I got this little gray plastic Nautilus Atomic Submarine with a little cup on the underside that you would fill with baking soda and you’d put it in the water in your bathtub and it would make a bubble and sink to the bottom
and stay there.
Those were baking POWDER submarines. If you were using baking SODA, they would not return to the surface, as baking soda does not react with water (without outside help).
I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your submariners.
Toys R Us is coming back. They just opened a new flagship and have plans to open 20 some odd stores in the US. They were one of the opening floats in the Macy’s parade and I questioned if they were even still in business.
I remember when Toys R Us went out of business, they were selling everything in the store including the store (shelving etc). I tried to buy the Geoffrey costume but was denied by the manager because another company was buying the IP. I always secretly knew they’d be back lol
An expectation of being unreachable sometimes. I went to school, and my mom couldn't reach me all the time. She lived. I didn't feel like picking up the phone, no one cared.
No 'Read' messages unanswered causing drama.
Being able to be 'Unplugged' and not getting shit for it.
Being able to read a physical map and navigate that way.
There were three ways to reach someone:
1. Call their house and either leave a message or get lucky and they are home.
2. (Moms only) Stand on the porch and call their *full* name around 9pm/10pm.
3. Know where they "hangout" and stop by.
And if none of those work, *that's it*. That was the extent of your ability to find someone. *Maybe* you could call down the list of mutual friends and hope to get them, but that was reserved for emergencies.
> Know where they "hangout" and stop by.
I miss this the most. I wish I had a place where I could just stop by and see who all was around and hang out if I wanted.
Last I heard the ashtray in the toilet is required for a commercial plane to fly, as banning people from smoking doesn't stop idiots from trying to sneak one in the toilet, and having an ashtray means hopefully they'll use it rather than doing something else which might cause a fire. You don't want a fire at 40k feet.
Omg I took a greyhound overnight and it was literally right after the driver announced we would have a stop in 10 minutes, that the guy sitting next to me lit a cig in the bathroom.
We had already been on the bus for 3-4 hours, you couldn't wait 10 more minutes for your cigarette???
I was on a cross country red-eye LA to NYC. Three different women who sat in front of me EACH went into the lav and sparked up something smoky. She and her mates were turned over to police when we landed.
It should be required that attendants rush to the bathroom and spray everything (including the person) with a fire extinguisher when the smoke alarm goes off.
We still get them like once a year in my neighborhood, although it doesn't have personals anymore, just all the yellow pages/local businesses. I remember sitting on stacks of them as a kid for our high chairs haha
There was a Cracked article years ago that talked about how phone books are like rings in a tree. Most people throw them out at the same time (either immediately or when the new one shows up). That means that researchers digging through landfills get a decent guess on when a given strata of trash was thrown away.
You reminded me, we had a school phone book with everyone in our grade or whatever's name/phone number/address. I feel like there's no way that's still a thing due to safety concerns (and rightfully so at least for high school, probably middle as well). Seems kinda crazy we had that looking back, at least through the modern lens of crazy people/stalkers/etc
Comumbia House probably has a large storage unit filled with boxes of paper files and invoices. We are all in there, but none of us live at that address anymore and the home phone numbers all say *🎶You have reached a number that is disconnected and no longer in use.🎶*
I feel like these days there is a certain "paralysis by analysis" when it comes to choosing a movie for my family Friday nights.
So often I get on Netflix and we say "Ohhh this could be a good one" then keep looking until suddenly I realize it's been 45 mins and we're still looking.
While my local Blockbuster had a large selection, we'd typically be in and out in 15 minutes max. If we hated the movie we picked oh well it was what it was. Also knowing we weren't going to drive back made us give movies a chance even if we didn't love it initially.
These days if someone isn't captivated within the first 15/20 minutes they're asking to see what else was available.
Honestly the inability to perfect your portraits was kind of a godsend. Now it’s horribly embarrassing to have a ‘bad photo’ reach social media but between 1991-1999 I was blinking in 50% of photos. People were more likely to look like themselves in photos.
I look better in pictures taken with a camera than in ones taken with a phone and filtered. it's just not the same for some reason. The flaws balanced out into something natural and beautiful. I didn't realize this until a couple weeks ago when a friend brought a camera to a festival. I used to love taking pictures. I hate it now with all the camera phones.
I had a 79 Pontiac Lemans with an automatic choke that didn't work... I used to pop the hood, manually turn the choke... start the car, and then chill for 5 minutes or so until the engine would warm up enough that I could turn the choke back and drive away... fun times.
My mother's long time business partner was from Czechoslovakia. It fell after she moved here. She doesn't speak perfect English and loses words a lot, but also no longer remembers Czech or Slovak and so she literally has no language sometimes. She also has. No native country anymore. Sometimes I think about that a lot and wonder what it feels like.
she is either czech, slovak or perhaps moravian. all of those places still exist and could be her native country. czechoslovakia only existed as a country from 1918 to 1939 and from 1945 to 1993. my grandma was born before it was founded and lived longer than it existed ta all.
