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!

I happened at my secondary school 1983 - 1988 in Manchester UK - very grim

I think they should bring back boozy pub lunches at work. It was one of the things that made work tolerable. Work is just serious, stressful and unpleasant now.

I got wheeled off in my silver Cross pram from outside gateway supermarket 1972, my mum saw the pram was gone so walked back to my grans thinking she'd took me home, luckily I was found, parked up on the mostly empty car park just round the corner 😳 no harm done and the other shopping still untouched under the pram 😂

I often think of the sweets that looked like cigarettes so little kids could pretend to smoke like their parents. My kids couldn't believe this!!

2 miles isn’t far at all. I (and my DS) used to walk further than that taking my DS to school and a lot further than that walking to work, which we did “in all weathers”. If we all walked a bit more we’d all be a lot healthier!

It was the case until 1973 in the UK Foreign Office. A friend of mine still has the letter she received telling her that she would no longer have to resign if she marrried.

It was a thing circa 1990 in mine too. I was obviously very wily because I only remember actually getting wet once or twice. I was so embarrassed to have pubes !

Didn't it mean happy?

I managed to be 'on' every week 😂

I always thought it meant happy.

I’m in the UK and this (communal showers after PE) was definitely a thing at my school in the 80’s. Hated them!! Getting naked in front of your peers (and a teacher when they were checking on us) during the puberty years - I mean???!! We all did whatever we could to get out of it

I'm an oldie and I was regularly caned at school for spelling mistakes. Not only was this outrageous but my parents didn't raise an eyebrow. Mum hated that it happened but wouldn't have dared go to the school and complain.

There's that great scene in Hairspray where Tracy and Mom go singing and dancing by the bar with all the women sitting in there about 7 months pregnant smoking and drinking martinis.

I still can't get over the fact that kids are allowed to walk to school on their own. I think I did from about age 6.

But we did leave the babies outside and they were fine. Many a time you came out the shop and someone was either rocking the pram because the little one had woken or if the baby was sitting up somebody would be chatting to them. Even in the early 90s babies were left outside.

My mum left me outside the shop.

it was only when she got home did she realise I was still there….

Going to a party? Not enough room in the car? Just pile on each others laps! Hard to believe now, but that was actually quite a regular occurrence!

I saw a toddler (about 1 year old) in a pushchair outside a shop in 1999, to my horror had wriggled out of the straps and was almost completely out. His mum had probably only been in the shop for a minute or two, I couldn't just walk off, I had to keep an eye on him until his mum came out. I shudder to think what could have happened had I not been there. He could have wandered into the road and got hit by a car.

Goodness, my comment about transphobia sure has brought all the bigots out. As I said, pathetic. I do find it heartening that whenever I post about transphobia being ridiculous, that post gets a lot of thanks. It’s nice to know this site isn’t totally full of silly wee billies 😆

In the early 90s near me there was a big new department store with two floors. Babies were left in prams at the bottom. My aunt said she used to go there to meet friends in the mornings, and at the top of the stairs there would be lots of groups of young women having a chat. By mid 00s when i had DS that was probably an arrestible offence. I feel so much envy for those earlier mums, they had the chance to unwind and relax. It's no wonder mums today are so miserable, they never get a break

My dad, who was born in 1931 and was a walking encyclopaedia, told me that the reason female teachers are called "Miss" regardless of marital status, is because there was a time when only unmarried women (spinsters if aged over 25) were allowed to be teachers. And the "Miss" thing sort of stuck.

Driven by Frank Spencer!

Except... not everyone has a garden. Bit hard for people living in high-rise blocks.

Who would watch the babies left at the bottom?? And did they not have lifts?

'Silly wee billies' for being concerned about male sex offenders and other violent male prisoners being housed in women's prisons? About the totally inadequate research into puberty blockers for children with psychological problems around gender? About the threat to women's and girls' sport from trans-identified males who went through male puberty? I don't see anything bigoted there, I see common sense and empathy.

No one. That was the whole point! Everyone had a break. If a baby cried I'm sure someone would run down. Once lifts were installed a few years later the Mum meet ups stopped.