When my parents said it, I would roll my eyes incessantly. We would hear one of them say "When I was a kid..." and my brother and I would cut them off with "We know, the only thing you had to play with was a stick and a box. You could buy a Hamburger for a nickel and go to a Movie for 25 cents!" We really had a way of bursting their bubbles.
Well, now I'm the Mama, and I find myself telling my son about when I was a kid. Luckily, he finds it wildly entertaining at this stage and will ask questions like..."Mom, when you were a kid did people drive cars?' I'm not that old but I have found myself telling him some really hilarious facts about being a kid in the 70's.
Things like...
"When I was a kid, we didn't have a remote control. I had to sit on a pillow in front of the TV and actually turn a knob to flip the channels. My dad would make me sit there and be the human remote control. There was no such thing as cable yet so luckily I only had about 8 channels to have to flip through."
"When I was a kid we didn't have cell phones. If we were not at home and needed to talk to someone then we had to find a pay phone. A pay phone is a phone that anyone could use that was sometimes in something called a phone booth. You put a quarter in the phone and then you could use it for as long as you wanted. Yes...it did spread germs."
"When I was a kid there was no such thing as Cartoon Network. If I wanted to watch cartoons, I had to wait until Saturday morning. We would wake up at 7 am and watch cartoons until noon. Saturday morning cartoons were the best!"
"When I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we needed to learn about a subject we had to go to the library or read and Encyclopedia. An Encyclopedia is a book that is filled with information about topics, kinda like Google but in book form."
"When I was a kid we didn't have DVD players that you could watch in the car. When you were riding in the car you would look out the window or play car games for fun. A car game is when everyone in the car agrees to look at the world around them and make up a game to play. Like Car Bingo or looking for the letters of the alphabet in street signs."
He thinks that these are fascinating facts. He just can't imagine that a world like the one I speak of ever existed.
Ah...the salad days!
21 comments:
My son said that I was alive in the year 1000 the other day...thanks, kid.
I always like it when someone does a post like this. Its fun to remember way back when....
Recently my nephew asked how old I was (he is 5) and of course I asked him how old he thought I was. After much pondering he said I was realllly old...like 16! I said YUP! You are so smart!
I remember flipping the knob to find a station and having to reposition the bunny ears... Saturday morning cartoons were...still are...the best. The old ones. They for sure don't make cartoons like they used to!
When I was a kid people made fun of you when you were fat and you felt so bad and humiliated and rotten that you swore revenge and ended up being in really good shape and could later rub it in their face later in life.
Good times. Good times.
I've told my kids about the no remote idea - or that there was a top and bottom turn dial for the channels - they don't believe me. I have yet to tell them my brother and I broke the knob fighting over it and had to use plyers from then on.
Omg check out Steve Harveys video don't trip he ain't through with me yet. He discusses this very thing including the pliers being used to turn the knobs lol.. my hubby was heartborke the other day when he saw CLASSIC handheld football being sold the toher day. He was like man when I was a kid that was the HIGH tech stuff and we thought we were teh shiznit cause we had that game with x and o's , until we figured out teh patterns for the plays and could win every time.. Remember ATARI?? Frogger?? PONG and Tank.. yeah now THAT is classic lol
Hahaha but we had fun then didn't we?
Right after I tell my son one of those stories he'll ask a question like, "Had cars been invented yet when you were a kid." Jeez!
when i was a kid, no one had cell phones in elementary school. lol
When I was a kid we didn't have video games. We played candy land without Dora on Nick Jr.
I can vaguely remember a time when cartoons were a Saturday only treat. Now, they are 24/7 torture.
However, something is lost in the quality when they're cranking them out at break-neck speed.
And I'm SOOO glad that TVs have remotes now. Can you imagine trying to manually go through over 100 channels??? Torture!!!
I LOVED Saturday morning cartoons!! They were my reason for existing.
I was telling my kids about film strips and projectors the other day. Yeah, they were confused.
Hahaha! Google in a book! Good analogy!
When I was a kid we could play out front without a parent watching. Oh, and ride our bikes without helmets.
Nothing was better than Saturday morning cartoons and I do believe one had one TV in the house that had a permanent vice grips on one of the knobs.
I can relate to all of this. First off, I remember as a kid asking my dad what it was the like growing up "in the old days". He would just laugh.
Manually changing the TV channels, using a pay phone, no cell phones, no computer, playing outside, Saturday morning cartoons....they all bring back memories.
I was born in 70, so this was fun to read. I even forgot about some of that stuff. Sad how accustom we become to luxuries, which our kids think are the norm.
I always said when I started to say "When I was a kid" meant I was getting to old. When I did it the first time I actually cried.
You are dead on.... it's funny how we change and become our parents. *Shhhh, don't tell them I admitted that.
Jumped over from SITS, you're right above me. :D
My daughter was in awe when I told her I was around before remote controls. Surely I belong in a museum.
I tell mine that when I was a kid we did what our parents said to. They are not impressed.
I remember flipping the knob to find a station and having to reposition the bunny ears
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