It was brought up in another thread, that some of us here were too young to remember certain things, but what do we remember? What do you realize has changed?
I realize that I remember a time when, driving through the central valley of California, you could look out the window of the car and see gigantic TV antennas and dishes next to ranch houses. I remember asking my Dad about them, and his explaining that in small towns, there might not be Cable TV.
I remember when the SF peninsula had one area code- 415, and when the town I lived in had one prefix, which meant people would give their numbers in 4 digits.
I remember carrying 1.3 mb 3.5 inch floppy disks in my backpack, in a case. And I remember using 5.25 inch floppies at school. I remember installing games on my computer that came in a package of between 2 and 10 floppies.
I remember my Mother, who was a publisher, telling me that in the near future, we would have a computer in every room in the house. For that matter, I remember when computers (as opposed to the internet) were seen as avatars of education in themselves.
I remember my Mother warning me that you couldn't leave an open can in the refrigerator over night because there was lead in the can, and it would seep into the food (banned by law since 1993). I remember the California drought, when the state government developed cute little expressions that encouraged people not to flush the toilet after every use (I didn't start flushing the toilet after number one for many years). Then I remember a time when it rained in San Francisco for over a month straight (at least this is my recollection of things).
What do you realize about your life?
Posted by Elmer's Glue (Member # 9313) on :
I remember ripping off the edges of everything I printed.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
But one nice thing was that the pages were all attached, and they were spooled out of a box you put under the table where the printer sat.
Posted by Elmer's Glue (Member # 9313) on :
Yeah, I liked them.
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
I remember saving a program I wrote to a cassette tape. I remember being thankful when I started using 5.25" floppies, and especially 3.5" floppies, because they were so much easier to carry around in bulk.
I remember renting movies on Betamax, which was virtually impossible at the time. My family wasn't particularly wealthy, and was simply unable to dish out the cost of a new VHS unit.
I remember not having to dial an area code to call the neighbor. Such is the case in Dade County now, which is quite annoying because I work in Palm Beach County. In PBC, sometimes you have to put the area code, sometimes not, and sometimes you even have to add the "1" before everything. And that's to dial numbers in the 561 area code.
And a big one: I remember when playing lots and lots of video games on a computer was considered a GOOD thing.
The first computer I ever used was an Apple ][e at my gifted program school; was around 4th or 5th grade. How did we learn to use this marvel of modern science? By playing Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord... every day, for several hours a day, even skipping regular classes in order to do so. Forget programming, forget manuals, forget any theory about the magical box-like device... Teachers *wanted* us to play games on it! And skip unimportant classes (like English, Math, Science...) in order to do so!
My parents bought me an Apple ][e when I was in the 6th or 7th grade. And, sure enough, I spent every waking hour of the day... playing games! And everyone was happy!
Crikes, what the hell happened?
Posted by Shanna (Member # 7900) on :
I remember taking the edges off the printer paper and folding them into insanely long and fancy accordian patterns.
And we'd do this in the school computer lab between games of Oregon Trail.
As for area codes, I remember being a kid and having to punch in the area code for the first time while living in Harris County, Texas.
Then I moved to Louisiana a few years ago and people still don't use area codes. Since I primarily use my cell phone which requires area codes, I still haven't adjusted. Dialing out of a landline at work drives me insane because I'm so used to 10-digit phone numbers. Of course, in my job I need 10-digit numbers to complete application paperwork and people will just spit out their 7-digit number really fast while I keep asking them to start over with the area code. After Katrina, alot of people moved out of the city into our town and brought their own area code cell phone numbers with them. So we're a two area-code town now and yet NO ONE remembers to put it down on their applications for anything! So I'm stuck guessing and having to call people twice just to verify that I have the right phone number.
Its a huge pet peeve for me.
Posted by breyerchic04 (Member # 6423) on :
I have proven I have a horrendously good memory for things that happened when I was tiny. I remember the Berlin Wall coming down, I remember my great grandfather's funeral, my brother buying a house (he's 19 years older than me and bought the house at 22), all sorts of things I shouldn't from the 80s. I was born in 1986.
Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :
My family was one of the first in the neighborhood - possibly THE first - to have a computer at home. A 486 with Windows 3.1, which was totally cutting edge at the time.
I remember when we first got cable TV. And I remember when MTV first launched... whatever happened to the music, anyway??
I also remember the thing about open cans in the fridge, although I'd forgotten that it was a lead toxicity issue. I remember I used to stick magnets on cans all the time, too.
588-2300.... Empire....
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I remember the California drought, when the state government developed cute little expressions that encouraged people not to flush the toilet after every use (I didn't start flushing the toilet after number one for many years).
*snort* The government didn't develop them. They're older than I am. Sonny.
I remember the Loma Prieta Quake ('89) and the 1992 quake (which is apparently called the Landers Quake), and I really remember the Northridge Quake ('94). I even remember the Whittier Quake ('87), although that was much smaller than the others.
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
I remember the first time I heard "meg" in reference to computer memory and about had a heart attack at such huge sizes. I remember communicating with people over the computer at 1200 baud per second ... just a black screen with colored letters, no graphics. And it was so cool.
At college we all borrowed time on a friend's word processor to type our papers. No one had a computer. Got my first computer after I was married.
The power was down recently and we needed to look something up and I had to rack my brain trying to remember how we used to get information. Oh yeah - books! Dictionaries, encyclopedias, phone books.
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
When we got our first computer (a Radio Shack TRS-80) there was not only no internet, there was no software. You were supposed to learn BASIC and write programs. Also, you could subscribe to a magazine that published BASIIC programs that other people wrote, and you could type them in, line by line, into your own computer. A lot of these made the word, "Hello" repeat over and over again on your screen.
We also had the first video game in our circle of friends. It was an Atari, and it had a whole bunch of games -- pong, tennis, handball, doubles tennis. These were all the same game, though. And it didn't have a monitor; you used your TV screen. Unfortunately, the game burnt our the picture tube on the screen, so there was always a bluish outline of the pong background.
Anyway, if someone was trying to use the TRS-80, it caused interference with the TV set. But there was nothing to watch, anyway, because cable hadn't come to our town, and we could only get three stations in clearly on our antenna.
My parents got a new alarm clock when I was a kid. It was digital. But not LED. No, it had cards with the numbers on them, and they'd flip every minute. I remember having friends over on weekend mornings, and they'd have to come before 10:00, so we could sit and watch the clock flip from 9:59 to 10:00. It was a big deal. Sometimes we'd go and do something else and come back to see it flip to 11:11. That was neat, too.
I remember when you listened to music on a phonograph, and you had to be very careful to walk gently (and for goodness sake, don't dance!) so that the record wouldn't skip and cause the needle to make a scratch. The long playing records (LP's) had a little hole in the middle that fit on the spindle on the turntable, but the singles (45's) had a big hole. You needed a little plastic insert to fit into the big hole so that you could play the record on the phonograph. Why didn't they just make those with little holes, too?
TV sets (and stereos) were like pieces of furniture. They were big things in wooden cabinets with brass drawer pulls on them (but, for the TV, no actual drawers). The stereo had sliding doors to the cabinets, where you could store your albums. For some reason, you had to keep them stored on end, and there would be wire racks to keep them standing up. I don't know why it would be a problem to have them laying down.
Cars, also, had lots of fake wood trim on them -- on the outside panels and on the dashboard and steering wheel. It was like they were trying to convince you that they carved the whole station wagon out of a block of wood, like a giant Pinewood Derby car.
Oh, and we had station wagons. SUV's and minivans hadn't been invented yet.
[/geezer]
Posted by Elmer's Glue (Member # 9313) on :
My first gaming system was Atari. We sold it to buy a used Super Nintendo.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
I remember when the enemy was still communism. I also remember when the bulk of a TV's size was behind the screen. I remember when computers had a turbo function that could jack the ghz on your computer up from 24 to 33. I remember when we were surprised to find out a sequel was in the works for a successful movie. I remember when programmable calculators were a *new* awesome thing.
Posted by dantesparadigm (Member # 8756) on :
Wow. You're old. I remember having CD players as a kid, and thinking it was pretty snazzy, but I'm more than happy to leave that in the dust along with storing the corpses in the drinking water.
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
Tante, you could've lived in our house. Oh, the memories.
We had a station wagon too, and on long trips we'd put the back seat down so everything behind the driver's (bench) seat was one big platform. Add pillows and blankets and it was a big bed. Who needs seatbelts? We'd roll around back there for twelve hours.
Cassettes seemed such an improvement over vinyl records, because they weren't so easy to scratch and ruin ... and now we have a cabinet full of CD's and DVD's that we have to be super careful with, and the kids have put scratches into a number of them. This is progress?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
We had a station wagon with wood trim and an eight-track player.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
... that you have the most beautiful face?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
I installed Windows 95 from floppy disk and I damn well *liked* it.
