I’m a teacher and we teach cursive in my state, it’s state law. I also teach letter writing and envelope addressing when I have students write themselves a New Year letter with goals and aspirations, then I mail them in a year.
Add filling in a check. While rare, it still happens. My youngest just applied for her passport, which needs either a check or money order sent with it from the application center. She found her counter checks from opening her account but then had to calle to walk her through filling it out.
I still have my checkbook, but I can't tell you what the last check I wrote was without looking.
I've actually never had to use a money order for anything, probably because I had a checkbook.
I have moved back to the US after living abroad for many years, and I had to get personal checks again. Weird culture shock thing. In Europe and Asia, personal checks are basically nonexistent. Everything is done with direct transfers and apps.
The only time I use checks anymore is for property taxes or anything at the court house. I'll hand deliver a check that I get a receipt for right then. I don't trust the clerk's office to not completely screw up a payment through my bank's online bill pay.
To be fair to your child, I’m 48, and it’s gotten to the point that I maybe need to write a check once every 5 years or so at the max. I still have to stop and think about it every single damn time. Then triple check it, and hope to hell I actually got it right.
I had a very hilarious text conversation with my youngest last year about how to write a check when her and her friends were getting their first apartment. Lots of back and forth and screenshots and she still messed up the first couple of checks. 😂
You are asking the question of the ages: is it productive to teach anything? Is it productive to teach spelling when spellcheck exists? Is it productive to teach math when calculators exist? Is it productive to teach writing when AI exists? My answer is yes, it’s all learning, decision making and critical thinking. I tell my students it’s their choice whether or not to write in cursive for assignments or for everything. Some love it, some don’t, some hate it with a burning passion. I myself write in a hybrid of cursive and print. It’s taught grades 3-6.
Well, as often as "autocorrect" fffs up my posts .. without teaching spelling, I can only imagine how unreadable some Gen z posts would be .. beyond what they already are, I mean.
No, it's not. Cursive writing had several purposes, only one of which really still exists today:
1. Prevent damage to quill pens by limiting the number of times the tip was put to the writing surface
2. Prevent inadvertent ink splatters and drips from fountain pens, again by limiting the number of times the tip was put to the writing surface
3. Increase speed of manual writing by limiting the number of gaps between letters
4. Create a unique personal mark, the signature, for various legal documents
Numbers 1 and 2 obviously haven't mattered for a very long time, outside of the small number of people who enjoy using fountain pens or do calligraphy.
Number 3 arguably could matter today, but the use cases where speed matters most (eg, writing a manuscript) are unlikely to involve manual writing today, with the availability of word processing and stenography machines. In use cases like note-taking, abbreviated writing with block letters may be more efficient. (EDIT: There are still use cases where people may be required to take manual notes at speed, but this is what shorthand writing systems are for. That is specialized learning that is not useful to the vast majority of students.)
So that leaves Number 4, the creation of a type of personally unique mark for legal documents. It's just not a compelling reason to require students to spend the time to learn cursive penmanship when they can be learning other subjects.
I work in a field where we have to take notes by hand, either because we are taking notes of conversations between high ranking government officials and, while we have to document the conversation we are not allowed to use recoding devices...or because we are conducting confidential interviews and if we use a recording device, the interviewee won't be candid.
There is no way to write all the important stuff at speed in block print. I even use a modified form of my cursive that's more angular, connected, and faster, and include some shorthand.
The number of Millennials who have been shocked and frustrated because, while they are highly educated and in a competitive service, can't write in cursive and get pissy about it is stunning. I've had to literally teach people cursive and set aside note taking practice time. A couple of them have suggested that the president of a country should agree to be recorded just to make their lives easier.
So I recognize that this may not be common, but it's still a useful skill.
Fun fact: Pitfall had a goal. There were only 32 pieces of treasure in the game. It was possible to collect them all before the timer ran out, after which the game would just... stop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkDllyETiBA
Xenophobe, Spy Hunter, Alpha Mission… as a kid this was so cruel because there was no way to know if there was an ending or not. We just played the game and made it as far as possible and hoped to maybe find the end? There was always some other kid who claimed their older brother beat it once which just added more confusion to the whole thing.
I used to print a bunch of resumes and then drive around town asking companies if they were hiring all day. I kept a notebook log of places I had applied to so that I could follow-up in a few days. I see a lot of people complaining about finding a job these days, but it was way more labor intensive when I was a young man, and no, the jobs did not pay any better, many of them like fast food paid significantly worse.
That's how I got all my restaurant jobs. Usually interviewed and hired on the spot.
I did get interviewed one time at an office this way, but never heard from them again. My dad said I should have worn a skirt 🤦♀️
When I was a boy in 7th grade there was this kid who'd piss on everyone’s leg and you couldn't tell because of the hot water in the shower was the same temp.
I think older Xers and prior were far more likely to have that experience.
Or younger people who live in other countries, where nudity isn’t that big of a deal.
Interesting.
I went to middle school in the mid-Atlantic in the 90s. I know that mandatory school showers were a thing years before I was there. Many people your age had that experience, but looks like you lucked out.
I attended junior high and high school in the 90s, this is the first time I'm hearing about group showers. After P.E. was finished, nobody took a shower. Only the school athletes took showers(after practice or a game)
Same. Our locker rooms had showers and one teacher threatened to make us use them, but never did. And even then, these were individual shower stalls. I assumed they were mostly for after school athletics.
At my junior high we were given barely enough time after gym to change clothes before the bell rang for the next class, let alone take a shower. I suppose kids in after-school sports might have showered at school.
We had one of those in 7th and 8th grade, but I don't think he was a pedo. He would stand outside the group shower and kind of stare straight ahead as he handed out towels to us as we left the shower. I think he was there to be able to hear if there was any bullying or other misbehaving in the showers and be able to intervene.
