Things change. I was born in 1962.
Having a Touch Tone Phone was high Tech.
No Home computers when I was a kid.
In the early 70's PONG was the video game.
My parents Collected S&H Green Stamps.

What do you remember?

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Working as a teacher, the biggest two things that I see as very different from my past are the introduction of the Internet and cell phones. The Internet changed everything about how I do my job and how students do their research, for good and for bad. Truthfully, it's mostly good for them; the breadth of information they can get now is far superior to the 5 year old encyclopedias of small rural schools in the past.

Cell phones are the other giant change. Every student has one. Every student wants to chat with it when they are in class. Students try to use them to cheat. They text endlessly. Even with a no tolerance cell phone policy school wide, it's difficult to control, but certainly manageable. The current policy in our school is that if a teacher sees a cell phone between 8 am and lunch, or after lunch until 3:10, they automatically take it away and give it to the vice-principal. The student has to retreive it after school, with escalating consequences.

I dropped in to the Lanys board yesterday for my monthly gander and saw this thread. Today a friend forwarded me this, which I thought was curious timing, so decided to share
..................
No matter what our kids
and the new generation think about us,
WE ARE AWESOME !!!
Our Lives are LIVING PROOF !

To Those of Us Born 1925 - 1970 :

First, we survived being born to mothers who may have smoked and/or drank
while they were pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then, after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs
covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets,
and when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps, not helmets on our heads.

As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes..

Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And we weren't overweight.

WHY?

Because we were always outside playing...that's why!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day and we were OKAY.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem..

We did not have Play Stations, Nintendos and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVDs, no surround-sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms. We had friends and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from those accidents.

We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, ping-pong paddles, or just a bare hand, and no one would call child services to report abuse.

We ate worms, and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors ever. The past 50 to 85 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas..

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

If YOU are one of those born between 1925-1970, CONGRATULATIONS!

I imagine talking about video games ranks close to #1 for kids now.

For me it was transfomers and scratch-n-sniff stickers.

I love how that long article treats retarded actions like they're some kind of badge of honor, heh.

"We didn't have no silly car seats! Heh! We put our kids in the back of pickups! Safety?! FUHGETABAWTIT!"

This.

Worthy can you improve your memory through hypnosis?

Not sure if I would call them "retarded actions" given that some such amenities weren't necessarily readily available in those days =p Especially if we're talking 50's and prior. Knowledge and its availability has also increased at an exponential rate, so what may seem like an easy home-made solution today wasn't anywhere near as obvious back then. Hindsight 20/20, etc.

Generic knowledge about physics and other sciences(which has only increased amongst the semi-educated population over time, despite the fact that there's still a lot of ignorance out there) helps a bit, too. While it's true that common sense would suggest popping your kids in the back of your pickup truck isn't the brightest idea in the world, it's also safe to say that knowing many of the potential risk factors as a result of understanding how physical collisions and interactions work broadens your perspective and gives the common sense idea a scientific and logical backbone, not to mention being able to identify more of the dangers inherently involved in it.

I'd call some of it a badge of honor for them in the sense that they had to use a lot of workarounds for what today would be a simple point-and-click or push-a-button task.

Lawn darts and wood burning sets

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If things are under control, you're going too slow. Artwork by hijinks

Shorter cut-n-fark from Worthy:

"The mid-20th Century was awesome if you were white!"

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Hope is the new black.

Funny, I thought some of the most incredible lives lived in the 20th century came out of people who lived in a place and time that was oppressive towards them. I wouldn't mind living the life of MLK, despite all the hardships he had to endure along the way. Not an easy life by any means, but one where obstacles were cast aside and life was given incredible meaning.

Don't seriouspost ITT please, this is a thread to laugh at Worthy.

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