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I also remember when the bulk of a TV's size was behind the screen.
Um, mine still is.
I remember when we used to have air raid drills in school. We had to practice hiding under our desks with our hands clasped behind our necks for when the Russians dropped the bomb on Woodglen Elementary School.
Do they still make elementary school kids line up in size order for fire drills? I could never figure out why this was important. Did they think it was imperative to evacuate the smaller kids in the class first because they'd burn quicker, like kindling?
I remember when school shoes were Buster Brown Shoes. They had a slogan, "Here's Buster Brown, he lives in a shoe. Here's his dog Tige, and he lives there too". Why would that make me want the shoes more? Because they had a boy and a dog living in them? Does that make them better?
Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :
I didn't think to mention the Atari cause I still have a 2600 woody.
I got my first CD player at 14 and oh man did I think it was kewl. My first disc? Vanilla Ice. I actually STILL have it! Come to think of it, I still have my first vinyl as well (as opposed to the kiddie albums that came with the goofy Fisher Price record player we had as kids), although I don't have a working player at the moment.
Drive-in movies in the station wagon were the bomb. Mom and Dad would sit in lawn chairs next to the wagon, we'd all lie in the back end with the seat down just like Jenna says. By the time the double-feature was over, we'd all be asleep in the wayback, they'd tie the chairs to the luggage rack on top and maybe bother to get us out of the wagon when we got home... but maybe not. Depended on the weather. And nobody seemed to think twice about letting us sleep in the car overnight.
Fire drills and tornado drills. Yep, we lined up by size, which meant I was always the first kid in my class cause I was younger than everyone else. Outside for fire drills, no matter what the weather, and in the halls on our knees in the tuck position for tornado drills. I hated those.
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
The Walkman came out when I was in high school. It was the size (and weight, if I recall correctly) of a brick. You put in a cassette tape. You were supposed to wear it with a strap that went around your neck and shoulder when you went jogging, which was the thing to do in the late '70's, early 80's, but the thing would bounce and thump against you, battering and bruising you, with every step.
People thought that was so amazing.
I remember, back before everyone had one, when cell phones were called "car phones." They were the size of a small suitcase. Only very rich and important people had them, and, of course, there were no laws forbidding you from using a car phone in your car.
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
quote:We had to practice hiding under our desks with our hands clasped behind our necks for when the Russians dropped the bomb on Woodglen Elementary School.
You too? Small world... they had all of us convinced that Rockway Elementary in Miami was Ground Zero, and that a desk that I could barely fit in seated would save me from getting incinerated if I crawled under it.
And weren't the movies they showed pleasant?
Scene 1: A three story building getting flattened by a shock wave. Scene 2: Little Timmy crawling under his desk, whose surface is no bigger than a notebook.
Hurray! Timmy's saved! I felt pity for his parents, who probably didn't have school desks to hide under at work...
I remember typing several school papers on a Smith Corona typewriter. I thanked the heavens when they came out with erasing tape!
Later in life I owned a Smith Corona "portable" typewriter, that would type using thermal rolls of ink on to onion skin-like paper. After excessive typing and erasing, it felt like I was typing on six thousand year old papyrus.
I was apparently one of the first people to have a "wireless" phone: you take your "brick" phone and attach it to this device the size of a car battery, and that device had a microphone and speaker. And, even if it was sitting in your lap, you'd still have to shout at the top of your lungs to use it. And, man oh man, the looks I got from people driving by, watching me having a loud, screaming conversation... with myself...?
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
We used to wonder why they didn't make the whole school out of whatever those desks were made of, since they were impervious to nuclear bombs.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Why the heck did you have a portable phone, Nighthawk?
--------
I just remembered: somedays, when you'd buy a magazine or comic book, there'd be a thin plastic insert. You could punch it out to reveal a small record, usually a hit single or some kind of promotional program. And the record often had the oversized hole in the middle, so you had to struggle to get the plastic adapter piece in place (which was harder than it sounds, since the "vinyl" was so thin.) We had a copy of "Teddy Bear's Picnic," sung by Julie Andrews, in this format, and I remember buying a commemorative Spider-Man anniversary comic that came with a "read-along" record of this type.
Posted by All4Nothing (Member # 11601) on :
I definitely remember Atari....and when it gave way to Nintendo.......Mario Brothers was the shi*.
I remember when Reagan was president, and Transformers/He-Man/G.I. Joe were the most popular cartoons to be watching.
I remember when Michael Jackson was more known for being the king of pop than being an accused child molester.
And more importantly....and I think you'll all agree about this.....
I remember when the whole world thought we'd have flying cars and really amazing tech. in the year 2000.
Posted by hobsen (Member # 11808) on :
Milk bottles. On a cold morning the milk would freeze and expand, and and make a three inch column of ice-milk with a tinfoil cap on top. Before that the milk was not homogenized, so the cream would rise to the top. Margarine came as a white brick, with a packet of yellow dye you had to knead in to make it look like butter. I never thought that worth the work, since it did not taste any different, but my mother was a traditionalist.
The farm wagon was pulled by oxen, and it has been too long since I have seen an ox. They were so large and quiet and strong I liked them much better than horses. But an older cousin raised the bizarre combination of Shetland ponies and Percherons - the equine equivalent of rabbits and elephants. The Percherons were no trouble - almost like oxen - but the Shetlands would pick a section of fence and take turns leaning against it, day after day, until the fence fell over. Then they would be into the corn, or the vegetable garden, or wherever else they could cause the most trouble.
Blackout curtains over the windows, to prevent giving bearings to the German submarines offshore. It was not pleasant to think of the sailors drowning in the cold water, or screaming when an oil tanker burned. The dead were as many as at the World Trade Center, almost every week for four years. Ration stamps for food, and shortages of everything. People would run into their yards to see an airplane flying over, or a blimp, and I remember great excitement when a DUKW drove through town and into the river, where it made a few circles before returning to land. Why it did this I have no idea, maybe just some soldiers giving a patriotic demonstration to the locals.
As a teenager I treasured an old radio, with vacuum tubes which were failing. But it would get the nearby radio station on Cape Cod, for music and news and basketball games. "John Sears is driving toward the basket, he passes off to Randy, who spins and shoots... Miss!" Actually they were semi-good, and would go to the state tournament now and then, where they would lose in the first round. But there was a shortwave capability, which for some reason would pull in WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia - that must have had a monster transmitter - and gave me an early fondness for country music. The only other station it would get was Radio Moscow, which in the Eisenhower era had a rather different take on the news than the local station, and taught me to look at both sides of a controversy. But attitudes were more or less friendly except for obligatory name calling - the Soviets had been allies in World War II and a lot of good feeling lingered - so there was not the hostility of ten years later.
Tempus fugit. "Time flies, they say. Ah, no... Time stays, we go."
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
I think hobsen wins.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
I remember when ER was brand-spanking new, and everyone was swooning over this older hunk, George Clooney.
Since I'm sitting in a Starbucks right now - do you remember when they weren't ubiquitous? When you'd get your coffee at a place that mainly sold something else, like McDonald's or Dunkin' Donuts, and very few Americans knew what a mocha or latte was?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Its sobering to realize that I am too old to have been in on pop culture trends that my college students missed because they are too young.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I had a college student ask me the other day, "What's East Germany?"
Posted by Shanna (Member # 7900) on :
Almost ten years before the Columbine Massacre, my elementary school had "Pizza Man Drills." Our principal would get on the loud speaker and announce that the pizza man had arrived. The teachers would lock their classroom doors, close the blinds (we had windows out into the hall, and turn off the lights. Then we'd all line up at a wall perpendicular to the hallway and sit as quietly as possible. The principal would then walk the hallways with a flashlight, peeking in all the windows in the door and we'd have to be especially quiet then.
We did these drills as often as we did fire and tornado drills. We all enjoyed the break for class and it became almost like a game, but a rather disturbing game by the time we were old enough to realize that we were preparing for a day when an armed bad-guy would come into the school with the intention of killing us all (for no good reason, as our logic dictated.)
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I had a college student ask me the other day, "What's East Germany?"
Probably an engineering student.
quote:Originally posted by Elmer's Glue: My first gaming system was Atari. We sold it to buy a used Super Nintendo.
My first gaming system was an Intellvision. My brother always hoarded the new gaming systems, so by the time I came along, I got the video gaming hand me downs until Nintendo 64 came out and I got it for my birthday and it was ALL MINE. I remember when I was younger I would have given anything for a Sega Nomad. To this day some of my favorite games are Sega games. I still play Shining Force and Shadowrun on an emulator.
