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Post by katlady on Jul 8, 2024 14:48:27 GMT
My GF and I went door to door selling and delivering Girl Scout cookies. We walked and pulled the cookies along with us in a wheeled cart.
Oh, and some toys were made with wood. I had the game Booby Trap and the frame and the pieces were made from wood. When I bought the game for my boys, it was plastic. I sort of wished we had saved the game from my childhood.
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Post by Susie_Homemaker on Jul 8, 2024 14:58:30 GMT
-I remember sitting in the seats in the back of the station wagon that faced backwards.
-Riding in the back of the station wagon on trips
-Laying in the huge back window area as a little girl
-Cigarette machines were everywhere. And of course cigarette smoke was everywhere
-Biking all over the neighborhood, riding to the 7-11 and buying candy and a soda
-Walking several blocks to school. Which I hated because I was not and am not a morning person and it was too early for that!
-Reading books at 10-11yo like Flowers in the Attic and "romance" novels
-Our moms dropped me and my BFF off at the mall at 10-11yo and then picked us up a few hours later
-Going to the neighborhood pool without a parent with me. When I was about 7-8 my friend went down the slide and started to drown so I tried to save her. She pulled me under and the lifeguard had to pull us both out.
-Walking down to a neighborhood park and playing in the creek all day long
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Post by crazy4scraps on Jul 8, 2024 15:02:35 GMT
My mom was a stay at home mom, and every day she cooked and usually also baked.
For the years that I was a stay at home mom, I also cooked nearly every single day, and baked a loaf of bread (albeit in a bread machine usually), and baked a dessert. I really think not baking, cooking, or mending is more a symptom of all parents in a household needing to work outside the home, rather than parents nowadays not wanting to do those things for their families. I’m sure that’s part of it. I also think it’s partly a generational thing and partly because schools don’t teach home ec anymore so a lot of people my age and younger just never learned how to do those things. Back when I was in 8th grade, it was a required class. We had cooking for a trimester, sewing for a trimester and wood shop for a trimester (and ironically, my wood shop project was an ash tray, LOL). I was leap years ahead of my classmates because I had an older mom who knew how to cook, bake and sew and she taught me how to do those things when I was really young. My mom wasn’t always a SAHM. When my older siblings were younger she owned a hair salon up until she had 3-4 kids and I’m not exactly sure how she made that work. Even after that she still would go out to some of her more elderly client’s homes to do their hair when they could no longer drive and were house bound. I remember going with her sometimes and having to sit somewhere quietly while she worked. My mom was closer in age to my friends’ grandmas than their moms. She grew up in a totally different era so I think a lot of it was a generational thing. I think if I would have had a younger mom, I doubt I would have learned how to do those things. |
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Post by essiejean on Jul 8, 2024 15:11:52 GMT
Speaking of tans, we’d slather up with baby oil & lie in our backyard in the hottest part of the day on our silver reflective blankets to get tans. Sometimes our moms would lie out there with us. I remember my neighbor’s mom using that Hawaiian Tropic oil because we loved the smell. Oh the memories of baby oil & iodine while laying on a tinfoil blanket! My blotchy age spot skin is paying for that now. |
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Post by 950nancy on Jul 8, 2024 15:19:00 GMT
Freedom! We got up and were out the door after a bowl of cereal. We had to be home when the streetlights came on 14 hours later. We also came home for dinner at 5:30 sharp. Lunch was optional. I grew up in a larger city and we went for miles and miles on out bikes.
I remember hating have to clean up after the smokers in our lounge at work. We had to clean the lounge by ourselves one week a year. There were 70+ people who used this lounge. The only thing that irked me more than cleaning up the ash trays was cleaning up after all of the coffee drinkers. They had three pots they wanted emptied, washed out, and set up for the next morning. I emptied them and rinsed them out and put them back. As a non coffee drinker, I didn't think I should have to clean up the pots as well as clean out all of the coffee mugs in the sink. I established the "wash your own damn dishes" battlecry my second year of working there. We also had to clean out the fridges on our week. People are just gross.
