Tales for spoiled brats

[Dave-the-rave]

Sounds like a few birthday parties when I was in the USAF!

Yeah I was in the British Army re the first porn cine film
That kinda thing wasn't particularly odd in Germany.

 

[BigFoot]

Sounds like your childhood birthday parties were different to mine...

Sorry David, in the US we got porn for our birthdays.

We had a party line with 3 family's on it. You would pick up the phone and listen to make sure the line was empty before calling. You did not want to stay on too long for fear of someone else needing the phone. We had 1 computer in our entire high school. You had to go find your friends, no texting them to see where they were at.

and

Spoiler

 

[Dave-the-rave]

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.

I bet you don't get many birthday party invites.

 

[Bakker1964]

I have a friend whose job was to service payphones (collect the coins, check the operational status, minor mechanical repairs, etc.). He was only let go within the last three years.

 

[Doc4]

LEGO back in the day:

LEGO now:

 

[Go West Young Man]

Before going to the pool, we'd put extra oil on to INCREASE the speed and intensity of our tan.

 

[Acmemfg]

Computer? Closest thing we may have had to such equipment at our school was a mimeograph machine and manual key adding machine. "Children are starving in Europe". Grandparents' tales of Onion sandwiches during the Depression and the only butter available was on the "black market" throughout WWII because of rationing.
Two TV stations....then ABC arrived!!! Now three. Still no color TV though. FM radio? What was that?
Cuban missile crisis. Cold War. Communist threat.
At least the music was good.

 

[Dave-the-rave]

Rented TV's with a coin slot.

 

[RenoRichard]

When I was young we had to use Barbasol....

 

[emwolf]

Well, I grew up in Champaign, Illinois which was (and still is) a very advanced computer town. When I was around 9 or 10 (1972 or 73) I was part of a small group that experimented with PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching), a computer system to aid school systems. By the time is was 12, the system had actually made it into public schools. The benefit was that I was the tech support kid at my school since I was already using the system, plus the classroom had to have air conditioning installed for the terminals to operate without overheating. I used my first "touch screen" then too, which was accomplished by having a grid of electric eyes. resting over the monitor that would register where your finger broke the plane.

 

[The Count of Merkur Cristo]

Legion:
I remember my Dad telling me when my other brothers got me to ask...”Why don’t we have more bathrooms”?

His rejoined with a wink...”Bathrooms...when I was your age...I had to share the one bathroom with my brother while he was still in it”.

“Chiidren are often spoiled because no one will spank Grandma”. The Gospel of Brats

 

[Ad Astra]

I had to eat lousy, burned food because "there are children starving in China."

And really did walk three miles to school every day in subfreezing weather.

Adversity builds character, not that this was actual adversity - though one day a tow truck ran over and killed one of my class mates walking to school.

I miss the Lawn Darts. They encouraged hard-headedness.

Dog attacks taught running skills. Stuff like that.


AA

 

[Cool Shave Luke]

Atari controler had one button and you had to blow into the games for them to work.
You couldn’t be on the internet and the phone at the same time
As a kid we would get into fights for fun

 

[Tanuki]

No AC in the house, let alone the car. “One car family.” No seatbelts, airbags, or child seats in the car, either. Computers! The government had some. Like the government computers, the B&W TV was full of vacuum tubes and broke constantly. I did eventually own a transistor radio with several transistors in it!

When we wanted to play, we went outside to play. With our cap guns or our baseball gear. There were even empty spaces to play in. When we wanted to go somewhere, we got on our bikes and went.

We did our own yard work and the boys mowed the lawn. Oh wait, it still works that way at my house.

 

[_MementoMori_]

When I was a kid, a cure for boredom (and test of masculinity) was taking a standard yellow #2 pencil and erasing a hole into the back of your hand with it. If you didn't cry out when the eraser created a searing red pathway of pain on your flesh, you were tough. Or stupid. Or some combination of both.

 

[BudgetShaverGuy]

When I was your age I was clothed and fed better than OK and had a 13" color TV in the kitchen.

 

[emwolf]

I did have to walk a couple miles to junior high and high school, but only 2 blocks to elementary school. I walked or took the bus all over town as young as 12 years old with no fear. Black and white 9 inch tv until the family bought a 19 inch color tv when I was about 8. Got to watch Disney's Wonderful World of Color in color.

 

[Dave-the-rave]

I remember watching snooker in black and white.

 

[Ramathorn]

Our black and white tv came with three remotes....... my siblings and I. The best part was that we had to walk 11 feet, both ways, through thick shag carpet just to change the channel or adjust the volume. It even felt like it was uphill both ways.

 

[Dave-the-rave]

I remember when you had to walk right up to the TV and point right at it, or the remote didn't work.