Things that you can’t quite believe were the norm

[ItsNotAShopItsAStore]

What’s one of those things you think in 10/20/30 years people will go “WTF why was that acceptable?”

For me - the Jeremy Kyle show. I’m so pleased it’s off air - awful poverty porn hosted by a nasty little bully and enabled by god-complex shit stirring producers. Also who wants to watch so much shouting and arguing at 9.25am!

In the 90s we were made to do PE in our underwear if we didn't bring our kit. But, if girls were in a "training bra" they'd sit out. Then mocked, as the fact you were sitting out showed you were wearing one.
The secondary school I went to had showers, we didn't use them but the school was built in the late 80s so shows how recent they were in use. We all changed in the same room, if you were on your period you had to ask permission to change in the toilet. Those of us with irregular cycles were refused.
Smoking indoors, around children, in cars. I smoke myself but find this disgusting. So many baby photos of me where cigarette are in ashtrays in the background or worse, in the hand of the adult holding me.
I walked unaccompanied to school from 7. My family were quite shocked to hear I'm expected to walk DS to primary right to the day he finishes. And I'm happy to.
Still to this day the stigma of being a single mother. I've been met with sympathy, disdain and shock.

I'd hope in 10 years time it will be harder to use social media under the age of 16. I'd hope raising a child as gender neutral, trans, fluid or anything other than the gender they are (until they can make their own choices) is seen as emotional abuse.
I'd hope renewable energy was wide spread.

Intriguedbythis · Today 09:45

That would have been 1972.

"Dinner ladies forcing kids to eat things they didn’t want to"

(Primary school, 70s) I refused to eat the disgusting school custard with its thick skin on top, 🤮 while this particular bitch of a dinner lady tried to force me to. My mum came up to the school and sorted it out; I was never bothered again. Good old Mum. I was never made to eat something I disliked at home, so I didn't expect to have to at school, either.

I am really sorry for both you and your sibling. Must have been awful. Thank god you were ok !

It being safe to cycle around and play on greens, fizzy drinks being for birthdays and Christmas, tv being something you only put on in the evenings and Saturday mornings!! Not being a slave to a screen. Having actual conversations with people on the phone!!!being blue to test a perfume in a pharmacy without it being in a locked case 😉

oh and the tripe and liver

Disposable vapes. And I say this as someone who is ashamed to admit I have used them before. They are so bad for the environment. They are so readily available and super addictive.

my girls were easy as they wanted to wear knickers and allowed to choose them, beginning with towelling ones from Boots, as they liked the feel of them.
boy child would just part his legs and wee, that was quite a challenging time.
Boys are lazier than girls with this, holding on until the last minute,
’just don’t get it’ - or won’t!

"The secondary school I went to had showers, we didn't use them but the school was built in the late 80s so shows how recent they were in use."

Someone correct me on this if I'm wrong, but I believe to this day that it's mandatory for schools to have showers installed. Whether or not anyone uses them is another matter. My school was built in the 1870s, and did have showers, within the changing room, but I didn't know anyone to use them in the seven years I was there, in the '80s.

I used to watch the Black and White Minstrels show with my Grandad who was babysitting. I loved singing along. I was much too young to be aware of how wrong it was. I don’t think I was even aware they were parodying black people. It just was what it was. My kids can’t believe some of the things we watched in the 60s/70s

I went to primary school in 1980, a few years after that I remember our school show including a black and white minstrel act. We were blacked up and sang an American slave song, the lyrics were "Up, down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton..up, down, turn around, pick a bale of hay ...oh lordy! Pick a bale of cotton, oh lordy! Pick a bale of hay ..." Etc.

I remember golly wogs too, badges and collecting vouchers from jam to get golly wog dolls.

I see they've also changed Uncle Ben's rice to just Ben's. Pretty sure there was another brand called Aunt something's with a black lady on it, that's been changed.

Same.