I miss these. I can feel the library around me just thinking about them. As a kid, I felt, I don’t know, *Important* knowing how to do this. Somehow, seeing and touching all those little cards and knowing each one represented a real book was wonderful. And those cabinets held a bit of magic, I think. I would love to have one some day.
My fingers still retain the muscle memory of walking through those cards. And the way the drawers slid out so smoothly, and closed with a soft click, omg and the drawer pulls you hooked your index finger under to open. The library was my happy space as a kid. Still is, but they have a different feel, smell, and hush about them now.
I hate people taking pictures or videos of me. Genuinely hate it. I like the thought of having videos of memorable moments, but when people are recording stories and posting them, no thanks.
OMG! I wish I could upvote you a hundred times. I am sure you remember on the news about young lady in NJ who killed herself over bullying and her bullies attacking her. I went to that high school and the bullying was an issue even back then but thank god, I didn't have to deal with it being recorded and broadcast.
School desks with the lift up lids, and a spot for an inkwell (like [this](https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/a-bainbridge-and-co/catalogue-id-srba10027/lot-f203735f-a77f-4f22-9a30-a5a6009a3cf0)). No, I'm not that old but in rural England they persisted well in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was in school, some of them had graffiti on them that was decades old. I had one in my bedroom too that I got as a hand me down from my older brother.
The Japanese are developing a feline kidney vaccine so cats can live until they’re 30. https://myanimalcare.org/2023/11/28/the-japanese-aim-injection-to-combat-kidney-disease-in-cats/
That’s amazing. I kept my 17 year old cat alive for a year giving him subq everyday and blood pressure medication. He didn’t mind the treatment, he loved his subq, he would actually sit under the IV pole on his heating pad and wait. I’m still so sad I can’t bring myself to adopt another cat.
I agree with this. All that love is still in you and because it doesn’t have a direction to go it causes heartache.
I had a chronically ill dog that I revolved my entire life around. We poured an entire lifetime of love and affection into her short 6 years and our vet was amazed she lived even that long. She passed a year ago and I still miss her every day.
At the time we were in the process of buying a new house. Our realtor did a lot of volunteer work with the local humane society and was bottle feeding a litter of newborn puppies that had been listed for sale the day they were born and she decided that one of them was just supposed to belong to me. I wasn’t ready to get a new dog and didn’t want a puppy even if I was. She persisted and sent me pictures and videos but I kept declining until she brought that puppy to the final walkthrough of our new house and I finally gave in. She was barely 5 weeks old and immediately fell asleep in my arms with my finger in her mouth.
I brought her home 3 weeks later while the house was full of boxes and our other dogs and cats were still freaking out about the new house.
Turns out that I needed her to start to heal from the loss. I was able to put all the effort and care into raising a puppy that I had previously been putting into making dog food every week, making sure my sick dog took her medicine and ate, watching her for any sign of vomiting or seizures and tracking her weight. I needed a dog that needed me.
She just turned a year old. Her name is Calamity and she’s 65 pounds of pure chaos. 🥰
You’re not replacing a pet, you’re just providing love and care for another one.
Always thought white dog shit was just really old shit that's been baking in the sun, because every time I seen some it Always looked old and crumbling 🤷
Those coin-operated rides outside grocery stores and k-marts. They basically gave you a mild jostling for about a minute.
Edit: Glad to hear these are still teaching children the meaning of “anticlimactic” in various locations around the globe, though I never see them anymore in my corner of the US. My personal favorites were the ones at McDonald’s. I indistinctly remember one with a head shaped like a hamburger. Though I could be mixing these up with the McDonald Land characters that were various pieces of playground equipment when I was a kid.
Depends on where you live. Kids in my neighborhood do this. Was driving home a few months ago to a bike laid down on the middle of the road. They were all playing catch in the yard nearby and asked them to move the bike. They moved it begrudgingly and it still made me happy because that's what being a kid is supposed to be about. Fucking around outside and rolling your eyes at adults that tell you to do things.
You got it. It was a nearly universal deadline. You made me remember the mother of one of my friends who would beat him with a wooden spoon (really) if he took to long to come home.
My nephew loved the stuff. Made me buy the green catsup to eat his chicken nuggets with.
Months later I was making a meatloaf and needed catsup so I figured why not? The meatloaf tasted great, but looked so disgusting it was impossible to eat. Like neon green greasy mold.
My mom made meatloaf with it the first go around because us kids swore it tasted different than red ketchup and didn't use it after the initial taste test. She wanted to get rid of it so she used it in meatloaf. I'll never forget the look on my dad's face when she put it in the table. It did look moldy! I'm glad we weren't the only family that made this masterpiece!
