Remember the days before...

jeanor

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I know this is going to age me, but oh well.


Today at work a coworker and I were talking about our teenage kids and cell phones etc.

Remember the days before cell phones? You had to use a *gasp* phone booth!

Also, ATM/debit cards. You had to plan how much cash you needed for the weekend and get it from the bank on Fridays. Or, you could cash just about any check at a grocery store for cash.

Anyone else care to reminisce?
 

cheeseface

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*Gasp!*... I still have to use a phone booth every once in a while.
 
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jeanor

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According to my husband... the zoo
hehe, well, actually the phone booth conversation was how there weren't very many around anymore. When I was a teen, they were on quite a few street corners, now you can only find them in a few places.
 

cheeseface

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I do remember when I had to plan and get enough cash ahead of time. I hate banks. I believed they always kept short hours to make getting your money as inconvenient as possible.
 

deb25

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LOL. At school, I am currently collecting money for our 5th graders' end of the year field trip. One mom sent in the permission form today and wrote, "Email me and I'll give you my debit card number for the payment."

We aren't THAT far ahead in the school system. I don't exactly have a credit card swiper on my desk.

 

lunasmom

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What about the days before remote controls for your TV? When you *gasp* actually had to get up off the couch and walk to the TV to change the channel OR turn it off!!!
 

MoochNNoodles

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Originally Posted by lunasmom

What about the days before remote controls for your TV? When you *gasp* actually had to get up off the couch and walk to the TV to change the channel OR turn it off!!!
Mom still has my old TV like that. We also still have a black and white TV. (But of course they have like 4 new TVs too, they don't use the old ones!)

Lately all I've been reminicing about is the days when I didn't have to get up in the morning.....pathetic!
 

lunasmom

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Originally Posted by MoochNNoodles

Mom still has my old TV like that. We also still have a black and white TV. (But of course they have like 4 new TVs too, they don't use the old ones!)

Lately all I've been reminicing about is the days when I didn't have to get up in the morning.....pathetic!
Same here...earlier on my lunch I was just thinking back to the day when I didn't have to leave the sunshine and warmth just to go back to work. Why can't my parents still take care of me?
 
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jeanor

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Originally Posted by lunasmom

What about the days before remote controls for your TV? When you *gasp* actually had to get up off the couch and walk to the TV to change the channel OR turn it off!!!
I remember when my kids were at home and they would spend 15 minutes searching for the remote if it was lost instead of just changing the channel.

I always told them that when I was little... "I" was the remote.
I can remember my parents having me turn it on, off, up, down, channels etc.
 

valanhb

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Originally Posted by lunasmom

What about the days before remote controls for your TV? When you *gasp* actually had to get up off the couch and walk to the TV to change the channel OR turn it off!!!
Yeah, but there were only 4 channels to choose from, so it wasn't too taxing.
 

pandybear

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i remember when there were no mobiles too, i was pretty young but i do remember using phone booths a lot more lol

remember when mobiles were like bricks, especially compared to the streamlined one's available today, those old phones could do some serious damage if you dropped one on your toe


one thing i remember is the price of coke....it used to be 60 or 70 cents, now it's $1.20 a can...and loose sweets used to be 1 cent each, when i was a child i would take 50 cents into the store and have a whole bag of them, now i think they are 5 to 10 cents each
 

katachtig

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How about planning to get gas or groceries before holidays and some places, Sundays because nothing was open?

Of course there are the old LPs (When ever I see Lauren's (Pombina) Sleeves, I think of this because he was named after a record store), 8-tracks.

AM radio was the only thing around and FM was big stuff.

Expensive calculators that were basic add, subtract, multiply, divide.

Rotary dial phones.

Cars that didn't come with seat belts or power steering.

Am I getting old or what?
 

zak&rocky

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My gosh. I think my age is kinda interesting b/c I remember when certain things were brand new and before others, while my younger bro and sis don't remember. I'm 27. My parents didn't get a color TV until we got cable in 1983. Then we got our first VCR soon after and my dad gave our babysitters a tutorial in how to work it. I remember we had one pushbutton phone that wasn't touch tone, it made rotary clicks, and learning how to dial a phone. My parents actually got a cell phone pretty early (1992) b/c my mom's job had her on the road a lot. We called it the car phone, were not allowed to use it unless it was a real emergency, and it was about the size of a computer printer and weighed about 10 pounds! We finally got a microwave in 1988 and I was so excited to make popcorn in it. I thought it was so cool! My dad didn't think that CD's would stick around so we didn't have a CD player in our house for a long time- he finally got a CD ROM for the computer, so we could use that! I remember we had a "remote" for the VCR- it plugged into the VCR from a cord.
 

gemlady

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How about remotes that were attached to the TV by a cord and had only one button?

Telephone party lines? Only having to dial 4 numbers to get someone in your exhange? Rotary dials?

Gad, I'm not that old...
 

gailc

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We were on a party phone line with our neighbor's growing up!!!
I remember mom buying a "handheld calculator in the early 70's-just basic function and it cost $70!!! It would be worth alot on Ebay now.
Or when we 1st got the microwave and had to microwave potatoes as it was so much faster than the oven-we ate lots of potatoes!!!
My 1st car-the 67 Chev-AM radio there wasn't such a thing as power windows-remember that little tiny windows cars and trucks would have???
No power steering/power brakes either!!
In high school -one computer which was very much a novelty at the time.
How about when home movies meant hauling out the movie projector and the reels of film-Speaking of reels the 1st place I lived after college my roommate had reel to reel as the sound was better than 8 tracks!!!

Now I'm really dating myself!!!
 

marie-p

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I remember rotary dials. I'm not that old, but I guess my parents were pretty old fashioned.

I also remember the early days of the internet. Me and my brothers would download sounds from The Simpsons... and it would take something like half an hour to download a few seconds of low-quality sound


Also, remember the time when there were no grocery stores yet and you had to go out and club a mammoth when you were hungry?
 

lilleah

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YAY! I dont remember ANY of this stuff. lol.

Well some of it..but when I was very young. I JUST turned 22, and I had a cell by the time I needed one..and a color TV with a switcher that had lots of buttons on it...and A real cordless phone.

So no..I dont "remember when".
AAawww...This is sad. I cant belive things used to be like that.
 

valanhb

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Oh yeah, I remember the party line thing! Having people from three houses down yell at you because they needed to use the phone...
Woo-boy those were the days!
I also remember that the first time my parents left us girls alone when they went on vacation (to South Carolina) when we were 16 and 13, there was a bad thunderstorm the first night they were gone and our line got crossed with one of the people on the party line. So they couldn't just call us, they kept getting these people who insisted they were calling a wrong number! It took a while to get that straightened out.
 
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