting the better of everyone by staying out. It stunk and we probably have some growth of something inside each of us just waiting to present itself.
October 25, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Walk to school alone; walk home alone after school.
Ride in the camper shell of the truck with no seat belts or even a "seat."
October 25, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Going to public school where we not only said the Pledge of Allegiance every day, but prayed too.
October 25, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Counting the numbers of cars on a train, and straining to be the first to see the caboose.
October 25, 2010 at 2:47 pm
1. Long division in math class (they no longer teach that method anymore)
2 Diagramming sentences (this really shows my age!)
3. Seeing a Catholic school where 95% of teachers are nuns in Habit.
4. Kids playing ball in the streets on a summer day.
5. Ice cream trucks with bells instead of blasting that annoying "Turkey in the Straw" tune.
6. Children playing on stilts or children making their own scooters out of wood and old roller skate wheels.
7. Little girls playing with baby dolls that don't talk, cry, pee, or make other mechanical (and creepy) movements.
October 25, 2010 at 3:01 pm
– Playing Red Rover in the schoolyard during recess.
-clamp on roller skates, always losing my skate key.
– Leaving the house unlocked.
– Being able to visit a church at any time, night or day.
– Being able to light a candle in church – nearest church to me now that has candles is a forty minute drive.
– Following the iceman and begging for ice chips during the summer, the icebox was kept on the back porch – didn't have a refrigerator until I was in fifth grade – 1949.
– Walking to church for confession every Saturday at 3PM.
– Sisters of Mercy in full nun habits and living together at the Mother House.
-Telephone party lines.
– Being priviliged to stay after school and clap the blackboard erasers.
– The neighborhood park manual merry-go-round.
October 25, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Saturday serials at the Roxy Theatre for 5 cents. Duck and cover. Nightmares after "Frankenstein" and "The Wolf Man". BIG theatres. A movie house on every block downtown. Double features. The Bowery Boys; Flash Gordon; Rocketman. Attic fans. A time when Ferdinand, the bull, was just a peaceful bovine; Little Black Sambo was just a kid like me; Amos and Andy were just plain funny.
Someone lied about the water being "colored".
Christmas pageants in public schools. Eating all our food somehow helped the starving Armenians. Respect toward elders. Listening to "Inner Sanctum" with the lights out in our parent's bedroom. A time before TV. A time before the world went crazy….
October 25, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Swingsets on school playgrounds!
Doing "cherry drops" from the chin up bar, which was on asphalt! (Hanging by your knees, swinging hard and flipping right side up and landing on your feet.)
October 25, 2010 at 3:34 pm
1. going to the corner store by yourself
2. buying cigarettes for your parents at the corner store you walked to by yourself.
3. going to the library to research a project
4. using a card catalog with actual cards at afforementioned library
October 25, 2010 at 3:45 pm
– Television movie premiers were such a huge deal that the town was buzzing with excitement that afternoon.
– A good TV signal meant that the picture wasn't rolling too much.
– Riding in the back of a pick up truck.
– Nuns.
– My parents coming to school to check me out for the day just so we could go do something fun (and they were allowed to do this!!)
– Helping with the laundry at the convent during the school day
– wall phones
– the smell of the mimeograph machine!
– Sears radios with the leather backs with the snaps! Height of technology!
October 25, 2010 at 4:13 pm
A fun walk down memory lane, but also a sad realization of how much our country has changed. Not all good.
October 25, 2010 at 4:24 pm
-Separate subjects in English, spelling, reading, phonics and penmanship instead of "language arts"
-Kids who misbehaved in public getting disciplined in public, and no one calling it "abuse"
-Stopping at the "beer depot" after school and buying a soda and candy bar
-If a kid had a black-and-white TV in his room, it was considered a luxury, and his friends would congregate there
-playing "Wilderness Campaign" on an Apple IIe at the public library
-$2.00 bleacher seats at the ballpark, and stuffing yourself silly on hot dogs and soda for $5.00
-Controversy at same ballpark when the price of beer reached a dollar.
October 25, 2010 at 4:49 pm
wow- so many changes…I remember having a neighborhood kids' club. My kids barely know our neighbors- and no kids (but we live in a townhouse- can't afford a farm like the one I grew up on)
October 25, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Looking at the shoes on your friend's back porch and knowing who was inside watching Roy Rogers and Sky King.
Green plumbs, "stolen" from neighborhood trees.
Looking up at the clouds and yelling, "LET IT RAIN!" and running home when it did.
Smoking wax straws.
Walking home for lunch beginning in the 2nd grade, with parents' permission and never returning late.
That first television set (with antenna of course), barely picking up one channel (NBC).
Going across the street to the neighbors' back yard for coneys and, maybe, a sip of beer.
The smell of my father's new cars.
Going with the family to small independently owned gas stations.
Building wooden box cars from scraps (and baby carriage wheels), only to discover they weighed so much, they couldn't roll.
All principals knew you by name (not a good thing).
Most policemen knew you by name.
Too young to be hired, but always looking for a summer job.
Hiding fishing gear in the front bushes for a forbidden venture early the next morning.
Christmas tree forts (boy, those smelled good!).
Annual father and son baseball games in the vacant lot in the next block.
Organized trick-or-treating.
The smell of that first dollar you ever earned (I wrote the serial number down).
True, unconditional friends, some of whom stayed with you for a lifetime.
October 25, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Air raid drills 1st Wednesday of every month, when we had to hide under the desks. As cool as it was to do (disrupting class and all…), I never quite understood how a desk was going to protect me from a nuclear blast.
October 25, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Watching TV and only having NBC, CBS, ABC, and sometimes PBS to choose from.
October 25, 2010 at 5:06 pm
– drinking from a hose
– family friendly sitcoms (Think Growing Pains, Family Ties, etc)
– Cars with no air conditioning
– Walking anywhere by myself. No worries
– Coffee can stilts/clompers
– Pop one time a week and split 7 ways
– Party lines
– Waiting OH SO impatiently for this tv specials= Mary Poppins, Peanuts at the holidays, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Sound of Music.
October 25, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Trick-or-treating until 10:00 with a pillow case that would weigh 10 pounds when we got home.
If you couldn't whistle to it, it wasn't music.
Variety shows.
Mandatory showers after gym class.
Walking your dog without a leash.
Making out at the drive in theater.
Doing math on a scratch pad.
Responding to any adult with yes mam/sir.
Suckers that sometimes had a coupon for another free sucker!
Bank night at the movies.
Kids throwing a tantrum at the grocery store getting a swat without someone calling the police.