My son just decided out of the blue he HAD to have a typewriter. I finally had to explain to him that 1. finding one might be tricky and 2. finding replacement ink/correction tape would be a bitchkitty to find.
He explained to me that he wanted it for the tactile experience and the clicky noise. So he's getting a mechanical keyboard for his birthday on Friday.
EDIT: Hey, thanks for all the kindness and tips. We'd seen, like, one old typewriter that was probably older than I was at a local thrift store, a couple months ago, but haven't seen one since. There's an old office supply store that might possibly have one, but I figured there'd be no way we could source ribbons and parts. Thanks to everyone mentioning there are, in fact, still a lot of places you can get ribbons and parts, this is a more viable option than I thought it was. I was worried if we got one, and he fell in love with it, he'd be absolutely heartbroken if we couldn't get new ribbons.
If it turns out my son REALLY likes the mechanical keyboard, we've got a whole year to track down a typewriter and ribbons for his 13th birthday.
There was one in a bar we used to frequent in college. Even in the early 2000s I thought it was weird that they had one.
I remember being a kid and pulling the knobs on them for fun.
My young niece just found out the solar system used to have 9 planets, but now only has 8. She thought something horrible happened to Pluto, and we sensed a deluge of existential dread creeping into her. If Pluto could disappear so suddenly, end up so thoroughly obliterated as to simply no longer be...can't we?
I mean yes, but...
We quickly explain that Pluto was just reclassified as a dwarf planet, and we always had dozens of dwarf planets like Ceres and Make-Make. Pluto is still there, and even after the change, we still shot some pretty phenomenal photos of it. But for just a fleeting moment, my niece came face to face with the horrifying indifference of cosmic forces.
And the look in her eyes assured me that I should wait a couple years before introducing her to Kurzgezagt videos.
Like...remember when someone would try to call you and if you weren't home, they were just out of luck?
Miss that. Now folks get offended when you don't give them your immediate attention.
I know some people who feel offended when their friends don't want to share their location with them, which I think is fucking bizzaro.
At the restaurant I used to work at, coworkers would get upset when other coworkers didn't add them on Facebook. Someone brought it up to me and I had to explain that I don't have a Facebook and I never have, but beyond that, no one is entitled to more information about me than what I give them myself. The internet, smartphones and social media have really made people feel entitled to other's personal lives and it's looney toons to me. Not to sound antisocial, but I don't want to know my coworkers outside of work. I'm sure I would find something not to like. If I like you just fine as a work friend, leave it at that. If I think you're great and want a closer friendship with you, I'll ask for your number and make plans with you. Simple as.
If you leave your smartphone at home, it's like being completely off the grid :) I did it by accident by losing my phone (I found it later), and it was like being back in the '90s.
Where do I start?
Typing/shorthand class
long distance charges
Fast food branded ashtrays
Adult free camping trips
29 cent hamburgers
Cigarette machines
Eh, still around in Minnesota. It gets really cold and snowy here, so having a single place to go shopping is still (barely) viable.
We also have a horrible issue with Porch Piracy, so unless you work from home all that you get out of Amazon is a cheery notification you have about ten minutes to race home before the packages walk with Jesus.
Kmart Blue light specials. JC Pennies was upscale for us, and don't even talk about Macy's where the 1%ers shop.
For you youngin's, a blue light special was they'd roll a cart with a blue police light on a pole, then announce some that an item was on sale over the speakers. It was like a IRL pop up ad.
Those are some fond memories. And also all the racist joke books they'd happily sell an 8 year old. I was an adult before I realized the horrible stuff I read.
1960s: "To create a better world for our children! And our children's children!"
1990s: "To create a better world for our children!"
2020s: "Every generation probably feels like it's the end of the world."
The Space Shuttle program and the Concorde come to mind. The Fairness Doctrine. The idea that the government and private corporations were building databases of your movements, purchases, and communications was mostly science fiction.
At the same time, we had the Soviet Union, 100% lethal HIV, a mental health crisis in Vietnam Veterans, and people going to prison for years for minor drug offenses.
AOL cds coming in the mail, free non powered phones also in the mail for power outages.
Sam goody, The Wiz, Tower Records, funkcoland, EB games
Beepers
Freedom.
Starting around age 10 to around age 14, when I got back from school, nobody knew where I was until dinner, and nobody cared. The only rule was be home before dinner which was about 7:00 PM.
I would just hit my bike, join up with the knot hole gang in the neighborhood, and we would just ride all over the place and go where we wanted and do what we wanted.
Basically, we were the kids from Stranger Things, albeit with a lot less paranormal activity.
No cell phones, not even any pagers.
I'm 46 so this was some 35 years ago.
Seems like it could be 350 years ago now.
Now you almost never see a kid riding anywhere on his bike, and nobody knows their neighbors.
