How to tell if you're old...

You know you are getting old when with each day one realizes they are one step closer to the grave, and all of your loved ones die off.

Needhelpwithmom - I have way too many stereoscopes with hundreds of slides from all around the world. The Viewmasters are relatively new-fangled. I guess just using that word dates me!

Yep! Drinking age was 18! We had cocktails with dinner before our senior prom! Shhhhh...don’t tell parents! Hahaha 🤣

Boyfriends drove dates to the prom.

No limousine service back then for prom dates.

Parents pay for limousines today because they know otherwise their kids will be drinking just like they did when they were young!

No car seats for babies! My mom admitted to putting us in a box and placed it on the floor to protect us from rolling around the car!

I was in a box when she hung clothes on the line too! I said, “Mom, you put me in a box?” Her response was, “You were perfectly happy in your little box!” LOL

They did what they had to do, I suppose.

As she said, “There were fewer cars on the roads back then.” True, but I am glad we had car seats for our kids.

Yes, how did we survive?

Geaton,

Your BB gun story reminds me of an incident at my daughter’s school when she was young.

A little boy in my daughter’s class accidentally brought a pocket knife to school. His grandfather was teaching him to whittle with it.

Oh my gosh! His mom forgot to take it out of his pocket.

The knife fell out of his pocket at school and all h*ll broke loose.

A note was sent home to parents saying that a ‘weapon’ was found at school!

The teacher punished the young boy.

His parents were contacted saying that the school administration was discussing whether or not he could return to school.

The whole situation got out of hand.

He was learning a woodworking skill from his grandfather.

The pocket knife was a birthday present from his grandfather.

The kid was a good student, wasn’t violent and had no history of behavior issues.

His parents were so mortified they took him out of the private school and placed him in another school.

Times are different! BB guns and whittling were not considered dangerous years ago.

Now, due to increased violence, precautions are taken seriously to protect children, as they should be.

I did feel badly for the kid in my daughter’s class because he was completely innocent.

Violence wasn’t on your brother’s mind with his BB gun, nor this kid’s mind.

I remember my brothers playing with cap guns. They didn’t have a BB gun.

Remember the bows and arrows? Dart guns? Weren’t there accidents where kids went blind? I guess that is why Nerf was introduced.

We had a new toilet put in yesterday. We chose the high one. We know we're old. At 78 and 80 I guess it's time we do. I have to say, I love it!

My hubs is 63 and grew up in MN. He tells me how he took his BB gun on the bus to school for show and tell. Back then the drinking age was 18 and as a HS senior he and his buddies would drive to a burger joint at lunch, share a pitcher of beer, then drive back for class.

I'm 61 and grew up in northern NJ in what is now a bedroom suburb of NYC. As a HS senior my biology teacher was meeting some of his female pupils at bars at night. At my 20th reunion, I found out my 8th grade teacher was married to one of my classmates...creepy!! How did we all ever survive?!

Speaking of schools, I was always jealous that when my Dad was going to school he rode his horse, all 12 years. This was back in the late 1920's to 1930's in a country school in the mid-west.

Dad use to brag that he dated all the girls in his senior class. Later I found out there were only two girls in that class back then :)

You must have been a town kid Golden, country kids carried their lunches (and still do). My sister actually began school in a one room schoolhouse, then later went to the slightly larger school in our little village. I was bused to 1st grade in the brand new central school, of course in order to be central it was in the middle of nowhere so we all carried lunchboxes.

Golden and MS,

MS, yes very cool metal lunch boxes. I loved mine!

Geeeeeeez, we would have NEVER have been allowed to leave campus.

Catholic school had many restrictions.

We even had separate playgrounds, one for girls and one for boys.

The dress code was strictly enforced. In high school the nuns made us kneel. Our skirts had to touch the floor, otherwise it was considered too short.

Some of us rolled up our skirts and unrolled them in front of the nuns.

I had forgotten about the glass liner in the thermos. Now that I'm thinking about it, I do recall one getting broken at my childhood home and looking into the top of it after it broke. It must have been something my dad took back and forth to work. I think I had an early generation of an unbreakable thermos to take back and forth to school on days I didn't buy the school lunch, but the lunch box that it coordinated with was the older style metal.

Golden, I remember maybe in 1st or 2nd grade we could walk home for lunch if we wanted to. Our lunch break was an hour - split between 30 min of eating time and 30 min of outdoor recess. Those going home just took the whole hour to allow for time to walk home, eat, and walk back. One day, due to a schedule change at school, I didn't leave on time and my mother walked up to the school and found me on the playground with everyone else! It was an honest mistake on my part and I can still see the look on my mom's face and the utter confusion as to why I never had arrived home for lunch that day. I have a faint memory of the school principal laughing at me and feeling very hurt since he was the one who had changed the daily schedule!

Golden,

That’s interesting! Going home for lunch? Wow!

I did have really cool lunch boxes that are collectibles now! Too bad I don’t still have them.

I just remembered something funny. Back then if the thermos was dropped, the inside shattered into a million tiny pieces!

My mom warned me to NEVER drop it. Well, I was a kid, it was an accident. I dropped it and boy was I scared to go home and tell my mom.

She had to purchase a new thermos for me. I have no idea what they were made of back then. Nowadays they are unbreakable.

A real bell? That’s awesome!

We had the annoying electrical type of bell.

I love real bells, bells that ring out in choirs, bell towers that ring for churches are simply beautiful sounding to me.

Some people use tiny bells on their cats collars. I never did that.