I barely remember using 5.25 inch disks, but only at school for a short time. I used the 3.5 inch hard disks a lot all through high school. I imagine most kids use jump drives now. I remember when Oregon Trail was the biggest thing since sliced bread (seriously, how much bear meat could a conestoga carry?), but at the Boys and Girls club computer room everyone mad a mad dash for the game Jones in the Fast Lane, which I still play every now and then as well.
I barely remember ripping the edges off of printer paper. That was back whem all printers had ribbons, or at least, any that I'd ever seen. I remember my mom showing me betamax tapes and the betamax player, but mostly VHS.
In my life we've had three different area codes. When I was a kid we got moved to 810 from 313, and then in high school we were moved again to 248, where we remain for the moment.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I'm with Tante and Jenna. All of us kids rolling around in the back of the station wagon - Dad would take the hilly roads just for fun.
Mimeograph machines and the smell of ditto pages.
My first job out of college, I was typing letters using carbon paper for copies.
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
I remember it being the COOLEST THING EVER when my father brought home his electric typewriter from work. Ours was manual. If you typed too fast the keys would get all stuck together and jumbled up and you'd have to untangle them.
Click clack click clack click clack DING! Zip!
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I'm with Tante and Jenna. All of us kids rolling around in the back of the station wagon - Dad would take the hilly roads just for fun.
Mimeograph machines and the smell of ditto pages.
My first job out of college, I was typing letters using carbon paper for copies.
We had a station wagon with the cargo area that had a bench seat. The floor folded up and you could stick three kids back there. My parents sold it after we got rear ended really hard while my brother and I were sitting back there. We were coming home from an Alabama concert and a drunk driver with his feet hanging out the window rammed us.
After that my mom insisted that my dad get something more "practical."
Posted by Artemisia Tridentata (Member # 8746) on :
Our first phone number was 905J. J meant that the operator would ring twice. If it only rang once then the call was for the Roselunds. That was a while ago. But, the number for the Boy Scout Camp in Chester CA is still Drakesbad 7. When I was in grade school, they had us all go out and stand in the yard because there was going to be a new B-52 taking off from the local Air Force Base. The runway was a little too short, and they were were worried that it might fall on the school. And what was Julie Andrews doing singing Teddy Bears Picknick. That was the theme song for the Big John and Sparkie Show on the Radio. (Plunk your majic twanger, Froggie!) She may well have listened to the program, but was not singing professionally then. Nolan Bushnell was starting grade school, when I used to play parties and hang out at Lagoon. Later, when Nolan worked the arcade there, he came up with the idea for Pong. Oh, and I still play my vinyl records almost every day. Hobsen may still have be beat with Radio Moscow. But, "Radio Liberacion, desde La Havana" was almost all I could get on my car radio, after dark, outside the city limits of Montgomery Ala.
Posted by Wendybird (Member # 84) on :
I remember going to work with my Dad and he would take me to see the computer he worked with and it would take up a whole room. It used little cards that were punched in various areas and would be inserted and the computer would read them.
I remember when we got our first VHS player and thinking it was so cool.
I remember seeing Star Wars: A new hope in the theater with my Daddy. I was 7.
I remember learning to type on electric typewriters and using correction tape to fix my mistakes. I pulled out my grandfather's old electric and my kids were typing on it. They made a mistake and were hunting all over the keyboard to find out how to erase it! LOL)
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Tom, I remember those promotional records. I got one in a box of Cheerios. It was Bobby Sherman.
Tante, my first digital clock was also a radio!
And it wouldn't have occurred to any of us to wear a helmet for anything. Bike riding, rollerskating - with the skates that needed a key to attached to your saddle shoes.
With the no seat belts and the no helmets and sniffing the dittos, it's a wonder any of us have enough brain function to type.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:You needed a little plastic insert to fit into the big hole so that you could play the record on the phonograph. Why didn't they just make those with little holes, too?
So that singles could be played in jukeboxes.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Tante, my first digital clock was also a radio!
My first digital clock was a birthday present when I turned 7 or 8. It was also an alarm clock radio, but it had no LEDs. It had the numbers printed on black tabs that flipped sort of like a rolodex.
[Edit: I just saw that Tante had one of those as well. Well, when we opened the box mine came in (with those enormous factory staples), the time showing on the clock was 4:42. Which happens to be the time I was born.]
quote:Originally posted by Elmer's Glue: My first gaming system was Atari. We sold it to buy a used Super Nintendo.
Heh. I remember when they started selling Pong at the local supermarket. It cost $99, and you hooked it up to your TV. It played exactly one game: Pong.
My little brother actually found it in our parents' crawlspace and hooked it up to his TV. It was such a trip down memory lane.
We had a VCR before they were really widely available. A 3/4 inch tape one.
My parents actually went out and bought a PC Jr. when I was away at college. I wrote a 600 or so line program in Basic on the thing for my Mom to use a contact management program.
Of course, the first computer I played with was the TRS-80 in the school library. It had 16K of RAM, and no hard drive at all. If you wanted to save a program, you saved it on a cassette audio tape. Honest to God. I wrote a Blockout game on it, but the ball moved slowly enough that I could go get a drink from the drinking fountain while I was waiting for it to bounce back down to the paddle.
In the summer of 1978, when I went up to summer camp, all the pop cans had the new tab things on them (that we still have). I've been breaking them off before drinking for the past 30 years.
There was a time when the pull tabs on some pop cans (Mountain Dew, for example) had a perfectly round puller that was the size of a dime. We used to use these to get free cans of pop from the machines. But better than that, they were attached to the tab with a plastic connector. So you could shake the can up, and pull the teeniest bit of the plastic back, and shoot a thread-thin spurt of pop into your mouth. When the stream died down, you just shook it again.
The 588-2300 of Empire didn't have an 800 in front of it, either, because all of Chicago was 312.
The remote controls on TVs clicked. Not only that, they used sound waves instead of infra-red, so you could sometimes change the channel by making a "sss" or "fff" sound. And we had a TV with a "zoom" feature. It doubled the size of the picture, with the obvious loss in resolution. We used to watch the Six Million Dollar Man during dinner, and every time Steve Austin zoomed in on someone with his bionic eye, my Dad would zoom the TV.
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I just remembered: somedays, when you'd buy a magazine or comic book, there'd be a thin plastic insert. You could punch it out to reveal a small record, usually a hit single or some kind of promotional program. And the record often had the oversized hole in the middle, so you had to struggle to get the plastic adapter piece in place (which was harder than it sounds, since the "vinyl" was so thin.)
There were actually cereal boxes that came with records like that on the back of the box. You'd cut the record out with scissors. I remember one by the Archies.
Okay... does anyone here remember the war between Quisp and Quake? These were two breakfast cereals that were exactly the same (I think) except for their shape. Quake was a giant and Quisp was an annoying little alien with a propellor on his head. They were always competing with each other (and I think they were drawn by the same people who did Rocky and Bullwinkle).
Eventually, they had a contest. No texting, of course, and no 900 numbers. No, you had to send in postcards to vote for which cereal would continue and which would disappear forever. Quisp won.
quote:Originally posted by Wendybird: I remember seeing Star Wars: A new hope in the theater with my Daddy. I was 7.
When I was 14, I was in town with my Dad and I saw Marvel Comics Star Wars #1 in the bookstore. I bought it, and read it, and saw that it was the first part of a six part adaptation of a movie that was due out that fall. I ran to my Dad and asked if we could see it when it came out. But it wasn't called Star Wars: A New Hope. It was just Star Wars. No episode 4, no nothing. Just Star Wars.
[ November 17, 2008, 11:26 AM: Message edited by: Lisa ]
Posted by Artemisia Tridentata (Member # 8746) on :
It wasn't just for the juke boxes. The first High-Fidelity record players were 33.3 RPM players, and they used the records with the big hole for stability. They had automatic changers that had a big post and kept the records level. You could put 15 or twenty disks on at once to play, for instance, a symphony. You only had to turn them once, after the second movement. Years later, the Hi-Fi 33.3 format was put into an LP format, a big record with a small hole. EDIT LP=Long Playing 2ND EDIT, My first player had two needles. a big one for 78 RPM and a little one for 33.3. You had a switch on the end of the pickup head, to select the right one. You also had to use the little spacer for the small record/big center hole records. I don't remember which needle I used for the 45 RPM records, which also used the big center hole.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Tante, my first digital clock was also a radio!
My first digital clock was a birthday present when I turned 7 or 8. It was also an alarm clock radio, but it had no LEDs. It had the numbers printed on black tabs that flipped sort of like a rolodex.
Mine was digital in the same way as yours and Tante's - little flippy cards. Did yours have the cool, new snooze button thingy? I got mine for my 10th birthday.
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
quote:I remember when the whole world thought we'd have flying cars and really amazing tech. in the year 2000.
