<p>fruit loops…that’s right…in the state of Delaware that is what they were called and girls seemed to feel obligated to chase boys to yank them off…haven’t heard that phrase since middle school</p>
<p>I guess many of the HI boys wore t-shirts & this wouldn’t apply anyway. Don’t have any memory of chases & “fruit loops” & “■■■ tags,” but then I maybe I somehow missed it all. Didn’t go to schools that required button down shirts, ties or jackets anyway, just our local public that just wanted girls not to show TOO much skin & cleavage.
I do remember the term, “■■■ bags” for small “purses” & “waist packs” carried by men, particularly after they had traveled to Europe. The idea never caught on in HI.</p>
<p>Adjusting the valves yourself in your VW bug.
Bringing a stack of keypunched cards to the glassed-in college computer lab and seeing how many hrs./days of turnaround time (of course it took longer as finals loomed).
In magazine work–marking up four-color separations (chromalins)
cutting ruby lith for photos for page layout
Frying in the sun in a baby oil and iodine mix
Dropping cardboard numbers into the slots for the scores and innings on a wooden scoreboard on the baseball fields
Dropping stuff down the inkwell hole (no longer used for ink bottles) in the elementary school desks
Knowing whoever got sent to the principal’s office might get paddled or rapped on the knuckles with a ruler
Ironing a crease in your gym blouse sleeve or suffering a demerit
Exercising to the “Go, you chickenfat” song in P.E. class
Wearing chemin de fers and Dittos jeans, wearing Yardley lipsticks, shampooing with Lemon-Up shampoo, and when you were a little kid, soaking in the bathtub with Soaky bubblebath, singing, “Soaky soaks you clean in oceans full of fun” and when the bottle was empty it was a “toy.”</p>
<p>Remembering to wear a tie to school. It was in elementary school, in the days when boys had to wear ties. And if you forgot, not a problem; the teacher had a selection of ties that you could choose from. And after that happpened a couple of times (at most), you never again forgot to put on your own tie.</p>
<p>Valve adjusting!</p>
<p>Thanks for the reminder. And synching carbs on an old Datsun 240Z!</p>
<p>Fanfold computer printouts on that wide paper with the holes down both sides (and the wavy lines, depending on the printer adjustment)</p>
<p>How to Stifle a Laugh When The Principal is Holding You in the Air by the Back of Your Collar and Your Classmates are Spitting Spitballs at You</p>
<p>Taking TV Tubes to the drugstore tester, finding the burnt out one and then trying to get all the good tubes correctly returned to the right sockets…</p>
<p>Fixing a computer program by splicing sections of paper tape…</p>
<p>Fruit loops in Oklahoma too. I once gave myself a black eye from pulling a little too exuberantly on a loop and whacking myself in the process. This was in elementary school around 1965-66.</p>
<p>Having to wear dresses to school and wearing pants (or shorts in hot weather) under your dress to school so you could twirl on the monkey bars. </p>
<p>My high schooler is still required to make book covers out of grocery bags. I can do it without using tape!</p>
<p>We used to pull the fruit loops here in Florida, too, back when I was in high school. This would’ve been 1965-1967 or so. The little button on the back of the collar of the button-down shirts was called a “fairy button”. We only pulled the loops from the shirts of guys we had a crush on. I remember leaving a big hole in Tommy Garson’s shirt. I’m sure his mother was thrilled.</p>
<p>I’ve gotta show this thread to my S - he thought I was kidding when I told him we used to do this! :)</p>
<p>Bethel: Yes to everyone on your list except the briefcase and the snow boots. In S. California the alternative was dodging the giant tumbleweeds to get home across the playground when the SantaAna winds were blowing. And the shirt tabs people “collected” were “locker loops”</p>
<p>Picturing school reminds me of another one: The 6th grade boys had the much coveted job of going around the school with giant cloth covered boards that were like giant erasers to clean the blackboards. Then they got to stand in the playground and whack them together, creating clouds of (probably lung clogging dust) to clean those. </p>
<p>Girls got to empty the wall mounted pencil sharpers–no comparison for fun but probably better for our pulmonary systems…</p>
<p>… mentioning ties brings back old memories at my Catholic HS… but ours were clip-on bow ties. We felt so rebellious when we found some very tiny ones to clip-on that met the letter of the dress code. No teacher nowadays would have noticed with the current, ahem, various different items of clothing (or lack thereof) that passes for HS dress code.</p>
<p>Patsmom–yes, they definitely were “locker loops” in my part of the country (VA.) I had a pretty good collection but (I blush to admit) not necessarily from chasing boys–I had two brothers whose shirts qualified.</p>
<p>“No one has mentioned defrosting the freezer compartment in the old refrigerators. Now that was a fun job.”</p>
<p>Haha…my son just did that when moving into his off campus apartment. He didn’t understand why we didnt have all that frost in ours…</p>
<p>also had to teach him how to sew a button on his pants…and then he sewed the hole in his hat. Had an audience of roommates wondering what he was doing…they were in awe that he could do that. Now they are offering him $$ to fix things for them :)</p>
<p>well, the defrosting theme has cropped up and now we could do the various schools of defrosting:</p>
<p>1) Put ice cube trays of boiling water in the freezer compartment and let them work; then go at it with a table knife to unhitch the chunks.</p>
<p>2) (in the modern era) Use a hair dryer</p>
<p>3)…are there regional variations on this??</p>
<p>Defrosting Freezer Variation </p>
<p>We’d boil water in small pots and place them in the freezer - or under the metal freezer compartment which was within the refrigerator section. You had to keep returning the pots to the stove to reheat.</p>
<p>This was the kind of freezer contained inside the refrigerator. It had its own metal door. You knew it was time to defrost when you couldn’t get that door to close.</p>
<p>This is just a variant of the the ice cube trays already mentioned - remember when the trays were metal? The fancy ones had a lever that moved the metal dividers. We had the less fancy kind where you had to pull on the metal dividers individually. No easy popping cubes out - sometimes (most times?) you had to run the trays under hot water to pry out a cube or two…</p>
<p>My variant on defrosting the freezer:</p>
<p>Use up food.
Unplug freezer. Leave door open.
Put towels under freezer.
Wait.
Mop up mess.</p>
<p>
These skills are obsolete? :eek:</p>
<p>A college-age skills not obsolete after all these years? … your first place off campus, but finding out you are forced to eat that old stand-by Kraft macaroni and cheese until the next work-study check comes …</p>
<p>You could afford the Kraft brand mac and cheese? LOL</p>
<p>Ramen noodles/Easy Mac/Spaghetti-Os are the staples nowadays</p>