<p>Thanks leanid. I agree. Form over function. I love watching great skiiers carve beautiful, effortless turns. As a teenager with little money, I used to sometimes follow individual or group lessons down the mountain, a few yards back (far enough to not be obvious, but close enough to hear). So I might not have come by my skiing skills honestly, but I have pretty good form :)</p>
<p>The smell of fresh mimeographed test papers being handed out, and sometimes they were still warm. (Maybe my teachers were just a bunch of last-minute-Harrys). </p>
<p>How to spell (omg, lol, ur my bffl 4 eva). </p>
<p>Looking at your watch. Kids today don’t wear watches, if they need to know the time they check their cellphone.</p>
<p>My kids don’t understand the part in Margaritaville about “Stepped on a pop top, cut my heel had to cruise on back home.” DD said, “How can you cut your foot on a Pop Tart?” Couldn’t explain to them that the flip-tops on soda cans used to come off ON PURPOSE.</p>
<p>Gosh, we must still live in the Dark Ages…my children can milk a cow, butcher a chicken, make butter (but not cheese, our current cow doesn’t make good cheese), crank start a tractor, drive the feed truck when they are 5, frame a wall, fence a pasture, deliver a lamb, move a herd of cattle by themselves, break a horse, can, spin wool, weave blankets, grind wheat and bake bread, sew without a pattern, shoot a coyote, and bale hay. The girls all do lovely calligraphy and I just taught diagramming and predicate nominatives to my 10yo this past week!</p>
<p>We in the urban wastelands are counting on you in the heartland to pass on these skills for when we are back to coping without instant gas and electric…
so thank you for preserving and transmitting these talents.</p>
<p>And on the mimeograph front: how about the related skill of correcting an error by peeling up the topsheet and scraping off the error with a double-edged razor --then re-typing the correction…</p>
<p>Which in turn brings up shaving with a razor and brush and dropping the “used” blades down that mysterious slot in the back of the bathroom “medicine chest”…</p>
<p>Thats what that slot was for?</p>
<p>Turning over a reluctant car engine without flooding it and the accompaning sound. (I never could spell)</p>
<p>How to melt an old album over a soup can in an oven to make a lovely bowl to put potato chips in. (Good old Girl Scout arts & crafts…)</p>
<p>How to make a book cover out of a brown paper bag WITHOUT using tape.</p>
<p>The fine art of using white-out when typing. </p>
<p>How to manually open a garage door. Our garage door opener broke and DD was FASCINATED that I was able to open that HEAVY-LOOKING door by myself with ONE hand! The kids were actually fighting with each other to see who would get to open/close the garage door! That faded after a few days, though…</p>
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In my college dorm it was: YOU MADE AN ASHTRAY OUT OF “FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE”??? Yes, we did. People were shocked, shocked. I think we did it with butane lighters, though, and I ain’t never been no Girl Scout, although I respect them.</p>
<p>My physics teacher has been showing us slide rules. Good thing we have calculators now because I don’t get it LOL Maybe someday…</p>
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<p>We still do that at our house for the books issued by the school.</p>
<p>My kids thought “book socks” were the only way to cover a book. Then DD got the bright idea to use paper shopping bags from name brand stores (American Eagle, Abercrombie, etc) and arrange them so the store label was on the front cover. Required quite a bit of tape though. She’s amazed that I can do it with NO tape – but I don’t think I could make it work and get “Hollister” lined up the way she wants it, lol.</p>
<p>Polishing my saddle oxfords with that chalky white stuff. Shining my Dad’s shoes on Sunday nights during the Ed Sullivan Show. Brushing off my Hush Puppies.</p>
<p>Covering oranges with cloves.</p>
<p>Buying Easter bonnets.</p>
<p>Washing out one’s white gloves and laying them to dry.</p>
<p>How about sewing badges on your scout uniform (now they are iron on…)? </p>
<p>“Darning” socks?</p>
<p>Stopping “runs” in nylons with clear nail polish?</p>
<p>Going to the “dime” store and selecting an attractive “hair net” chosen to match your hair color, when you worked in the grade school cafeteria as one of the “big” sixth graders…</p>
<p>Metal (army surplus issue no doubt) “hot lunch” trays with little sections for the different food categories</p>
<p>Changing a typewriter ribbon
splicing movie film
dissolving old movie film in acetone to make a colorless glue</p>
<p>loading 35 mm film into a camera; pushing that little button on the bottom of the camera to release the film when all done, so you can hand crank to rewind and remove the film.</p>
<p>loading 35 mm film into a camera; pushing that little button on the bottom of the camera to release the film when all done, so you can hand crank to rewind and remove the film.</p>
<p>loading 35 mm film into a camera; pushing that little button on the bottom of the camera to release the film when all done, so you can hand crank to rewind and remove the film.</p>
<p>Tatting. My grandmother taught me how to tat (make lace)! My grandfather and father taught me how to make a fishing net with a shuttle type device…really. Gosh tatting had alittle metal shuttle too come to think of it (and I still have both of them tucked away somewhere). My dad and I made nets to hold the life jackets and stuff for our sailboat when I was really young.</p>
<p>I enjoyed reading all comments and am so sorry that my children have never and will never enjoy any of these skills. Such is life. We are old and we better write it all down to pass on to our future generations! Will they even care…</p>
<p>Actually I suppose there are people for whom this is a current skill but I just haven’t seen anyone actually use one in ages. I remember people bringing some amazing concoctions to Congregational potlucks. There is a skill both to getting it out of the mold (i could never do that part)–and then in the creative decisions about ingredients. Maybe we could have sub-thread here about unusual jello mold contents: what besides fruit cocktail or marshmallows in orange jello?</p>
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<p>LOL, I have to ask you where you are from. In my part of the world jello molds are considered an abomination. I met them occasionally when my parents lived in Lexington, VA and occassionally from my Greensboro, NC relatives.</p>