<p>I was talking with my son last night about an e-mail he was sending. I said make sure you “carbon copy” your coach. He said, “carbon what??? what are you talking about?” Oops, I don’t think they even make carbon paper anymore.
My kids can’t even imagine a rotary phone or even a manual typewriter. I remember my mom finally getting an IBM Selectric typewriter that had a built in erase tape. With the touch of a key, you could erase your mistake. I thought we had it made! My kids still roll their eyes at my husband who uses the “one finger hunt and peck method of typing” I wonder what funny stories they will tell their kids.</p>
<p>SueinPhilly: my kids did the same thing with a rotary phone when we cleaned out my mom’s house. My D wanted to know where the mute button was.</p>
<p>TVs without remotes - “You had to get up to turn it on and off, AND to turn the channel?” </p>
<p>No personal music devices until the walkman came along - I think I was already married then. </p>
<p>Cars without air conditioning? or seatbelts? or radios (my first Honda didn’t have one - it was optional)? Cigarette lighters and ashtrays in cars? </p>
<p>Medicine bottles where the tops just pop off, or even more shocking - just screw off?</p>
<p>We had a milkman and breadman. The garbage men actually took the garbage and the trash was burned in a large metal drum. We raked and burned the leaves (after a sutable interval of playing in them).</p>
<p>but you still have a “CC” line in many email programs. I guess the kids don’t know it stands for ‘carbon copy’.</p>
<p>I remember copy machines with liquid ink. And a mimeograph machine where you had to write out a page and then mount it on a machine and turn the handle with all the gooey ink. </p>
<p>Erasable typing paper. A godsend.</p>
<p>I remember explaining to my son how we centered something on the page. Go to the middle, backspace half the number of characters in the title (or whatever you wanted to center). and if you didn’t set the margin correctly you went off the page. And noticing when you were at the bottom of the page… can’t tell you how many times I messed that up… </p>
<p>And those were the days when “look it up” sent you on an expedition to the encyclopedia (if you were lucky enough to have one in the house) or the library. And filling out those cards to get a copy of an old issue of a magazine…</p>
<p>My kids howled when I related about the times the doctor came to our house and did exams, gave shots. They were dumbfounded when I told them about the doctor setting my brother’s broken arm on our dining room table.</p>
<p>Does anyone else remember putting coal into the furnace? Hard, dirty job. </p>
<p>We had a milkman too, but my kids remember that; we had one till 1995, when the company discontinued the service.</p>
<p>No pants for girls at school? Boys had to take shop and girls had to take home ec - and the opposite gender couldn’t take the other class.</p>
<p>I loved the smell of dittoed paper. (Do you think I could get high from that?)</p>
<p>Ironing sheets and table cloths with a mangler. (Though our garbarge man still gets the garbage from the back yard…)</p>
<p>My younger daughter is on her first trip to the snow/learning to snowboard trip this weekend. Her friend’s dad is taking pictures with his iphone every step of the way, and then immediately emailling them to us from the slopes. It feels like we are there! Remember when you would take pictures, and then a few weeks later when you used the whole roll you would take them into a store and they would process them and make prints and you would have them back in a week?</p>
<p>“No pants for girls at school?”</p>
<p>I recall walking to & from my public school (uphill both ways, of course) wearing snowpants to keep warm. After the boys went into the classroom, the girls would pull off our snowpants (I believe we called them leggings) and hang them in our lockers. Somewhere along the line, pantsuits became acceptable. I still remember how thrilled we were when we were finally allowed to wear JEANS to school.</p>
<p>We rarely had pop (soda), but when we did it was from Towne Club, in bottles that had to be returned to the TC store.</p>
<p>Here’s the one I was thinking of</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/377192-60s-childhoods.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/377192-60s-childhoods.html</a></p>
<p>But here are a few more</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/417051-amalgamated-nostalgia-regional-variations-thread-6.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/417051-amalgamated-nostalgia-regional-variations-thread-6.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/193692-you-know-you-old-when.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/193692-you-know-you-old-when.html</a></p>
<p>I was the first in my school to wear a pants suit, got in trouble for it, but hey, changed my little world</p>
<p>in college we had everclear…yummm</p>
<p>I have some really nice tea cups and saucers that were given away at gas stations when you filled er up- nice english china!!! my mom saved them for me, and i will pass along to my Ds </p>
<p>tab</p>
<p>and I don’t ever remember sun screening</p>
<p>The only TV signal you could get was via your roof-top antenna and TV’s only were capable of receiving 12 channels. (And nobody got all 12.)</p>
<p>Seat belts were usually tucked under the seat cushion, if the car had any at all! Why? Becuase sitting on them was uncomfortable for the 6 - 8 kids from the little league team who sat in the back.</p>
<p>Double features * with cartoons*</p>
<p>Candy cigarettes</p>
<p>I remember as a young girl when we got our first hand held hair dryer!</p>
<p>Having already earned a significant amount of money since age 12.</p>
<p>My S was 18 last year (his senior year in HS–2007). We were discussing his HS senior year “Spring Break” and a student’s choices generally in college when “not exactly” in snyc with the parent’s ideas. </p>
<p>It became clear to me that one fundamental disconnect between parents born in 1948-52 and their children born in the late 1980s is early work experience and the child paying his own way for something when the child’s choice and the parents’ ideas of “a wise idea” diverged.</p>
<p>They still sell candy cigarerettes.</p>
<p>My son and I were watching “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” and he just could not understand the concept of a person to person long distance call. And an operator.</p>
<p>Life without color tv. The internet. Personal computers. Airbags. The list is endless.</p>
<p>And for things that have (largely) disappeared: vinyl records, 8 track tapes. B&W TV’s, the milkman, house calls by doctors. Coal hods.</p>
<p>Growing up in a house with a lot of women, I recall the introduction of “Wella-Wella Balsam” being huge. Prior to that, it was “No More Tangles.” Prior to that, we were told that our hair was only clean when it squeaked when we combed it out.</p>
<p>I miss bar bets! Remember when people actually had disputes about song lyrics and who was Truman’s vice president and so forth? Now someone at the party whips out a Blackberry and settles the question with Wikipedia.</p>
<p>Speaking of lyrics, when I was about 12, I heard an amazing song on an episode of “The Wonder Years.” I had to know what band it was and buy the album. Nowadays, I’d just Google the lyrics, but back then, how could you find a song you’d heard once? Well, I went to a big record store and sang it to one employee after another until someone recognized it and found me a cassette tape. (It was Simon & Garfunkel.) I sure do love the internets.</p>
<p>
In 6th grade or so, I asked my father if I could have a calculator. He said, “Sure” and handed me a pencil and a piece of paper.</p>
<p>I still remember our first color TV.</p>
<p>And our first stereo - before then, we had a “hi-fi.”</p>
<p>Vinyl records - well, my d knows what they are, since we still have about 500 of them! And an eclectic collection. My h was astounded when d had a party, and the kids started playing the records! Music they liked but didn’t own or wasn’t released on CD (or now, iTunes). D was even more shocked when two of her friends, with musical tastes on opposite ends of the spectrum, each found records in the collection that they liked!</p>
<p>D’s never known encyclopedias that took up an entire bookcase, and were updated with yearly Annuals.</p>
<p>Or sneakers. Not tennis shoes, not walking shoes, not running shoes, not basketball shoes, not cross-trainers. Just plain, ordinary sneakers.</p>