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.

The huge excitement at my primary school when gasp we got the overhead projector! It meant we didn't have to use the dog-eared hymn books in assembly, and everyone wanted to be allowed to put the little sheet on the glass...

I have my 4 digit childhood phone number as my PIN also!

I work for social services. One of our NHS trusts still sends referrals in via post. Bloody ridiculous in 2024.

@Elseaknows The armrests, before we had little remote controls etc, used to have one big button for reclining your seat and one little metal lid that flipped open to reveal an ashtray! My mum would go absolutely spare (understandably) when my sister and I played with the ashtray as very little kids.
AND you'd get excited to see one large, crappy tv (might have been a projection?) on the plane, on the dividing wall between sections of rows. I remember kneeling on my seat trying to see over the headrests and people to watch whatever film they stuck on that flight.

I loved the story about someone's history-loving teacher sneaking them all out past the head for a walk.

I was watching an old film on Talking Pictures TV last week, set in the 50's or 60's I think, as Barbara Windsor looked about 20. There were a group of men outside the pub impatiently waiting for the doors to open at lunch time, then pushed out again a few pints later. It was so strange, but I suppose nobody had beer at home then either.

I had travelled to meet a friend at a railway station but he was ill and couldn't make the journey himself (it wasn't a long journey for me thankfully). I found this out when I heard my name being tannoyed to go to the customer services desk - in pre-mobile days the only way he could get the message to me was by phoning the station and asking them to let me know.

I haven’t rtft but my kids still get milk cartons at school! Is it a Scottish thing as most of the schools round here do it.

My 14 son has had a paper round for the last year. Paper rounds still exist.

NDN used to use our landline for their phone calls. Our phone would ring and it would be for next door so I had to run round and get them. They used to leave 20p pieces on the side which I would then take! This was mid - late 80s, blows my mind when I think of our phone use now.

Catalogues.

Leaving babies outside shops in prams.

As a PP mentioned, sexual harassment being treated as pretty much a rite of passage when you entered the workplace.

Spaghetti bolognese and yoghurt being exotic in the 70s.

Taking sandwiches and a flask on days out, because even greasy spoons were a treat.

Reins on toddlers being absolutely standard.

Buses with a conductor coming round to take your money with a leather pouch for the money. If you did regular journies and got to know them, you might be given the end of the rolls of tickets to take home and play with.

Your grandmother saving up margarine tubs and toilet roll tubes for you to play with, and hours of fun emptying kitchen cupboards and using pans and wooden spoons as drums. (I know some people probably still do this to be fair, just there wasn't quite the proliferation of toys that there is now, and if your family was on a tight budget, they were few and far between).

A pound a week pocket money being considered extravagant.

My primary aged DC have a carton of milk at school with fruit as their mid morning snack every morning.

I don’t think this is at all weird…

I'd be interested to know if this would happen now: one morning, just before school started, I fell in the playground and hurt my head really badly. A passing teacher took me straight to the nearby hospital in her beige car. As both my parents worked, my au pair was with me (two working parents and an au pair was unusual then), who took me back to school afterwards, on the bus.

Probably not so weird when my brother had burnt his hand at home. A teacher showed me his blister, and asked me what had happened. I was baffled at the time as to why she did this, but now it's nice to know that they looked out for us in the 1980s. Compare this moment in a Grange Hill episode from 1980:
Teacher: (to a boy with a black eye) Who gave you that?
Pupil: Me dad, sir.
Teacher: May one ask why?
Pupil: I had me bike nicked, sir.
Teacher: (shrugs) Off you go.

When I was ill at school once, the elderly dinner ladies got out the paperwork for contacting my parents, read my mum's details, and said "it says, 'with great difficulty'" (my mum was a secondary school teacher). Even I knew that my dad was much easier to contact during the day, and I tried to tell them this, but they refused point blank, saying they didn't want to disturb him at work. I had to wait until the end of the school day. I saw the polite letter that my dad wrote to the school the day after (typed and duplicated with carbon paper), expressing his surprise that nobody tried to contact him at his office, and that he could get to the school much more quickly than my mum could.

Children getting the belt at school if they were naughty!

It blows my mind now! Teachers getting their cat o' 9 tails belts out and whacking them down of their desk as a warning.

Then some poor wee kid would have to put their hand out and get hit hard with the belt. Obscene really! I never got the belt but once got hit hard on the knuckles by a ruler.

But preferred that than having to do lines. Do kids still do lines? What an absolute waste of time!!

Also the party line! Lifting the phone and hearing someone else's conversation! Mental!

They were candy here and THEY STILL EXIST but they aren't called cigarettes, just "candy sticks".

I've been in my job 20 years and when I started one of the tech guys smoked in his office. The new starters in their 20s don't believe me.

I remember saving wrappers of various things to send off and get a free gift. There was a pop hits cassette you could get by saving Twix wrappers in the late 1980s that I've still got somewhere!

It strikes me that companies are missing a trick with the modern version of scanning a QR code to get some digital nonsense freebie or other. In the old days, if you wanted the free gift Twix were offering, you'd buy nothing but Twix bars until you had enough wrappers!

Hard toilet paper at school.

Being allowed to drop all sciences at O level and doing three languages instead.

Later, writing letters at work by hand for the typists to type.

Films only appearing at your local cinema for a week so if you were on holiday that week you missed it. And then wait three years for it to be on TV until videos started being available about a year after release of the film.

Random teenage girls doing babysitting.

I use my childhood phone number as my banking app needs a 6 digit code and I can still remember it off by heart.

That said, we didn't have a home phone until I was in my teens, partly due to cost, partly because the Post Office opposite our flat had three phone boxes that worked perfectly well, thank you. And red phone boxes (occasional pee aside) had a really weird cold metallic smell that I can conjure up instantly.

Also my grandmother didn't have a fridge until we moved in with her also in my teens. She had a meatsafe with a slate or marble shelf as I recall. And a boiler and a mangle. This was the 80s.

An Aga. They are not obsolete at all.

At my first office job, people in the next room would send people in my room notes about cases in internal envelope. Nothing was done on email.

Going abroad and your family having to find the shop that sold international newspapers that were always a day or two behind, and that being the only way you knew what was going on in the world!

I only this week found my old primary school reports in a clear out. Couldn't stop laughing that my favourite teacher had seen hit to write 'even though hobbitum is left handed' she could read my writing!

Proper typewriters - if you made a mistake, you started again.

No dating apps - you placed a 'lonely heart' ad in the local newspaper.

No resale sites - again, an ad in the local newspaper.

It was ok for your boss to slap your arse on his way past.

Waiting for the telly to start. Like, literally waiting for any programme to start because there were only two channels and they didn't broadcast all day.

Doctors routinely coming to your house for an appointment.

Being excited about the arrival of internet cafés, where you paid for a coffee and half an hour on the computer. You had to wait your turn, though.

I've recently discovered that the speaking clock still exists. My toddler grandson likes to punch random numbers into the landline handset and 123 gets you the time.

Just remembered another one. Travellers cheques! And trying to find the best deal on holidays when changing them.

Love film? I used to use them and my dog used to bite the dvds as they got posted through the letterbox