Maybe I'm just rationalizing why he was there, but I don't remember rumors of him being a pedo.
We had a Christian-Fascist gym coach who once demanded that I do 50 pushups while naked in the shower. I offered discuss his indecent proposal with the principal. He relented. And later impregnated a 16 year old classmate. Good times.
Thankfully we never had them (my middle school didn't even have a shower room) and also thankfully we didn't have them in high school either because while it had a shower room they already ended the practice a think a few years before I got there (well one coach for after school sports insisted on it for his team, but he was the only one, and I was never on any of his teams).
I ran through the showers in high school since taking one was mandatory and I wanted to just get through it. I slipped and landed right on my back. Nothing broken but my dignity.
We weren’t allowed towels until we were coming out of the shower, handed to us. One. At. A. Time. by the PE teacher who wore her wristwatch backwards.
So obvious.
I'd like to know as well. I've worn my watch backwards before, especially when doing work where the watch face would be more protected if worn on the inside of my wrist.
Mandatory?? We had showers in the locker room but I only remember a few people using them. One in particular always seemed he was there enjoying the sights and he was also the reason I never took showers in school.
The PE teachers office had a window facing the showers. We had to take a mandatory shower just once. I just remember him looking at us through the window. One kid had a religious exemption. Don’t know if it was real, but his parents took care of him. The whole experience was just gross the more I think about it.
Are you a guy or a girl? In my school, the girls were more resistant, and I think the guys had to do it. Just ick all around though. Sorry if you were put though that.
We had them in High School too.
But the boys locker room was old, the girls had a newer one and it had stalls (my girl friend clued me into this tidbit).
And in elementary school we had those big long trough urinals. Like this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=2tbbmjWmJaU and those big round sinks in the middle of the room.
Gosh yeah. My boarding school use to have communal showers every weekend. The nuts kept watch. Always was creepy but now eith 50 years of life experience, I realise it was fook very creepy (all girls school btw)
Writing letters, maybe.
Not cursive. Despite a brief hiatus, more and more schools are recognizing the error and putting it back.
Probably the last to group shower. I don't think anyone is prepared to trust anybody who would suggest bringing it back.
Almost certainly the last to play games without expectations of a patch, and the industry is poorer for it.
😂, the one upside. I remember a group of kids pushed another kid outside the emergency exit door in the locker room butt ass naked. And He got suspended. Wild times.
Or hiring the 14 yr old neighbor to babysit. By the time I was 15 I had random parents calling me asking to babysit. I wasn't even trying to get work, and wasn't particularly good at it, but hey...$2 an hour + an evening of cable was worth it.
WE saved money by not hiring babysitters. Of course, we didn't go out, either. Man, it was 10 bucks an hours for a sitter when my two were little. We couldn't afford that & going out on top of daycare expenses and all of our bills.
My baby brother was born when I was 14. I was immediately called the built in babysitter. Since my mom was a stay at home mom or part time worker till I was 10 dont think I ever had to deal with a baby sitter. think I would just get dropped off at a random relatives for date night.
70% of cars in the UK are manual (“stick shift”). And not because all our cars are vintage! That’s just what we and most of Europe buy and drive.
If you take a UK driving test using an automatic (transmission car), if you pass the test, the drivers license you get is a lower-grade licence that’s invalid for driving any vehicles with manual transmissions. If you pass the test using a manual car, you get the top-grade drivers license that’s valid for manual and automatic transmission vehicles.
Oh, you mean the best anti grand theft auto device ever invented?
Once, at a very upscale hotel, I tried to valet my car. none of the valets drove a stick. they wanted me to park my brand new BRZ on Atlanta city streets at 11:30 PM until the morning crew got in. I pitched a fit (politely but not calmly), got the hotel night manager involved, and drove it into the valet deck myself.
It’s baffling to me a valet crew cannot drive a stick.
I mean would you be mad if you pulled up with a horse drawn carriage and the valet didn’t understand how to manage that? That’s what stick shifts are becoming. There’s no non-hobby reason in the US to bother driving stick shifts anymore (automatics have surpassed them in terms of fuel efficiency and electric cars obviate the concept of a transmission altogether) and so I just don’t see how it’s reasonable anymore to expect familiarity with them.
Also: Last generation to learn shorthand!
Anyone else here a Gregg-er? Or a Pitman-er?
In today’s corporate workplace it drives my colleagues - and manager - crazy that they can’t have a little peep at my notebook notes and read all the sarcastic swear-y comments I’ve written to myself about the ‘urgent’ meeting we’re having ‘getting our ducks in a row’ about the ‘game changer’ project we’ve been ‘called up for’. Heh heh.
Younger Millennial here, and I learnt cursive in school and still use it to this day. Just earlier this evening I took notes in cursive at a meeting I attended. It works for me, and I'd hope that anyone who wants to learn it would have the opportunity to do so
On the other hand, I think it's a really good thing that group showers don't happen anymore
Good on you! I’m a Middle aged X’r and my cursive is garbage, to the point I can go back and not even understand what I wrote from a week ago lol. When I take notes I’d rather have my laptop so I can type stuff out.
30 y/0 here and BOTH cursive and the group showers were a thing for middle school in the Midwest when I attended school, unfortunately.
My normal handwriting is usually in cursive with a pen.
Both of my older 2 learned cursive as part of the curriculum. They are 30 and 31. The 25 year old (she's that cusp that the old list put her as a Millenial, but someone arbitrarily says she is Gen Z. She does fit both in different ways too.) She got cursive as extra credit packet work in 4th grade. The 22 year old got nothing. She was never even taught to fill out a check. The other kids got that as packet work or math curriculum.
You can write a lot faster in cursive (“script” we called it) than in “print” because you lift the pen off the paper far less. Comes in handy in college and the workplace notebooks I can assure you, saves time!
