"Going viral" meant sitting around the TV, then rushing to Toys 'R us to buy a board game or toys with the TV show or commercial emblazoned on the box.





******************

No one said "my phone." It was just "the phone" and it was very hard to make friends if you had 0's, 9's or 8's in your phone number.



*********

Calller ID was magic. There was a separate box for Caller ID, another box for Voice Messages (wasn't called voice-mail), another box for dialing your phone.

************

Bigger was better. Case in point:



- vs -

Kids actually played outside.
Parents were allowed to discipline their kids without it being called child abuse.
Going out to eat was a big deal.
Boxes of cereal had cool toys/prizes.
VCR's were almost as big as the TV.
Renting a video was a weekend highlight. Even better if they actually had the movie you wanted.
I was the remote control for the TV.

I know I'm not that old but anyway I'll go...When I was a kid...

The street light (not your iphone) told you when it was time to go home for the night.

Every movie had gratuitous tits and ass. Every. Movie.

Taco Bell sold tacos exclusively, and they were made from corn shells, not ****ing made from DORITOS. In fact, I think Doritos were new when I was a kid.

You didn't order combo meals. A fast food menu had like 3 different burgers on it, fries, sodas, and shakes. That's about it. You ordered "a burger and fries" not "A number 17, upsized with sweet potato fries".

The only people who drove trucks were contractors or people who NEEDED them. And nobody drove an SUV, because, well, nobody ****ing needs to drive over large boulders on their way to Starbucks. Not even sure we had Starbucks back then. Probably just Seattle.

You had 2 phones in your entire house. 1 downstairs and 1 upstairs in your parents' bedroom. The downstairs phone was attached to the kitchen wall and had a cord that stretched out maybe 12 feet at most. That's right - all your after school conversations were in earshot of your mom and siblings.

You had 1 TV. Maybe 2. The 2nd one was probably small and black and white.

You saw cigarette vending machines everywhere. Easily accessible to under aged kids. lol

Quarterbacks were allowed to be hit.

Baseball players were 5'11" 165 and hit 7 homers a year. The league leader would hit like 35. 20 a year meant you were a bigtime "homerun hitter".

There was 1 HBO channel. Not 20. If you had extended cable you had like 40 channels, not 600.

You had to sit in front of the TV on the floor with one thumb on "Play" and the other on "Record", waiting for the 7pm movie to start. This is because you read your weekly "TV Guide" that came in the SUnday paper and saw Goonies was on at 7pm Thursday. If you wanted to copy it you better damn sure be ready at 6:55.

You listened to your cassette tapes straight through because it was a bitch to fast-forward and try to guess when the 6th song on the album would come up. So you just listened to all the songs.

You went to the library to research stuff. And you used microfische. "Control F" was your ****ing EYEBALLS. Good luck.

Old man alert!

The street I grew up on was baby boomer heaven (hell?) as every house on the block had 2-8 kids. This was an interesting phenomenon in retrospect. There were kids EVERYWHERE! Now I live in a somewhat similar residential area and there are almost no kids around ever. I've been working nights since spring and I was out and about all day every day this past summer ( I walk about 10 miles a day) and there were never any kids out being kids. Maybe too busy playing video games?

A perfect day was about 12 hours of pickup baseball down the street in Dawes Park.

Every Saturday we went to the matinee for kids at the local theater which featured 25 cartoons and something like 2 Hercules movies. Being an adult in that theater would be pure hell with a couple of hundred 10 years olds running around and screaming for hours. These matinees are some of my fondest childhood memories.

If a professional football player got to 300 pounds he was considered freakishly enormous. Nowadays a runt like that would never make the team.

We had 5 TV channels, the 3 networks, the local channel and PBS.

Trading cards were huge. Besides baseball cards and football cards there were specialty cards. I had astronaut cards, I had Beatles cards and I had Mars Attacks cards. Yeah that ridiculously perfect cheeseball movie Mars Attacks was based on trading cards. The cards were considered so terrifying that there was lots of pressure to stop selling them since kids were getting nightmares.

We would sneak transistor radios into school to listen to the world series, now kids all have full internet computer/phones in their pockets.
There's probably more but I'm rambling now!

Oh yeah, the World Series was played in the daytime and the Superbowl was a noon Sunday start with no fanfare or 18 hour pregame show.

LOL. Old 30-somethings getting grumpy!

This is a great list.

I'm 35 now, excuse me while I scream at the children smoking weed outside.

I learned how to type on one of these.



These look like a lot of fun to create, but not very fun when you get half-way through and forget to press space.

The Fat Boys were cool and we would go to the grocery store begging for their biggest cardboard box so that we could flatten it out on the driveway and breakdance to "Brrr Stickem, Ha-Ha-Ha Stickem."

Pro Wrestling consisted of a big name versus a jobber in every single match. Randy Barber took a beating five times one Saturday morning.

TV had static.

Watching porn meant looking for a nipple between the static and bars on late night Skinamax or Prism.

Cabbage Patch Kids and Garbage Pail Kids were huge.

Girls wore legwarmers on their legs and jelly bracelets on their wrists. They also krimped their hair.

Video games were brand new. Joust, Pong, River Raid, Pitfall, PacMan and Space Invaders.