I even chose wedding bells for my wedding cake topper. I never liked those ‘bride and groom’ toppers.

I love bells at Christmas time. I have always purchased bells for making decorations for the holiday season.

All this talk about school lunches shows I MUST be old - there were no school lunches. We walked or cycled home for lunch and back to school afterwards. I remember tomato vegetable soup with pasta letters in it and a sandwich.

At the end of recess the presiding teacher stood on the school stairs and rang the old fashioned call bell to signal us to come in. It was a metal 1/2 sphere with a part sticking up that you had to hit for the clapper to strike the bell. They used to have them on counters in stores by the cash registers so you could let the cashiers know you needed attention. Ding, ding, ding!

Anyone remember mello roll ice cream, and the five and dime store?

In Math we worked out logarithms by log tables in our very well used and somewhat tattered log books, which were loaned out each term to those who needed them. I think they helped students to understand logs better than using calculators do.

Peanut butter and Mayo came in glass jars.

You needed a church key to open soda cans.

There was one flavor of potato chips.

S&W green stamps. Or did I already read that one somewhere?

Slide rulers were our calculators.

Tabu perfume.

Makes me ill.

Robinson's
May Co.

Helm's Bakery truck

MS,

They even have vending machines in schools now. We would have never had vending machines at school.

I like the muffin tin cash register! That’s cute.

They were very strict at my school. We had ‘silent’ lunch. No talking was allowed during lunch.

Absolutely no wasting of food or we were punished. No recess.

Sometimes my dog would get out and follow me to school. Most of the time he waited by my bicycle. Once in awhile he followed me to my classroom.

I got detention for that! Hahaha 🤣 I was foolish enough to try and say that he wasn’t my dog.

I was busted. The nun asked me, “Why is he curled up by your desk?”

Then the neighbor’s dog followed me. I told her, “Sister, it is not my dog!” She looked at me and said, “You tried that before and it didn’t work. Haven’t you learned your lesson?” I got detention again!

They never hesitated to smack us with a ruler. I had the same nuns that taught my mom! Hahaha...my mom was a perfectionist, even as a child so I heard all about her straight A report card, blah, blah, blah...from the nuns. It was kind of cool to hear about my mom as a kid though.

I adored chorus. The chorus teacher was my favorite nun. She taught us great harmonies, fantastic singing lessons. It was fun!

NHWM - they checked the milk cartons? Good grief! That said, I don't think food/eating should involve fear of punishment. That's a shame, but I guess they were trying to teach "waste not, want not."

I went to public school, so I guess no one cared if we ate it or not! In those days, they still served things like succotash as a side. I can remember watching the dish lady rinsing tray after tray of succotash down the disposal at the elementary school. In general, the school food was good. Pizza day was the best!!

The "cash register" was literally a muffin tin that kept the coins sorted so they could make change when needed. Far as I know, most schools are electronic now and kids pay with a card swipe.

MS,

You were brave eating the school lunches! LOL

I brought my lunch. Every now and then I bought lunch if my mom was out of bread for a sandwich.

I hated buying lunch. The nuns had plate check!

The nuns would shake the milk cartons to see if kids stuffed food in the milk cartons.

We were supposed to eat every bite.

The food was gross. I would get punished for not eating it.

NHWM- My parents would get half dollar coins at the bank so that I could use them for lunch money at school. That way, I'd only have one coin to keep track of! I felt I was pretty responsible, but they told me it was better this way. I remember a classmate would bring a regular paper dollar for her lunch (wow!!). I wanted to do the same thing, but my parents told me I'd get "too much change" from that. (By the way, I think school lunches are about $3.00 per day currently).

We had an AJ's Bayless grocery store in our state - not sure if it was anywhere else though.

"Mysteryshopper,"

Yes, Montgomery Wards how could I forget (that tells you I'm old) - it was at a nearby mall along with Sears. Woolworths.

"Sendhelp," - Wow, I forgot about Bullocks too.

"NHWM," - My best friend lived behind me and we both had the same pair of white platforms.

Silver dollars and half dollars.

Kerosene lamps for when power went out.

My parents had a gas powered refrigerator.

Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans in 1965. I was 10. We were out of power for weeks.

We used kerosene lamps and kept milk and eggs for our neighbors in our gas refrigerator!

Remember the aluminum Christmas trees?

Did anyone tie clover flowers together to make necklaces? I did.

I even sewed acorns together with a sturdy needle and strong thread to make necklaces.

Bullocks

Fedco

Sears (now closed in my area).

NDI,

I had platform shoes too.

Woolworth's and/or Montgomery Wards.

Yellowfront and Thrifty

Send, Filene's and Woolworth's.

Age yourself in the name of a store....
Woolworths

...then break the darn mirror!

Wait a minute that sounds like something I've heard in a song!

When the mirror tells us we're older....

Does anyone remember the test for the better mirrors? Put the edge of your thumbnail up against the glass, it should measure a space of over 1/4 inch between your nail and the image reflecting back. Maybe mirrors are not made that well anymore?

If it is a cheaper mirror, maybe you will look older?

"earlybird,"

It means "Rolling On the Floor Laughing" - the problem when I use it is I usually type "ROLF" almost as if a dog was barking.

So a couple weeks ago I was texting my cousin and said "ROLF" and she asked "what does ROLF mean?" and I just burst out laughing as we had been talking about her cats and my dog so it just came out that way. Now, I have to s l o w l y and methodically type it R O F L!

If you still read books in hard or soft cover. Loving my Kindle!