je_ne_sais_quoi

Hairdryers so big they came in their own suitcase. I think mine was a Miss Clairol. Fond memories of Saturday nights in my pink, spongy curlers over which I donned a shower-cap-on-steriods, prompting merciless teasing by my older brother. If I plugged in the behemoth anywhere other than the living room, I blew a fuse.

Fuses. That's another one my kids ask about. I still say, "We blew a fuse," when I really mean we tripped a circuit.

TheOneCurlyFry

I'm from India, and a first-year in college, and a lot of these things are still in common use - I had no idea that carbon paper and curly-wired telephones and cassette tapes and dictionaries and log tables were so outdated here...

Lafalum84

Remember buying flash cubes for your camera?

mom2three

4-sided.

Remember polaroids that you had to time (our camera had a little mini-timer your could set, on the side) and then peel? Added a little excitement and skill.

Remember sorting through change and having a really good chance of getting a silver coin?

CBBBlinker

I found a silver dime about 3 years ago in some change from the grocery store! Back in college I ended up w/ a buffalo head nickel as change from the bookstore.

PackMom

Remember popcorn poppers? My kids have no clue how to pop popcorn other than the microwave.

How about those make-up mirrors with the lights on the sides. I had one with doors that folded open to reveal the lights. There was a little slider thing on the bottom to change the light from "daytime to nighttime" so we could have the most flawless makeup,lol

coronax2

When my son was around four or so, I told him we didn't have VCRs when I was little. He looked at me incredulously, and asked me how we played our tapes.

Now, the joke is on him, because his kids won't know about VCRs or video tapes.

blackeyedsusan

How about the milk boxes that you kept on your porch so the milkman had a place to put the milk when he delivered it? Wow, I'm really feeling old. How long ago did that stop?

great lakes mom

Working in a hospital, we still use cassette tapes for shift to shift report. We're afraid at some point there will be no equipment to replace what we have when it wears out.

Curlers seemed to be a permanent fixture of certain heads in my neighborhood, back around 1968. There were moms, as well as teens that I never saw without curlers. Seemed remarkable then, more so now.

Don't most households have dictionaries of some sort around the house still?

swimcatsmom

In England we still have the milkman delivering the milk every day. I do miss that. Would have been great when my son lived at home - I think we went through a gallon a day!

gladmom

Went to my 41st high school reunion a year ago. Brought back a world of uncomfortable memories. To see if your skirts were the right length, you had to kneel and the skirt had to brush the ground.

And don’t get me started on the nasty gym suits. Non-stretch cotton one-piecers, with a belt and a little elastic “skirt” around each leg under the hem, so no one could possibly see your underwear. PE classes were single gender, so there really was no one to see anything.

And for swimming, the girls had these cotton one-piece horrible swimsuits that stretched out of shape as soon as they got wet, and boys didn’t wear swimsuits at all in their classes. Absolutely creepy, as I look back on it.

And I remember wearing rollers in my hair to bed for most of high school. The rollers were brushes that hurt your scalp. How did I sleep? What were we thinking?

GtLakesMom: We have numerous sizes and types of dictionaries/thesauruses which I still love and use.

dmd77

BlackeyedSusan: I get my milk delivered once a week. Eggs and yogurt too.

CBBBlinker

Memory lane here! Speaking of milk -- what about little glass bottles of milk in school? In elementary school we got a "milk break" mid-morning. It cost us $.10/week, and the "Class Treasurer" collected and recorded the $$. The bottles had green cellophane over the top, which we used to pop w/ a pencil.

Oh, and how about the pencils themselves? We didn't have to bring any of our own school supplies in elementary school.

owlice

Is it possible to buy typewriter ribbons now? My son was fascinated to see a manual typewriter, and when he was little, he'd try to use one we got him from somewhere.

I still have my portable manual from college, but it needs a ribbon!

je_ne_sais_quoi, ewwwww! Yes, I remember; 'nuff said on that score!

JHS

Back to the beginning of this thread:

A couple of years ago, the 400+-item list for the giant University of Chicago spring Scav Hunt began:

1. A copy of this list (1 point)
2. The mimeograph machine you made it on (30 points)

I loved that!