What was it like, when you were a kid?

[SunnyDawn]

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Hahaha! Yea I have to admit, I do like flowers. But DH knows to never buy PINK flowers.

 

[airmechreed]

I still am a kid. Nothing has changed except for the time I have to be home by. LOL

 

[Nitrous]

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Yes, and I deserved every whooping.

Wow. Yeah. The bad ones didn't even make up for the ones that I didn't get caught for. I always thought when I wrote a book, I'd dedicate it partly to my mom and admit... "I'm the one who put the bologna under the carpet." She never figured out how it got there

[hint: it was me]

 

[Fierlin1182]

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I was more of a boy than a girl when I was a kid. I had short hair, loved video games and hung out with the guys at school, climbing trees and playing basketball.

Hey even now, you won't see me anywhere near makeup or posters of anything that sparkles, human or not.

 

[Royd]

I remember when a loaf of bread and a gallon of gasoline were the same price.....Oh, never mind.

 

[SunnyDawn]

 

[yinepu]

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same here.. I remember when the furnace "blew up" and sooted all the walls.. we also had a BIG furnace grate in the floor that would get red hot.. so for fun we would try to roll pennies or marbles across the grate (where they would fall in and eventually melt).. got my rear end paddled quite a few times over that! We also had an old pot bellied stove in one of the big rooms that wasn't heated by the furnace.. used to burn myself on it every winter.

Back then it was acceptable to spank your kids.. in public.. a lot.. my mother pulled down my pants in a five and dime store (our version of a regular walmart at the time) and spanked my bare behind right in the store because I fussed for a baby duck at Easter... I never fussed for another thing in a store.. when my mom spanked us she meant business! Child Protective Services wasn't called in.. no one batted an eye (was there even a child protective services then?.. if there was I never heard of them)

back then we could get 10 pieces of candy for a penny.. bread was "expensive" at 25 cents a loaf.. a gallon of gas hit a high of 24 cents a gallon. We didn't even own a TV since only "rich people" could afford them.. and when we finally did get one it was a black and white.

My dad was a Carpenter and he made 4 grand a year.. which according to a lot of people was a lot of money.. never seemed to go far enough for my mom since there were 7 kids in the family (and bread & gas were so expensive.. lol)

Milk was delivered to a "milk box" on the front porch early in the morning.. my brother tried sitting in the milk box and got stuck.. mom had to call the fire department to get him out.. they had to cut off the box.. come to think of it now the box would have been worth more than my brother is!

Our big summertime excitement was sitting out on the porch watching thunderstorms
or catching fireflies (which were everywhere when I was a kid.. now a days we haven't seen one in years.. too many pesticides?)

in school we would have air raid drills where we would have to go out in the halls.. crouch down placing our heads between our knees ... somehow they had been convinced it would protect us from radiation if a bomb was dropped on us.... uhm... ok.. so it wasn't the brightest idea.......

girls had to wear dresses to school.. so during the winter I would be bundled up in my dress.. with snow pants.. and a very scratchy wool coat... well.. at least I was warm... even if I felt like a stuffed sausage

 

[chickened]

When I was a kid we lived in a rural logging town and there was no crime, no law and everyone did what seemed right and neighbors helped each other out and minded their own business. County government was minimal and was there to fix the roads and that was it. You did not need a permit for everything and there was not a police for every thing you did or own.

My brothers and I had no curfew in the summer, could pretty much do as we pleased but did respect others property. NO video games except pong at the dentist office.

 

[michickenwrangler]

OK, not as old as some on here, but ...

Didn't have a microwave until I was about 6-7 yrs old

When I was old enough to walk to the store with friends, candy bars were 40 cents or 3 for a $1

First car was a 1979 orange Ford Pinto

We had a VCR and taped about everything we could off the TV. Didn't actually buy any VHS until the mid 90s. DBF and I were ranting at the girls at Halloween when they were bored by Charlie Brown's Halloween special. "When we were your ages, we used to wait ALL YEAR for this to come on TV!"

 

[Nitrous]

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles repeatedly. So they really were reused.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building.

We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days.

Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power.

We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their parents into a 24-hour taxi service.

We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

When I was a kid, many boxes were still made of wood. In old machine shops, you will still find old wooden drawers and crates that are in daily use. Some of our customers ship to us, in re-usable wooden boxes that are so impregnated with machine oil as to be utterly waterproof. The parts come in in the wooden boxes and then go back out in the same box. Back and forth, for decade after decade without ever being thrown out. The edges and corners have been worn smooth, by decades of hands touching them.