Without telling your age, what is something from your childhood that kids today wouldn't know about?

[Snowysmom]

Rotary phones
TV stations did not stay on all night. On some the National Anthem was played at midnight or 1 am and the station went off the air.
Record albums and record players
Romper Room, Bozo the Clown, Captain Kangaroo
The Monkees, Beatles, Dave Clark 5 etc.

 

[PollyannaMom]

The card catalog in the library

 

[jdb in AZ]

phone with party line. My cousins had one and I thought it was so strange.

needing a phone operator to place a long-distance call.

 

[fly girl]

Card Catalog
Encyclopedia
MTV music videos
Hand crank car windows
No Caller ID, you just blindly answered the phone without knowing who it was!
Coming home when streetlights came on.

 

[fla4fun]

Free TV.

I still have an antenna. Comes in handy when weather cuts the satellite signal. I may get fewer channels on the antenna, but in a pinch, it’s a good backup.

My first thought was party line phones. Not to be confused with a 1-800 number to call to be part of the “party”, which kids might also be unaware of, but multiple people sharing one phone line. When one house got a call, all the phones would ring, and you could listen in to all the conversations. My grandparents had one to save money, but all bets were off when a squirrel chewed through the line.

 

[E&Cmom]

TV antenna on the roof with a box in the house to turn in.....thing rarely worked.

 

[JOLT]

Dunk-a-Roos

 

[Tiggerette]

Floppy Disk
My era= computer data storage device
Today's era= fabric or flexible frisbee

#
My era= pound sign
(see also: rotary or push button phones, actually talking over said communication medium)
Today's era= hashtag
(see also: tweeting/texting as communication medium)

Saturday Morning Cartoons!
My era= a sacred time of the week to have at least 2-3 hours of animated programming and sometimes a special breakfast-treat like choc.chip pancakes
Today's era= ?What's a Saturday Morning cartoon? Is Saturday Morning a new anime series?

 

[jo-jo]

Hand crank car windows

We still have a car with them. 92 grand voyager.

 

[chickapin parterre]

ALL RIGHT HERE COMES THE BEST POST....paper admisson to attraction tickets that dictate your experience at Disneyland.....all day.....book empty.....time to go home

 

[shh]

When TV stations signed off for the night.
ugh...remember it was kinda depressing those nights I couldn't sleep...knowing that was it...

S&H green stamps.
Still remember nights sticking all those stamps into the books and then wandering through the aisles with my mom, books in hand to see what bounty we could score. The store was right next door to a publix, I remember (where we earned all those stamps.) lol forgot all about those green stamps.

 

[shh]

Card Catalog
Encyclopedia
MTV music videos
Hand crank car windows
No Caller ID, you just blindly answered the phone without knowing who it was!
Coming home when streetlights came on.

speaking of card catalogs, remember how you'd do research for term papers when you had to look up old newspaper or magazine articles....those microfisch readers?

 

[goodeats]

I remember when the library would actually stamp the card in the book to tell you when it was due and the card catalog that told you the book's call number/location in the library. I also remember using microfiche for school research papers. It's amazing how much that has all changed.

ETA - Jinx shh!

 

[jo-jo]

I remember when the library would actually stamp the card in the book to tell you when it was due and the card catalog that told you the book's call number/location in the library. I also remember using microfiche for school research papers. It's amazing how much that has all changed.

ETA - Jinx shh!

Remember when you couldn't take the research books out, so you had to pay to make a bunch of copies?

 

[NannyBeBe]

10-key adding machine. I was an expert on it and wish I still had one.

 

[PollyannaMom]

I also remember using microfiche for school research papers.

Remember when you couldn't take the research books out, so you had to pay to make a bunch of copies?

I actually remember handwriting quotes on index cards!

Then went you went to write the paper, spreading them all out all over the floor, rearranging them into the order you liked.

 

[#1hoosierfan]

I remember sitting on my dorm room floor at IU with my electric typewriter to type papers. I had to make sure I caught a mistake as soon as I made it, so i could backspace and “erase” it. Otherwise I would have to retype that whole page.
Good times......

 

[jo-jo]

My DH is/was a chemist, so all the chemical equations had to be hand drawn for papers.

These young whippersnappers have it too easy.

 

[Love Ft Wilderness]

Playing Pong on a TV set
Picking up the free leaflet of the words to latest hit record from Camelot music stores
You pick up your concert tickets at Ticketmaster in a Maas Brothers store
Punch cards for computer programming

 

[Keetchino]

Wuzzles sewing cards