I remember sitting in school figuring out how old I would be in the year 2000. And thinking that I couldn't imagine being that old (28), and wondering what the "future" would look like.
I know we don't have flying cars, but we have so many things that were imagined back then - flat panel tv's so the picture on the wall is your TV; Computers in everyone's house that are connected to each other; really cool flip phones like Captain Kirk's. Every once in a while I am reminded that I am living in the "future".
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
You know what I miss? The sight of children playing outside in the street.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
The big wagon, "wayback", flattening it out and making a big bed back there...check.
Tearing off and playing with the tractor ribbons on fan fold paper...check.
Oregon trail...check.
Why don't I have any ORIGINAL memories? Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Tante, my first digital clock was also a radio!
My first digital clock was a birthday present when I turned 7 or 8. It was also an alarm clock radio, but it had no LEDs. It had the numbers printed on black tabs that flipped sort of like a rolodex.
Mine was digital in the same way as yours and Tante's - little flippy cards. Did yours have the cool, new snooze button thingy? I got mine for my 10th birthday.
Mine had a lever you'd push down to let the radio play for an hour. If you wanted it to play for less than an hour, you just pushed it down part way instead. I don't remember if it had a snooze button.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
My first gaming system was a Colecovision. It had pong with no way to add new games. It cost ~$100. (edit: Lisa already posted this. I should have read the thread)
We had a Telex machine in our house, complete with yellow paper tape that stored messages in a 5 bit code.
I remember when we had 3 TV stations.
I remember when "IN COLOR!" was something to brag about.
I remember when we used to send people to the moon.
Stagflation and the Misery index.
We used to ride in the back of dad's pick up, and no one called CPS.
Used to, people stayed married.
My first clock made a terrible grinding noise as the hands moved. If I put it face down, the grinding stopped. Unfortunately, this also scratched up the face so that it was hard to read unless you took the bezel off. The cool thing about this was that I could take the bezel off and feel what time it was without opening my eyes.
Tante: Putting quarters on the needle kept the records from skipping.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
When I was a kid, kids could go trick or treating without any adult supervision and eat anything we got.
Oh, and handheld videogames... we had "electronic football". The players were red LED dashes, and the whole thing was about the size of an oversized deck of cards. It made sounds like R2-D2.
My brother the nostalgia buff actually put together a small electronic football league at his law firm a few years ago when he found our old one.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Before remote controls, my Dad used to holler for a kid to come and change the channel on the TV.
Also, we did get our milk delivered in glass bottles, but the milkman did have a truck.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: Used to, people stayed married.
I was 8 years old when I first heard of divorce.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Pix- I believe the quarter trick would also wear the record out faster (due to the pressure on the groove).
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: You know what I miss? The sight of children playing outside in the street.
Maybe it's just because I'm not (yet) a parent, but I truly do not understand the "stranger-danger" & general levels of (over-)protection of children today. My neighborhood has children playing in our court together, but they never go more than a house or two away from someone's home. There's a wooded area with a small creek just a block away that I would have been all-over as a child, but I can't ever remember seeing kids playing there.
It's a sad thing to see an creek without a dam in a neighborhood full of children.
Also: I was walking my two (extremely friendly but large) dogs around yesterday, and there were three children ~ 6-8 yrs old playing in a yard who obviously wanted to come over and pet the dogs, but didn't say anything to me until I invited them over. After I finished showing them how to properly greet unknown dogs & they'd been petting my pups for a few minutes with great joy, a dad came out and glared at me and called the children away. Dude, I understand being unsure of unknown large dogs and strangers, but when I'm obviously instructing your kids on how to pet a dog nicely, and my two dogs are on on their backs happily getting their bellies rubbed, I don't think there's much to be worried about. I wouldn't have allowed them near my dogs if I had the slightest fear of, well, anything happening - I don't want a child's injury or a lawsuit any more than you do.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
The knob broke off our TV. For years we changed the channel with a pair of pliars. We also used percusive maintenance when the picture didn't look right.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: Used to, people stayed married.
I was 8 years old when I first heard of divorce.
I was 10, and I heard about it from my parents when they announced they were getting a divorce.
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: You know what I miss? The sight of children playing outside in the street.
I don't miss it at all. The little brats never get out of the way when I'm driving down the street. I don't mind the kids with the basketball hoop, they step aside, but these other kids further up the street have a friggin skateboard ramp and rail in the middle of the street and they never get out of the way until I'm right on top of them glaring. When I was a kid and we played hockey in the street, we ALWAYS moved well before the car got close. There are always tons of kids in the street near us because our street is the smoothest around. Every other street has cracks or small holes.
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
When I was in school, there was an educational tool called a film strip. It was still pictures on a roll of film that threaded through a projector. It came with a record. The teacher would turn off the lights and put the record on the record player, and one of the kids would work the film projector. The record would have some kind of educational narration, and the film strip would have pictures illustrating the narration. Every so often, the narration would pause and go "beep". That meant you were supposed to advance the film strip to the next picture. If the kid working the projector messed up and didn't turn the picture when he was supposed to, all the kids would yell out, and he'd turn it. But he probably wouldn't get chosen again to work the film strip projector. That was a plum assignment, and it only went to kids who were favored by the teacher and did a good job of properly advancing the frames.
I have no idea why anyone thought that this was a valuable educational tool.
And, mmm . . . I do recall getting a buzz on from huffing mimeograph fumes. We all loved getting fresh, warm mimeographs, and the whole class would immediately take their sheets and sniff them deeply. And they kept wondering why the SAT score were falling.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: We also used percusive maintenance when the picture didn't look right.
Ditto. We'd throw a tennis ball at our TV to straighten the picture out and the dog loved it.
I remember a) my dad's 8088 computer. b) his first "portable" computer, a 386, which was pretty much the same size as my desktop workstation is now.
There was also some sort of car commercial jingle from SoCal that had a little bouncing ball so you could sing along with the words: "91 freeway lakewood exit bellflower"
Posted by Godric 2.0 (Member # 11443) on :
I remember baseball cards coming with a stick of chewing gum.
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
Horrible, brittle chewing gum.
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: We also used percusive maintenance when the picture didn't look right.
Oh come now... I STILL use percussive maintenance on everything, even the expensive stuff.
quote:Maybe it's just because I'm not (yet) a parent, but I truly do not understand the "stranger-danger" & general levels of (over-)protection of children today.
I remember when my cousin from New Jersey came to town, and we decided to go exploring in our neighborhood. We each took a tennis racket for defense and began walking. We walked a good thirty blocks in to the deserted and swampy areas west of my home (which was the Everglades), and found all sorts of wacky stuff.
These days it's unthinkable for parents to do that. My parents then didn't even bat an eye.
And now another one...
My first computer course was Turbo Pascal, taught at the Miami Dade Community College. I think I was in sixth or seventh grade - maybe a little older - but I was the youngest person in the class.
The instructor used a "portable" computer: it was a computer (an early edition 8086 PC) the size of a steamer trunk that had to be wheeled in on a gurney because nobody could carry it.
Their definition of "portable" was more like "integrated screen": the screen was part of the base unit, and it was no bigger than five or six inches diagonal. Text on it was in bright amber.
For the overhead projector he had the really advanced technology: a panel that he would put on top of the projector. The image from the computer would appear similar to a quartz display and it would get broadcast up to the screen in a ghostly dark gray.
There was no color or shades of gray or anything; the pixels on screen were simply either "on" or "off".
At the time I had a Tandy 1000TX at home, which had the same graphics support as the PC Jr. - a staggering 320x200 with SIXTEEN colors! Since I knew the lab at MDCC had PC Jrs, I explicitly made my last project use colors. I floored my instructor and the other students with the display of color; they thought I was a programming God.
Posted by breyerchic04 (Member # 6423) on :
My mom ran a computer lab with 386s, upgraded in 1995, I forget the name of the new models, they actually were gateway (I loved the boxes!).
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tante Shvester: Horrible, brittle chewing gum.
They were the taste of freedom. Horrible, brittle freedom.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: ... The instructor used a "portable" computer: it was a computer (an early edition 8086 PC) the size of a steamer trunk that had to be wheeled in on a gurney because nobody could carry it.
Way to use one old thing before my time to describe another one. Had to Google that one. Apparantly, it is "from the late 18th Century to the early 20th." Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
You kidding? We actually owned a steamer trunk to keep all our Christmas stuff in until a few years ago.
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
I remember the days when I actually looked forward to a sequel in the Star Wars franchise.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
I remember Pong.
I remember when Ms. Pac-man was a new and controversial game.
I remember when you had to go to arcades to play the good video games.
I remember BBS's, public bulletin boards accessed with my new 1200k Modem.
I sold Tandy IV computers.
