What do you remember???

This morning I was checking out this article.  It's about things that the graduating class of 2010 doesn't know/can't relate to and things that have always been for them.  Things like Nirvana being considered classic rock and not writing in cursive. 

Even though I consider myself to be a pretty adaptable person who totally doesn't feel my age, I still felt kind of old and dated by some of the list.  :)

Which got me thinking......

What things do I remember that my kids (ages 13, 8, 7, and 4) don't remember and won't ever be able to relate to?

1.  We didn't always have cable--Now Jeff and I did go through a no-cable phase in the early '00s but my oldest is probably the only one who'll remember it.  What I'm talking about is how back in the day, the majority of people didn't have cable.  It was a newfangled thing that most people considered luxury instead of necessity.  I can remember being ten years old and having a cable company representative come to our door trying to rustle up subscribers.  I remember my grandmother being able to choose what channels we wanted and BEGGING her to get MTV(when it was actually a music channel!).  We had a huge console television set with a dial (another thing they won't know about), so our "remote" was a rectangular box with 15 buttons on it.  Each button was assigned 2 channels and there was a "shift" button to determine which of the two channels you wanted to choose.  AND....the box was connected to tv set by a long wire that went across the room and that we ultimately tripped over on a regular basis.

2.  I actually owned a black and white TV--B&W televisions were much cheaper than color.  The tv in my room, until I was 15 years old, was black and white.  The only reason I got a color set was because for my 15th birthday my grandmother gave me 'Dr. Mario' for the original Nintendo and I almost burst into tears because I couldn't play it unless I had a color tv.  Hell, I'm a drama queen, I probably did burst into tears.


3.  I owned a game system that required a cartridge--I saved up all my Christmas money when I was 8 years old to buy my very first system--the Atari 2600!  My father was so impressed with my saving skills that he matched my money and bought me a ton of games (that I played on my B&W set, LOL).  I got my first NES for Christmas when I was 14 years old.  My kids won't ever know what it's like to have to blow inside the games to get them to work!

4.  We did 'duck and cover' drills in elementary school--yep, even in the early '80s there was still the fear of being nuked (and we totally didn't even live close to a major US city!).  The alarms would go off and we'd have to climb under our desks until we were told it was safe to come out.  And how exactly was crawling under my desk going to save me in the event of a nuclear attack??

5.  I did my sixth grade project on Czechoslovakia--now it doesn't exist.  Enough said. :)

6.  I was still buying albums in 1990--I was a teenage vinyl purist, not wanting to make the transition that, of course, I eventually made.  A few years ago, my mom gave me some albums that belonged to my late father.  My daughter, Addy (at the time 3 years old), gasped when she saw them and said "that's the biggest DVD I've ever seen!!"  Mathias, my youngest, won't even know what a CD is, let alone albums and cassettes.  Last week my mom gave me her old stereo and we played a few of the albums for the sake of novelty.  It was cute watching them marvel at the "old technology".

7.  I didn't get my first contract cell phone until 2007--Texting?  Jeff and I couldn't even figure out why anyone would want to text.  Now we're two of the biggest text addicts out there!  Prior to '07, we shared a prepaid cell phone that we each respectively used for emergencies when either of us went out alone.  Now we don't even have a landline phone (Mathias surely won't be able to relate to landline phones in the home) and both Nathan and Addy both have their own cell phone.

8.  I was left home alone--what's a latchkey kid?  I was a latchkey kid.  At roughly Addy's age, I was left home alone before my parents got home from work.  There would be a casserole in the fridge with instructions on how to cook it so dinner would be ready when they got home.  All summer long, I was in the house until they returned.  There was no daycare....no babysitters.  I was expected to be responsible, to behave myself and to not get into any mischief.  That happened....most of the time :)

9.  Seatbelts and car seats weren't always required by law--I can actually remember when New York State enacted the seat belt law.  I can remember my parents being upset that the government was telling them what to do with their life in their car.  They would relish the trips to Vermont we'd take to visit relatives because as soon as we crossed the border--off came the seatbelts.  My dad used to let me sit on his lap and steer the car when I was maybe 5 or 6 years old!

10.  Smoking was allowed in restaurants and outside of schools--my entire family was full of smokers (in fact, I'm the only one who hasn't ever even tried it) and we often dined in the smoking section.  When I was in high school, the courtyard was the place to be if you were a smoker.  School didn't care if the students were smoking, it was their right to do so.  If I wanted to cut across the courtyard to get from one building to the other, it was through a thick cloud of smoke from all the kids huddled by the doors--cigarette in hand--thinking they were sooo cool. (trust me, they weren't)

11.  I used to fill up my very first car for $10!!!!--In 1999, it was quite common to see gas prices at 98 cents a gallon!!  Think we'll ever get there again?  Yeah, probably not :)

What do you remember?