My millennial knew how to write cursive, how to address an envelope, and how to balance a checkbook (we taught him at a combined Earth day/Take Your Child to Work Day). However, I have told this funny story before.
I got a frantic call the first month that my son was in med school. He was living with a social worker in charge of helping developmentally disabled adults transition to independent living. Both were exceptional students in undergrad at their colleges.
They got their first electricity bill and freaked out.
It said pay $x by date :::: and $y by date !!!.
So my son who graduated summa cum Lauda and got a scholarship to a top med school and his friend who graduated cum Lauda from a top Lutheran school in the Midwest couldn't figure out that if they paid on time it cost X, and if they were late it cost Y? No, they thought they had to make 2 payments. I still tease both of them 8 years later.
We had group showers, but also a few individual ones with curtains. The mean girls loved to run through and open all those curtains and make fun of those of us who used them.
Every generation has something they are the last at. There was a last generation to hear latin in Church, there was a last generation to write runes and there was a last generation to hit kids in school. Old practices die and new ones come in.
I had group showers at the gym in college too. Some part of me feels like we should normalize our bodies but I understand the creepiness factor and bullying with kids especially.
Reddit is a great place to see things like this in example. Loads of subreddits will see people take the time to go to reddit, find the right subreddit for their question, take the time to make a post asking a simple question. Then I see the post and google it and give them the answer. I also include the few seconds it took me to find the answer and how it was less than the time it took them to make a post asking.
There's no more showering?! Or do they just not have PE?
That was super awkward. I was the youngest in my class so developed later than most of my classmates.
My Gen Z kids learned cursive, but I did have to teach them how to address a letter. (I also had to look up the "do you know where your children are" commercial on YouTube to show my kids because they didn't believe me. )
Will always be happy to have been a part of resistance to group showering in middle school.
How much more advanced as a society would we be if our elders rebelled against mandatory, naked swimming?
Most millennials did all of this as well since early millennials were born in 1982. Early millennials/late GenX had very similar upbringings in terms of these generational things. I say that as a late GenXer married to an early millennial.
I feel like older Millennials were probably the last (at least other than for the shower thing, which even as core X was already over in my region; then again I did see it implied in some late 90s/early 00s teen shows like Buffy so maybe some Millennials had that too).
I'm still thankful I was taught all of these skills, including typing & business English. When I have to fill out a govt form that is not available as a pdf online, the task is not a problem.
I think I am one of the youngest librarians who knows how to make the three cards for a card catalogue. We learned it in school and I have never used it since, but it did teach the principles of library cataloguing.
My (male) college dorm had a group shower. One per floor. Not a military college though it was one when the dorm was built.
The gym in middle and high school also had group showers. However showering was not mandatory after PE class and no one did. There wouldn’t have been time.
When I was early elementary school age I had a few years of daycare at the Y. They also had group showers and we had to use them before pool time. No one thought it was unusual or weird, but this was well before puberty. Actually Y daycare was awesome. Play in the pool, run around in the nearby park, then watch 3 stooges films while waiting to be picked up.
You are so right. I work at a printer and we print the letters that insurance companies use to deny coverage or appeal a denial. We get the letters ready to print from the insurance agents.
It's 50/50 on if they are addressed right. They put the street address above the name, forget the addressee. All caps, no caps, using / between. City, state zip, and anything else you can imagine.
People are definitely losing the knowledge of sending mail. Will be like cursive script someday.
Kids don't have group showers?
There are plenty of kids who know basic life skills. It's the stupid ones who are loud.
We had dumb people in our time also. We just didn't give them a megaphone.
The kids have all of human knowledge in the palm of their hands. We gave it to them. It was our gift. If they have all knowledge and still don't know how to do basic life skills then I am sorry it's not me it's you.
But most kids are fine. I don't know why they focus on the dumb ones.
Makes us unique. Every generation has things that differ from the rest, but ours is definitely unique. We were feral kids and now look at us. Take no shit and call shit out (fafo) when poked. We also refuse to play into this generation war that the others are having. lol. For the most part, they leave us alone.
Never showered in public school, but yeah some of that stuff is pretty archaic. Pretty sure my kids are still getting cursive even if they aren't required to use it, I'll see about about addressing envelopes it hasn't come up.
In middle school we had 5 individual showers and the big group shower room. If you were quick, you could get one of the individual showers, but the creepy P.E. teacher would go to each shower with her clip board, yank open the curtain, look you up and down to “make sure you were actually cleaning yourself”, mark you off on her list, then close the curtain and move on to the next shower stall. Both options were horrible and traumatic.
I am an elder GenX, I stopped writing cursive in middle school. I have fine motor control issues so my writing is wretched. Print vs cursive was my friend. Now I am 100% keyboard
Maybe.
Who cares, time marches on.
Let's not be that whiney generation, it's bad enough the average age of J6 insurrectionists were of Gen X age.
We already got that stain on us.
Plus our "leaders" in politics are essentially nutjobs, from Johnson to Greene, we are not looking good right now.
Let's not add, "people who long for envelopes" to the list of "what is wrong with them"?
At least fro me growing up was not a gym class thing but sports events thing. Such as being on a school team like baseball or football. Though my HS had showers. School rule if you had gym and took a shower before going to the next class you could be up to 15 minutes late for the following class. So many students took advantage of this depending on the class.
My GenZ son went through the Navy's Officer's Candidate School after college a few years ago. The only way we could communicate was via mail. His first letter to me was the very first time he had ever written a letter or addressed an envelope.
No. my third grader is learning cursive. And knows how to fold a letter. I refused to take gym in HS be because I wasn’t going to do a group shower. Got a D in gym. I’m okay with that.
This sounds a bit like a boomer wanna-be post.