I remember the Bicentenial.
I don't remember getting old.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
Oh, let's see.
I remember the Tylenol scare, after which everything from your aspirin to your mustard suddenly had to have tamper-evident packaging.
I remember rotary phones, and being able to call 8-4-4 to get the time and temperature.
I remember what seem now like incredibly dumb arguments with a friend about whether the Atari 2600 (my console) or the Colecovision (his) was superior. Now I'd freely admit the Coleco was the superior hardware. But they only had a decent software library because of an adapter to play Atari 2600 games.
I have fond memories of my Commodore 64- with fast load cartridge!- which was my first experience with music composition, by way of "Gary Kitchen's Gamemaker". And I remember being so scared by the "Jaggi" in "Rescue on Fractalus" (start at about 4:45) that I eventually had to stop playing.
I remember our first PC (or "IBM Compatible PC", as they were called), a 386. GIFs in VGA looked amazing compared to the C64s graphics. It didn't have a sound card; I accidentally fried the mouse board trying to install one.
I remember the fan adoration of the Seattle Seahawks' Brian Bosworth, which proved to be a laughable irony.
I remember leaded gasoline being available.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
A lot of these have been said, but I remember:
- Getting a thin piece of plastic in a cereal box that you could play on your record player. "Believe it or not, I'm walking on air" was the song that I remember getting (or Theme to Greatest American Hero).
- Playing Pong (or perhaps it was a cheap knock-off). I remember begging my friend Judd to let me play his new Atari 2600, once he got it. I checked last time I was home; my parents still have that old Pong console (and they still keep it in the same place).
- The Christmas my Dad brought home a Mac 512k. My favorite games: Loderunner, Hunt the Wumpus, and a slot machine facsimile (called MacSlots, IIRC).
- Our first VCR (it had faux wood paneling), and how my Aunt brought her's over and illicitly recorded some movies for us, including Iron Eagle.
- The first home run I ever saw (on TV) was hit by Dale Murphy, who golfed a breaking ball that was about 6-inches off the ground into the first or second row at Fulton County Stadium. He went on to win the MVP that season.
- When "We Built this City" replaced "Shout" as my favorite music video.
- "Pac-man" breakfast cereal, which I'd eat while watching "Pac-man" Saturday morning cartoons.
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
quote: I remember when you had to go to arcades to play the good video games.
Gauntlet at the food court with my hot dog, a Dr. Pepper, and a pocket full of quarters from raiding my sister's room who was a waitress--those were the days.
*note* used tinyurl because the url has parentheses.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: You kidding? We actually owned a steamer trunk to keep all our Christmas stuff in until a few years ago.
*shrug* Never heard of it.
Then again, my first memory of a boat is like a hydrofoil ferry between Hong Kong and Macao. So steamer, not so much.
PS: On browsing the Wikipedia article, I may have seen one at Red Lobster when they gave out children's toys. Or is that a treasure chest. Hmmmm.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:When we got our first computer (a Radio Shack TRS-80) there was not only no internet, there was no software. You were supposed to learn BASIC and write programs. Also, you could subscribe to a magazine that published BASIC programs that other people wrote, and you could type them in, line by line, into your own computer.
The TRS-80s and Apple IIc we had at school were where I learned to type BASIC programs. Probably out of that same magazine.
quote:No, it had cards with the numbers on them, and they'd flip every minute. I remember having friends over on weekend mornings, and they'd have to come before 10:00, so we could sit and watch the clock flip from 9:59 to 10:00. It was a big deal. Sometimes we'd go and do something else and come back to see it flip to 11:11. That was neat, too.
I don't think we ever had friends come over just to watch it, but us kids sure watched it. (My mom keeps everything. The clock finally got tossed a couple of years ago, although it hadn't been entirely functional for several years before that.)
quote:The stereo had sliding doors to the cabinets, where you could store your albums. For some reason, you had to keep them stored on end, and there would be wire racks to keep them standing up. I don't know why it would be a problem to have them laying down.
More likely to warp, especially if it was a sunny place. This tended to irritate one's parents.
quote:The knob broke off our TV. For years we changed the channel with a pair of pliers.
Yes! My parents thought hiding the pliers would keep us from watching TV when they were out and we were supposed to be doing homework. We discovered that a screwdriver fit the little slot just right.
I remember filmstrip reels. We didn't just watch educational stuff on them -- one year we watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I don't remember why.
quote:I remember the Tylenol scare, after which everything from your aspirin to your mustard suddenly had to have tamper-evident packaging.
I do too. It was in the news a lot, and it was scary.
I also remember monochrome computer screens. And when the pixels were easily visually distinguishable. We were so excited when we first got a color computer monitor!
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
I remember when a big announcement in computing was the use of 16-color color monitors.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Sure. Our first color monitor did four, IIRC.
Posted by T:man (Member # 11614) on :
I remember Nightman, an action figure I got when we moved into our first apartment. My first gaming system was the super Nintendo, but I don't remember it too well. The first gaming system I have fond memories of was my N64 (which I still have) I remember staying up all night playing my brother in Starcraft.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: I remember the Bicentenial.
When I was in 4th grade, we all made designs to enter into the contest Illinois had for a bicentennial license plate.
[And in 1986, Father Guido Sarducci came on the David Letterman show proposing that we celebrate the "Bicenten-tenial". He even had t-shirts made up for it. Every decade since then, we've talked about the Bicenten-ten-tenial, and so on.]
Also in 4th grade, we were told that the USA was committed legally to going fully metric by 1976. There were lots of jokes about dropping the ball on the 10 meter line and cowboys with two and a half liter hats.
I remember when gasoline hit $1/gallon. All the gas stations switched to prices in liters, not because they wanted to go metric, but because the gauges on the pumps didn't go high enough. Also, because it made the prices sound not quite so bad.
I remember reading the issue of Mad Magazine before the '72 elections. I still have it downstairs. On the back cover, there's a picture of the statue of liberty, with all four men running visible in her crown, and a tear running down her cheek...
I remember when all area codes had a 1 or a 0 in them, and no exchanges could have those digits in them, and you didn't have to dial a 1 before the area code, because the presence of a 1 or a 0 made it obvious that it was an area code.
I remember being excited the first time I saw a monochrome amber on black monitor. It was easier on the eyes than the old green on black ones.
I collected Planet of the Apes (TV show) cards.
Posted by hobsen (Member # 11808) on :
My grandfather used to whip up the lather and shave with his straight razor, and I would watch him. He had a little styptic pencil to stop the bleeding when his hand shook. Shaving was more exciting in those days.
My mother also once decided to save on fuel by lighting the stove only for meals. The water pipes promptly froze, and the plumber summoned to unfreeze them set the house on fire. A fire engine then came roaring up, and a neighbor dressed in his yellow slicker chopped an eight foot hole in the wall with a giant axe, so the fire crew could get water on the fire. That was exciting too, but after that my mother kept the kerosene stove in the living room burning whether we needed it or not. That kept the skunks who lived under the house comfy as well, and they usually behaved with great propriety. But late winter is the mating season for their kind, and they sometimes lost control a bit when in the throes of passion. So we would hear frantic squeals, and shortly after get a clear reminder that we had neighbors.
Posted by hobsen (Member # 11808) on :
Gas prices. Just before Christmas of 1956, my great-aunt asked me to drive with her from Massachusetts to Pass Christian, Mississippi. At one point she asked if there was any sightseeing I would like to do along the way, so I told her that after reading Huckleberry Finn I would really like to see the Mississippi River. So she drove west about thirty miles, and crossed the river, and continued down the western bank for another thirty miles or so before crossing it again. That was a kind thing to do, for which I was duly grateful. But I also remember coming to some little town with gas stations across the street from one another which were engaged in a price war. They had dropped the price to 25 cents a gallon, and I remember how excited she was to be able to fill her tank at that price. Those things are hard to remember, but the trip pinpoints the date almost exactly.
Posted by anti_maven (Member # 9789) on :
I remember there only being 3 TV channels (BBC1, BBC2 & ITV).
Hobsen wins hands down, but I still say that nostalgia ain't what it used to be...
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
LOGO (LOGOS?) was my first programming language. At this distance in time I'm not sure if it was Turing-complete or not, but what it would do was draw lines, in various colours, on the screen. There was a turtle, and the commands were of the nature "Move ten points left", "Pencil up" (that is, move without leaving a line), "Pencil down", "Change colour", "Hide turtle". Presumably it could have been used to draw the map in a labyrinth game, but I was too young to figure that out, I thought you were supposed to make the turtle itself do stuff for your game. Later I went on to Turbo Pascal, the only language I've actually written a complete game in. The animations were hardcoded arrays, so when the character hit a monster, I would switch between the "holding sword upright" and the "sword straight out from body" arrays.