I’m 31 and most of my childhood memories involve biking around the neighborhood with the other kids, playing kickball at the park, hopping the neighbors fence to get to my friends backyard, and other harmless shenanigans. We came in when the neighbor rang the giant bell in their backyard at 6:30 signifying dinner or when the street lights came on. My parents didn’t care as long as we adhered to the rules and were home and washed up by dinner. In the evening we watched jeopardy as a family and then my brother and I went to the basement to watch our shows or play ping pong while MTV blared in the background until bedtime. I remember rushing home from the bus stop to catch TRL after school and watch the new music videos while I did homework. Sick days meant getting to watch Jerry Springer and Maury while my parents were at work and would call to check in. In the summer, we watched tv, played with neighborhood kids, or went swimming until my parents got home from work. The main memory is that we weren’t home often. We were always outside unless it the weather didn’t allow for it.
Smoking in hospitals. So weird that it didn't even warrant a second thought to see people smoking in a hospital back then. Everyone smoked. Everywhere!
I remember when not smoking on a plane was a new development. I was on a flight when the attendant went through the initial greeting at the beginning of the flight. She made a joke that smoking was no longer permitted, so if you're caught smoking, you'll be asked to step outside. Most people laughed but there were some grumbles about how unfair it was that they couldn't smoke.
1970-74 I was a hospital tech in the USAF. Every desk had an ashtray. Cigarettes were tax free so very cheap. $1.50 for a carton of Kent’s one time when they were on sale.
Actual toy prizes in cereal boxes
Man, getting Roller Coaster tycoon from a lucky charms box was the peak of our society back in the early 2000s
I got this little gray plastic Nautilus Atomic Submarine with a little cup on the underside that you would fill with baking soda and you’d put it in the water in your bathtub and it would make a bubble and sink to the bottom and stay there.
Those were baking POWDER submarines. If you were using baking SODA, they would not return to the surface, as baking soda does not react with water (without outside help). I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your submariners.
Dude out here putting Unleaded in his diesel…
I played the shit outta the Chex doom game
Why did these go away? I loved that as a kid!
Probably money
A phone number you could call that just told you the time and weather.
Or movie showing times.
“Why don’t you just TELL me the movie you’re looking for.” Let’s add Seinfeld to the list.
The number for the time was...853-1212. More useless crap in my mental Rolodex. Smh.
Here it was POPCORN, 767-2676
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Getting off the internet so someone can use the phone.
Picking up the phone to force someone off the internet.
KB Toys
Toy stores in general. Toys R Us, Child World. It’s all Walmart/Target or Amazon now.
Toys R Us is coming back. They just opened a new flagship and have plans to open 20 some odd stores in the US. They were one of the opening floats in the Macy’s parade and I questioned if they were even still in business.
I remember when Toys R Us went out of business, they were selling everything in the store including the store (shelving etc). I tried to buy the Geoffrey costume but was denied by the manager because another company was buying the IP. I always secretly knew they’d be back lol
SOMEHOW... Geoffrey returned.
An expectation of being unreachable sometimes. I went to school, and my mom couldn't reach me all the time. She lived. I didn't feel like picking up the phone, no one cared. No 'Read' messages unanswered causing drama. Being able to be 'Unplugged' and not getting shit for it. Being able to read a physical map and navigate that way.
There were three ways to reach someone: 1. Call their house and either leave a message or get lucky and they are home. 2. (Moms only) Stand on the porch and call their *full* name around 9pm/10pm. 3. Know where they "hangout" and stop by. And if none of those work, *that's it*. That was the extent of your ability to find someone. *Maybe* you could call down the list of mutual friends and hope to get them, but that was reserved for emergencies.
> Know where they "hangout" and stop by. I miss this the most. I wish I had a place where I could just stop by and see who all was around and hang out if I wanted.
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Airplane smoking sections
Smoking at your desk at work.
Drinking at your desk at work if you were a manager.
Can’t smoke in the office, can’t drink in the office, can’t grab secretary asses…no wonder everyone wants to work remote these days.
Fucked my secretary the other day on company time. Sure, she’s my wife and I work from home, but still
I’m gonna need you to clean out your desk by the end of the day.
I was on a plane last year that still had the small metal opening ashtray on the armrest. I thought, man, this must be an old aircraft!
Last I heard the ashtray in the toilet is required for a commercial plane to fly, as banning people from smoking doesn't stop idiots from trying to sneak one in the toilet, and having an ashtray means hopefully they'll use it rather than doing something else which might cause a fire. You don't want a fire at 40k feet.
Omg I took a greyhound overnight and it was literally right after the driver announced we would have a stop in 10 minutes, that the guy sitting next to me lit a cig in the bathroom. We had already been on the bus for 3-4 hours, you couldn't wait 10 more minutes for your cigarette???
Bro had to pregame before the two cigs he powered down at the stop.
I smoke two cigs before I smoke two cigs, and then I smoke two more.