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Post by 950nancy on Jul 8, 2024 15:20:56 GMT
Oh, I thought of another. Going to sleepovers. Several times a week, just calling from a neighborhood kid's house, and spending the night. No parents grilling the other parents about gun safety, or anything. Parents were just glad to have a night "off." Our guns were displayed in a glass case. The case had non locking doors. Ammo was right underneath. I was also taken out at 5 years old and made to shoot a gun. Knocked me on my butt so hard I decided it wasn't for me. |
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Post by jeremysgirl on Jul 8, 2024 16:02:15 GMT
Just wanted to highlight that this is such an accomplishment. I can remember how hard it was for my dad when he quit smoking. It took him several attempts, but I was just thinking yesterday about how many decades it's now been since he smoked, and how much healthier he probably is today because he kept trying to do so. I wish you the best! Thank you! It *is* a big deal. It is hard, very, very hard. Thank you for cheering me on. |
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Post by jeremysgirl on Jul 8, 2024 16:06:30 GMT
83 days is amazing! Getting to day 83 is VERY hard, you should be immensely proud of yourself. Because it is really, really hard! Congrats to you! It does get easier but it will be a while. Thank you for the excitement. It really keeps me going feeling like I'm accomplishing something pretty impressive. I know that probably sounds funny. But knowing how horrendous it is and how difficult it is to quit, makes me just proud enough of myself to keep going. |
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Post by crazy4scraps on Jul 8, 2024 16:09:15 GMT
Freedom! We got up and were out the door after a bowl of cereal. We had to be home when the streetlights came on 14 hours later. We also came home for dinner at 5:30 sharp. Lunch was optional. I grew up in a larger city and we went for miles and miles on out bikes. I remember hating have to clean up after the smokers in our lounge at work. We had to clean the lounge by ourselves one week a year. There were 70+ people who used this lounge. The only thing that irked me more than cleaning up the ash trays was cleaning up after all of the coffee drinkers. They had three pots they wanted emptied, washed out, and set up for the next morning. I emptied them and rinsed them out and put them back. As a non coffee drinker, I didn't think I should have to clean up the pots as well as clean out all of the coffee mugs in the sink. I established the "wash your own damn dishes" battlecry my second year of working there. We also had to clean out the fridges on our week. People are just gross. I stirred up a huge hornet’s nest with regard to smoking in the break room at work in the early 80’s. I worked at a bank that had a “lounge” that was basically a room with a couple couches, a color tv, two small tables with some stacking chairs to sit at if you wanted to eat at a table. People would basically go in there and smoke during their lunch or breaks. There was no sink, refrigerator or microwave. It was such a gross place to eat that I would often eat in my car unless it was really hot or really cold. Anyway, this was right around the time when the indoor clean air act was going into effect nationwide and I decided I was going to eat in an empty, unused office space by myself on the second floor instead of in that nasty smoke filled room. The branch manager told me I couldn’t eat in there, and I told him it was gross to have to eat where all these people were chain smoking. I suggested getting a couple smokeless ashtrays to help clear the air in the lounge. Well it turned out that when that was looked into, it wasn’t an option due to the new clean air laws. They ended up setting up a secondary tiny “smoking break room” in a little used storage closet where they set up a couple chairs, a table and a tiny b/w TV. OMG, the smokers had a total fit over that because there were way more of them than nonsmokers, and as a result they totally ostracized me because they knew it was me who stirred the pot. I ended up posting out of the department a few months later for multiple reasons and I was so happy to be gone from that toxic workplace! |
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Post by jeremysgirl on Jul 8, 2024 16:14:32 GMT
I am thinking about how it always seemed my parents didn't want us around. Unless it was raining they were like get outside. No such things as sitting indoors. I felt like they couldn't stand me. I still feel like they can't stand me. But they seemed so absorbed in their own lives, I felt like we were an intrusion. So get outside. Stay outside. They had no fucking clue where we were most of the time. I can relate to this. My Mother never wanted us around. We, especially me (I was firstborn) were the burden she was stuck with. Her getting pregnant at 17 in the mid 1960's and giving birth at the age of 18, was and still is....somehow my fault. Since the day I was conceived and her being forced to keep me (by her Mother), and forced to get married to my birth Father(lasted long enough to have a second child)......a deep-seated bitterness has always been the core of her. As the years went on...the resentfulness and bitterness grew. She is a taker and a user. I and my sisters are givers. Then more I-we gave, the more she took. In her eyes we owed her. She had no use for me, unless I was doing something for her. Her narcissism and bitterness has cause all of us to cut ties with her. When I finally cut ties, I felt like a toxic cloud lifted off of me. I'm sorry. I'm going through some things right now. My feelings are all over the place. I'm glad you've found peace. |
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Post by grammadee on Jul 8, 2024 16:18:42 GMT
I am thinking about how it always seemed my parents didn't want us around. Unless it was raining they were like get outside. No such things as sitting indoors. I felt like they couldn't stand me. I still feel like they can't stand me. But they seemed so absorbed in their own lives, I felt like we were an intrusion. So get outside. Stay outside. They had no fucking clue where we were most of the time. I felt sad when I read this. I spent most of my childhood, when at home, outside. And when I ended up at a boarding school for a couple of years, I missed the FREEDOM of just going outside, unsupervised, deciding what to do, making my own fun or relaxation. Our family had an unelectified, and for most of the years I was growing up, unmechanized farm. All the adults, and most of the kids had work to be done, so no one would have had time to watch me play, let alone plan things for me to do. Even the work we had to do, we managed to turn into play alot of the time. When I was raising our own kids, I was a working mom (as in working away from home), and our kids were often left to their own devices. This was not because I couldn't stand them. It was a combination of my not being home from work yet when they got home from school, having stuff to do when I was home, and remembering the sense of freedom I had growing up. My kids had chores to do, but also had lots of time to do their own thing. I hope none of them felt neglected. |
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Post by smasonnc on Jul 8, 2024 16:54:55 GMT
It wasn't until college that I knew anyone with an answering machine. My friend bought one and it was huge. We would all leave ridiculous messages on it because we thought it was hilarious to care who called while you were out. They'd call back if it were important. Now everyone has to be able to reach you right f-ing now. Ugh.
