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Sunday, July 24, 2011

30 Things My Kids May Never Experience

A Facebook Friend recently posted an article entitled, “100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About”.

When I read the title, I immediately thought of all kinds of things from my childhood that my own children will probably never experience, simply because of all of the changes in technology and society since the 1970s and 1980s. I decided to make my own list before reading the article, just to see how many things I could bring to mind.

30 Things My Children May Never Experience:

1. Putting a key in the car door to lock and unlock it.

2. Using the hand crank to manually raise and lower the car windows.

3. Sitting on Mom’s lap in the front of seat of the car.

4. Getting out of the car to raise the garage door by hand.

5. The record player as a piece of furniture in the living room.

6. 8 track tapes. (My Dad listened to 8 track tapes until his car was stolen at a restaurant on my 13th birthday. I don’t think he could have found a car with an 8 track tape player in 1986, if he had tried, so he finally “converted” to a cassette tape player.)

7. Making mix tapes for your best friend or boyfriend.

8. Telephones with rotary dials.

9. Stretching the phone card into another room and closing the door for privacy.

10. Going up to the TV to change the channel.

11. Having only four channels to choose from—CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS.

12. Reading the comics in the Sunday newspaper.

13. Renting a VCR for birthday parties. (As another testament to my technology-deprived childhood, my parents didn’t get a VCR until after I went to college in the 1990s. When we were young, Mom would rent a VCR from Blockbuster so my friends and I could watch movies during sleepovers!)

14. Going to Blockbuster to rent movies.

15. Stovetop popcorn or a popcorn popper on the kitchen countertop with the rest of the appliances.

16. Tearing the edges off paper after it comes out of computer printer, then tearing the pages apart at the perforations.

17. Chalkboards in the classroom.

18. The flickering and clicking of reel-to-reel filmstrips.

19. Card catalogs at the library.

20. Having a set of encyclopedias on the bookshelf.

21. Waiting to get photos developed to find out if any of your pictures “turned out”.

22. Putting film in your camera, and worrying that you will lose pictures when you open the back of the camera.

23. Worrying about your film getting ruined when you went through security at the airport.

24. Roller skates you strap onto your shoes.

25. Prank calls (I can’t imagine kids make these in the current days of Caller ID).

26. Riding under the grocery cart.

27. Waiting for paper plane tickets to arrive in the mail before your trip.

28. Greeting relatives at the gate of the airport when they first get off the plane.

29. Starting over with a fresh piece of paper to type your second draft in the typewriter. (My Mom and Dad had a plan worked out when we were babies: In case of fire, they knew who would grab the kids and who would grab my Dad’s dissertation!)

30. Using correction tape in the typewriter.

Those of you who are older than I may have additional items to add to the list. My husband, just 8 years older than I am, recalls having a black and white television when he was a kid.

What can YOU add to my list?

42 comments:

  1. I remember black and white tv too! And monochromatic monitors (green or orange, with after glow) programs on cassette tapes or music, and winding them with your pencil, floppy's (the 5 1/4 ones), playing pong on the television set, hear their name yelled in the nieghbourhood by mum, calling to come home. We had a neighbour who called her son and man, did she have a voice :)Thats just on top of my head. Loved your list

    ReplyDelete
  2. wowee! we must be exactly the same age! what a fun trip this was... i remember every single one of these. and on the topic of VCRs: Beta or VHS?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love your list! As I'm much older than you, I can remember sitting and listening to the radio at night....no TV! I think I was about 10 or 12 years old before we had a TV and it was B&W. We also had a party line on our phone. You had to listen for your ring to know the call was for you. But everyone else would listen in on your conversations!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yay! I love seeing these additions to my list. Marion, I forgot to include floppy disks and anything related to early video games; thanks for reminding me! Aimee, let me guess--38??? I was so out of it, technologically-speaking, that I wouldn't know a Beta from a VHS! Janet, an evening in front of the radio--I love it! Every generation could supply a very different list, I'm sure.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Renting a vcr...wowza...your post also reminds me kids of today will probably never hear a dot matrix printer printing.

    They may never use a manual card catalog at the library

    They may never LICK a stamp or an envelope (if they even use snail mail at all)

    I'm not even sure they will sharpen a pencil (unless choosing a field in the visual arts). hmmmm

    ReplyDelete
  6. great list!! i can think of lots of things.....of course, i would totally date myself if i mentioned them all!! (i.e., we had color tv, but no vcr OR computer.....how in the world did we get by?!! heehee)

    ReplyDelete
  7. children of today may never see the greatest rock band in the world U2 as I did 6 times this summer on their us tour...each time just got better!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nae, licking a postage stamp is a good one I hadn't thought of! Lori, I'm sure our kids will see us as "so deprived" without all the technology they are used to. I don't know, Miracler52, I have a feeling U2 is going to be around for a LONG time...my kids just might catch a concert before they stop touring!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Learning to put rollers in their hair to curl it. Putting a "hood" over those rollers and pushing a button for a blast of scorching heat to dry it. Going out to play with friends after breakfast, coming home before supper, and no parent worried.
    Do kids take showers after gym class?
    Do they even HAVE gym class? I hated that! H'm, guess I'm old -- YOU didn't do those things!!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Oh, I remember you putting rollers in my hair, Mom, and then I would sleep in them all night! (Not the hot scorchy ones, but the foamy ones. I can't believe I slept on those!! "Beauty is painful," remember?!)

    ReplyDelete
  11. party lines...I remember trying to make phone calls from my grandma's house meant that you had to pick up the phone to first listen if anyone else was using the line.

    and riding in the back up my uncle's pick-up truck to go to town. Okay, so I grew up around orchards and this was likely not allowed in the 70s either, but certainly more acceptable than little ones riding in the bed of a truck these days.

    Great list!

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