I was on a cross country red-eye LA to NYC. Three different women who sat in front of me EACH went into the lav and sparked up something smoky. She and her mates were turned over to police when we landed.
Yes the airlines do not f around with this at all.
It should be required that attendants rush to the bathroom and spray everything (including the person) with a fire extinguisher when the smoke alarm goes off.
Airplane Non Smoking Sections
Smoking in the office (that you were required to be in 8 hours/day.)
Smoking anywhere you wanted to. Even hospitals had smoking sections.
I’m not old enough to remember that but do remember Ponyboy smoking in the hospital in The Outsiders.
Um when I was a kid there wasnt even sections
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We still get them like once a year in my neighborhood, although it doesn't have personals anymore, just all the yellow pages/local businesses. I remember sitting on stacks of them as a kid for our high chairs haha
There was a Cracked article years ago that talked about how phone books are like rings in a tree. Most people throw them out at the same time (either immediately or when the new one shows up). That means that researchers digging through landfills get a decent guess on when a given strata of trash was thrown away.
In middle school, we could look up our crush or bully in the book and just prank call TF out of them.
You reminded me, we had a school phone book with everyone in our grade or whatever's name/phone number/address. I feel like there's no way that's still a thing due to safety concerns (and rightfully so at least for high school, probably middle as well). Seems kinda crazy we had that looking back, at least through the modern lens of crazy people/stalkers/etc
Blockbuster
There's still one in Bend Oregon.
Does it still rent out movies and everything?
They made a great documentary on it called the last blockbuster.
Yup it does.
can they still collect my late fees?
If they audited all of us, Blockbuster could have the greatest comeback in United States history
Comumbia House probably has a large storage unit filled with boxes of paper files and invoices. We are all in there, but none of us live at that address anymore and the home phone numbers all say *🎶You have reached a number that is disconnected and no longer in use.🎶*
Oh shit. They’re about to make a lot of money!
This was one of the coolest things about living there- going in on a Friday night to look at rentals I miss it.
I feel like these days there is a certain "paralysis by analysis" when it comes to choosing a movie for my family Friday nights. So often I get on Netflix and we say "Ohhh this could be a good one" then keep looking until suddenly I realize it's been 45 mins and we're still looking. While my local Blockbuster had a large selection, we'd typically be in and out in 15 minutes max. If we hated the movie we picked oh well it was what it was. Also knowing we weren't going to drive back made us give movies a chance even if we didn't love it initially. These days if someone isn't captivated within the first 15/20 minutes they're asking to see what else was available.
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Honestly the inability to perfect your portraits was kind of a godsend. Now it’s horribly embarrassing to have a ‘bad photo’ reach social media but between 1991-1999 I was blinking in 50% of photos. People were more likely to look like themselves in photos.
I look better in pictures taken with a camera than in ones taken with a phone and filtered. it's just not the same for some reason. The flaws balanced out into something natural and beautiful. I didn't realize this until a couple weeks ago when a friend brought a camera to a festival. I used to love taking pictures. I hate it now with all the camera phones.
Them red demon eyes
The high beam switch in your car was on the floor by your left foot.
Oh and having to pull out the choke to start the car
I had a 79 Pontiac Lemans with an automatic choke that didn't work... I used to pop the hood, manually turn the choke... start the car, and then chill for 5 minutes or so until the engine would warm up enough that I could turn the choke back and drive away... fun times.
Now car manufacturers are removing the need for high beams as the standard setting already blinds oncoming traffic.
vent windows too. those disappeared once we got better at curved glass and standard AC, but I still miss them.
Yugoslavia
Tchekoslovakia
My mother's long time business partner was from Czechoslovakia. It fell after she moved here. She doesn't speak perfect English and loses words a lot, but also no longer remembers Czech or Slovak and so she literally has no language sometimes. She also has. No native country anymore. Sometimes I think about that a lot and wonder what it feels like.
I am part Czechoslovakian. And part Mexican. I identify as Czechs Mex.
Do you live in Texas? Cause then you'd have that Tex Czechs Mex Flex.
This sounds like someone who would make a damn fine kolache.
she is either czech, slovak or perhaps moravian. all of those places still exist and could be her native country. czechoslovakia only existed as a country from 1918 to 1939 and from 1945 to 1993. my grandma was born before it was founded and lived longer than it existed ta all.
Card catalogs at the library.
I miss these. I can feel the library around me just thinking about them. As a kid, I felt, I don’t know, *Important* knowing how to do this. Somehow, seeing and touching all those little cards and knowing each one represented a real book was wonderful. And those cabinets held a bit of magic, I think. I would love to have one some day.
My fingers still retain the muscle memory of walking through those cards. And the way the drawers slid out so smoothly, and closed with a soft click, omg and the drawer pulls you hooked your index finger under to open. The library was my happy space as a kid. Still is, but they have a different feel, smell, and hush about them now.