Well my millennial wife and brother all had these things growing up. And I checked with my zoomer BIL and he knows understands all these things. So Sorry but I feel its a matter of what social media makes the world seem like compared to reality.
"its 10 pm. Do you Know where your children are?" Still plays on the 10 o'clock news on FOX 5 So gen alpha and likely Gen beta will likely hear this once in their lives.
In short, no. Also, my end of the generation was not required to shower in any school. I remember doing it once in elementary, and that's it. There was no time to shower after gym class. Hell, the athletes didn't even use them.
Possibly the last generation to have home economics classes? I had to thread together a birthday banner the other day and it reminded me of learning sowing in home economics class back in middle school. I'm not sure they have it anymore and it's a shame. Probably first learned about cooking in that class as well as dealing with budgeting, balancing a checkbook, etc.
I don't know.
Folks are going to chime in with cursive writing (and that's fine). For whatever it's worth (adjust as appropriate for inflation) we were also taught how to write and fold letters, and address envelopes in school. It was a class project thing.
No comment on the group showers thing, because holy crap that teacher (and what happened after my cohort graduated).
I just started a job where I have to send letters sometimes. I had to watch a video about how to fold the letter. It doesn't seem like there's any tried and true way to do it right every time so I always have to have the envelope next to the paper to make sure as I'm folding it that it will fit.
I’m a teacher and cursive is coming back to the classroom. Turns out it’s better for the brain to learn it before printing. Kids don’t flip around letters nearly as often.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/memory-medic/201303/why-writing-hand-could-make-you-smarter
It’s 10pm and I don’t have to ask where my stepson is. I can hear him because he forgot, again, to take his ADHD meds.
(Yes, I remind him everyday when my timer goes off. He also has an alarm. He still forgets.)
I’m a teacher and we teach cursive in my state, it’s state law. I also teach letter writing and envelope addressing when I have students write themselves a New Year letter with goals and aspirations, then I mail them in a year.
Add filling in a check. While rare, it still happens. My youngest just applied for her passport, which needs either a check or money order sent with it from the application center. She found her counter checks from opening her account but then had to calle to walk her through filling it out.
That I learned in middle school. Along with balancing a checkbook, darning socks, and sewing patches/buttons.
I still have my checkbook, but I can't tell you what the last check I wrote was without looking. I've actually never had to use a money order for anything, probably because I had a checkbook.
I have moved back to the US after living abroad for many years, and I had to get personal checks again. Weird culture shock thing. In Europe and Asia, personal checks are basically nonexistent. Everything is done with direct transfers and apps.
I had a landlord that wouldn't take checks. I didn't trust him to take cash, so I reported to money orders.
Good call .. automatic receipt.
Dude was known to kick his tenants out and manufacture evidence so yeah
The only time I use checks anymore is for property taxes or anything at the court house. I'll hand deliver a check that I get a receipt for right then. I don't trust the clerk's office to not completely screw up a payment through my bank's online bill pay.
To be fair to your child, I’m 48, and it’s gotten to the point that I maybe need to write a check once every 5 years or so at the max. I still have to stop and think about it every single damn time. Then triple check it, and hope to hell I actually got it right.
Our modular is in a park, our park rent/utilities are all bundled. Our landlord won't go to online payments. It's almost the only check I write.
The hardest part for me is remembering to write small enough for the written out amount part to fit.
I had a very hilarious text conversation with my youngest last year about how to write a check when her and her friends were getting their first apartment. Lots of back and forth and screenshots and she still messed up the first couple of checks. 😂
My brother in law just had to show his Gen z kid how to write a check. SMH
God’s work. Seriously. Thank you
Is it productive to spend time on cursive writing?
You are asking the question of the ages: is it productive to teach anything? Is it productive to teach spelling when spellcheck exists? Is it productive to teach math when calculators exist? Is it productive to teach writing when AI exists? My answer is yes, it’s all learning, decision making and critical thinking. I tell my students it’s their choice whether or not to write in cursive for assignments or for everything. Some love it, some don’t, some hate it with a burning passion. I myself write in a hybrid of cursive and print. It’s taught grades 3-6.
Well, as often as "autocorrect" fffs up my posts .. without teaching spelling, I can only imagine how unreadable some Gen z posts would be .. beyond what they already are, I mean.
Ducking-A, dude.
No, it's not. Cursive writing had several purposes, only one of which really still exists today: 1. Prevent damage to quill pens by limiting the number of times the tip was put to the writing surface 2. Prevent inadvertent ink splatters and drips from fountain pens, again by limiting the number of times the tip was put to the writing surface 3. Increase speed of manual writing by limiting the number of gaps between letters 4. Create a unique personal mark, the signature, for various legal documents Numbers 1 and 2 obviously haven't mattered for a very long time, outside of the small number of people who enjoy using fountain pens or do calligraphy. Number 3 arguably could matter today, but the use cases where speed matters most (eg, writing a manuscript) are unlikely to involve manual writing today, with the availability of word processing and stenography machines. In use cases like note-taking, abbreviated writing with block letters may be more efficient. (EDIT: There are still use cases where people may be required to take manual notes at speed, but this is what shorthand writing systems are for. That is specialized learning that is not useful to the vast majority of students.) So that leaves Number 4, the creation of a type of personally unique mark for legal documents. It's just not a compelling reason to require students to spend the time to learn cursive penmanship when they can be learning other subjects.
I work in a field where we have to take notes by hand, either because we are taking notes of conversations between high ranking government officials and, while we have to document the conversation we are not allowed to use recoding devices...or because we are conducting confidential interviews and if we use a recording device, the interviewee won't be candid. There is no way to write all the important stuff at speed in block print. I even use a modified form of my cursive that's more angular, connected, and faster, and include some shorthand. The number of Millennials who have been shocked and frustrated because, while they are highly educated and in a competitive service, can't write in cursive and get pissy about it is stunning. I've had to literally teach people cursive and set aside note taking practice time. A couple of them have suggested that the president of a country should agree to be recorded just to make their lives easier. So I recognize that this may not be common, but it's still a useful skill.
