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Tales for spoiled brats

Legion

Staff member
Today I was thinking about the tales my father told me when I complained about things as a kid.

You know what I mean. "When I was your age I had to walk forty miles to school in snow, and I had to share a pair of shoes with my brother." That type of thing.

So I was thinking, what will I tell my kid when she is old enough, and she probably wont believe me?



For starters, where I grew up there was only two TV channels. A commercial one, and a government run one. And my school had one computer. It was on a trolley, and was wheeled around the school to the class where it was required.


What have you got?
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
When I was growing up we had to memorize our times tables up to 12 times. Hand held calculators didn't become available until I started at university. Until then, we used a slide rule and log tables.

"Daddy, what's a slide rule?" Try explaining that to a child now.
 
Seat belts were for sissies - REAL men don't need 'em. Oh, and you had to shift the gears yourself. No air conditioning in cars. You roll down the windows and turn the "wings" out so the air blows directly into the cabin. First job was walking the fields for weeds at $1.25 / hour, ten hours a day. Could not believe I was making $12.50 a day at the age of thirteen. Sun screen, what is that? At the age of fifteen (illegal) I started working construction as a go-fer at $2.50 / hour. "Son, remember if the inspector comes by you are 16 years old and lost your driver's license the other day."
 
The trouble with telling kids such things today is that they are a lot smarter than we were at the same age.


Not all of them. I told my now 15yrs daughter a few years ago, that the house Hitler had in the mountains, survived the war in one piece and is now a Chinese restaurant called Das Rice. She told all her friends at school and I was asked to go and see her history teacher. That was only 3 years ago. The pair of us still belly laugh about that one.

Mind I lied about my age at 11, said I was 13 and got a Saturday job working in a builders yard, got the grand some of £10, for 10 hrs work. Had to give £3 to my mother for house keeping, £2 for savings and the rest my father gave to me during the week to spend as I saw fit (wayward child I bought cigarettes, lied then too said they were for my dad).
 
My first beer i had with around six, my first coca cola with around ten.

Grew up in a city divided by a wall, surrounded by a border but part of the country beyond the border.

My first TV was black and white.

I used to have a device that people would call and leave a text message, just so i would get alerted to go to a phone booth to call a number so a robot would read that message to me.

Playgrounds were a no go since there was too many syringes laying around.

Germany beat Brazil in their home with 7:1

I would pay for a magazine that included a CD that would give me 10(!) min of internet


this is fun, maybe i can think of more..
 
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Having those conversations with my grandkids these days - when I was a kid:
  • I was able to find gas for 6 cents a gallon.
  • Our family TV (only one) was B&W, had no remote, and only got three channels...until 11:00 when everything shut off and the Star Spangled Banner signaled the end of the TV day.
  • No microwave oven, dishwasher, or crockpot until I was an adult.
  • No air conditioning until Mom & Dad got a window until in their bedroom, where we all congregated during the summer.
Lots more, but that's probably enough reminiscing.
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
I can remember when there were 240 pennies in £1.
Same here, and 12d to the shilling.

Before starting high school, we could divide £, s & d like £8-8-7½ divided by 3 and get £2-16-2½.

A 10 mile tram ride into the city of Sydney was 2d.

We actually wrote letters on paper and posted them. If posted in the morning, they were delivered that afternoon or the following morning. We had two postal deliveries each day.

The night-soil man would come and change our dunny can once a week.

Each morning the milkman would come and fill you milk jug up that you kept in your ice box. The iceman also delivered daily.
 

Legion

Staff member
We wanted to watch a movie for my birthday party so my parents rented us the movie, along with the projector, and projected it onto the lounge room wall.

My high school PE class had us swim in the local (fairly fast running) river.
 
The Wilful Child:

Once upon a time there was a child who was willful and did not do what his mother wanted. For this reason God was displeased with him and caused him to become ill, and no doctor could help him, and in a short time he lay on his deathbed.

He was lowered into a grave and covered with earth, but his little arm suddenly came forth and reached up, and it didn't help when they put it back in and put fresh earth over it, for the little arm always came out again. So the mother herself had to go to the grave and beat the little arm with a switch, and as soon as she had done that, it withdrew, and the child finally came to rest beneath the earth.
 
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