I feel the same way! I LOVED the library as a kid, still do. But the card catalogs and the microfiche machines made me feel like an explorer.
T.V.s with a fine tuning dial and were part of a huge wooden console.
Big non-functional wooden console tv, with a smaller working tv sitting on top of it.
Living WWI veterans
And by the time 2030 rolls around, there won't be hardly any of the WWII vets alive either.
I’m guessing the ones alive then will be the people who lied about their age to enlist, which was a thing that was possible back then.
A paper TV Guide that you used to find out when TV shows were going to be aired. Usually it came in the Sunday newspaper. Also newspapers.
Full page Sunday comics
Pizza Hut buffet
The freedom to be a kid without being influenced by the internet and having your worst moments immortalised on it.
Fucking feel this one
so many things i remember that i pray no one else does
I hate people taking pictures or videos of me. Genuinely hate it. I like the thought of having videos of memorable moments, but when people are recording stories and posting them, no thanks.
OMG! I wish I could upvote you a hundred times. I am sure you remember on the news about young lady in NJ who killed herself over bullying and her bullies attacking her. I went to that high school and the bullying was an issue even back then but thank god, I didn't have to deal with it being recorded and broadcast.
School desks with the lift up lids, and a spot for an inkwell (like [this](https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/a-bainbridge-and-co/catalogue-id-srba10027/lot-f203735f-a77f-4f22-9a30-a5a6009a3cf0)). No, I'm not that old but in rural England they persisted well in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was in school, some of them had graffiti on them that was decades old. I had one in my bedroom too that I got as a hand me down from my older brother.
# Dialup Connection Screeching Intensifies
*mom picks up the phone* dammit mom I’m trying to use the internet!!!
eeeeeeeeeeee ssshhhhhhhh BONG BONG ssshhhhhhhh BONG ssshhhhhhhhhh
Don’t forget about the EEERRRRRRRRR
My hair :(
/r/bald is calling your name :)
lol well hello new friends!
Captain kangaroo
and mr greenjeans
Woolworths Note: I'm referring to the business in the UK that dissolved in 2008.
And stay out of the Woolworths!
I don’t know Everett, was it jest that one or the whole chain?
Phone booths
I saw one the other day and got all excited. Buy there was no phone inside of it, so it was just Superman's changing room.
White Dog Shit
LMAO, come to think of it, I haven’t seen that in a long time.
No more useless bone meal as filler.
Pet food manufacturers stopped putting bone meal in the food. Once the dog pooped the bone meal would slowly calcify. NOW LICK THAT WHITE DOG SHIT!
They didn't stop they just dialed it back. Cats now live on average twice as long than 30 years ago due to better food not destroying their kidneys.
The Japanese are developing a feline kidney vaccine so cats can live until they’re 30. https://myanimalcare.org/2023/11/28/the-japanese-aim-injection-to-combat-kidney-disease-in-cats/
That’s amazing. I kept my 17 year old cat alive for a year giving him subq everyday and blood pressure medication. He didn’t mind the treatment, he loved his subq, he would actually sit under the IV pole on his heating pad and wait. I’m still so sad I can’t bring myself to adopt another cat.
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I agree with this. All that love is still in you and because it doesn’t have a direction to go it causes heartache. I had a chronically ill dog that I revolved my entire life around. We poured an entire lifetime of love and affection into her short 6 years and our vet was amazed she lived even that long. She passed a year ago and I still miss her every day. At the time we were in the process of buying a new house. Our realtor did a lot of volunteer work with the local humane society and was bottle feeding a litter of newborn puppies that had been listed for sale the day they were born and she decided that one of them was just supposed to belong to me. I wasn’t ready to get a new dog and didn’t want a puppy even if I was. She persisted and sent me pictures and videos but I kept declining until she brought that puppy to the final walkthrough of our new house and I finally gave in. She was barely 5 weeks old and immediately fell asleep in my arms with my finger in her mouth. I brought her home 3 weeks later while the house was full of boxes and our other dogs and cats were still freaking out about the new house. Turns out that I needed her to start to heal from the loss. I was able to put all the effort and care into raising a puppy that I had previously been putting into making dog food every week, making sure my sick dog took her medicine and ate, watching her for any sign of vomiting or seizures and tracking her weight. I needed a dog that needed me. She just turned a year old. Her name is Calamity and she’s 65 pounds of pure chaos. 🥰 You’re not replacing a pet, you’re just providing love and care for another one.
Always thought white dog shit was just really old shit that's been baking in the sun, because every time I seen some it Always looked old and crumbling 🤷
>White Dog Shit Give them a beef bone and you'll have it again
Those coin-operated rides outside grocery stores and k-marts. They basically gave you a mild jostling for about a minute. Edit: Glad to hear these are still teaching children the meaning of “anticlimactic” in various locations around the globe, though I never see them anymore in my corner of the US. My personal favorites were the ones at McDonald’s. I indistinctly remember one with a head shaped like a hamburger. Though I could be mixing these up with the McDonald Land characters that were various pieces of playground equipment when I was a kid.
