Things our kids can't imagine...

[JimmyBean42]

Only buying fruits and vegetables "in season."

This one makes me laugh b/c my every Lent if you asked my grandfather what he gave up, he would say watermelon b/c it wasn't available in most grocery stores.

 

[Maistre Gracey]

WDW not costing a bazillion dollars+your first born son.
My parents had it so good! $99/4-Day/4-Park tickets.
(I'm making the final edits to our summer trip )

Lol!!! I'm not sure if my parents codtcwgen I was a kid, but it was waaaayy cheaper than that. We're taking early 70's here, when the park was first opened.

MG

 

[JimmyBean42]

Penny candy.

Penny candy is a great one! I can remember going to a store that had penny candy and literally having 30 cents and going to the clerk "Ok I'll take 5 tootsie rolls, 6 swedish fish, 2 pixy stix......". That and candy cigarettes that blew the fake powdered "smoke". They probably still sell them somewhere I bet.

 

[JimmyBean42]

Hitting the cones is probably the least common way to "fail" parallel parking here. Too far from the curb or failing to turn your wheels the right way when parked is what trips up most.

Oh when they opened the door to see how close you were to the curb as well, that was an anxious moment. You were sitting there relieved you didn't hit the cones and then immediately remembered you had to be close to the curb too just as the instructors hand was on the door to open it and check. Although it's a skill that has come in handy for city and beach parking.

 

[Uncranky Donald]

The street my business is on only has parallel parking...unless you you wait around for 2 cars to leave in a row When we see someone do it in only 3 points we clap for them when they get out, cuz we see a LOT of horrible parking jobs (and people who blatantly ram the cars in front & back of them), good work deserves celebration!!! Oooh but I got to say at our Town Hall there is no parking on the right side of the street which means you have to parallel park on the left side and that is an exercise in my driving skills for sure. The only other place I often have to do this is in the City but I'll avoid it at all costs cuz it ain't easy out of practice!! And a friend of mine just took her test 2 weeks ago and she indeed had to parallel park, still very alive and well here in CT

 

[AppleDumpling]

Hit the cones you fail the test

lol that's how we cheated.. the passenger adjusted the cones

You were sitting there relieved you didn't hit the cones and then immediately remembered you had to be close to the curb too just as the instructors hand was on the door to open it and check.

LOL, what are these cones you speak of? Here, you take the road test on actual roads. Real roads, real traffic conditions. Park behind a real parked car. No cones.

 

[AppleDumpling]

Soda bottles that were all glass and that had to be returned to get your deposit back (2 cents for the small and 5 cents for the large bottle).

Deposit bottles still exist (or were brought back) in several states. In NY it's all soda, beer and water bottles (but for some reason, not iced tea or juice drinks). There are machines at the supermarket where you return them to get your money back, and the glass, plastic or aluminum cans get recycled.

There was a Seinfeld episode about this where Kramer and Newman had a scheme to collect a truckload of bottles/cans in NY, where the deposit is 5 cents and bring them to Michigan, where it's 10 cents!

 

[JimmyBean42]

LOL, what are these cones you speak of? Here, you take the road test on actual roads. Real roads, real traffic conditions. Park behind a real parked car. No cones.

I'm sure at some point they probably did the test on real roads but then too many citizens cars were being hit by teenage drivers taking their drivers test and then they implemented the cone system. Our test was out on the real roads and highway and the end was you pulled back into the DMV station and the last test you did was parallel parking with the cones. Literally the last part of the test was the worst. Should have started with parallel parking then most kids would have never made it to the road test.

 

[Liberty Belle]

How about purple dittos? They would come from the machine, still wet with alcohol.

And I cringe when I think about the number of times I wrote out a whole worksheet or test, only to realize I had forgotten to remove the tissue paper separating all my hard work from the carbon paper!

And if you made a mistake, you had to very carefully cut off the carbon with a razor blade.

For the record, though, we still have chalkboards. They come in very handy when:
a) you need more than one screen-- I can put a diagram on the board below the screen, or to the side.
b) the wifi (or even the power in general) is being finicky. We lost power for an hour or so earlier this year... I forget why. I found a piece of chalk, opened the blinds for light, and finished my lesson.

I was just going to say the smell of dittos.

 

[DaisyJ]

Wow, that's one I completely forgot about. That post was a real blast from the past!!


And prior to Blockbuster, our local grocery store and pizza restaurant were the places we went to rent movies. And they only had ONE copy of each movie, so you had to wait FOREVER to see the new releases. I still remember the first VHS we ever rented. Out of Africa.

Not only renting movies, you had to rent the VCR!

 

[mjkacmom]

I'm in NJ and to my knowledge parallel parking is still required for your drivers exam.

I parallel park all of the time, our main steet is all metered on street parking. There are not nearly enough lots here.

 

[Turn the Page]

I have seen this clip several times but it still cracks me up.

I have tried to explain the computers we had when I was in elementary school to my kids and they just laugh. Well, they laugh at the things they understand, most of it they just can't grasp because the technology is just too far out of their experience to understand.

 

[RedAngie]

Penny candy is a great one! I can remember going to a store that had penny candy and literally having 30 cents and going to the clerk "Ok I'll take 5 tootsie rolls, 6 swedish fish, 2 pixy stix......". That and candy cigarettes that blew the fake powdered "smoke". They probably still sell them somewhere I bet.

If we had 30 cents to spend on penny candy, the store proprietor would probably become suspicious and assume we stole the money from our parents' change jar. A nickle or dime, no problem, but anything above that was a red flag.

 

[Gumbo4x4]

No "undo" button

 

[here757]

LOL, what are these cones you speak of? Here, you take the road test on actual roads. Real roads, real traffic conditions. Park behind a real parked car. No cones.

They were plastic orange traffic cones, no way they let us practice near real cars

 

[here757]

I'm sure at some point they probably did the test on real roads but then too many citizens cars were being hit by teenage drivers taking their drivers test and then they implemented the cone system. Our test was out on the real roads and highway and the end was you pulled back into the DMV station and the last test you did was parallel parking with the cones. Literally the last part of the test was the worst. Should have started with parallel parking then most kids would have never made it to the road test.

I'm not sure if the test was near real cars.. since I aced the class and behind the wheel I was exempt

 

[soccerdad72]

Before a road trip, going to AAA to get your TripTik, next onto Mapquest and printing out directions

I was also thinking about TripTiks - my MIL still goes to the AAA office to get them and my kids were fascinated by them the last time they saw them.

 

[moniqueand2]

Choosing from a variety of search engines.

 

[superme80]

Only having one computer in the house. My mom hit a key she had no idea what it was. She locked up the computer for nearly a week. No one could use it. My dad was in Spain working, so they were playing phone tag. Finally my parents got a hold of each other. My mom had it the insert key. It is funny now, but it was serious business. And no one in our families or immediate friends could fix it!

 

[PollyannaMom]

I have seen this clip several times but it still cracks me up.

Oh my gosh, that was so funny!!

No "undo" button

SOOOO true! I often think that one button has changed children's thinking completely.