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Post by grammadee on Jul 8, 2024 16:58:53 GMT
It wasn't until college that I knew anyone with an answering machine. My friend bought one and it was huge. We would all leave ridiculous messages on it because we thought it was hilarious to care who called while you were out. My oldest son's university room mate had one. THEY left hilarious messages for people who called when they were out. |
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artbabe
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,409 
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Post by artbabe on Jul 8, 2024 17:34:09 GMT
I remember when they banned smoking in bars here and everyone thought bars were going to go out of business. It didn't happen, obviously- every bar just put in a patio. I hate that you can't sit on a patio anymore without being surrounded by smoke. I don't see a lot of smoking anymore except on bar patios. I work at a school, so nobody smokes. I went on vacation in Rehoboth and smoking wasn't allowed on the boardwalk. I think I saw one person smoke the whole vacation.
I really like that smoking doesn't exist in buildings anymore. I remember going to bars and having my clothing just reek of smoke afterwards. I had a leather biker jacket that I loved and I was never able to get the smoke smell out of it.
Someone mentioned earlier, growing up we just left the house in the morning and roamed the neighborhood and woods until dinner time. No one thought anything about it. I think not doing that has hurt kids today- they don't know how to handle conflict and problem solve on their own because adults are always managing everything. Organized sports existed but we also did a lot of sports and activities with no adults and we had to hammer out the rules and solve arguments. Those are good life skills.
Now people will call the cops on you if you let the kids roam free. My sister always went across the grain with that, though. She let the boys go to the park by themselves as long as they were in a group of kids. The middle school kid even now rides his bike all over the place- he has a phone but she lets him roam free. I know bad things can happen but no more than it did when we were kids. There is a risk/reward thing there. We are keeping our kids safer but also ruining them at the same time.
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Post by ScrapbookMyLife on Jul 8, 2024 17:39:42 GMT
I can relate to this. My Mother never wanted us around. We, especially me (I was firstborn) were the burden she was stuck with. Her getting pregnant at 17 in the mid 1960's and giving birth at the age of 18, was and still is....somehow my fault. Since the day I was conceived and her being forced to keep me (by her Mother), and forced to get married to my birth Father(lasted long enough to have a second child)......a deep-seated bitterness has always been the core of her. As the years went on...the resentfulness and bitterness grew. She is a taker and a user. I and my sisters are givers. Then more I-we gave, the more she took. In her eyes we owed her. She had no use for me, unless I was doing something for her. Her narcissism and bitterness has cause all of us to cut ties with her. When I finally cut ties, I felt like a toxic cloud lifted off of me. I'm sorry. I'm going through some things right now. My feelings are all over the place. I'm glad you've found peace. Wishing you peace and healing. Hugs. |
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Post by Zee on Jul 8, 2024 17:40:43 GMT
Research papers in highschool actually required you to go to a library and research, or at the very least find books to check out to find information. It required learning how to use a card catalog and the Dewey decimal system. I was lucky enough to have a pretty prestigious small college in my town and we could use the library so we had a great place to research papers. And if you had parents, family or friends that worked for the college you could probably find someone to check certain ones out for you. It was also where I learned to look up old articles and find them to read on microfilm or microfiche. And I have to say, going back to school online in 2016 was INFINITELY easier thanks to having everything online! Researching articles and journals takes a tiny fraction of the time it took in the 90s, AND I didn't have to pay for copies, have index cards of notes, pages of hand-written notes... Everything can be edited as it's typed. Just finding the articles you want to use can now be done in an instant since you can search hundreds (with keywords and summaries) in the time it used to take to just look at a dozen. That part, I wouldn't trade, though I did enjoy research time in the library back then. Only because we had no other faster choice. |
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Post by Zee on Jul 8, 2024 17:53:39 GMT
My mom was a stay at home mom, and every day she cooked and usually also baked.