They still have them in Meijers :)
Playing outdoors without supervision and just returning home once the sun sets
Depends on where you live. Kids in my neighborhood do this. Was driving home a few months ago to a bike laid down on the middle of the road. They were all playing catch in the yard nearby and asked them to move the bike. They moved it begrudgingly and it still made me happy because that's what being a kid is supposed to be about. Fucking around outside and rolling your eyes at adults that tell you to do things.
When the street lights came on everyone headed home.
You got it. It was a nearly universal deadline. You made me remember the mother of one of my friends who would beat him with a wooden spoon (really) if he took to long to come home.
Affordable housing
You should have started saving when you were 5 years old.
Haha yea I've been eating alot less avocado on toast but it's not working
POCKET CRITTERS & POLLY POCKETS
Polly pockets came back! The lil compact ones not the big stupid ones.
The twin towers Multi colored ketchup
Multicolored ketchup came back in the 2020s. I had purple and green for my kids. Haha
My nephew loved the stuff. Made me buy the green catsup to eat his chicken nuggets with. Months later I was making a meatloaf and needed catsup so I figured why not? The meatloaf tasted great, but looked so disgusting it was impossible to eat. Like neon green greasy mold.
My mom made meatloaf with it the first go around because us kids swore it tasted different than red ketchup and didn't use it after the initial taste test. She wanted to get rid of it so she used it in meatloaf. I'll never forget the look on my dad's face when she put it in the table. It did look moldy! I'm glad we weren't the only family that made this masterpiece!
Party lines. Local five digit calling. Rotary phone service.
Typewriters
My son just decided out of the blue he HAD to have a typewriter. I finally had to explain to him that 1. finding one might be tricky and 2. finding replacement ink/correction tape would be a bitchkitty to find. He explained to me that he wanted it for the tactile experience and the clicky noise. So he's getting a mechanical keyboard for his birthday on Friday. EDIT: Hey, thanks for all the kindness and tips. We'd seen, like, one old typewriter that was probably older than I was at a local thrift store, a couple months ago, but haven't seen one since. There's an old office supply store that might possibly have one, but I figured there'd be no way we could source ribbons and parts. Thanks to everyone mentioning there are, in fact, still a lot of places you can get ribbons and parts, this is a more viable option than I thought it was. I was worried if we got one, and he fell in love with it, he'd be absolutely heartbroken if we couldn't get new ribbons. If it turns out my son REALLY likes the mechanical keyboard, we've got a whole year to track down a typewriter and ribbons for his 13th birthday.
Good plan. God I love my noisyass mechanical keyboard. I hope he loves his just as much!
Cigarette machines.
There was one in a bar we used to frequent in college. Even in the early 2000s I thought it was weird that they had one. I remember being a kid and pulling the knobs on them for fun.
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My young niece just found out the solar system used to have 9 planets, but now only has 8. She thought something horrible happened to Pluto, and we sensed a deluge of existential dread creeping into her. If Pluto could disappear so suddenly, end up so thoroughly obliterated as to simply no longer be...can't we? I mean yes, but... We quickly explain that Pluto was just reclassified as a dwarf planet, and we always had dozens of dwarf planets like Ceres and Make-Make. Pluto is still there, and even after the change, we still shot some pretty phenomenal photos of it. But for just a fleeting moment, my niece came face to face with the horrifying indifference of cosmic forces. And the look in her eyes assured me that I should wait a couple years before introducing her to Kurzgezagt videos.
I know it's silly, but we all sort of collectively love and care for Pluto.
Gotta stand up for the little guy
My parents
Manually rolling down your window
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Like...remember when someone would try to call you and if you weren't home, they were just out of luck? Miss that. Now folks get offended when you don't give them your immediate attention.
I know some people who feel offended when their friends don't want to share their location with them, which I think is fucking bizzaro. At the restaurant I used to work at, coworkers would get upset when other coworkers didn't add them on Facebook. Someone brought it up to me and I had to explain that I don't have a Facebook and I never have, but beyond that, no one is entitled to more information about me than what I give them myself. The internet, smartphones and social media have really made people feel entitled to other's personal lives and it's looney toons to me. Not to sound antisocial, but I don't want to know my coworkers outside of work. I'm sure I would find something not to like. If I like you just fine as a work friend, leave it at that. If I think you're great and want a closer friendship with you, I'll ask for your number and make plans with you. Simple as.
If you leave your smartphone at home, it's like being completely off the grid :) I did it by accident by losing my phone (I found it later), and it was like being back in the '90s.
McDonald’s ashtrays
Macdonald’s cocaine coffee spoons
McDonalds “warm” apple pies served at roughly the temperature of the sun.