In the 60s there wasn’t the same walking dogs on leads , taking them to parks and socialising them with other dogs etc. Maybe occasional lead walks to an unfamiliar area but it was commonplace for folk to open the door and let their dogs go off for a wander on their own. Our dog often disappeared for a couple of hours, probably shitting on the pavements during his adventures.

It wasn’t unusual to see dogs humping in the street in the 60s and someone coming out and throwing a bucket of water at them 🐕

Did the solo dogs fight each other or just do their own thing?

anyone see the episode of Madmen where they have a picnic, and then just shake the blanket of the rubbish, and leave it there!
appalling behaviour, which actually went on

Or they are allowed to be.

Perhaps they cooked it very soft and mashed it with a fork or potato masher? 🤷‍♀️

@Intriguedbythis I remember this too. They’d chill out lying in the street or the garden and sometimes hang out together. Local dogs loved my mum so we’d have a few come to see her and join my dog lying outside. But you never heard of kids getting bitten-people had mongrels not these deadly breeds. A staffie was exotic and unheard of in our council estate.

You are aiming this at the wrong person. @crockofshite brought up the holocaust. No one else had mentioned it up until that point.

Yep, a night in the pub and you came home smelling of cig smoke.

As late as 2002 I worked in an office where people smoked at their desks.

I don’t recall seeing much dog fighting. My dog owning adult children find it hard to believe that dogs were allowed out to roam and come home when they were hungry. A bit like the freedom children had back then !

I know it's fiction, and set in the 50s, in the States, so I don't know how true to life that would be. In the '70s, my mum once took my brother and me, along with her friend's two girls, on a day out, with a picnic. One of the girls dropped (deliberately, not accidentally) an empty crisp packet or something, on the ground. My mum immediately told her, "Pick that up. We don't drop litter". The girl was shocked; she clearly thought that what she'd done was completely normal. Sadly, it is, for far too many people, still, fifty years on.

I agree. And that the further scandal of trans ideology being pushed, by adults (in education), onto Autistic gay girls specifically. My 16 y/o semi verbal ASD Dd thinks she's gay (figuring it out in an age-appropriate-for-her-way). But she's been told that means she 'must really be a boy' & is buying into it big time. I live in Scotland. She can call herself Dave, wear mens clothes, have intimate relationships with women. Of course. She could (but it would worry me silly) access hormones & have 'top surgery'. But she can't become a boy/man. It isn't 'the cause / answer' to her ASD intense yet perfectly normal feelings re women. If I try to tell her that biological sex is noted & assigned at birth (for 99.9%) & she is, always will be female then she can report me to the Police for hate speech. Then how do I guide & protect her as she works out her feelings & boundaries? Madness.

So interesting. I wonder if the off-lead dogs perhaps has less dog on dog anxiety due to them having so much exercise and learning to rub along ?

wondering if dogs on leads can sometimes cause stress between dogs ( not that it would be feasible to not use leads in towns now anyway)

very interesting though!

Rather a tenuous link between infant mortality rates and children of school age still in nappies...
I'm sure we can keep the first down and even get it lower while still supporting parents and children with the second issue.

stayathomer · Today 10:32

It being safe to cycle around and play on greens, fizzy drinks being for birthdays and Christmas, tv being something you only put on in the evenings and Saturday mornings!!

We weren't allowed to watch telly in the morning and I must have been 7 or 8 before I realised it was a thing on Saturdays. I remember Playschool and Bagpuss, before going to school, but it was only two programmes.

I remember going round to a friend's and then having Tiswas on, it was a revelation!

I think in the future the decimation of services - education, intervention and care services - will be seen as a scandal.

The lack of logic on smoking policies is the one that always baffles me. I worked for the local authority in the school holidays. Smoking wasn’t allowed at desks… unless it was after 5 or on a Saturday. Because obviously lung cancer and second hand smoke is only an issue 9-5 Monday to Friday!