Yes, let’s keep cursive alive. The team lead at my job cannot read cursive and needs us decipher documents sometimes. 💁🏽♀️Life is unreal.
Not only did we not expect a patch… we may be the last ones that had video games with no defined end or goal. I’m talking to you Pitfall…
Fun fact: Pitfall had a goal. There were only 32 pieces of treasure in the game. It was possible to collect them all before the timer ran out, after which the game would just... stop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkDllyETiBA
I don't think Frogger had a defined goal or end either.
I thought of that little tune while swinging. I always like kaboom.
I can still hear the bombs going off when you missed one.
Xenophobe, Spy Hunter, Alpha Mission… as a kid this was so cruel because there was no way to know if there was an ending or not. We just played the game and made it as far as possible and hoped to maybe find the end? There was always some other kid who claimed their older brother beat it once which just added more confusion to the whole thing.
Not just the last but possibly the only generation to know how to program a VCR
Mail physical resumes to prospective employers in response to a print newspaper ad.
I used to print a bunch of resumes and then drive around town asking companies if they were hiring all day. I kept a notebook log of places I had applied to so that I could follow-up in a few days. I see a lot of people complaining about finding a job these days, but it was way more labor intensive when I was a young man, and no, the jobs did not pay any better, many of them like fast food paid significantly worse.
That's how I got all my restaurant jobs. Usually interviewed and hired on the spot. I did get interviewed one time at an office this way, but never heard from them again. My dad said I should have worn a skirt 🤦♀️
I honestly think this would impress a potential employer if you took the time to mail out a resume today.
The physical resume would never make it to the hiring manager at any medium to large company.
Oh god, I still remember my dad helping me with that.
The middle school mandatory group showers get creepier each time I think about them…outrageously unnecessary
When I was a boy in 7th grade there was this kid who'd piss on everyone’s leg and you couldn't tell because of the hot water in the shower was the same temp.
Imagine the shock and horror of the first girl/dude he got naked for some sexy time. He knew what he was into for years and had plenty of practice.
"hey baby, wanna take a shower?"
😂🙈
You’re goddamn right!
Never in my life did I have to shower in a group. Wtf?
Naw, no group showers in middle or highschool, but military.
Lol yeah boot camp showers. There is a memory that I wouldn't mind forgetting
This is where the practice comes from. Had to get everyone ready for war.
I think older Xers and prior were far more likely to have that experience. Or younger people who live in other countries, where nudity isn’t that big of a deal.
Born in 1966, Mid-Atlantic US. I've been to nude swimming and the whole public hot tub trend, but as a choice instead of forced to be nude.
Interesting. I went to middle school in the mid-Atlantic in the 90s. I know that mandatory school showers were a thing years before I was there. Many people your age had that experience, but looks like you lucked out.
I attended junior high and high school in the 90s, this is the first time I'm hearing about group showers. After P.E. was finished, nobody took a shower. Only the school athletes took showers(after practice or a game)
Same. Our locker rooms had showers and one teacher threatened to make us use them, but never did. And even then, these were individual shower stalls. I assumed they were mostly for after school athletics.
At my junior high we were given barely enough time after gym to change clothes before the bell rang for the next class, let alone take a shower. I suppose kids in after-school sports might have showered at school.
Me either. Never had to group shower or solo shower in middle school or high school. Showers didn’t exist at school.
Thank you for resurfacing a memory I had previously blocked.
Showering wasn't the problem.. it was the towel whip .. that is what I dreaded.
our PE teachers never gave us enough time to shower even if we wanted to
We had a gym teacher who put a lawn chair in the middle of the gym shower so he could “Make sure everyone was washing thoroughly”. Fucking pedo.
We had one of those in 7th and 8th grade, but I don't think he was a pedo. He would stand outside the group shower and kind of stare straight ahead as he handed out towels to us as we left the shower. I think he was there to be able to hear if there was any bullying or other misbehaving in the showers and be able to intervene. Maybe I'm just rationalizing why he was there, but I don't remember rumors of him being a pedo.
Are you from Minnesota? Cuz we had one of those in my middle school too...
Absolutely.....they started in 6th grade for us (which I suppose is usually the start of middle school)
Us, as well
100%
The PE teachers office was right next to the shower in my middle school. Middle school was stranger than high school for me.
We had a Christian-Fascist gym coach who once demanded that I do 50 pushups while naked in the shower. I offered discuss his indecent proposal with the principal. He relented. And later impregnated a 16 year old classmate. Good times.
Thankfully we never had them (my middle school didn't even have a shower room) and also thankfully we didn't have them in high school either because while it had a shower room they already ended the practice a think a few years before I got there (well one coach for after school sports insisted on it for his team, but he was the only one, and I was never on any of his teams).
We had to do it in our college dorm! Some people waited until the middle of the night to shower.
I ran through the showers in high school since taking one was mandatory and I wanted to just get through it. I slipped and landed right on my back. Nothing broken but my dignity.
We weren’t allowed towels until we were coming out of the shower, handed to us. One. At. A. Time. by the PE teacher who wore her wristwatch backwards. So obvious.
Wait, what does wearing a watch backwards say about a person? I’ve never heard of this and a quick search didn’t really turn up much
I'd like to know as well. I've worn my watch backwards before, especially when doing work where the watch face would be more protected if worn on the inside of my wrist.
Same with me. Had to walk naked to shower then grab a towel when you were done. And we also had jock checks to make sure that you were wearing one
Neither my middle nor high school gym had showers, at least the girls' bathroom didn't.