Games that needed the turbo switch, because they weren't meant to be played at 33MHz.
One TV channel. It was a seriously big deal when a second channel was introduced. (Financed by - gasp! horror! advertising!) I was allowed to sit up late and watch the introductory show. The weather ladies were all fantastically nervous the first day; they stood straight up and down and very nearly stuttered. They got through it, though, and we were all proud of them.
The Berlin wall, yes. Before that we sent letters and drawings to children in Poland, and they sent the same back. I was jealous of the people in our class who got candy in their letters; but knowing what I do now, it was likely not very good candy.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: LOGO (LOGOS?) was my first programming language. At this distance in time I'm not sure if it was Turing-complete or not, but what it would do was draw lines, in various colours, on the screen. There was a turtle, and the commands were of the nature "Move ten points left", "Pencil up" (that is, move without leaving a line), "Pencil down", "Change colour", "Hide turtle". Presumably it could have been used to draw the map in a labyrinth game, but I was too young to figure that out, I thought you were supposed to make the turtle itself do stuff for your game.
I taught the turtle to spell every letter of the alphabet.
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
quote:You know what I miss? The sight of children playing outside in the street.
This is still something that can be seen in small towns, though I will admit, it doesn't seem as common as it was when I was growing up. (I'm 28.)
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I would be horrified at the thought of my younger nieces and nephews doing the kind of stuff we did as kids - and I was a bookish, not very physically adventurous kid. We climbed on roofs, crossed over ravines on sewage pipes, climbed very tall trees from which a fall could kill you, sledded into ravines with creeks at the bottom, swam unsupervised in Lake Michigan...
Posted by Epictetus (Member # 6235) on :
I remember learning about the Four Food Groups and watching an educational video about AIDS with Magic Johnson...of course, none of the teachers in the school were willing to explain what unprotected sex meant-but that's another issue.
I remember playing two-player Lemmings on my old Amiga, never thinking it odd that a computer would need two mouse ports.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
I can remember my brother learning to knap flint. You could even say that the axes and arrowheads he produced represented cutting edge technology.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
You could, but someone would have to administer severe punishment if you did.
Two mouse ports? I remember when a mouse was optional on a computer, and I desperately wanted a joystick.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: [qb]Used to, people stayed married.
I was 8 years old when I first heard of divorce.
I was 10, and I heard about it from my parents when they announced they were getting a divorce.
Wow.
At least half the kids in my first grade class had divorced or separated parents. At least. By sixth grade it was close to 2/3. In preschool it was at least 1/4, including me.
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
Oh Palleeeze, you do not want to play 'do you remember' with me.
I remember when, to make a phone call, you turned a big crank on the side and a nice lady would answer with 'operator'. You would then respond with 'Hi Mabel, this is Steve, can I talk with Aunt Nettie?" Soon enough, you would be connected.
If you wanted to call a nearby city, you would get Mabel on the phone, and tell her you wanted Mason City AXtel 2345. She would connect you to an outside line, then instruct the outside operator as to the city and the number you wanted to call. The outside operator would connect you to the Mason City operator who would then in turn connect you to the number you requested.
I remember, in the country/rural areas, they had party lines, when the phone rang, it range is several houses at once. You identified the call was for you because of the ring, your ring might be 3 long & 2 short, and the neighbors might be 3 long and 1 short.
I remember when there were NO TVs. The local TV guy was Jerry Sparks. He both sold and fixed TVs. Also, since so very few people had them, he would loan you a TV on a trial basis to see if you liked it. Of course, once it was in your home, and the kids got a look at it, it was very hard to let it go. He sold a lot of TVs that way. Of course, when we tried our first TV, there was only one available station.
I remember my first calculator, it was a TI and cost $250 and was about the equivalent of a $15 calculator today. But more importantly, I remember, prior to that, doing all our technical calculations with a very expensive bamboo Slide Rule that we attached to our belt in a heavy leather carrying case.
I remember my fist computer was a Commodore VIC-20 that was painfully slow and had virtually no memory, and cost $250.
I remember when the world was safe enough that even very little kids just ran outside and played. When I was young, my brother and I had the full run of the little town we lived in, but we couldn't cross the highway that ran through the town until we started school. Since the school was on the other side of the highway, they took us down, and showed us how to cross safely. From then on, the entire town, and the fields and woods around it were our playground.
I also remember un-homogenized milk. When the weather was cold, the cream would rise to the top and freeze. That was like ice cream. My brother and I would eat the cream, then refuse to drink the milk, which by then was the equivalent to skim milk.
I remember when there were no indoor dogs. All dogs ran free all day, and played with all the kids in town. Then at the end of the day, the kids and dog would return home.
I remember that nearly every house had a 'parlor' which was a room that was too good for everyday use; it was reserved for company. Yet, no company was ever good enough to use that room.
I remember grandma Ellingson, who was not actually my grandma, who refused to use a gas stove. She stoked a BIG cast iron wood burning cookstove. She could tell by the feel when it was the right temperature for whatever she was baking. She made homemade bread nearly every day, and it was like manna from heaven. You simply can't find bread like that today.
My grandfather was born in 1900. Consider the massive changes he saw in his lifetime. I sometimes wonder of quantum changes like that are still possible. Are there going to be new invention of the scale of the telephone, automobile, and airplane?
Oh yeh, I also remember Howdy Doody and PF Flyers.
I also remember drinking warm school milk through chocolate or strawberry flavored straws.
OK, now you all know what an ancient decrepit antique I am.
Steve/bluewizard
[ November 17, 2008, 06:00 PM: Message edited by: BlueWizard ]
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka: You could, but someone would have to administer severe punishment if you did.
quote:Two mouse ports? I remember when a mouse was optional on a computer, and I desperately wanted a joystick.
Yep, it wasn't until I got my third computer that I got one for which a mouse was even available (computer #1 being a TRS-80 with 4K of RAM, computer #2 being a Commodore 64, with (you guessed it) 64K of RAM, and computer #3 being an Amiga 2000, which ran at a blazing 7.14 MHz and had 1.5 MB of RAM). I had a tape drive on the TRS-80, a tape drive and then a 5 1/4 floppy drive on the Commodore, and a 3.5 floppy drive on my Amiga. I remember being delirious with joy when my girlfriend bought me a second floppy drive as a combined birthday/Christmas present in 1991. Years later I got a hard drive for that machine, but I wasn't sure that it was really worth the money. I valued that second floppy drive a lot more highly.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:My grandfather was born in 1900. Consider the massive changes he saw in his lifetime. I sometimes wonder if quantum changes like that are still possible. Are there going to be new invention of the scale of the telephone, automobile, and airplane?
I can remember when people used "quantum change" correctly, to mean "sudden change not proceeding through the intervening territory", rather than incorrectly as now, to mean "large qualitative change".
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Epictetus: I remember learning about the Four Food Groups
When we learned about the 4 food groups, they taught us a song with 4-4-3-2 in it, because that's the number of servings we were supposed to eat of the four groups.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
Geez, are the 70s and 80s now legal for "I remember"?
I remember going to Star Wars in the theater with my grandpa when I was 4. Going to E.T. when I was 7 or 8 and gripping my dad's arm hard at the beginning with the 4x4 trucks.
I remember going to my older sister's kindergarten once and seeing presidential debates on TV. It must have been Jimmy Carter.
I remember when "Thriller" came out and how awesome it was.
I remember when MTV had the man on the moon with the big M that changed patterns. My favorite pattern was the bricks.
Our favorite video was "Cum On Feel the Noiz" by Quiet Riot. Also "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister.
I remember when it was revealed that Magic Johnson had aids.
I remember watching the coverage of Tiannamen Square.
I remember Halley's Comet being somewhat of a disappointment.
I also calculated what my age would be in 2000 (26) and thought how cool it would be when the Roman numerals for the year were MM.
My dad brought home a couple of original IBM PCs in the early 80s, and I spent a lot of time on those. We didn't have a word processor until probably after I was in high school. I wrote my papers in P-Edit with manual line breaks and overtype and printed them out on our dot matrix printer. I had a "portable" computer at one point that had a tiny screen. I wrote programs in Pascal on it, but mostly just to draw pictures on the screen. I never was much of a programmer.
I remember when you could pretty much just turn your computer off without having it "shut down."
I remember running programs off floppies and being amazed at the prospect of a hard drive.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by advice for robots: Geez, are the 70s and 80s now legal for "I remember"?
Of course they are. Sheesh, the 90s are!
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by kq: Wow.
At least half the kids in my first grade class had divorced or separated parents. At least. By sixth grade it was close to 2/3. In preschool it was at least 1/4, including me.