For the years that I was a stay at home mom, I also cooked nearly every single day, and baked a loaf of bread (albeit in a bread machine usually), and baked a dessert. I really think not baking, cooking, or mending is more a symptom of all parents in a household needing to work outside the home, rather than parents nowadays not wanting to do those things for their families. I’m sure that’s part of it. I also think it’s partly a generational thing and partly because schools don’t teach home ec anymore so a lot of people my age and younger just never learned how to do those things. Back when I was in 8th grade, it was a required class. We had cooking for a trimester, sewing for a trimester and wood shop for a trimester (and ironically, my wood shop project was an ash tray, LOL). I was leap years ahead of my classmates because I had an older mom who knew how to cook, bake and sew and she taught me how to do those things when I was really young. My mom wasn’t always a SAHM. When my older siblings were younger she owned a hair salon up until she had 3-4 kids and I’m not exactly sure how she made that work. Even after that she still would go out to some of her more elderly client’s homes to do their hair when they could no longer drive and were house bound. I remember going with her sometimes and having to sit somewhere quietly while she worked. My mom was closer in age to my friends’ grandmas than their moms. She grew up in a totally different era so I think a lot of it was a generational thing. I think if I would have had a younger mom, I doubt I would have learned how to do those things. I had a young mom (she was 17 when I was born) and she was the oldest girl of 7 kids. She was, therefore, very familiar with cooking, cleaning, and childcare. So it wasn't like having your typical self-absorbed teenager for a mom. She sewed, cooked, cleaned, made our Halloween costumes, baked bread every day, everything was healthy. We had healthy snacks, not convenience foods (too expensive). We had a garden and canned things. She used cloth diapers and always preferred older methods (like, we never had Tupperware, or paper towels, it was glass and rags the could be washed and re-used). She hated smoking and was so glad when my dad quit. They got divorced in 1984 when I was 12 and things necessarily had to be different after that, but I was well equipped to take care of myself and my sister by then. I had actually been doing it for a couple years. We didn't get a microwave or VCR until 1988. She still to this day doesn't use AC. |
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Tearisci
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,268
Nov 6, 2018 16:34:30 GMT
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Post by Tearisci on Jul 8, 2024 17:59:31 GMT
Speaking of tans, we’d slather up with baby oil & lie in our backyard in the hottest part of the day on our silver reflective blankets to get tans. Sometimes our moms would lie out there with us. I remember my neighbor’s mom using that Hawaiian Tropic oil because we loved the smell. Oh the memories of baby oil & iodine while laying on a tinfoil blanket! My blotchy age spot skin is paying for that now. Another one on that bus. And we used hydrogen peroxide in our hair because our parents wouldn't buy Sun In. My still-to-this-day BFF actually got in trouble for her hair getting lighter. I'm not sure my parents even noticed. |
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Post by 950nancy on Jul 8, 2024 19:33:20 GMT
Freedom! We got up and were out the door after a bowl of cereal. We had to be home when the streetlights came on 14 hours later. We also came home for dinner at 5:30 sharp. Lunch was optional. I grew up in a larger city and we went for miles and miles on out bikes. I remember hating have to clean up after the smokers in our lounge at work. We had to clean the lounge by ourselves one week a year. There were 70+ people who used this lounge. The only thing that irked me more than cleaning up the ash trays was cleaning up after all of the coffee drinkers. They had three pots they wanted emptied, washed out, and set up for the next morning. I emptied them and rinsed them out and put them back. As a non coffee drinker, I didn't think I should have to clean up the pots as well as clean out all of the coffee mugs in the sink. I established the "wash your own damn dishes" battlecry my second year of working there. We also had to clean out the fridges on our week. People are just gross. I stirred up a huge hornet’s nest with regard to smoking in the break room at work in the early 80’s. I worked at a bank that had a “lounge” that was basically a room with a couple couches, a color tv, two small tables with some stacking chairs to sit at if you wanted to eat at a table. People would basically go in there and smoke during their lunch or breaks. There was no sink, refrigerator or microwave. It was such a gross place to eat that I would often eat in my car unless it was really hot or really cold. Anyway, this was right around the time when the indoor clean air act was going into effect nationwide and I decided I was going to eat in an empty, unused office space by myself on the second floor instead of in that nasty smoke filled room. The branch manager told me I couldn’t eat in there, and I told him it was gross to have to eat where all these people were chain smoking. I suggested getting a couple smokeless ashtrays to help clear the air in the lounge. Well it turned out that when that was looked into, it wasn’t an option due to the new clean air laws. They ended up setting up a secondary tiny “smoking break room” in a little used storage closet where they set up a couple chairs, a table and a tiny b/w TV. OMG, the smokers had a total fit over that because there were way more of them than nonsmokers, and as a result they totally ostracized me because they knew it was me who stirred the pot. I ended up posting out of the department a few months later for multiple reasons and I was so happy to be gone from that toxic workplace! If I remember correctly, I had been teaching almost 20 years before the Clean Air Act for Colorado and by then there were fewer smokers, but one person smoking one time in one week made it unbearable. I just don't do well with smoke. I do remember there were a few people who wanted bottled water and to be able to smoke. I found that ironic. Our teachers couldn't smoke outside the lounge since it was a school. They did find a place on top of the school to smoke (that was still illegal), but no one said anything because they weren't doing it in the building. |
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Post by peasapie on Jul 8, 2024 19:45:53 GMT
I love reading these responses.
