Stuff from a 90's childhood your kids don't understand:

[TheGhostsOfMeAndYou]

After reading CandidFruit's amazing thread about weird stuff from a 80's childhood, it got me thinking about things from my childhood and when telling my 10 year old DD about them she didn't get at all.

I was born mid 80's so although a lot of the 80's thread rang a bell I definitely remember kore 90's stuff.

My daughter couldn't grasp children's TV only being on for a set amount of time each day and if you weren't home to watch a programme when it was aired you missed it!

I was also explaining 10p mix ups to her and it blew her mind!

Only house phone in the hallway & having to wait until 6pm to use it.

Making arrangements & having to stick to them as no way to let someone know you were running late.

Mix tapes.

Sending letters to friends & family.

Using a map or A-Z to get around places.

Sharing a mars bar as a treat - maybe they were more substantial in the 80s/90s.

Buying a record to listen to a song & having to schlep into town to buy a record or book.

Toys in cereal

No YouTube or on demand entertainment

If you wanted to play video games with your friends they had to come to yours /you go to theirs, and bring own controller pads. Most games weren't even multi player, you just had to take turns

Awful school dinners. Greasy turkey shapes with an ice cream scoop of mashed potato with a strange aftertaste and dry cake with lumpy custard 🤢

Dial up Internet and the horrible sound the phone would make if you were online

Top of the pops!

Mizz magazine and cosmo for the older girls

Tammy girl and etam clothes. Bon bleu tracksuits

People were only just starting to get the internet. It was limited because it cost per minute> it also tied up the house phone, and because people didn't really have mobiles, and didn't have text, WhatsApp, social media etc, you didn't want to be uncontactable like that.

Coffee shops, takeaways, fast food etc were a lot less common than they are now. Buying lunch every day was very much a luxury that few could afford.

If you wanted food from the supermarket you had to go and get it and would probably pay cash.

If it was 2 days before payday and you didn't have any money left, you could pay for your shopping with a cheque and the money wouldn't be taken until after you'd been paid.

It was still legal to smoke in the workplace.

If you wanted to order clothes, you got them from a catalogue, had to do it by post usually and had to 'allow 28 days for delivery'. These days people get twitchy if online shopping takes more than 28 hours or if food more than 28 minutes.

Dial up Internet

Floppy disks

Phone boxes being everywhere

Using a map in the car

Sitting and listening to the radio for certain songs and trying to hit record on time.

Actually needing the local library for homework

I could say all that about my 70s childhood too. I think things only really changed when everything - maps, shopping, phones - when digital and/or mobile.

God it’s just blown my mind to think that we weren’t able to use the internet and get a phone call at the same time! Getting WiFi in like… 2004? Was a massive deal.

My kids don’t even know what a landline is 😂

Dial up internet
Blow up furniture
Bang on the Door!
Bubblegum Club
Mizz and Sabrina's Secrets magazines
Crisps that made your tongue turn blue or green
Going out to play and having to go home when the street lamps came on
Blue eyeshadow, then progressing to white
Hair mascara!
Gathering in the local shopping centre on a weekend
Pedal pushers
Spice Girls launching Channel 5

...I loved the 90s!

In the mid nineties I had dial up internet and a new pc.
it had a new feature and if the landline rang there would be a little pop up telling you you were missing a phone call!

I don’t think it was yet commonplace in the 90s for people to carry a drink/water. I used to get thirsty so occasionally I’d buy a small carton of juice based drink and anger that but I felt it was a luxury.

Getting 50p for making tea/coffee for the adults and buying:
freddo- 5p
panda pop- 20p
pack of crisps-10p
10p mix up-
lolly-5p

or getting 50 sugar sticks- made out of plastic (the horror)

1 computer in school that barely worked 🤣

laptops the size of concrete slabs- and the weight of them too

microsoft 97

citv, live and kicking

Bad: Creepy teachers being tolerated and even laughed about. Sexual harassment in the workplace. Casual racism and sexism being rife and having to be a good sport. I might be wrong but I think even though there was less choice of places to eat, restaurants were largely better.
Good:A general sense of optimism! Charity shops were full of cool clothing from the seventies and you could get a leather jacket for a tenner. If you wanted to know something you had to find and read a book about it, actually, the loss of skills might be a bad thing, suppose it depends.

I tried to explain text messaging by the number keypad.

More late 80s/early 90s...

Teletext/Ceefax
Cassettes
VHS
Video shops like Blockbusters
Smoking in planes
Having just landlines

My son is 5 and is dumbfounded that I grew up without YouTube or iPads!

With my kids, I can tell that they don't actually believe me about no youtube or on demand tv. It is so ludicrous, I must be making it up. Who could possibly have survived the deprivation of kids tv only being on at set times a day and having toxwatch it live or miss it forever.

Oh... playing Bamboozle on Teletex/ceefax!

I did try emailing having only one computer that could only get the internet if no one was on the landline.

That led to explaining about landlines and that blew her mind even further!

People staying in jobs for life, didn’t swop around so much as they did today.

Me and DH were talking about weird things we remember from 80/90s childhood last night.
Ghostwatch.. I don't know if anyone else remembers it but it's insane that it was aimed at children.

Actually thought I must have imagined this but husband remembers similar.. primary school took us on a school trip to a sort of model house with a group of firemen and filled it with fake smoke to see how we'd cope/escape. They also did a fake mugging!

The stress of trying to record top 10 songs on cassette tape whilst cutting out the DJ talking

The excitement of going to blockbuster video to pick a film and snacks (the annoyance of someone who didnt rewind it!)

Talking on the phone landline and having to stretch the cord as far as it would go for privacy

Grunge- when you wanted to look like a smack head

when we plucked all our eyebrows out and drew them back in with a sharpie 🤣

That horrific screaming gurgling sound dial up used to make

To study, you had to go to the library to get out an actual book

Cars never seemed to start in the 90s if it was cold- you’d see people with their bonnets popped staring into their engines in confusion whilst shivering

Having to wait for songs to be released, and often they’d be released in America first!

This thread has made me so nostalgic, I also loved the 90s!

Smoking on top deck of bus, in the cinema & in restaurants. That seems like another world.

I also remember casually buying tickets to Glasto from a record shop about 3 weeks before the event. It was all very chilled & no worry about going into an online queue.

Publishing GCSE results by name & school in the local paper.

Surely more mind-blowing was no internet at all. No mobiles. I am 50 and obviously remember no www yet can't quite remember how I found anything out. If I didn't know something I didn't know it. Now I Google everything and the most obscure bit of shite can be found out

Using a payphone when you missed the bus home from school. Always had a 10 pence piece in my pocket for that reason.