Funny thing you mention Bugs Bunny/roadrunner. You actually had to get up early to watch these. Kids now sleep till 1:00/2:00 pm now.
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Growing up without a cell phone
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I'm only turning 28 this year but I can relate to most of these things. Somethings are slightly different since I lived in NYC vs smaller towns.
- when CD players to use skip, and 10 second anti skip was the best
- Mini Disc players was the best thing aval at the time ( a lost technology )
- I use to play sports in the streets such as football, wiffle ball or hockey.
- I use to look forward to yard time after lunch in school, we didn't do anything but run and play tag.
- I use to have to have set a agreed location and time for everyone to meet up before we left the house
- I use to carry little phone books with us
- I use to use the lost art of pager messaging ( like what RYU mentioned )
- In NYC we use to have movies on every night after 8 and disney cartoons after 3. No body had cable so everyone in school watched the same movies and cartoons and we discussed it the next day
- We use to wait and wait and wait for the song to come up on the radio so we can record it, we sometimes never knew what the song was called.
- If a car had a cassette player, it was considered super high class
- when CD players to use skip, and 10 second anti skip was the best
- Mini Disc players was the best thing aval at the time ( a lost technology )
- I use to play sports in the streets such as football, wiffle ball or hockey.
- I use to look forward to yard time after lunch in school, we didn't do anything but run and play tag.
- I use to have to have set a agreed location and time for everyone to meet up before we left the house
- I use to carry little phone books with us
- I use to use the lost art of pager messaging ( like what RYU mentioned )
- In NYC we use to have movies on every night after 8 and disney cartoons after 3. No body had cable so everyone in school watched the same movies and cartoons and we discussed it the next day
- We use to wait and wait and wait for the song to come up on the radio so we can record it, we sometimes never knew what the song was called.
- If a car had a cassette player, it was considered super high class
31 here.. I relate to most of this.
I thought 56K was the best thing ever. It allowed me to at least consider the possibility of downloading songs from Napster.
I got my first PERSONAL cell phone at the age of 31, just this past December (2010). I have had a company cell phone for the past few years that I used for personal use as well but that was it. Even now, I don't use my phone nearly as much for calling/texting as I do for checking email while on the run, browsing for locations/addresses when I'm out and about, or just keeping up on Facebook or whatever.
I'm 36 and I remember I had to ride my bmx 5 km to school from age 8 or I just would not get to school . I had to service my own bike with not much more than knives and spoons from the kitchen drawers and my only toys were Lego but I eventually got an amstrad 128k computer in 86 which my parents had to put a second mortagage on the house to buy. I'm now an engineer because of these roots .
The problem these days is modern devices and society are making practical imagination redundant. But your all forgeting it is our generation that instigated the development of these things that render todays youth air headed .
The problem these days is modern devices and society are making practical imagination redundant. But your all forgeting it is our generation that instigated the development of these things that render todays youth air headed .
I do miss the "map" drawer.....heck with nav systems and google maps young drivers of today don't know what paper maps were all about...you think texting while driving is dangerous try driving and reading a big map..which by the way you could never fold back into its original form....
Got my first cell phone it 1991. It was a Motorola Brick. Calls were like $.50 a minute so I never used it. Just carried it around everywhere I went. If someone called me, I'd say, "let me find a landline and call you back. This costs me 50 cents a minute."
First car had the high/low beam switch on the floor. You pressed it with your left foot.
First car had the high/low beam switch on the floor. You pressed it with your left foot.
haha when I was a kid, my father would take me out of state to search for a prime location for his restaurant. I had to use the damn map to figure out where we were!!! The hardest thing was to figure out which way was north, south, east, west mid day without a compass.
I remember spending my summers cutting, splitting and stacking firewood so we could stay warm in the winter. We used the wood stve to melt snow so we could take a bath in the winter. Summer baths were in a stream in the woods. All summer we would raise a cow, chickens, pigs, ducks and then slaughter them in the winter so we could store the meat in the snow.
The rail road had discarded a large piece of 1/2 inch, maybe thicker, steel that was a plate from where a bridge, the tracks and earth came together. We put that up on cinder blocks and in the summer that was our stove. We would sit around the fire in beat up lawn chairs at night, my mother would cook and my father would play his 12 string guitar. I truly mean this, those were good times. At the time it seemed like it sucked but it really was a learning experience.
