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.

When I have tried to explain to my daughters what it was like having a home phone only and no mobile, computer, internet, not even video machines when I was very young...I don't think they really get it! For birthday parties your dad would hang a sheet up on the sitting room wall and hire a movie and movie projector, it was so exciting...until the film came off the spool and your dad had to spend ages rethreading it...

I still easily remember my home phone number and I have not had that number for nearly 40 years!

A driving one. Some streets that are now pedestrianised that we used to drive both ways.
Poole High Street, it also has a level crossing near the station.
Oxford: The High and turn right into Cornmarket.

That we had a rented one from Redifusion, they had cable connections if I remember correctly.

That Netflix was originally a dvd that got posted to you and you posted them back. I got two free rentals when buying a large bag of minstrels

Most people rented colour TVs in the 70s andVHS recorders in the early 80s because they were new technology and broke down often If you were renting they were repaired or replaced for free.

I was born in the 50s. My nephews can't believe that for much of our childhood my brother and I lived in a house that only had heating in one room. That was a coal fire which didn't get lit until mum got home from work. By the time the room had warmed up it was bedtime and off we went to our unheated bedrooms. I used to get dressed in bed in the morning it was so cold. Think I was 15 when an electric storage heater was installed on the landing so all the bedroom doors were left open all night to let the heat in but it was bliss.

At one time mum and I had to share a pair of going out shoes! Luckily we were the same size and mum, bless her, didn't get the opportunity to go out much.

I'm a bit older than you @TheyAllFloatDownHere but I know what you mean about feeling like there really was a massive change between my generation and my children's. A lot of I has been driven by technology of course, but not all.
I do feel genuinely lucky to have been able to go to University in the 80s in what I think was possibly the peak couple of decades for bright, working class kids to be able to do so. Had I been born a decade earlier I would almost certainly not have had the opportunity as very few young people from my background even stayed on at school for 6th form, never mind went to University, especially not girls. But had I been born not much more than a decade later I wouldn't have had the funding that I benefitted from, and I suspect my parents would have dissuaded me because of the debt.
But I hit that sweet spot where my exam results alone were enough to win me a place on a sought after STEM course at a good redbrick University (now RG but that didn't exist then!) and I was able to leave with no debt and without financially crippling my parents - though they did make some contribution I don't think it was as much as they'd have to now.
And going to University radically changed my life, not just because of the increased earning capacitu it's afforded me. It was a whole new world full of people, ideas and experiences that were absolutely new to me and it changed me, and my future irrevocably and for the better. I feel very fortunate to have had that opportunity. I don't feel my DC's University experiences, whilst still good, are as good as mine and DH's were.

I can still remember the address and birthday of the boy I was madly in love with and so many decades have passed since then!

Our school nurse recommending the sponge as contraception.

My GP saying drinking wine would help with the stress of pregnancy.

Having to go to the gp for a pregnancy test.

Being allowed to watch 18s when off sick in primary school.

Taking a buggy through airport security without it going through any x-Ray or scanner.

Handwriting essays and using tipp ex.

In England, in the Sixties, I remember both chocolate cigarettes (wrapped in white paper of some sort (rice paper?) with a "glowing" red(yellow?) tip) and white sugar cigarettes with a pink tip. I much preferred the chocolate ciggies. Wasn't fond of the pure sugar mice we used to be given, either!

Playing outdoors unsupervised, walking to school by yourself from the age of 5
Going in and out of friends' houses without an invitation or parents arranging "play dates" from roughly the same age
Taking a bus with friends and spending a day at the beach at the age of 13 with no parental supervision
No gates around the school
Calling a mate on a landline to arrange to meet in a couple of days and then turning up somewhere just expecting them to be there.
Turning up at friend's house and ringing a door bell (not texting to say you were outside)
Opening the door when someone rings the bell
Photoshopping your hand reflection out of your sunglasses after taking a selfie on a holiday so people don't realise you took a selfie.
Ironing and sewing on buttons.
Rewinding a cassette tape with a pencil
Have an album full of your pictures an an infant with your pants off/in a bath.

Desk calendars you had to alter every day, walking to school with no adult at 6 yrs old, lighting coal fires with gas hose stretching from the kitchen

When I started teaching in 2007 we still had the old overhad projectors that used film on a roll that you could draw on. I also had to send off my slides to reprographics to be printed on film so I could use them in class. Only a few classes had Powerpoint and projectors that made life so much easier.

I was obsessed in the 90s with having penpals! I'd receive dozens of letters and I'd be constantly asking parents for stamps.

I fear I am the sort of person this thread was referring to as prior to looking up what it is just now, I assumed this referred to Rag n Bone Man, the singer, who is only 39 years old and wondered why it’d be so strange that he’d still be around 😂

At 13yo my DSis went to stay with her pen pal in Paris. Neither she nor my parents had ever spoken to, let alone met, either the penpal or the parents.

I remember when I was first at work and we went out for a Christmas meal some of us would sit and smoke between courses - feel so sorry now for the non smokers.

Also used to smoke at work when I first started. And go to the pub Friday lunchtimes and come back quite worse for wear.

This was 1980s.

Similar white ones are available in the UK but are now called Barratts candy sticks. I dont think they have the red tips now. They used to be known as sweetie cigarettes 😳

I'm 50 and I still can recote my home phone we got when I was 12! I can't recite my husbands, sons, mothers mobiles but I can remote my home phone from when I was a teen.

My parents moved from India to Europe in their twenties. I remember a couple of years ago we had both my parents and dh's friends over. The friends had teenage kids. Over dinner my dad told everyone a funny anecdote from a fitness course he did many decades ago and he mentioned how the instructor kept addressing him as "Hey you, Indian!!" For my dad that wasn't the point of the anecdote (and i dont think he minded being addressed like that) but apparently the teenage kids were absolutely shocked and incredulous at the casual racism of those times.

Funnily enough I remember one year the iPhones had a bug and people's alarms didn't go off - so it can still happen! (might be this year www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12878517)

Listening to music. Explaining to my DDs about how if you liked a song in the 90s you had to either hope it came on the radio or go and buy the single from an actual shop.
Or the recording it off the radio of course- which they thought was insane!

Nominated for classics

Poste restante - travelling around the world and letting family/friends know where you will be in a month or 2 so they can write to you Poste Restante. You then go to CPO in Istanbul or wherever and pick up your letters.

Smoking at desk in shared office.

Using a ice lolly stick to make a phone call when you forgot the change.

Putting empty milk bottles out with the milk money in a bottle.

We had a sick room at school, there were a couple of beds and a school nurse. 1970s, a lot of people didn't have a home telephone, parents were at work so uncontactabe during the school day or SAHM couldn't get to the school unless walking distance as usually one car, if any, in a family even if contactable.