Normal was calling a friend's HOUSE and having to say hello and do some friendly banter a bit with whomever answered the phone before you got to speak with the friend. That's a lost art right there.
Normal was looking in the physical newspaper for a job and circling potentials with a pencil or pen.
Normal was a cloud of smoke pouring out of the faculty room when you walked by.
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Post by 950nancy on Jul 8, 2024 19:48:34 GMT
We also had a milkman. I never got the joke about looking like him until I was in Jr. High.
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Post by peasapie on Jul 8, 2024 19:50:40 GMT
I am thinking about how it always seemed my parents didn't want us around. Unless it was raining they were like get outside. No such things as sitting indoors. I felt like they couldn't stand me. I still feel like they can't stand me. But they seemed so absorbed in their own lives, I felt like we were an intrusion. So get outside. Stay outside. They had no fucking clue where we were most of the time. I can relate to this. My Mother never wanted us around. We, especially me (I was firstborn) were the burden she was stuck with. Her getting pregnant at 17 in the mid 1960's and giving birth at the age of 18, was and still is....somehow my fault. Since the day I was conceived and her being forced to keep me (by her Mother), and forced to get married to my birth Father(lasted long enough to have a second child)......a deep-seated bitterness has always been the core of her. As the years went on...the resentfulness and bitterness grew. She is a taker and a user. I and my sisters are givers. Then more I-we gave, the more she took. In her eyes we owed her. She had no use for me, unless I was doing something for her. Her narcissism and bitterness has cause all of us to cut ties with her. When I finally cut ties, I felt like a toxic cloud lifted off of me. My sister-in-law says much the same thing ScrapbookMyLife, about her childhood. Her mother and her father's family blame her for the forced marriage and she has never forgotten it. |
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Post by karenk on Jul 8, 2024 20:40:37 GMT
Slightly off topic, maybe, but I think when we called someone on the phone, we started by asking how are you. Nobody seems to do that except spam callers for Medicare, etc.
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Post by compeateropeator on Jul 8, 2024 20:47:54 GMT
Research papers in highschool actually required you to go to a library and research, or at the very least find books to check out to find information. It required learning how to use a card catalog and the Dewey decimal system. I was lucky enough to have a pretty prestigious small college in my town and we could use the library so we had a great place to research papers. And if you had parents, family or friends that worked for the college you could probably find someone to check certain ones out for you. It was also where I learned to look up old articles and find them to read on microfilm or microfiche. And I have to say, going back to school online in 2016 was INFINITELY easier thanks to having everything online! Researching articles and journals takes a tiny fraction of the time it took in the 90s, AND I didn't have to pay for copies, have index cards of notes, pages of hand-written notes... Everything can be edited as it's typed. Just finding the articles you want to use can now be done in an instant since you can search hundreds (with keywords and summaries) in the time it used to take to just look at a dozen. That part, I wouldn't trade, though I did enjoy research time in the library back then. Only because we had no other faster choice. Absolutely agree. If people have access to the internet it is a game changer. I would take online research any day of the week as compared to what we had to go through back then. Other than it can hinder those that do not have easy online acces, I think there are very few cons. |
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Post by katlady on Jul 8, 2024 20:54:41 GMT
I don’t know how I ever typed up long research papers on a typewriter and included footnotes at the bottom of each page! I think that is definitely a lost art! Lol! And I spent a lot of money making xerox copies of pages for my paper when I needed to go home and ran out of time at the library.
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Post by iamkristinl16 on Jul 8, 2024 23:10:11 GMT
No seat belts in cars. It doesn’t bear thinking about now. I used to lay in the back window of the car while on road trips. Yikes. |
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