None of the kids I grew up with had divorced parents. But my parents have a better relationship now than when they were married. None of my current friends even knew they were divorced until after two years of my knowing them. From what I've seen from friends with divorced parents (ignoring the stereotype), mine are an exception.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by advice for robots: Geez, are the 70s and 80s now legal for "I remember"?
Of course they are. Sheesh, the 90s are!
When you can barely remember the 80s, I'd say so. There was a time when people would have asked the same question about any period of time.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: When you can barely remember the 80s, I'd say so.
Maybe you can barely remember the 80s, boyo. I remember 'em just fine.
Posted by maui babe (Member # 1894) on :
Man, most of you guys are really young, you know that?
Geroff my lawn!!!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I remember when it was revealed that Magic Johnson had aids.
I remember when Magic Johnson was playing against Larry Byrd in the NCAA finals.
I remember before before AIDS had a name.
quote:I remember when MTV had the man on the moon with the big M that changed patterns. My favorite pattern was the bricks.
I remember before there was MTV.
quote:I remember being excited the first time I saw a monochrome amber on black monitor. It was easier on the eyes than the old green on black ones.
I remember when computers didn't have monitors, just card readers and hard print outs.
Posted by Sean Monahan (Member # 9334) on :
I remember when Tom Hanks was a sitcom star.
Posted by Sean Monahan (Member # 9334) on :
oops, double post...
I remember we had a television antennae on our roof. We had a gadget hooked to the tv, that kind of looked like a clock, which we had to twist, in order to mechanically turn the antennae on the roof in order to get one of our 3 channels in clearly.
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
I love this thread. Being older is an advantage. Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sean Monahan: I remember when Tom Hanks was a sitcom star.
I remember when Billy Crystal was. His first scene on TV was in a pink dress and a blonde wig.
Posted by Amilia (Member # 8912) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: [QUOTE]I remember when gasoline hit $1/gallon.
My 6th grade Reading teacher said once, "I don't believe in aliens. However, I also didn't believe gas would ever go over $1 a gallon. So you never know." This past summer, every time the price of gas would go up, I'd think of him and how the possibility of aliens just got a little bit better.
I remember, in elementary school, the lunch lady who punched our cards saying that in 10 years there would be a computer doing her job. Ten years later, in high school, our lunch cards were electronic and we scanned them through the computer. But there was still a lunch lady there--she was just in charge of minding the computer instead of punching holes in our cards.
I remember card catalogs.
I remember our first computer, a TI-99/4A. It was awesome. Lots of fun games. My dad could even make it talk--although it pronounced my name funny.
I remember my mom telling my sister and me to play quietly because this was the very last time MASH would ever be on, and Dad wanted to see it. I was very confused a few weeks later when the reruns started.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
quote:I remember when Tom Hanks was a sitcom star.
Tom Hanks was a sitcom star? I can totally see that.
I'm too young to play I remember, except for the playing outside thing. When I was a kid, we tore up and down the streets on our bicycles, sold flowers for pennies and walked to school alone or in pairs from a young age. This was the nineties.
Now there are so few people on the street that it is more dangerous than it used to be when everyone was out.
I remember when the only allergy I'd ever heard of anyone having was 'hay fever'. Even after people started to be allergic to things (there was a continental move involved in this revelation), kids were still allowed to bring peanut butter and peanuts to school.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Amilia: I remember card catalogs.
Ooh, me too! I spent so much time in the library when I was a kid, that when we learned how to use a card catalog in school (it was a formal lesson, just like learning to use a dictionary and learning to use a telephone book), I already knew how.
My oldest, OTOH, knew what they were (apparently they were mentioned in a book she read), but even though she was a volunteer in the library this past summer, had never seen one until I showed her a picture (ok, that's not the one I showed her. ) a few minutes ago.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
We used a card catalog until we hit high school when it was all on a computer.
I used to like the smell of the old cards.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
quote:Originally posted by Noemon: Yep, it wasn't until I got my third computer that I got one for which a mouse was even available (computer #1 being a TRS-80 with 4K of RAM, computer #2 being a Commodore 64, with (you guessed it) 64K of RAM, and computer #3 being an Amiga 2000, which ran at a blazing 7.14 MHz and had 1.5 MB of RAM).
Actually, there was a mouse available for the Commodore 64, though it came into being pretty late in the game and there wasn't a heckuva lot you could do with it. There was also a Macintosh/Windows style interface called GEOS, though why you would have wanted to use up the resources of a computer that only had 64K to begin with with such a thing is beyond me.
Speaking of which- I remember when speech synthesis (a computer being able to speak! Shock! Awe!) was really, really cool.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: I remember when speech synthesis (a computer being able to speak! Shock! Awe!) was really, really cool.
Me too. My then-spouse used to show it off to people over the phone. Posted by Sean Monahan (Member # 9334) on :
I remember when John Hinckley tried to assassinate president Reagan. I was in 8th grade.
That very day, I learned about "the zero factor", which was an interesting bit of trivia: up to that point in time, every president who was elected in a year ending in zero died in office*. It appeared that day that Reagan might fulfil the zero factor. I ran home, ran in the door, and in a happy excited voice shouted, "Mom, mom, the president's been shot!" I got in big trouble. (Reagan ended up dealing the death blow to the zero factor.)
I remember that the tv show The Greatest American Hero was airing at the time, and the lead character was named Ralph Hinkley. He was a schoolteacher, and after the assassination attempt, his students stopped referring to him as "Mr. Hinkley", and started referring to him as "Mr. H".
A year or two ago, someone posted the video of the assassination attempt on filecabi.net. I was aghast by how many commenters said something along the lines of, "It's obviously a fake, because no one ever tried to kill Reagan."
*Actually I just looked it up. It's not every president, it's every president from 1840 through 1960.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: I remember when speech synthesis (a computer being able to speak! Shock! Awe!) was really, really cool. [/qb]
Me too. My then-spouse used to show it off to people over the phone.
On a slightly tangential note, I remember that it was so cool when MODs came on the scene and (seemed to) started to replace MIDI music in computer games.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by Sean Monahan: I remember when Tom Hanks was a sitcom star.
I remember when Billy Crystal was. His first scene on TV was in a pink dress and a blonde wig.
I wouldn't have called Tom Hanks a "star". Bosum Buddies was not a huge hit.
I wish they would rerun Soap. I loved that show.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sean Monahan: I remember when John Hinckley tried to assassinate president Reagan. I was in 8th grade.
I was in second grade. It was the one and only year I attended the school I now live a couple blocks from. I remember an announcement on the P.E. system.
quote:Originally posted by Sean Monahan: He was a schoolteacher, and after the assassination attempt, his students stopped referring to him as "Mr. Hinkley", and started referring to him as "Mr. H".
Is THAT why?! I only saw it in syndication, and I wondered.
Posted by Sean Monahan (Member # 9334) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I wouldn't have called Tom Hanks a "star". Bosum Buddies was not a huge hit.
Actually, I thought about that after I posted it. It is funny though to think there was a time when Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari were of equal significance.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:I remember when it was revealed that Magic Johnson had aids.
I remember when Magic Johnson was playing against Larry Byrd in the NCAA finals.
I remember watching Lakers/Celtics with Johnson and Bird. I do not remember the NCAA finals with those two.
quote: I remember before before AIDS had a name.
I do too, or at least before everyone knew what it was.
quote:
quote:I remember when MTV had the man on the moon with the big M that changed patterns. My favorite pattern was the bricks.
I remember before there was MTV.
My parents didn't have a TV before MTV got started. So I missed out on that. I watched MTV at my friend's house in the early 80s.
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
I remember when sports stadiums didn't change names.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Announcer: Do you remember a time when chocolate chips came fresh from the oven? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Fry: Ah, those were the days. Announcer: Do you remember a time when women couldn't vote and certain people weren't allowed on golf courses? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sterling:
quote:Originally posted by Noemon: Yep, it wasn't until I got my third computer that I got one for which a mouse was even available (computer #1 being a TRS-80 with 4K of RAM, computer #2 being a Commodore 64, with (you guessed it) 64K of RAM, and computer #3 being an Amiga 2000, which ran at a blazing 7.14 MHz and had 1.5 MB of RAM).
Actually, there was a mouse available for the Commodore 64, though it came into being pretty late in the game and there wasn't a heckuva lot you could do with it. There was also a Macintosh/Windows style interface called GEOS, though why you would have wanted to use up the resources of a computer that only had 64K to begin with with such a thing is beyond me.
Speaking of which- I remember when speech synthesis (a computer being able to speak! Shock! Awe!) was really, really cool.
I remember living in Spain for three months, where I got to play The Hobbit interactive fiction game on a Timex Sinclair computer. A staggering 16K of memory in that thing!
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
I miss Rogue. Or Hack. Same thing.