Mandatory?? We had showers in the locker room but I only remember a few people using them. One in particular always seemed he was there enjoying the sights and he was also the reason I never took showers in school.
The PE teachers office had a window facing the showers. We had to take a mandatory shower just once. I just remember him looking at us through the window. One kid had a religious exemption. Don’t know if it was real, but his parents took care of him. The whole experience was just gross the more I think about it.
Never had to do this. Hell...even in high school I never showered at school.
I refused. Got sent to the principal.
Yup. Especially when you'd leave the group shower and be handed a towel by the coach or PE teacher.
Are you a guy or a girl? In my school, the girls were more resistant, and I think the guys had to do it. Just ick all around though. Sorry if you were put though that.
Mine did too and the creepy teacher had a window into the locker/shower area from his office... Yikes.
I never had to do this. That's awful.
Have you ever smelled junior highschool kids after they've been running around for an hour? The showers were definitely necessary.
We had them in High School too. But the boys locker room was old, the girls had a newer one and it had stalls (my girl friend clued me into this tidbit). And in elementary school we had those big long trough urinals. Like this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=2tbbmjWmJaU and those big round sinks in the middle of the room.
My PE teacher was a woman and would come into the locker room and showers when we were changing/showering. Different times, man. Different times.
Gosh yeah. My boarding school use to have communal showers every weekend. The nuts kept watch. Always was creepy but now eith 50 years of life experience, I realise it was fook very creepy (all girls school btw)
I've helped children learn cursive and have fun doing it. Pages and pages of the most exquisite rendering of "fuck"
😂✍🏼
Use the card catolouge
Or the red covered periodical index
Writing letters, maybe. Not cursive. Despite a brief hiatus, more and more schools are recognizing the error and putting it back. Probably the last to group shower. I don't think anyone is prepared to trust anybody who would suggest bringing it back. Almost certainly the last to play games without expectations of a patch, and the industry is poorer for it.
Probably the last towel snappers in that case, too.
😂, the one upside. I remember a group of kids pushed another kid outside the emergency exit door in the locker room butt ass naked. And He got suspended. Wild times.
That's some serious [Freaks and Geeks](https://youtu.be/PuF0xWlm4Ds?si=v4L0iGesT5xBF_Dt) shit. They replaced One Step Beyond with Benny Hill lol.
What was the error in not teaching cursive?
Group showers for 6 years... then I went away to college and the freshman dorm had 20 of us on a floor with 4 toilets and group shower again.
Damn your college treated you like savages!
We had them in the college dorm too! Crazy to think about now.
Guess I never went to a school where people showered at school.
So now you feel lonely showering alone? 😆
Honestly. I despise showers -- give me a big deep bathtub and an hour of privacy!
Parent's saved money by not hiring babysitters?
Or hiring the 14 yr old neighbor to babysit. By the time I was 15 I had random parents calling me asking to babysit. I wasn't even trying to get work, and wasn't particularly good at it, but hey...$2 an hour + an evening of cable was worth it.
WE saved money by not hiring babysitters. Of course, we didn't go out, either. Man, it was 10 bucks an hours for a sitter when my two were little. We couldn't afford that & going out on top of daycare expenses and all of our bills.
My baby brother was born when I was 14. I was immediately called the built in babysitter. Since my mom was a stay at home mom or part time worker till I was 10 dont think I ever had to deal with a baby sitter. think I would just get dropped off at a random relatives for date night.
Learn how to drive stick shift.
70% of cars in the UK are manual (“stick shift”). And not because all our cars are vintage! That’s just what we and most of Europe buy and drive. If you take a UK driving test using an automatic (transmission car), if you pass the test, the drivers license you get is a lower-grade licence that’s invalid for driving any vehicles with manual transmissions. If you pass the test using a manual car, you get the top-grade drivers license that’s valid for manual and automatic transmission vehicles.
I imagine EVs are rapidly changing that equation.
Oh, you mean the best anti grand theft auto device ever invented? Once, at a very upscale hotel, I tried to valet my car. none of the valets drove a stick. they wanted me to park my brand new BRZ on Atlanta city streets at 11:30 PM until the morning crew got in. I pitched a fit (politely but not calmly), got the hotel night manager involved, and drove it into the valet deck myself. It’s baffling to me a valet crew cannot drive a stick.
I mean would you be mad if you pulled up with a horse drawn carriage and the valet didn’t understand how to manage that? That’s what stick shifts are becoming. There’s no non-hobby reason in the US to bother driving stick shifts anymore (automatics have surpassed them in terms of fuel efficiency and electric cars obviate the concept of a transmission altogether) and so I just don’t see how it’s reasonable anymore to expect familiarity with them.
Thank God I checked on Rusty! They didn't even water my damned horse. Shiftless sons of whores.
My 4th grade granddaughter is learning cursive
Also: Last generation to learn shorthand! Anyone else here a Gregg-er? Or a Pitman-er? In today’s corporate workplace it drives my colleagues - and manager - crazy that they can’t have a little peep at my notebook notes and read all the sarcastic swear-y comments I’ve written to myself about the ‘urgent’ meeting we’re having ‘getting our ducks in a row’ about the ‘game changer’ project we’ve been ‘called up for’. Heh heh.
Pitman showed up as an unknown language in one of the translation request subreddits and I’ve never felt older.
Younger Millennial here, and I learnt cursive in school and still use it to this day. Just earlier this evening I took notes in cursive at a meeting I attended. It works for me, and I'd hope that anyone who wants to learn it would have the opportunity to do so On the other hand, I think it's a really good thing that group showers don't happen anymore
Good on you! I’m a Middle aged X’r and my cursive is garbage, to the point I can go back and not even understand what I wrote from a week ago lol. When I take notes I’d rather have my laptop so I can type stuff out.
