Things that happened 20/30 years ago that wouldn't today

[Putrid46]

As a child I recall aunties, uncles and grandparents smoking around me all the time with no ventilation. I'd stay at my grandparents for the weekend and go home with a cough, it was seen as normal.

Parents driving me to school hungover from the night before possibly still slightly drunk.

As an A level pupil in the early 2000s I recall staying until around 7pm one evening with 2 teachers to finish coursework due in the next day, the teachers practically did it for me and then one of them dropped me off home in her car, nobody batted an eyelid.

We had a French language assistant, who was actually French and she invited us to her home one Sunday to do coursework and eat croissants, again it was all above board, she was a lovely Mrs Doubtfire type lady and it was all fine but looking back, that'd never happen now!

Interested to hear from anyone else

Similar to me except I typed mine up on a word processor 😂

This would have been when I was about seven or so, so around '77, so much longer ago. I was sitting in the waiting area at the barbers while my older (he was nine) brother had a haircut. Picked up a magazine and started leafing through it. It was lifted out of my hands by my mum who said calmly, "I don't think you want to be looking at that." It was a porno mag. Different times, unbelievable to think of it now. Thank goodness that doesn't happen anymore - at least I bloody hope it doesn't.

Potty training starting at 1 year old.

I was at university in the 70s and althogh I hand wrote essays quite a few people who had portable typewriters obviously typed them up.
In my first proper job, in media on the mid 70s, the newsroom was full of cigarette smoke and people pecking away at very old Royal typewriters, fag in mouth. (Me included)
By the early 80s, it was confined to a truly disgusting ‘smoking room’ just off the newsroom but by then I was pregnant and had given it up. And we also had VDUs (visual display editing units/basic word processing machines .)

By the early 80s, it was confined to a truly disgusting ‘smoking room’ just off the newsroom but by then I was pregnant and had given it up.

Smoking rooms were absolutely vile, even if you were a smoker. I think walking into one in a previous employer's office was what finally persuaded me to quit. I remember the huge ashtray stands full to the brim with fag butts, the air so thick with smoke you couldn't see across the room. I remember walking into one once and it was so viscerally obvious how bad for you it was I remember feeling nauseous and putting my fag out. I stopped not long after that.

Sounds exactly like the smoking room at the British Telecom office where I temped in 2003. The walls were the colour of marmalade and you could smell the room down the length of the corridor. One of the other temps I started with who also smoked was as disgusted as I was when we dared to look inside the room. A week later and we were sitting in there with the rest of them. I'd love to say that room was the reason I quit smoking later that year, alas it wasn't.

I know how prevalent it was as I’m
in my 50s but still by the time I was 10 the adult population was stopping smoking. Public sector buildings also started banning smoking inside about 10 years before it was made illegal.

Pity the poor girl who got sent to knock on the staff room door at my school in the 80s. The door opened a crack and a fug of smoke billowed out. 🚬 💨 😂

Agree in certain areas it was prevalent. I grew up in the suburbs - lower middle class I would say and hardly anyone’s parents smoked. Those that did tended to hide it a bit.

Hahahah! I remember exactly this. I also remember the staffroom door at junior school wasn't always shut and being horrified at seeing a dinnerlady sitting at the table smoking a fag.

The school minibus circa 1991 had 2 wooden benches running vertically down either side - no seat belts in sight 😆

I was discussing this with a friend the other day. Going to the swimming pool with just enough money for a butty and locker with your mates when you were 10.
Being dropped off in Dweezles soft play in Asda whilst mum did the shopping.
Now parents would be reported to social services for this!

You have reminded me of a dreadful minibus crash that was in the news in the early 90s, even as a kid I was shocked by it, seat belts wouldn't have saved anyone. I think only one child left alive.

That's disgraceful. So unhygienic sitting on a table. 😤

My school was built in the 1870s so was prone to rodents although I never saw one in my seven years there. As a result, eating outside of the designated dining rooms was strictly verboten. I remember a teacher walking in on one of my classmates with a handful of crisps halfway to her gob. Caught in the act! 😄

At, not on, lol.

Yes, but that was mainly for the front seats. Then later on new cars started having seat belts in the back, but I think we were without belts in the back for quite a while.

Oh that's terrible. Even as I kid I thought it was a bit odd that we were all sqooshed in and sliding about but we just did as we were told 😬

I regularly went for a swim at my local baths, alone, when I was about seven or eight, in '77/8. Also walked the mile to and from school, crossing main roads (at the zebra crossing) on my own from six or seven onwards. Kids were expected to mature a lot sooner back then.

Yes, doing as we were told accounted for a great many things 😂I recall about 1991 being taken to the golden wedding party of some distant relatives, in a smoke-filled social club function room, and then coming home in the back of a car which contained five adults and me sitting on the lap of my dad's aunt Edith. I would have been about 13 at the time!

When I started teaching, smoking while actually teaching a class was not quite the thing any more, but nobody turned a hair if a teacher sat in a empty classroom, smoking while they tackled a pile of marking. When I was a pupil myself, one of the teachers smoked a pipe during quiet moments in the lesson. A trusted older pupil would sometimes be sent to the corner shop on an errand to top up cigarette supplies.
One colleague also smoked while on playground duty, as the fresh air would blow the smoke away from the children!
As I've mentioned before, my guide company would travel to camp in a furniture lorry; hard lumpy stuff like tents and tentpoles went in first, then softer stuff like sleeping bags, then us girl guides. Seat belts? we didn't have seats! Much merriment and rolling about if the lorry took a sharp turn.
On one occasion, we joined with other companies for a big international camp, "Under One Sky", and we looked on scornfully as some groups arrived in coaches - bunch of softies!
Entry to and exit from school premises was loosely supervised; as a 4th year (Yr 6) I would regularly go home at lunchtime, having had my school dinner, as the school toilets were so objectionable, often brewing a nice cup of tea before returning, (which involved lighting the gas under a kettle, not an electric one). DM was a working mum, unusual in those days, and quite a few children went home for their lunch, so if anyone did spot me leaving, I guess they assumed that I was a "home dinner".

I was at a girls convent school from '82 to '89. We were strictly not allowed to leave the grounds during the school day until sixth form, and even then we had to get permission. My own DC have been able to leave at lunch time right from the first year of secondary school.

I was telling my kids about school exchange trips back in the 80s. I stayed with a German family on my own at the age of 14. Absolutely would not happen today!

I remember a bunch of us sitting at a kids picnic bench in the boot of a landrover going to a birthday party, in the 80s

In mid 2001, pre 9/11, I realised the night before a holiday to France that my passport was a few months out of date. Decided to risk it and went for the ferry anyway, the nice man at Calais just winked at me and waved us through!

I went to Spain on an exchange. I wasn't even in the same town as the rest of the group - I was put with a family in a nearby village as "We knew you'd be fine."
Loved it.

Same here, also 14, only I stayed with a French family in Brittany. The mother was widowed so there was no man in the household, just the French girl and her twelve year old brother.

I was horrified when I read about some people on exchange with Germany where they were walking about starkers. Let it all hang out in front of your own family, but not a guest who is a stranger in your home. Thank God I wasn't subjected to any of that on my own exchange. They were reassuringly clothed and "normal".