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.

Yes, chain letters threatening all sorts if you didn’t keep the chain going by forwarding it to 20 more people. I had completely forgotten about them.

Backing your school books with wallpaper 📖 .

My son; “So they’ve made a rule in the Tuckshop that you can only have one ice cream per day”

Me; “well that seems pretty reasonable, good that they have your health in mind”

Other son; “mum, you had a smoking area. In your school. You used to go to the pub with your English teacher”

Me; “well yes, there is that.”

The doofer for our tv only went up or down so you clicked through the channels, or you could turn the volume up or down. As there were only three (then a bit later, four) channels this wasn't really a hardship.

One of my primary school teachers was terribly old and terribly strict (in fact just nearing retirement age and rather old fashioned), she would send one of us to the staff room to make her a brew mid lesson and fetch her ciggies, or empty her ashtray.

A couple of times when her dog was ill (in hindsight I think not ill, but in season), she brought her in, and we'd have our lessons with her smoking away, drinking the coffee one of us had made, with this MASSIVE German Shepherd lying on a blanket by her desk.

You'd be told to stand outside the room as punishment if you dared even look at the dog never mind distract her or mither her in any way. Favoured kids would be allowed to take the dog out on a lead and walk her one lap around the graveyard behind the school (could be seen at all times through the window, so there was to be no messing about, woe betide the child who messed about!). I was only granted this award once... what a day.

She also taught us (yep, 7 and 8 year olds) archery. None of this would be permitted, you wouldn't even be able to think about it now.

Bus ticket into town from our village was 12p. Return!

My best friend lived in the same small Sussex village as me and to ring her, I just had to dial 3 numbers. Then later we all got an extra digit.

That 4 digit phone number is now the PIN I use for loads of things 😁

Telling family when you were going on holiday and where you are staying so they could phone to leave a message if anyone died. Checking for messages once or twice a day.

Not being allowed to touch the tv during Wimbledon fortnight.

Having to rent movies at the video store, being able to only pick a few at once. Gosh wasn’t even that long ago, early 2000’s! If you told a youngster this they’d think it was nuts

The telephone tree when you were on a school trip! The school would ring parent A to pass on the news (e.g. we'll be back in a couple of hours), then parent A would phone B, etc.

I'm in my sixties. When I was young the release of a Disney film was a hugely anticpated treat. Apart from that much longed for experience our only exposure to the utter magic of Disney was the programme of film clips called Disneytime someone mentioned upthread.

It was shown on bank holidays at Easter and Christmas (maybe other BH too) and it was a tantalising collection of 2 minute clips of Disney films that I had never seen or only seen once and would never see again.

I used to fantasise about a space age future when I would have the magical power to watch any Disney film I wanted at any moment I wanted. When VHS came out I was nearly there but Disney movies were expensive - about £30 when my monthly mortgage was £120! Then they got a bit more affordable with DVDs. My Dc could watch Aladdin every day if they wanted - and they did!

Now I can subscribe £10 a month and watch everything I want on my tv, laptop or phone And guess what? Now they are so available the magic has gone.

Taking your Corona bottles back to the shop for your 5p refund
No remote control. Used to get up and walk over to TV to change channel
That ridiculous tennis game on TV where the ball took about ten seconds to travel across the screen. Felt like cutting edge technology!
Slide rules
Hiring your TV from radio rentals
Having to pre-book a phone call abroad
The most disgusting school dinners you could imagine

Our local swimming pool had slipper baths for people who didn't have bathrooms to use.

I was caned at primary school: was shortly before it got banned. My sister reminded me of this and I mentally double took. It now seems so outrageously cruel and old fashioned I wondered if I had misremembered.

Oh yes! I used to fly as an unaccompanied minor on 747s and they had smoking and non-smoking sections. Not that it made any difference where I sat because the entire plane was blue with smoke.

Everyone wears hoodies now, but growing up I seem to recall that they were really uncool. Looking back at uni photos, I don’t see anyone wearing them,except maybe genuine sportsmen. I don’t recall them as being worn by women much (80s).

Oh godess I'm old.

One computer in school, this was high school. And you saved programs to cassette tapes, it was really exciting when we got a second computer that had a floppy disk. And the disk was actually floppy.

STD - not a disease, subscriber trunk dialling, allowing what we now call long distance calls to be made without an operator.

London numbers all starting 01.

Actually knowing you home phone number.

Phones with dials, and letters on.

Being sent to the shop with a note to buy my mum's cigarettes and I was allowed to get something with the change. I wasn't even at school at the time.

The school bus having us sit 3 to a seat.

Being in France and radio 4 announcing that the X family, believed to be travelling in X country needed to contact their relatives.

Smoking on busses, planes, in cafes, in VI form.

Only 3 TV channels, then one went on strike for what seemed like months.

Re the dog in school, a friend of my mother's was a teacher and unusually for the 1970s carried on working after having a baby, that she took to school and let the children push around in the playground and help feed.

Impromptu school trips.

I had a newly qualified teacher at one point and she arranged for us to go by coach to the local poly to be filmed singing and then we could watch it back. The parents had no idea it was happening until one boy told his mum he had been on the BBC. Looking back it was probably a student friend doing a new-fangled course on TV production or something.

Another we went to the park to collect frogspawn that we watched develop in to frogs and then returned.

Also a rather eccentric ex miner teacher who would take us for history walks, we had to line up in silence in the main corridor, then crawl under the head teacher's window so she wouldn't see us and not come out on her broom stick and then we would go for a walk and learn about the buildings we passed.

No store-bought sanpro. Old towels cut up in strips and worn with a sanbelt. Had to handwash and scrub them in the cold-water washhouse in buckets hidden behind piled up cardboard boxes so that the males of the family did not have their eyes polluted. Sitting on a lump of scratchy towelling in class. I even managed to climb a 8200 ft mountain wearing the bloody thing, chafing my thighs under my shorts, and not able to change it. My parents were loaded, too.

Ceefax on the telly....remember every Christmas checking the advent countdown on there lol

Or teletext as it was also known 😂

Why would kids in school having milk be “nuts”??

I think on demand stuff is so normal for kids now that they can’t actually quite comprehend that tv was only live and you couldn’t pick and choose what you wanted, you had to watch what was on and not a lot was for kids.

No internet - mind blown.

Mid 80s, aged 15, on a school trip teachers allowed us to drink wine and beer, but not spirits.

Standing in the cold silently raging at a fellow-student, who is hogging the bloody phone box having got their parents to phone them back.

Still a student, checking your pigeonhole every day for letters from home or friends, society circulars etc.

Being woken up by the milkman clanking about by your front door; the milk float was diesel and the fumes reeked.

A family round the corner still only had an outside loo.

Not wearing seatbelts. No baby or child seats.

Complete and utter lack of disabled access. I had a friend who used a wheelchair and had to take a friend along to the cinema as he counted as a 'fire hazard'. Though as he said, what bloody use a weedy teenaged girl would be in such a situation was a complete mystery.

Edited for typo.

You had no accommodation costs! What university provided free accommodation?

Do you mean an Aga?
It's like a form of heating as much as cooking though. A radiator heating your house the you can also cook on. They're great in a damp chilly climate.