Stuff that didn’t seem weird at the time but when you tell someone younger they think it’s nuts

[MildGreenDairyLiquid]

Just that really.

The other day I explained to my 11 year old niece that when I was at junior school we used to have a small bottle of milk with a straw every morning, and she looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

I was teaching English in another country and was explaining Guy Fawkes.

"Teacher, you celebrate stopping a terrorist by burning him alive on a fire?"

"That is correct."

I talked to a group of Year 7 students (age 11) about the paper round I did as a teen. None of them knew what it was!

Phone boxes

My year five teacher used to smoke at his desk in the classroom.
Australia, early 80s.

I was going to say a landline telephone with a number you knew off by heart ☎️

That we had a black and white TV.

And we knew numbers of friends and family off by heart too!

Taping the charts and hoping that the radio DJ wouldn’t talk over the start of end of the song!

When I went to university, I didn’t have tuition fees or accommodation costs and actually got given money by the state!

Having to carry 2p for the phone box to avoid making reverse charge calls. Mum went mad if I forgot

Buying Smash Hits magazine so I’d know the lyrics to the newest songs

I was telling my teen about click on phone covers that Nokia did and it didn’t make any sense because phone covers exist today.

Was just thinking about this one tonight. These days, you have thousands of films at your fingertips on Netflix/Prime etc. If you start watching one and it’s rubbish, you just find something else.

We used to have to go to the VIDEO SHOP, eg Blockbuster, and peruse the shelves for a video to hire (for about £4 if I remember correctly which wasn’t cheap!). No online reviews or anything to aid our choices. In my case that also involved driving 12 miles to the video shop. Whilst there you could also buy some overpriced snacks. And if the film turned out to be rubbish, tough bananas. Then the next day you had to drive back to the video shop to take it back. Mind boggling nowadays.

• Landline in hallway & only allowed to use after 6pm
• Having no phone at uni & having to send handwritten letters
• Being able to stroll down the high street to a record shop about 3 weeks before Glasto to buy a ticket
• Smoking in cinemas, restaurants, on the bus etc
• No remote control
• No TV at certain times of day
• Having to wait until roll of film finished to send off photos & so no retakes if it was a rubbish photo
• All having to watch a TV programme at same time

Dont know if it also was a thing in the UK, but in my home country we gave children chocolate ‘cigarettes’…to make them excited about starting to smoke when they’re 16.

Netflix was a mail order company. They sent physical dvds that you sent back afterwards.

Amazon only sold books at one point.

Having zero paid holiday from work.

And then getting a job with 2 weeks paid holiday, and it not being that unusual.

@Weesiewoo - UK late 80s; the 6th formers were allowed to smoke in the common room.

We used to have candy cigarettes and thought we looked so grown up. Absolutely outrageous when you think about it! I very recently had to explain to my son about making mix tapes. He had no idea what a cassette was and looked at me like I'd lost my mind when I said we'd listen to the radio on a Sunday afternoon and just record the songs we liked. I kinda miss those days!

But phone boxes still exist, and we still watch live tv with my dc - and my dc had milk at school too. These things aren't obsolete

And when you took the video back to the shop you had to make sure it was rewound to the beginning otherwise you'd be in trouble!

ASOS started as an online company selling stuff you saw in TV shows or movies. As Seen On Screen.

I remember buying a replica keyring from Kill Bill when it came out.

True! As if the whole thing wasn’t enough of a ballache already!

A stock cube in a mug of hot water as an alternative to tea and coffee.

Wearing shoes in the house, obviously, because otherwise you'd get splinters and chilblains.

I remember when Boohoo first put 3d models on their website so you could see the outfit from different angles but the only people who could view the models were at work because the Internet was slow at the time.

You couldn’t make phone calls if you were online in the early days of the internet. The bill payer paid per minute if being online rather than a flat fee.

At work we used to wait for the post to bring us news from our clients / work. It was 2000 and I had a computer and work email but got about 1 email a day. Much correspondence still done by post.

This really blows teenagers' minds.