The rail road had discarded a large piece of 1/2 inch, maybe thicker, steel that was a plate from where a bridge, the tracks and earth came together. We put that up on cinder blocks and in the summer that was our stove. We would sit around the fire in beat up lawn chairs at night, my mother would cook and my father would play his 12 string guitar. I truly mean this, those were good times. At the time it seemed like it sucked but it really was a learning experience.
No I'm not that old but we were that broke.
indeed.
i read the response to steve's post and almost said the same thing about steve's childhood situation and that poverty isn't specific to any one era. but then i thought, "nah, let steve what he has to say".
having read many posts from many primers over the years, some talking about the wealthy "hood" they live in or referring to their wealthy neighborhood in a bragging manner, it was specifically about steve that i wrote my sig.
steve and i may have bumped heads on some things over the years, but he's my poster boy for "ya done good".
so, steve - you guys had strings for your guitar AND fire? man, what was that like!
indeed.
i read the response to steve's post and almost said the same thing about steve's childhood situation and that poverty isn't specific to any one era. but then i thought, "nah, let steve what he has to say".
having read many posts from many primers over the years, some talking about the wealthy "hood" they live in or referring to their wealthy neighborhood in a bragging manner, it was specifically about steve that i wrote my sig.
steve and i may have bumped heads on some things over the years, but he's my poster boy for "ya done good".
so, steve - you guys had strings for your guitar AND fire? man, what was that like!
I said father but he was really my step father. He was a refuse technician, in those days they were known as a garbage man. That guitar is one of the few things he owned that didn't come from the trash route. He saved up for a long time to buy that brand new. I'm not saying he didn't waste money on other crap but nothing as expensive as that guitar, I think he spent 600 bucks on it. My mother was so pissed that he spent that money. I think my mother was mad for a year about it, maybe more. In the grand scheme of things it blows my mind that my step father has been through 3 marriages, moving and living in several states, dozens of cars, many step children and he still has that old guitar. And my sister, she has a great voice from all that singing we did as children. My voice is still as bad as it's always been.
A shortage of things to burn was never a problem. We were always dragging stuff home from the garbage route or tearing down some old house and bringing it back, stacking it up in the yard, slowly burning it or building something out of it. The size of the project was only limited to how many bent nails I felt like straightening from the bucket of salvage nails. Which was really limited when I had to use a hammer and bang my fingers every so often. THEN... I made a nail straightener out of an old bottle cap press machine. It also doubled as a hickory nut cracker when it was winter time. Once I had what seemed to be an endless supply of nails I started pumping out picnic tables left and right.
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Looks similar to the one that was at my high school. The game I remember the most was swashbuckler. Does anyone else remember that game? There were two castles and each player had to figure out wind speed and distance to land a cannonball on your opponents castle.
I got about as far as
10 print "your name here"
20 gosub 10
or something like that
^I loved playing outside too. I'm 53. Remember going to the neighbor's house, knocking on the door and saying, "Can "Billy" come out and play?" :biggrin:
My son is 22 and says he would rather see virtual trees than the real thing.
I haven't' given up hoping that he'll come around when he's older and want the outdoors, again. My kids were brought up playing outside and loved camping, even if they are more into World of Warcraft now, at 22 and 24 years-old.Anyone here played oregon trail back in school with the green mono chrome screens? Or was that after your time? I'm still amazed at how far game graffics have come.
LOL can totally relate to this stuff..........^^^ I had and still have my Apple IIe with 128K and dual floppies........oh and the blazing 900 baud modem.
One more to add.....they allowed smoking on planes. As a kid I was stuck in the smoking section SFO to Heathrow. Talk about second hand smoke after 12 hours.
One more to add.....they allowed smoking on planes. As a kid I was stuck in the smoking section SFO to Heathrow. Talk about second hand smoke after 12 hours.
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Yeah, we all had fun. Somewhat like the Lil' Rascals. :smile: We built a treehouse one summer with an operational gondola over to another nearby tree. Must have been up some twenty feet or more. Parents never found out.
Yeah. Loved that game. You had to fire the bullets a full 2-3 seconds before the deer crossed the center of the screen if you wanted to hit them.
I'm 29. First cell phone at 21. Often times I feel like throwing it out the window because I've become "too" connected and need to detach.
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