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!

Being made to do PE in primary school in your vest and pants if you didn't have your PE kit. I can't believe how anyone thought that was OK. My mum actually didn't though, she went up the school and complained to the headteacher and that never happened again. This was in the 80s.

Wages...

Earning £120 per week, take home, from a bar job. Plus tips/drinks bought.
My rent for a flat share with a friend was £25 a week, bills and food were about £10.
Going out was £20 max, including cigarettes, bus/taxi/food.
We were loaded, relatively speaking...

No, they didn't. Just "lucky" I guess. Besides kids will gag on blended/mashed food as well. It's not any safer/better...

People can puree if they want, nothing to do with me, nor is it "wrong" to each their own i say.

But we never bothered, DD just chewed and got in with it. She started off with things like a strip of toast or a banana or chicken or whatever.

i know you can buy disposable cameras now, but , not being able to see the photos you had taken until they were developed. Great care had to be taken, being fairly frugal with photos.

I remember my older sister taking me once. I was about 3/4 she would have been about 10/11. I remember her leaving me alone to go to the deep end for a swim. I slipped she darts back and dramatically shouted at the lifeguard I was drowning. I wasn't I could easily have stood up.🤣🤣🤣

I went alone or with a friend from about 9/10. When qI learnt to swim going with school.

Smoking in pubs/bars, anywhere indoors really

Parents smacking kids to discipline (some people like to say ‘spanking’ to lessen how horrible it is - it’s smacking/hitting)

Teachers using a cane to discipline

Driving without seatbelts - I remember me & my siblings laying down in the back of the car with duvets and pillows for the long drive to Dover!

Going ‘round town’ when I was 15. Drinking and snogging older men. Yuck. 🤢

I remember reading a news article that disposable nappies can affect men's fertility as an adult.

Even later than that was common for dogs to just wander.

One of my first ‘jobs’ in the 80s was when our area got a dog warden and they started picking up dogs walking alone. Our two neighbours had elderly dogs used to just plodding around and they paid me 20p a week each to yell “that’s my dog, I’m watching her” to the dog warden if he tried to pick up either of the dogs while I was out playing in the street.

The dogs used to follow me to the shop on a Saturday morning when I got fruit pastilles and crisps with my 40p in the hope they’d get a treat from the butchers next door.

You're not wrong, it was the men in the team shirts who were embarrasing? Still it was the "Nuts" age ...

Our bullying PE teacher tried making us wear our uniforms inside out, and when that didn't have the desired effect, wearing black plastic garbage bags. Nobody was humiliated by it, as far as I recall. I'm glad she didn't cotton on to the underwear idea, or maybe she wasn't allowed to try it.

ETA of course this was high school, making teenagers run around in underwear would have been beyond stupid even for her.

We wouldn't have dared complain.

I went alone or with a friend from about 9/10.

Kids here still do that. They’re allowed (by the pool) to go from 8 without an adult, but 10 seems to be the age parents are comfortable with.

They play out here as well. One of mine tried the “hi mum, I’m home, tired and going to bed” dart upstairs yesterday because he’d got a bollocking from a neighbour and knew I’d be adding to that. It very much reminded me of my childhood as my Nana never let me quickly no upstairs to bed to avoid a row either 😂

Wearing your vest and pants for PE in Infant/Primary school.

PE knickers for the girls - hated those things.

Cross Country in the middle of winter. Ground frozen solid. Having to run it in shorts and T-shirts! (Unless you had school approved jogging bottoms.)

I could write a bloody list!

😂

8 yrs old popping to the shop for a 10p mix up for myself and a packet of John Player Specials for my mum, handed straight over no questions asked. Early 80's

Boys too...

Sadly this is what I would call the good oul days. When giggling boys of 11 or 12 might sneak a peek at a pair of boobs. Now they just to see men choking young women while having anal sex.

I'd happily take a return to page 3 in exchange for an outright ban on violent and degrading pornography. I also think pornography will be our shameful legacy but its going to take a lot of rapes, murders, men with deep psychological problems, a generation of failed relationships and God knows what else before it happens.

There's often a real lack of critical thinking or empathy on MN. If it didn't happen to you, or the people you went to school with, then it definitely didn't happen.

There's got to be a critical mass of people saying, 'Yes, same at my school', or are we all just trolls?

My school in the 80s and 90s, yes open showers and yes (female) teachers watching us to check. In fact, a male teacher came into the changing rooms once and I was the one to get a bollocking, for asking him to wait until we were dressed (I 'hurt his feelings'). This was 1993.

Covid lockdowns. I hated it the whole time and broke the rules as much as I could get away with. Saw my family for xmas, saw my friend indoors, went to parties. If you said that on here at the time you got abused and called selfish/stupid/a murderer/criminal. I basically kept quiet and pretended to go along with it on work calls and to my in-laws. Worst time of my life and I was suicidal by lockdown #3.

UPF - the food companies have basically caused an obesity epidemic, then turned the blame on people so we think fat people are lazy or weak. While the food companies make their food as addictive and moreish as possible.

About smoking indoors - still legal in Bosnia!!! EVERYWHERE. In front of toddlers. I went there on hols and it was fucking grim, people chainsmoking everywhere. If you go on Bosnia subreddit everyone defends it as their right, saying if you don’t like smoking then don’t go to cafes/restaurants etc.

??? on simple maths most men don't buy The Sun

"Till death us do part" was about calling out Alf Garnet's right wing views including racism.

I think we will be judged ;

For our unthinking use of single use plastics, for plastic grass and for calling native wild plants "weeds" and tearing them up. For not doing enough to sort out the environmental crises.

For cancel culture.

For our over use of prescription medication at indescribable cost, whether that's antibiotic resistance or elderly patients being prescribed meds that increase the risk of falls. 🥺. We have come to rely on magic pills, so many of which have very limited effectiveness or nasty side effects. I think if all GPs had to employ a health and fitness coach (with their ARRS funding) we would all be a lot healthier.

For our ridiculous fetish with baking. Urgh buttercream icing should be fucking banned not slathered all over everything. We spend ages obsessing over healthy lunch boxes for our DC and then sit down to celebrate "Great British bake off with them".

Remember Kyle's predecessor Kilroy? A friend of mine went to his show. She said it was very orchestrated - you were told when to clap etc. Another rabble rousing creep.

Smoking in public places didn't affect me much. I grew up with two parents who smoked and spent many a night at the local social club surrounded by cigarette smoke.
I agree about the nappy thing though. Toilet training too early can have a kickback effect when the child is older. As long as they're toilet trained by the time they start school what does it matter?

Oh, but he was a handsome devil 😈