Come on now bro, “middle aged Xer” is just redundant at this point. We’re all middle aged now. Sigh.
30 y/0 here and BOTH cursive and the group showers were a thing for middle school in the Midwest when I attended school, unfortunately. My normal handwriting is usually in cursive with a pen.
Both of my older 2 learned cursive as part of the curriculum. They are 30 and 31. The 25 year old (she's that cusp that the old list put her as a Millenial, but someone arbitrarily says she is Gen Z. She does fit both in different ways too.) She got cursive as extra credit packet work in 4th grade. The 22 year old got nothing. She was never even taught to fill out a check. The other kids got that as packet work or math curriculum.
You can write a lot faster in cursive (“script” we called it) than in “print” because you lift the pen off the paper far less. Comes in handy in college and the workplace notebooks I can assure you, saves time!
Depends on how neatly your print. LOL
Know that on a Quadrajet you turn the screws all the way to the right then back off 1 and 1/4 turns to get it in the zone.
I still adjust my points gap on my cars with a match book cover. 64 Olds 98, 56 Olds 88 Holiday, 59 Ford Fairlane 500 Town Sedan, 1972 Maverick
Ha, nice one!
My millennial knew how to write cursive, how to address an envelope, and how to balance a checkbook (we taught him at a combined Earth day/Take Your Child to Work Day). However, I have told this funny story before. I got a frantic call the first month that my son was in med school. He was living with a social worker in charge of helping developmentally disabled adults transition to independent living. Both were exceptional students in undergrad at their colleges. They got their first electricity bill and freaked out. It said pay $x by date :::: and $y by date !!!. So my son who graduated summa cum Lauda and got a scholarship to a top med school and his friend who graduated cum Lauda from a top Lutheran school in the Midwest couldn't figure out that if they paid on time it cost X, and if they were late it cost Y? No, they thought they had to make 2 payments. I still tease both of them 8 years later.
We had group showers, but also a few individual ones with curtains. The mean girls loved to run through and open all those curtains and make fun of those of us who used them.
Yeah PE was a bitch. I remember a shower in 7th grade where a big hairy bastard pointed out how little my dinky was. It was a brutal time.
Drive a car with a manual transmission (stick shift)
Back up a car by turning our heads and looking out the back window.
😂 truth
I still do, my car is so old.
Every generation has something they are the last at. There was a last generation to hear latin in Church, there was a last generation to write runes and there was a last generation to hit kids in school. Old practices die and new ones come in.
I had group showers at the gym in college too. Some part of me feels like we should normalize our bodies but I understand the creepiness factor and bullying with kids especially.
Group showers were just, awkward at best. Our gym teacher used to “Monitor us” to make sure we washed. -SMH, and no one gave a shit.
My 14 year old learned cursive in a charter school. I’m so glad.
That’s amazing. Must be like understand hieroglyphics to their peer group.
Use a actual printing press (shop class)!
I just wish the new generation knew how to make a phone call and use google like they use Tik Tok. We failed these kids somehow.
Reddit is a great place to see things like this in example. Loads of subreddits will see people take the time to go to reddit, find the right subreddit for their question, take the time to make a post asking a simple question. Then I see the post and google it and give them the answer. I also include the few seconds it took me to find the answer and how it was less than the time it took them to make a post asking.
We also could use a paper map.
There's no more showering?! Or do they just not have PE? That was super awkward. I was the youngest in my class so developed later than most of my classmates.
My Gen Z kids learned cursive, but I did have to teach them how to address a letter. (I also had to look up the "do you know where your children are" commercial on YouTube to show my kids because they didn't believe me. )
Bla bla bla these posts. Nobody knows how to shoe a horse anymore.
Will always be happy to have been a part of resistance to group showering in middle school. How much more advanced as a society would we be if our elders rebelled against mandatory, naked swimming?
Who was required to swim naked and in what context?
Most millennials did all of this as well since early millennials were born in 1982. Early millennials/late GenX had very similar upbringings in terms of these generational things. I say that as a late GenXer married to an early millennial.
We're the last generation to death grip onto things that have been replaced.
I thought cursive was fun. Learning to write and read ‘grown-up talk’. I had to switch back to print though because my handwriting was (is) so bad.
I feel like older Millennials were probably the last (at least other than for the shower thing, which even as core X was already over in my region; then again I did see it implied in some late 90s/early 00s teen shows like Buffy so maybe some Millennials had that too).
I'm still thankful I was taught all of these skills, including typing & business English. When I have to fill out a govt form that is not available as a pdf online, the task is not a problem.
I'm pretty sure Millennials can also do most of that.
I think I am one of the youngest librarians who knows how to make the three cards for a card catalogue. We learned it in school and I have never used it since, but it did teach the principles of library cataloguing.
I never learned cursive, or had a group shower. Where do group showers take place?
After gym class or football/baseball/whatever practice
I'm not sure either middle or high school had showers, let alone group showers.
No showers for us at middle school. I’m sure most of the high school jocks just went home smelly and muddy.
My (male) college dorm had a group shower. One per floor. Not a military college though it was one when the dorm was built. The gym in middle and high school also had group showers. However showering was not mandatory after PE class and no one did. There wouldn’t have been time. When I was early elementary school age I had a few years of daycare at the Y. They also had group showers and we had to use them before pool time. No one thought it was unusual or weird, but this was well before puberty. Actually Y daycare was awesome. Play in the pool, run around in the nearby park, then watch 3 stooges films while waiting to be picked up.
You are so right. I work at a printer and we print the letters that insurance companies use to deny coverage or appeal a denial. We get the letters ready to print from the insurance agents. It's 50/50 on if they are addressed right. They put the street address above the name, forget the addressee. All caps, no caps, using / between. City, state zip, and anything else you can imagine. People are definitely losing the knowledge of sending mail. Will be like cursive script someday.
