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

God I'm so glad we don't live in the "good old days" as older people like to say. Men are still grim now but would rather live in these times.

What was with that auntie thing?

I was having a conversation with mum and I was like who was that auntie who lived in town. And she was like we had no aunties fitting that description living in town. Oh you mean Joan smith yeah knew your dad from work.

@fanothetan @CrushingOnRubies Yeah I don't hear that now in white communities but it's still very prevalent in African and Carribbean communities, I work with many of them and they call all their mums friends Auntie and Uncle. I get so confused trying to work out who is actually family. Also still hear it in Indian and Pakistani culture.

What was with that auntie thing?
It was just a sign of respect rather than calling adults by the first name. Mr & Mrs was to formal maybe?
I called all the neighbours auntie & uncle as well as friends' parents, friends of my parents etc.
It's not something my children have ever done. I think one of my ante natal class friends tried it but it didn't stick.

This ^.

People were more formal. You only called people by their first name if they invited you to do it. Adults only called family and close friends by their first names. Neighbours, acquaintances and colleagues would be Mr Smith, Mrs Jones.

Calling someone auntie or uncle was more respectful than just using their first name but less formal than Mr or Mrs Bloggs.

I only came across the “auntie” thing as an adult, when children did it to me. I never knew the idea as a child.

A friend of mine lives in Singapore and she says that kids say Auntie/Uncle to loads of people.
Like the man who drives the school bus, or the dinner ladies at school, for example.

Mydahliasareshit · 24/06/2024 18:02

Yes, I do remember that Rowan A skit - the Devil's name was Toby 🤣

Here you go!

Actually, this is the one...

My boss used to get me to go over the road to the cafe to get him a bacon butties for his lunch. I was more than happy to do it, and always hoped there was a massive queue.
It got my out of having to do any actual work for 20 minutes or so 🤣

Actually doing proper chemistry experiments in schools.

This one has come back to haunt me today at the dentist.
The batshittery is that in the 70s and 80s dentists I believe got more money for filling kids teeth. So we all had all our teeth filled with horrible amalgam when we didn’t really need it. I had 12 superficial fillings, basically they just covered the top of my tooth with amalgam.
I also had 6 healthy teeth removed to ‘make room’ - totally unnecessarily.

String vests - yes! All the men in the family wore string vests. They wore them in the garden sometimes. What was that all about?

@Annielou67 Ugh strong vests, awful!

String *

Yes I had a number of “Uncles” and “Aunties” that I had absolutely no blood relation to.

Smoking areas on buses, trains and PLANES! As if the smoke would only stay in one designated area.

I miss the days when kids played outside, but the things we used to do (drinking, swimming in gravel pits and climbing into motorway bridges) make me shudder.

My 60+ year old BIL still calls his mum's friends Auntie. Sounds so strange!

My daughter is shocked there were busen burners seemingly like refinery flares, wooden tongs being set on fire (boys), chemicals just left about, no gloves, goggles etc. Luckily I missed the days of people pushing mercury across the bench top or in a pyrex dish.

My school still had inkwells in the desks but usually a cup with blue ink was in the room for fountain pen filling

Maybe in the hospital you were at. In others it was commonplace

There was a smoking room for patients in a hospital I worked at in the early 2000s (Dulwich Hospital, if it matters).

My form room in 1979 was the physics lab. At lunchtime we sometimes messed about with the Bunsen burners and even cooked bacon on them. Outing if my old classmates are here I expect.I also remember rolling mercury around.

Sorry but why would it be "outing"? Was your school the only one in the country that used Bunsen burners?

Of course not but the cooking of bacon was likely just us as our school was pretty remiss on safety and my friends would definitely remember it.

Smoking areas on buses, trains and PLANES! As if the smoke would only stay in one designated area

When smoking was allowed on planes, they changed the air in the cabin (front to back where the smoking area usually was) much more frequently than they do now.

On buses it did stay upstairs on double deckers, not so much on single deckers.

This. The COVID studies show that despite being enclosed areas, planes weren’t as dangerous as you might think because you were only ‘sharing air’ with the seats directly around you.

The same goes for smoke (which doesn’t mean I think we should go back to smoking on planes!).