Posted by Artemisia Tridentata (Member # 8746) on :
quote:I remember when Magic Johnson was playing against Larry Byrd in the NCAA finals.
I remember when Lew Alcindor played in the NCAA finals, and the band from Weber College (WSC was eliminated in an earler round) played pep band for the UCLA team. My silly sister got married that weekend, and I had to miss the trip.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: ]I remember living in Spain for three months, where I got to play The Hobbit interactive fiction game on a Timex Sinclair computer. A staggering 16K of memory in that thing!
Oh, I remember those Timex Sinclair machines. Man, did I hate the keyboards on them.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tante Shvester: I miss Rogue. Or Hack. Same thing.
Well, you don't have to. There are any number of modern version around.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
Tante, you asked two questions that I know the answer to, so while we're talking about antique things, here goes.
The reason you don't lay an LP record on its side in a stack is because the plastic they made them out of in those days was easy to crack, and the later plastic would warp. Storing them on their ends prevented this problem because the forces were much less. A record on its end only feels the gravity of its own weight. A record under a pile of records feels a lot more pressure.
Your second question was why the hole in the 45s was so big? Answer: in order for jukebox components to have a way to handle them easily, and for the machinery that drops only a single 45 at a time from a stack onto the platter to have room enough to work. Later on they developed a version of turntable center that would handle a stack of LPs (33s) too but it never worked that well, as I recall. The bigger hole means you can put a substantial piece of equipment in there, with room for plenty of subtle mechanisms.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
I see now (that I've read the whole thread) that both those questions had already been answered.
My first programming job was programming an IBM mainframe in COBOL using JCL to submit jobs. A guy I worked with there had been a programmer longer, and he had used to solder wires onto circuit boards to encode his program into the computer. Did you know they used to write programs by soldering wires?
We didn't have air conditioning when I was a kid until I was in third grade. On really hot summer days mom would take us to the grocery store or theater because those places were so nice and cold inside. If we didn't get to do those things, we just put on our bathing suits and played in the sprinkler in the front yard. It was fun.
I remember when candy bars cost a nickle and a coke cost 13 cents, or 10 cents if you drank it on the premises and left the bottle (with its 3 cent deposit).
I remember when bottled cokes (or beer, though I didn't realize that) had to be opened with the use of this little metal thing that for some strange reason (probably related to beer) was called a "church key". You couldn't just screw off the caps with your hands.
I remember when toys like dart guns and slingshots really worked, and had real darts or other missiles, and you could possibly kill a sibling with one, or "put their eye out", a weird turn of parental phrasing.
I remember when skate wheels were small and metal, instead of large and rubbery, and when they came rectangularly placed on the skate instead of all four in a line. Man, that was kludgy!
I remember being so sad that by the time they came out with big wheels (a low-slung type of tricycle with large plastic wheels) I was too big to ride on them. I tried anyway but the seat scraped the ground.
I remember back when Fisher Price little people sets were the bomb, when the people were smaller, and the designs were so cool and fun to play with. They totally ruined Fisher Price with the bigger (choke proof) people.
Oh, I remember rolling my hair on big rollers before going on dates in high school. Then my hair would be so poofy that I had to tie one of my mom's scarves around my head for a while to get it to mash down. Rollers were these round plastic things that you wrapped up your wet hair in to dry it with this hood type hair dryer. It had like a plastic shower cap thingy that went over your rollers, then a tube like a vacuum cleaner that hooked to the cap that the warm air blew through.
I remember when the game Clue first came out and it was so much fun. Our whole neighborhood spent several weeks playing it all the time.
I remember when my dad made his first telescope with a rectangular wooden enclosure for the optics, and no mirrors were available then. He had to grind the glass painstakingly over weeks, using a fine grit, then send the blank off to be silvered. It was an 8" Newtonian with an equatorial mount. He made all the gears with our lathe. I remember there was a long pole with a heavy weight at the end for a counterbalance, and when he was trying to observe sometimes I would climb that pole and wiggle the scope so he couldn't see clearly. This was back before there really were any amateur telescope makers to speak of.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
Nostalgia is fun but all in all I truly prefer now over any time since I've been alive. I hope I live to see a long time into the future, as well. I'm sure things are going to keep getting better and better, and I don't want to miss all the cool stuff there will be, and how much better people's lives will be.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
A dozen virtual chocolate chip cookies for anyone who gets the reference in my first post in this thread. Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
I remember when our remote control squeaked. O_o
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
Were you referring to "A Christmas Story" by any chance with the "put your eye out" line?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Nostalgia is fun but all in all I truly prefer now over any time since I've been alive. I hope I live to see a long time into the future, as well. I'm sure things are going to keep getting better and better, and I don't want to miss all the cool stuff there will be, and how much better people's lives will be.
I'm the first person to agree with a sentiment like that. It would seem to me that throughout our history (and especially the history of the last millennium) we have been moving towards an expansion of freedoms and of the quality of life of all individuals. We fall back in these areas all the time, and in some ways there are extant conditions today that are worse than extant conditions of a thousand years ago, but I think the mean quality of life across the world now has the greatest chance to continue increasing.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote:My grandfather used to whip up the lather and shave with his straight razor,
I still do.
I remember when we had to take all the tubes out of the TV and go to the drugstore to put the tubes in a machine that tested them to tell you which was the bad tube so you could buy a replacement. Same with the stereo, which was called a "HiFi."
I remember when cable TV was something they didn't have in big cities, because there was always a big transmitter in the city, so you could get all the channels on rabbit ears. But in smaller towns the cable company put up a huge antenna that would pull in the signals from the city, and broadcast channels were all you could get on cable.
I remember 78 rpm shellac records. I remember when 33-1/3 rpm records were 10 inches across (I still have some of them)
I remember when you could buy replacement parts for a toaster.
I remember when Paul was dead and John was alive.
I remember when the fire truck would come around each year, and all the children would get a thin plastic fire helmet, and we'd climb up on top of the fire truck, and they'd ride us around the neighborhood. Apparently our parents paid for our rides, which supported the fire department, but we didn't know that.
I remember when Modern houses were still modern.
I still have a rotary phone.
I learned to program on a thing that looked like a typewriter, where each key was an instruction, and it printed on a spool of paper like a cash register. Each line of code was one byte, and it could take up to 58 lines of code. It had separate storage registers for numbers. We would fill the registers with numbers and then print them out like:
88888888 11181111 11181111 88888888
88888888 81181118 81181118 81181118
88888888 81111111 81111111 81111111
88888888 81111111 81111111 81111111
18888881 81111118 81111118 18888881
I remember when soda cans were made of steel, and when you returned soda bottles to the store, they washed them and refilled them. You could tell, because the base of the bottle was all worn from where they bumped into each other on the conveyor belt.
I remember the first time I went into a house with air conditioning.
I remember the first time I saw a car with a stereo.
I literally walked a mile through an apple orchard (Downhill), a swamp, across a stream, across the road, through another apple orchard (uphill) to school, and back from school, in all weather including snow, floods, and a hurricane.
I remember when they didn't salt the roads, and snow got packed down on the road until it was a thick hard packed surface, and you could use a flexible flyer sled on the road or the sidewalk. And they didn't close school unless the snow was too DEEP to drive in. I remember the sound of buses driving with chains on their tires.
I remember when kids trapped raccoons or muskrats for extra cash.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Jesus, how old are you?
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Were you referring to "A Christmas Story" by any chance with the "put your eye out" line?
No, but good guess! Have a cookie for a consolation prize. <gives>
I meant my post referencing the thread title that said ".... that you have the most beautiful face"
Hint: It's a song by a sweet band we saw this summer at City Stages.
Posted by xtownaga (Member # 7187) on :
Something scary: Most freshmen in college this year were born in 1990.
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
I remember when nostalgia used to be something really special.
They just don't make nostalgia the way they used to.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Artemisia Tridentata:
quote:I remember when Magic Johnson was playing against Larry Byrd in the NCAA finals.
I remember when Lew Alcindor played in the NCAA finals, and the band from Weber College (WSC was eliminated in an earler round) played pep band for the UCLA team. My silly sister got married that weekend, and I had to miss the trip.
Too bad. If you'd gone, you might have met my mom.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Jesus, how old are you?
Roughly 2000 years. The first few were the toughest.
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
OK, that just cracked me the heck up.
Good one.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Jesus, how old are you?
Roughly 2000 years. The first few were the toughest.
It would be funny if I hadn't rolled my eyes as I was typing it, knowing that someone on Hatrack would faithfully fill in the requisite smart assed response.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
No, it's still funny.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Well, sure, just not to me.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Hail]](graemlins/hail.gif)
I think hobsen wins.
![[Mad]](mad.gif)
![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
![[Grumble]](graemlins/grumble.gif)