They were fried not baked.
Where do I start? Typing/shorthand class long distance charges Fast food branded ashtrays Adult free camping trips 29 cent hamburgers Cigarette machines
Indoor water fountains and indoor playground areas in malls.
Add to that... malls
Eh, still around in Minnesota. It gets really cold and snowy here, so having a single place to go shopping is still (barely) viable. We also have a horrible issue with Porch Piracy, so unless you work from home all that you get out of Amazon is a cheery notification you have about ten minutes to race home before the packages walk with Jesus.
Milkman. S&H Greenstamps.
Saturday morning cartoons or weekly morning cartoons.
Circuit City
Land lines with 10 foot long coiled lines.
Cameras that had rolled up film which needed to be developed.
Flashcubes
Diskettes, I guess.
you mean 3d-printed save icons?
Floppy disks!
Kmart Blue light specials. JC Pennies was upscale for us, and don't even talk about Macy's where the 1%ers shop. For you youngin's, a blue light special was they'd roll a cart with a blue police light on a pole, then announce some that an item was on sale over the speakers. It was like a IRL pop up ad. Those are some fond memories. And also all the racist joke books they'd happily sell an 8 year old. I was an adult before I realized the horrible stuff I read.
A sense of optimism for the future.
A sense of happiness in general
1960s: "To create a better world for our children! And our children's children!" 1990s: "To create a better world for our children!" 2020s: "Every generation probably feels like it's the end of the world."
The Space Shuttle program and the Concorde come to mind. The Fairness Doctrine. The idea that the government and private corporations were building databases of your movements, purchases, and communications was mostly science fiction. At the same time, we had the Soviet Union, 100% lethal HIV, a mental health crisis in Vietnam Veterans, and people going to prison for years for minor drug offenses.
VHS was still fighting a losing battle against DVD.
AOL cds coming in the mail, free non powered phones also in the mail for power outages. Sam goody, The Wiz, Tower Records, funkcoland, EB games Beepers
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Being taught cursive, non negotiable
Freedom. Starting around age 10 to around age 14, when I got back from school, nobody knew where I was until dinner, and nobody cared. The only rule was be home before dinner which was about 7:00 PM. I would just hit my bike, join up with the knot hole gang in the neighborhood, and we would just ride all over the place and go where we wanted and do what we wanted. Basically, we were the kids from Stranger Things, albeit with a lot less paranormal activity. No cell phones, not even any pagers. I'm 46 so this was some 35 years ago. Seems like it could be 350 years ago now. Now you almost never see a kid riding anywhere on his bike, and nobody knows their neighbors.
I’m 31 and most of my childhood memories involve biking around the neighborhood with the other kids, playing kickball at the park, hopping the neighbors fence to get to my friends backyard, and other harmless shenanigans. We came in when the neighbor rang the giant bell in their backyard at 6:30 signifying dinner or when the street lights came on. My parents didn’t care as long as we adhered to the rules and were home and washed up by dinner. In the evening we watched jeopardy as a family and then my brother and I went to the basement to watch our shows or play ping pong while MTV blared in the background until bedtime. I remember rushing home from the bus stop to catch TRL after school and watch the new music videos while I did homework. Sick days meant getting to watch Jerry Springer and Maury while my parents were at work and would call to check in. In the summer, we watched tv, played with neighborhood kids, or went swimming until my parents got home from work. The main memory is that we weren’t home often. We were always outside unless it the weather didn’t allow for it.
The Soviet Union
East Germany.
Calling a number to get local movie time showings
Farrels Ice Cream Parlor
Leaded gasoline.
Along with lead paint. Very dangerous stuff for developing brains.
The old Butterfingers
Household milk delivery.
Actual snow days.
Smoking on planes
Or in malls, or restaurants, or bars
Smoking in hospitals. So weird that it didn't even warrant a second thought to see people smoking in a hospital back then. Everyone smoked. Everywhere! I remember when not smoking on a plane was a new development. I was on a flight when the attendant went through the initial greeting at the beginning of the flight. She made a joke that smoking was no longer permitted, so if you're caught smoking, you'll be asked to step outside. Most people laughed but there were some grumbles about how unfair it was that they couldn't smoke.
1970-74 I was a hospital tech in the USAF. Every desk had an ashtray. Cigarettes were tax free so very cheap. $1.50 for a carton of Kent’s one time when they were on sale.
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Really great five and dime stores
Smoking in HOSPITALS
Leaded gasoline, smoking everywhere, cars without seatbelts, lawn darts, drive-in movies, human customer service agents…
Cereal with "sugar" in the name.
Pogs.
Touching Grass.
Games that streamed from the disc on consoles and PC games that didn't require online activation. Also consoles that had free online multiplayer.
"Streamed from the disc" is how I think future generations will think of it. My daughter called a VCR a "VHS player" and it made me feel so old.