Tipper Gore and the PMRC made sure you got the "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" label on every cassette you bought. Also, taping songs off the radio was common. Even better was if you had a dual tape deck so you could make mixtapes for your girl. And still better was if you had an actual boom box to perch on your shoulder and walk around town, feeding it with 8 D-batteries once every few hours.

People didn't drive trucks or SUVs because they had station wagons.

Eddie Murphy was actually funny.

This was really fun. I loved this time.


haha! nice

Just a few weeks ago I looked online to see how many Blockbuster video stores there were in Houston. There are 5 left and 1 was within a few miles of our house. So my wife and I took our baby boy there and rented a movie for old-times' sake. It was weird. I met my wife in 1999 and we were always in and out of Blockbuster. Now it was like a ghost town. We rented some Hobbit movie and even bought popcorn and let our son run around the store for a while. It was an odd feeling but it brought back memories. Crazy how things can change so quickly.

Parents who caught their kid shoplifting could take their kid to the store manager, make her apologize, and pay for the stolen merchandise without fear of police and juvenile court involvement.

Getting caught red handed meant the Cops took you home and told your parents what you did. Then left without arresting you.

Nobody locked their doors at night.

You could have a rifle in the gun rack during hunting season and no one blinked. Even at high school.

When I got gas there was always and attendant that pumped your gas. If you got a fill up it came with a free plate or glass or saucer. See, I'm really old!

Free toasters with a $50 initial savings account deposit at the savings and loan! And you got 4 3/4%*.

S&H or Gold Bell gift stamps.

I caddied for $5 a bag and a hot dog at the turn. When done I thumbed to the subway, rode for a dime (under 12) to Fenway, and sat in the bleachers for $.50 cents, and you'd get a contact high sitting out there (Standing room tickets for game six last week were going for over $1,000 and my contact high now usually comes playing poker at Foxwoods)

Bunch o punk-ass kids in this thread.

TV was black and white. Our neighbor got the first color TV on the block, and everything looked like it had been filmed underwate - but it was in COLOR.

Gas was 33c a gallon. Filler up for a fiver.

Mcd burgers were 16c, and small fries were in a little paper bag with maybe 20 fries or so. On a related note, the ass size of the average American was 40% smaller.

My first car was a Ford Pinto - I think my monthly payment was $39.00.

When we flew somewhere, we showed up at the airport about 30 minutes before takeoff, walked to the gate and got on the plane. The first 20 rows of seats were smoking, the last 10 nonsmoking - but the air was blue in the whole cabin

MM MD

Who you calling a punk-ass kid? Not only did we have a dial phone, we were on a party line with our next door neighbor.

I miss riding in the back of pickup trucks.

We drove around without seatbelts 3 in the front seat with my mom chain smoking.
We rode our bikes without suits of armor.
We got paddled at school.
We played cowboys and indians with cap guns.
There was a girl named London we'd sing "London britches falling down" and depants her on the playground...today we'd be arrested and labeled as sex offenders for life.

Pretty much all of this! Speaking of cap guns, do you remember Greenie Stick'em caps? And those spring loaded plastic bullets that could easily take out an eye? Most of our toys back in the day wouldn't pass muster today.

Cigarette companies were NOT attempting to get kids addicted to smoking...



The following items were weapons:

Epee:



Sword:



Not sure exactly, but it was fun until you got hit once:

Gas prices are strange. I started driving in the mid-'90s and remember gas being $.79/gallon in ~1998 on a trip to Alabama. Even back home in the city it was like $.89/gallon. It was super common for me to fill up my tank for anywhwere between $10-15. Unreal. I have no idea how kids these days drive to a minimum wage job. When I was bored I used to just hop in my car and drive all over the place. That just doesn't really happen anymore. I can afford it - I just don't want to waste money on gas these days.

When I was younger you woke up early on the weekend to watch the ONE show dedicated to baseball.... the 30-minute "This Week in Baseball" to hear Mel Allen say "Howww ABOUT that..." and see a small handful of the best plays of the week, a puff piece, and some key homers, then the credits with Will "The Thrill" Clark slowly swinging then trotting up the firstbase line.

There wasn't always "Baseball Tonight", MLB Network, or 400 weekly hours of sports coverage.

Speaking of sports, I miss "Alcoa Presents: Fantastic Finishes" that used to run every week during football games.

Punk-ass kids. Before we got dial phones we told the operator what number we wanted--or sometimes just who we wanted to talk to.

When people had car trouble or flat tires and were pulled over on the side of the road, there was almost always someone who stopped to help them within five minutes.

Not only would someone pump your gas as someone else mentioned, they would also routinely check your oil and radiator, clean your windshield and brush out your interior. They would also check the air pressure in your tires if one looked low or upon request. Most gas stations gave free road maps.

BTW, I've been meaning to ask if your avatar is Townes van Zant.

Oh man I forgot about dialing the operator. Typical conversation I'd have as like a 9 year old kid:

rrrrrrrring "hello operator speaking how may I help you?"
"Yeah, um, I want the phone number for um, the video store."
"Which location please?"
"Huh?"
"Which location please there are many in the city."
"Ummm, the one by Kroger."
"Which Kroger please?"
"Ummmmmm.... " <click> "Mooooooooom, I don't know how to do stuff!"

Also to find out the time or temperature you called a number on the phone whenever you wanted and some automated voice would come on "The time.... is one thirty-two, the temperature is......one hundred two."