Batshittery that was normal back in the day

[Pleasetakeaseat]

Smoking upstairs on buses

Smoking / non-smoking areas in restaurants

Smoking rooms in hospitals

Teachers going for boozy lunches and teaching afternoon classes pissed (my English teacher was always smashed by 1pm 🤣)

Chopper bikes with that brake thing in the middle that could easily disembowel you if you weren't careful

White van men picking up their underage girlfriends from school

White van men thinking schools were a good place to pull

Little kids being sent to the shop on their bikes for their parents booze and fags, and no law against shopkeepers serving them

@doubledenim305 @ porn stuck in hedgerows [snort] yep that too

Some of this can be explained by the fact that we were pretty much considered adults at 16. Not fully independent, but capable of making our own decisions. And with girls being more mature than boys... well thats teenagers fair game.

But now, 18 is seen as barely adult.

Is this a bad thing? Probably not. But teenagers, overall, do seem less competent these days.

My uncle was in the merchant navy and came home once with a monkey, the kind you used to be photographed with at the seaside. Small angry little bugger. The monkey not my uncle. Don't blame him for being angry though.

I clearly remember my father keeping rabbits (he's a gardener and wanted the bedding for the compost)
I was taught at a young age to pick them up by their ears,no hand under them-just grab and lift (I was born in 78,so early 80's)
I mean,how bloody cruel was that-but everyone seemed to do it-perfectly normal
Until he got one that growled and tried to bite him if he went near her
Suddenly it was 'cruel' and 'it's not the done thing'
She was the most evil rabbit ever but I can't blame her

A science teacher giving an unruly teenage boy a good whiff of bromine from a gas jar.

A local pub would let you in with an older boyfriend, as long as he only went to the bar to buy drinks.

Having a 22 year old boyfriend aged 15. He's still a friend and if I mention our ages way back then, he blanches as he's DBS checked for his job.

Having a Saturday job at 15, joining the Civil Service aged 18 with 8 O'Levels. A sibling only starting full time work 22 years ago after being a student for eons.

Showering after PE in communal showers, Miss inspecting us all as we stepped out of the shower.

Being told when about to set off across the village to see grandparents - there's a funny man hanging around by such and such path. Don't talk to him and run fast past him if you see him.

One of my grandfather's having to retrieve a boys body from the top of a pylon.

Having homemade cake every afternoon with a cuppa I usually made for my older grandmother.

I was shocked when I was at seniors in the 90’s and only then was rape in marriage made illegal…. Before then once married there was no such thing as rape.. it was seen as your duty!

Showers are a thing of the past! My daughters senior school just do PE and redress after .. no showers… probably due to the age of phones and bullying

Remember that song "5705 won't you hold the line ? "Poor sods with the number 55705 or 57055 got prank called for months with people ringing up and singing it 😂 eventually I believe the people on the receiving end were given new numbers and the offending g ones taken out of circulation

I can remember when police did nothing if a man beat his wife and neither did the neighbours. Some people thought the woman deserved it . Unless you were raped by a stranger the woman was not believed. If you complained about sexual harassment you were a prude or a spoilsport. I can remember when a woman couldn't get a
Mortgage or a bank account without a man's permission. If a man got a woman pregnant and did a runner people said "Bloody good luck to him".

@QueenofTheBorg I was about to post the same. I remember being given a sanitary belt and huge things with loops either end to hook on to the belt. They were so enormous they made you walk funny.
I was told tampons could only be used once you had children. Zero explanation of what periods were or any sex education at all except bizarrely the whole class aged 8/9 were shown the most graphic film of a women giving birth. Put me off child birth forever. I can still picture the woman screaming even now almost 50 years on.

Harrods used to sell all sorts of animals too, from puppies and kittens to monkeys and lion cubs. Crazy now when you think you could go in and come away with a wild animal

someone I know through work had a pet monkey when she was younger (she’s in her 80s now), her husband just came home with it. Her stories about it are hilarious

Was it living and growing by any chance

@Thevelvelletes that rings a bell. Did you see it?

I remember working in a local library where people could ring up ( mostly men) and ask who lived at such and such an address. You were allowed to give their name out by opening the electoral roll of the ward, which was kept in a box file under the counter. It wasn’t even locked up until about 95.

Teachers throwing small bean bags and board rubbers at kids in primary school (70s) if they were talking or messing about. Boys would get the board rubber at the side of the head, girls the bean bag.
One teacher making a sign saying Lazy Workers and attaching it to a Table and making me and others sit at it. (Aged about 10) Headteacher routinely walking round with a slipper and bringing kids out of classrooms.

Being hit by teachers in high school. Not because of misbehaving but because they were frustrated because I didn’t understand a maths question, couldn’t string a sewing machine or couldn’t read a measurement on a test tube in the science lab. All three teachers did the same thing - punched me hard in the back as they walked past me but not doing it in an obvious way so no one noticed. ( I was 11/12)

I also had a friend aged 15 going out with a 26 year old. She was married to him with a baby by 18. He would pick her up from school.

Ice cream van outside high school selling single cigs at lunchtime and after school.

Hitchhiking as a student.

Driving at speed in a reliant robin round corners 😱

Learning to drive on Southport beach.
Travelling 6 floors down in a lift aged about 8 in my grandmas’s flats, going to the shop next door with a scribbled list and asking for her usual Embassy No 6 tipped. Then buzzing her intercom to get back into the flats.

Yes ,it was about 50 yrs ago in primary 7.

Rampant misogyny and male chauvinism, totally disgusting 😡🤬 unfortunately I was trapped. Glad things have shifted big time and I lived to see it!🙂👍

Driving at speed in a reliant robin round corners

Many years ago I remember being at a biker's party when a couple of my friends turned up ashen-faced. One of them had got a Reliant Robin for £250 (you only needed a bike license to drive one back then, not a full car license) and had given the other a lift to the party with a boot full of beer. Long story short, Robins slide down the road on their side surprisingly well.

Omg😬

Boys marinading themselves in Lynx Africa...

I'm not denying it, of course you are right. But at the same time, women gave as good as they got. When I started work in The City in the mid-90s - boy could those ladies handle themselves. And the language would make a docker blush.

Our local.vilkage pub still does this.

My experience was more personal and as an impressionable youngster I just had to put up with it! 😡

Went to Majorca with my parents as a 14yo. Mum bought sun lotion from M&S (they’d just started doing it, apparently and my mum was and remains very loyal to M&S) - it came as a one third section of the bottle in SPF 15 and the other two thirds was SPF 8. Mum also bought SPF 4 tanning milk. Our natural skin tone is that of a milk bottle! I think the idea was that you’d use the 15 for the first couple of days and then build up your tan with the 8 and finally the 4. Instead, we burnt.

Porn shops especially in Soho where there were loads of them..

Top shelf tits and bums soft porn magazines, I remember feeling really shocked and attacked those things even existed 😑
...and the type of men that bought them..