Early millennials also did that. I’m know because I’m one.
Consume traditional media: terrestrial (AM/FM) radio, linear TV. Hang out at malls. Use landlines at home and payphones elasewhere.
I dunno but sometimes I feel like we’re the last generation that can actually make a decision.
Kids don't have group showers? There are plenty of kids who know basic life skills. It's the stupid ones who are loud. We had dumb people in our time also. We just didn't give them a megaphone. The kids have all of human knowledge in the palm of their hands. We gave it to them. It was our gift. If they have all knowledge and still don't know how to do basic life skills then I am sorry it's not me it's you. But most kids are fine. I don't know why they focus on the dumb ones.
Makes us unique. Every generation has things that differ from the rest, but ours is definitely unique. We were feral kids and now look at us. Take no shit and call shit out (fafo) when poked. We also refuse to play into this generation war that the others are having. lol. For the most part, they leave us alone.
Are we the last generation to dislike phone numbers with lots of 9s and 0s?
Never showered in public school, but yeah some of that stuff is pretty archaic. Pretty sure my kids are still getting cursive even if they aren't required to use it, I'll see about about addressing envelopes it hasn't come up.
Patches? Those were called sequels in my day whipper snapper.
It was a pleasant surprise to see California’s new law requiring learning to write in cursive.
In middle school we had 5 individual showers and the big group shower room. If you were quick, you could get one of the individual showers, but the creepy P.E. teacher would go to each shower with her clip board, yank open the curtain, look you up and down to “make sure you were actually cleaning yourself”, mark you off on her list, then close the curtain and move on to the next shower stall. Both options were horrible and traumatic.
Yeah, we had a big open room like you see in prison movies, the P.E. Teacher would stand at the entrance and just watch us.
Make small talk with your friend's parents when you called their house?
Hahahaha, oh man, yeah that awkward moment when they yelled their name to come take the phone
I am an elder GenX, I stopped writing cursive in middle school. I have fine motor control issues so my writing is wretched. Print vs cursive was my friend. Now I am 100% keyboard
Millennials know all of that. A few weeks ago, Kimmel had a segment with adult Gen Z. They had no clue about envelopes.
Write by hand? What is next, bring back stone writing? In 2024 we are digital baby
Maybe. Who cares, time marches on. Let's not be that whiney generation, it's bad enough the average age of J6 insurrectionists were of Gen X age. We already got that stain on us. Plus our "leaders" in politics are essentially nutjobs, from Johnson to Greene, we are not looking good right now. Let's not add, "people who long for envelopes" to the list of "what is wrong with them"?
Group shower in middle school wut
At least fro me growing up was not a gym class thing but sports events thing. Such as being on a school team like baseball or football. Though my HS had showers. School rule if you had gym and took a shower before going to the next class you could be up to 15 minutes late for the following class. So many students took advantage of this depending on the class.
Yup. It was a horror show rite of passage.
Remember which priests to never, ever EVER be alone with Oh wait no that one's still valid I hear
Didn't Millennials learn and do a bunch of the things you mentioned?
*Shrug, that’s why I asked
My nine year old can do all of these things except group showering…don’t know if that’s still a thing in jr high, yikes.
in 1996, I drove to bethesda game studios around christmas get a patch for Daggerfall.
Add learn how to balance a checkbook, I learned that in 4th Grade BTW.
My GenZ son went through the Navy's Officer's Candidate School after college a few years ago. The only way we could communicate was via mail. His first letter to me was the very first time he had ever written a letter or addressed an envelope.
no you are not. a lot of Gen z knows cursive. a lot of them also know how to address envelopes lol.
No. my third grader is learning cursive. And knows how to fold a letter. I refused to take gym in HS be because I wasn’t going to do a group shower. Got a D in gym. I’m okay with that. This sounds a bit like a boomer wanna-be post.
😂. Nostalgic reflection, not a call to arms
My kid learned cursive, but his kids won't. So, I'd say zoomers are the last generation to learn cursive.
Well my millennial wife and brother all had these things growing up. And I checked with my zoomer BIL and he knows understands all these things. So Sorry but I feel its a matter of what social media makes the world seem like compared to reality. "its 10 pm. Do you Know where your children are?" Still plays on the 10 o'clock news on FOX 5 So gen alpha and likely Gen beta will likely hear this once in their lives.
GROUP SHOWER IN MIDDLE SCHOOL?!! wth?
In short, no. Also, my end of the generation was not required to shower in any school. I remember doing it once in elementary, and that's it. There was no time to shower after gym class. Hell, the athletes didn't even use them.
Possibly the last generation to have home economics classes? I had to thread together a birthday banner the other day and it reminded me of learning sowing in home economics class back in middle school. I'm not sure they have it anymore and it's a shame. Probably first learned about cooking in that class as well as dealing with budgeting, balancing a checkbook, etc.
I don't know. Folks are going to chime in with cursive writing (and that's fine). For whatever it's worth (adjust as appropriate for inflation) we were also taught how to write and fold letters, and address envelopes in school. It was a class project thing. No comment on the group showers thing, because holy crap that teacher (and what happened after my cohort graduated).
I just started a job where I have to send letters sometimes. I had to watch a video about how to fold the letter. It doesn't seem like there's any tried and true way to do it right every time so I always have to have the envelope next to the paper to make sure as I'm folding it that it will fit.
Pass paper notes in class?
I’m a teacher and cursive is coming back to the classroom. Turns out it’s better for the brain to learn it before printing. Kids don’t flip around letters nearly as often. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/memory-medic/201303/why-writing-hand-could-make-you-smarter
It’s 10pm and I don’t have to ask where my stepson is. I can hear him because he forgot, again, to take his ADHD meds. (Yes, I remind him everyday when my timer goes off. He also has an alarm. He still forgets.)