Yahoo Lifestyle "My Kids Had No Idea What I Was Talking About": 23 Experiences That Were The Norm Decades Ago But Are Totally Unrecognizable Today
Even as a "younger" millennial, there are a few things I grew up with that I'm sure would stump today's generation of kids (the sound of dial-up still plays SO clearly in my head). Recently, redditor 13thTorturedpoet asked the r/AskReddit community to share their experiences growing up that would be totally unrecognizable to kids today. Here are a few of the nostalgic things they shared.
1."Pre-streaming TV! No recording, no rewinding, and having to run to the bathroom during commercials because you couldn't pause."
"I know being able to watch whatever you want, whenever you want, on streaming services is amazing, but I feel like old-style linear television had value because you couldn't do that.
When I was a kid, TV only had three or four channels, and children's TV only ran for a couple of hours before the six o'clock news. But the next day at school, everyone was talking about the same thing.
I feel like the internet has destroyed part of our shared culture; kids barely watch normal TV now. What will be the shared nostalgic touch-points they talk about in 30 years?"
2."Only being able to call long distance from a landline and having to wait until after a certain time at night because the rates were cheaper."
"I remember (in Australia) buying international call hours; you'd get a slip of paper with a code you had to put in before dialing out. It was a whole procedure just to call."
3."Not being in constant contact. Just playing outside or hanging out with friends and only calling your parents on a dial-up phone if it was an absolute emergency."
"Having to remember everyone's phone numbers and knocking on doors to ask if people want to play."
4."Not knowing stuff. Any conversation you have today can be Googled in seconds."
"I remember it was normal to ask someone you know something random, and now people rudely say, 'Google exists.'"
5."Hitting up Blockbuster with your friends sleeping over, picking out a movie or game, picking up a couple of pizzas and two-liter sodas, and staying up all night playing couch multiplayer (N64) video games!"
"I'm only 26, so older Gen Z, but I remember my best friend and I having sleepovers every weekend. One of our parents would take us to Blockbuster, and we'd pick out a scary movie and a funny movie every time. I miss this so much."
6."Saturday morning cartoons. My little one has zero concept of getting up early on Saturday to watch cartoons because she can get them whenever she wants."
"I remember as a kid thinking how awesome is it that cartoons were on every day after school when they started that in the late '80s. As an adult, I often tell kids how often they are missing out on Saturday morning cartoons. One day a week. You looked forward to it all week, and you definitely woke up early to watch."
7."Dot matrix printers and the sounds of several of them at once, endlessly and slowly printing students' assignments."
"My first government job was in the 1990s, and we had word processors. The noises they made when typing out the reports were wild. I swear it was going to vibrate off the desk."
8."Dial-up."
"'Mom, can I use the internet?'
'I’m on the phone, sweetie, you’ll have to wait.'"
9."My coworker didn’t know who Melissa Joan Hart was. That made me feel super old."
"A 20-something friend of mine had no idea what Clarissa Explains It All was and then revealed when he looked it up that it was from before he was born."
10."Trying to make your own mix tape off the radio and hoping you could pause it in time so that you did not record the DJ talking."
11."Cursive."
"I made an 'office is closed' sign in a (what I thought was) very clear cursive-like font, and the number of grown adults who said they couldn't read it blew my mind. And some of these are millennial-aged?? Did we not all learn cursive?"
12."The 'save' icon is a picture of something that was real."
"I'm a teacher, and a few years ago, another teacher was cleaning out her classroom as she was brand new, and it just had stuff all over. She brought up a whole box of the big floppy disks to the office and asked what they were. I thought we were all going to pee our pants; we were laughing so hard."
13."Ad-free Google."
14."Phone books."
"And the maps being in a book, too. You had to use the index to look up the address, then find the page and use the coordinates to find the exact address. Oh, and then you had to find yourself and make your own route to your location. It sucked if you were traveling far and the two locations were on different pages."
15."Being the first in the family to purchase a PC."
16."Back when data plans weren't unlimited."
"And SMS had a character limit."
17."I miss the thrill of getting AOL trial CDs in the mail and trying them out."
18."The joy when the house was hooked up to cable TV, and we had more than just what we picked up with the antennae: ABC, CBS, NBC, a fourth local channel, and PBS. Now we had 40 channels!"
19."Card catalogs. I thought I was the smartest kid because I was pretty good with the card catalog, and other kids would ask me for help. My kids had no idea what I was talking about."
20."I'm a teacher. In social studies, we discuss how technology changes. You should have seen their faces when I brought in a record player."
21."Dialing a number to see what movies were playing."
22."Having to get up to change the channel on the TV. Having to fine-tune the channel and adjust the antennas. Not knowing how annoying sunspots are. Having to wait for a specific time to watch your favorite show and the agony of missing a show and then not knowing what was going on the next week."
23."Having to physically pick up your paycheck and then go to the bank to deposit it."
"I was talking about this with my parents the other day! Just the huge amount of time during the 9 to 5 weekday bank hours people spent getting, depositing, or cashing paychecks! I feel like I was CONSTANTLY in the car at the bank at the drive-through teller with my mom, getting a lollipop back in the vacuum tube."
Is there anything you remember growing up with that would be unrecognizable to young people today? Tell us about it in the comments, or fill out this anonymous form!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
