'Remember when' or 'these kids today' nostalgia thread for old fogies like me

[willzpapa]

Loved riding bikes.
No protective gear and the Evel Knievel scars to prove it.
Anyone else line up radio flyer wagons and see how many they could jump?

Are you kidding we lined up kids and tried to jump them in RadioFlyer wagons lol!!!!!

 

[willzpapa]

I also remember we would play all day and when mom called us for supper we knew to get home pronto !! And you knew your moms voice !!! It was like kriptonite !!!

 

[User395221]

Have attitudes towards children changed? I think so. I remember when I was a kid, we'd be out on our bikes and the boys might have set up a ramp for the bikes/skateboards on the road (not a busy road, just a suburban street, and yes there was probably less traffic "back then"). People would just drive around it with a wave. Can you imagine today what would happen in many places? Kids charged, parents charged, blah blah. Everyone seems so intolerant of young people. Just because it might annoy you doesn't mean it's bad or that the children are "bad".

If I had children, I'd rather they ran the risk of breaking their necks sledding down hills in a box, than completely doing over their psyches by letting them see porn on the computer (which was recently reported as happening with little kids )

 

[21hens-incharge]

Remember when .........

Kids had to really work hard for ribbons. When working hard to improve was not only expected but actually done........


Yes Potato chip I remember when kids didn't have computers at all. I saw on the news where a school here was giving every 6th grader a lap top..... All I could think was "now that seems like a really bad idea".

 

[ChuSayBok]

I am a kid myself but for some strange reason I was always disgusted by my generation. I love the old music where they used to put their heart and soul into each word. Everyone worked hard! Children had to make do with what they had and still had fun with it! Cars were all unique and special in their own way, made by real people rather than being mass produced by machinery! But now... Figget spinners, dabbing, pokemon go, also, would it really kill you to spell out a whole word? Seriously, I am dissapointed. I have also found that many recent tv shows are mindless and stupid, and in return everyone around me is mindless and lazy. I can rant on even more but probably shouldn't. My mother has always told me I was a 40 year old in a child's body even when I was a toddler, and I am thankful that that is the way I am!

Remember genuine diamelles and when Michael Jackson caught his hair on fire making that Pepsi commercial? Poor guy was never the same after that.

I'm probably close to Mace's age and I felt the same way when I was a teenager about my peers as you, though I will dab at strategic moments in order to annoy my offspring/amuse myself. I will say that the younger people now are much saavier on computers and certain social etiquette (sometimes.) I'm a technologically regressive savage without a smartphone and have to rely on my children now just to make the TV work (because everything is hooked up to either the googlestick or one of their 4 game systems and linked through wifi from cable internet b/c I refuse to pay for cable TV.) I also refuse to learn the logistics of routing netflix through three boxes of metal and having to reprogram the TV and put in one of 15 passwords when I already have 30 for accounts I'm forced to have by society… indeed, I am a dinosaur, more in habits than in age possibly, but a throwback to say the least. Kudos to all the young people who have the audacity to live slower and pay attention (and the older ones who keep up w technology better than I do.)

BTW, have you ever looked for chickens in movies or on TV? Try counting the number of movies, shows, or games that have chickens in them. You will be astounded. I watch more British movies anymore than otherwise, but I've been surprised at the number of American films they pop up in.

 

[ChuSayBok]

Oh yeah, I have to add that I told my cubs they were really deprived b/c they had to be strapped in car seats. I slept in the back window of my mothers Monte Carlo on long trips and had the adventure of getting thrown in the floorboard if she had to come to a quick stop. Those were the days..

 

[CapricornFarm]

Oh yeah, I have to add that I told my cubs they were really deprived b/c they had to be strapped in car seats. I slept in the back window of my mothers Monte Carlo on long trips and had the adventure of getting thrown in the floorboard if she had to come to a quick stop. Those were the days..

My Dad was backing out of our driveway once and the door flew open behind the driver where i was, i fell out and right in front of the back tire under the car! Lucky for me he stopped!

 

[N F C]

And then there was the time a bunch of us kids obtained a giant appliance box in the middle of a snowy winter.

We tied together our small fleet of flexible flyers in a sort of a train and tied the box to the top of the array of sleds ... closed end up front. Piled in through the back with stolen pillows for 'safety'.

Now, the only decent hill led down through some trees and down to the river.

As we descended at great speed and sensed that we were nearing the trees (and thus the river!) through judging the terrain by looking out the BACK ... we began to rock the contraption to bring it to its side before speeding across the (mostly ... possibly ... somewhat) frozen river. Just as we were about to tip the whole affair over the whole thing crashed headlong into a tree. We emerged dazed but grateful our 'engineering' kept us from going into the icy drink.

It was the freakin' BEST DAY OF SLEDDING EVER!

Love that story Mace! Brought to mind my very best day of sledding, lol.

There was only one decently steep enough hill in town for sledding (and some years not enough snow for that) but one snowy winter when I was about 10, Dad and I went to the hill and found it was pretty crowded with other people. We spotted one good (we thought) place to go down and felt lucky no one else was using that area. Dad plopped the sled down, he got on the back and I got in front of him and off we went, super fast! Just as we reached maximum downhill speed, we hit rocks hidden by the snow...Dad flew off one way, I flew off the other and the sled sailed on, all the way to the bottom of the hill.

We laughed about that for years. I lost my Dad in 2010 and it's memories like this that I treasure the most...the times we laughed.

Thanks for bringing that story back to mind Mace!

 

[N F C]

When I was a kid, Mom cooked almost every day and eating out was a rare treat. I grew up thinking she was the best cook ever (other than my grandma) which I know now, she wasn't really .

I understand that a lot of parents today work outside the home now but it seems kind of sad that the whole sitting around the kitchen table together is a thing of the past.

 

[Chicken Girl1]

When I went to get a new Ford Ranger to replace my old one* I went through the whole car lot but they didn't have what I wanted. That is until the last model of their last order of the last year the Ranger was to be sold in the US, arrived on a flat bed.**

It had everything I wanted:
Extended cab,
Manual transmission,
Split bench seat,
Windows that you turned a crank to lower
And the button that locked the door was a mechanical one just over my left shoulder.

And yes, I actually held out for these! I must confess though, I did replace the AM-FM [mechanical!] push button radio for one with a CD player.

*(20 years, 310,000 miles and still running fine, original everything.)
**(I named it Kemo~Sabe for that reason. )

Imagine the strength they needed just to get the car running!