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 remember flying home from Greece in 1996 and it was very early in the season (I worked there) and the flight was almost empty. All the air hostesses were sat at the back smoking. It wasn't banned until 1998!

That my mother took just a few weeks off for each baby she had!

The Speaking Clock.

Still do where I live. He shouts 'rag BOOONE' through a loud hailer. Doesn't have a horse and cart though.

I'd be ecstatic if we still did this tbh. Might deter a few

My teachers all wore gowns and we had to stand when any adult entered the classroom. Latin was compulsory for 3 years. I did it for 5, was one of my best subjects.
amo, amas, amat… 😊

Getting sexually harassed by much older men and thinking thats just what happens

My grandmother was a Dr (GP) in the 50s and she took her baby (my father) to work and just had him in his pram in the surgery until he was old enough not to need breast milk and was walking around. I don’t know exactly and it’s too late to ask now but I assume he would have been about 9-12m and she went back to work when he was about 2m old.

pubs closing at 2.30
and opening at 6 pm

@MistressoftheDarkSide Oh yes, the shops being closed for ages after Christmas. If parents forgot the batteries for new toys, no shops would be open for several days, especially if Christmas Day was on a Friday!

More recently, when Oyster cards had come in, but you couldn't yet use a contactless credit or debit card: Barclaycard sent me a "hybrid" card. It was a credit card, but it doubled as an Oyster card, which you could top up. A shopkeeper was baffled when I tried to top this up in a shop. They didn't last long, though; they were superseded by being able to use contactless directly.

Those black PE plimsolls, along with doing PE in you underwear, much cheaper for parents in those days.

Smoking on public transport and in offices.

Page 3 girls and how normal it was to walk into a male dominated workplace like a garage and for there to be a spread of their favourite page 3 girls pinned up on the wall.

Building society books, cheques and those machines where you put the slip and the credit card in then rolled it back to take a print of the card details.

Getting your wages in a brown envelope.

Being told not to stand in front of the new spangly microwave incase you got radiation poisoning.

Having to stop using the internet so mum could make a phone call. Or not being allowed to use it at all when she was expecting one!!

Working in the bank, I calculated savings account interest with pen and ink, using logarithmic tables and a slide rule. This was long before banks were computerised.

Kids Saturday morning cinema - your Mum dropped you off at 10 and went shopping, returning at 12.30. Meanwhile 100's of kids watched White Horses or some other series and then a kids film. Happy Days!

Planning a route in advance and getting directions to a house. Making sure you had a map in the car or, even better in town, an A-Z.

Sending money abroad by post (paid for holiday rentals like this).

Choosing a hotel from a brochure or even just turning up somewhere and going to one that looked nice. No tripadvisor or online booking!

at primary school the milk would be delivered, along with the books, <<orange exercise books>> and sometimes the milk would smell, and cause the books to smell.

The post being delivered quite early, even 7am, and a second delivery around 11am.
I remember the phone in the hall and you stood, people didn't have a seat.

My 5 year old has milk at school now, it's not weird or nuts? Is it?

I loved chatting to people in the queue. Great opportunity to get to know people in the halls

Technology has made life far more convenient, but it's come at a cost to human interaction

Our local still does this (village pub).
To me the mind blowing thing is the way we kept in touch/arranged to meet. "See you outside Top Shop Oxford Circus at 11am". And you just did. I can't actually remember how we arranged group things like going to Glastonbury (1980s). I suppose multiple phone calls, or even letters. At uni I think maybe we just used to pop round to each other's houses/halls unannounced. I honestly can't remember.

The frost on the inside of windows. Wringing out clothes with a mangle in the garden. Smoking in the office and at the cinema.I remember going to Blackpool as a kid and my dad bought me a little plastic monkey with a hole for a mouth and you stuck a little cigarette in, lit it and watched it ‘smoke’.

In our house,grandad (my father) Is the font of all information

If grandad says something is true,it is

I was explaining to firstborn that in my day,if you wanted to find something out,you either asked grandad (the joke being,'if dad doesnt know,it doesnt exist') or went to the library

No Google at your fingertips

I also explained that there wasn't supermarkets-if you wanted fish,you went to the fishmongers,bread,you went to the bakery,tinned food,you ended up at the co-op or the corner shop etc

She didn't believe me on either account and rang grandad who confirmed what I said

She still spent most of the day giving me the side eye,thinking I'd got to grandad first and we where winding her up

(I may have had form for pulling her leg)

Visiting South Africa as a young child in the 1980s and seeing a bench marked ‘whites only’ - it just seems so utterly ludicrous that actually happened and the vast majority just went along with it.

Another one for video stores. It was a great weekend when my dad took me to the video store and let me get chips from the takeaway next to it before we went back home.

Spending an hour downloading/trying to download one song on Napster.

Toys in cereal boxes, like colour-changing spoons. One of the perks of being an only child was not having to fight over them.

My first car was ancient even when I got it but instead of a handbrake it had a foot-brake next to the clutch which you'd push down to activate, and a pull-and-twist lever to the right of the steering wheel to release the brake. (This was South Africa in the 90s, though it sounds like the 1940s!)

Queuing up to buy a tube ticket.

Little tiny thick card train tickets, about an inch wide and an inch and half long.

Buying fabric by the yard.

Buying 2oz of sweets from your selected jar at the newsagents.