I'm a 30-something, and havent experienced much more than the general membership here, I'm sure, but I get the most amazing "stop and think about this for a second...." moments when I consider how much our world has changed over the lives of us all.
For me - I've lived without a cell phone. I was in high school when people who had pagers were considered to be drug dealers. I grew up with Oregon Trail in my teens. Most people didn't have computers at home. The mountain I lived on didn't have cable TV, so we had only 3 channels. Our roads weren't paved, and Saturday afternoons were spent jumping into the river swinging off vines. Call waiting and caller ID were a really big deal, but we didn't get them because they cost more money.
My grandma tells me they didn't have wheelchairs. She was a nurse in her white cap and skirt and tights. She had an alcoholic, abusive husband at a time when that was shameful to even mention. My grandpa tells me no one on his street had a TV. It was a really big deal when someone got one, and everyone whispered about it.
My 90-something patient told me about how so much of healthcare took place at home because you really, really had to be messed up for mom to go get the horses and carriage ready to go to the doctor. She got in big trouble once when she broke her arm falling from a tree.
What have you lived through? What pieces of history stay with you?
I remember when folk subscribed to a 'Book of the Month Club". And you could buy an encyclopedia set a book at a time per week at the local grocery store. I still have my good ole' 'Funk & Wagnalls' (an old TV Laugh-In joke).
I can still sing-song 'e-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-a'. It was the biggest word I knew as a kid that was sung by Jiminey Cricket (?) on MickeyMouse Club after school. I can still recite the 'intro' to the cartoon section (Meeska, Mooseka, Mouseteer....) I remember all the original Mouseketeers, and Jimmy, the host, and Uncle Roy (wearing their 'ears').
General Hospital's Luke Spencer is still on the show - remember when Luke & Laura married on the show?? I think it was rated as the highest watched daytime show at the time.
Someone mentioned the Sears 'Wish Book' catalog; they also has a summer one. One year, Cheryl Tiegs was the cover girl. I bought the bathing suit she modeled from the cover because I had lost a gazillion amount of weight and I was 'skinny' for the first time in my adult life. If Cheryl Tiegs could wear that royal blue one-piece suit, so could I!!! I still have that little size 10 swimsuit - won't throw it away!
Thanks, ixchel, for fun topic! I'm archaic . . . well past the Crusty Old Bat stage and into the Cantankerous "I don't give a crap" Batty stage. Some of my earliest memories, or some of my "firsts":
Medical
Wanting to visit my best friend when in 6th grade who was in the Harry-Anna Crippled Children's Home in Umatilla, FL, in an iron lung. She was in the hospital for a year and discharged with braces and a permanent limp. I was not allowed to visit her.
I don't remember, but I remained in the hospital after birth for four months due to pertussis.
Only town physician making home visits. I remember seeing him once when I was sick at home and then being taken to the hospital.
My brother had tonsillectomy in his office. I don't know how I escaped with my tonsils as I'm told it was the "in" procedure during that time.
PoliticsMy father returning home from Japan (post reconstruction?) with a pair of Japanese shoes for my brother and me and a Japanese doll for me.
Cold War in early '60s, bomb shelters, Bay-of-Pigs, and building of Berlin Wall.
Being scared ****less after reading Pat Frank's book, Alas, Babylon, especially since he lived in the same county as I and wrote the book about the area. No one we knew could afford to build bomb shelters, so we were all doomed.
Fashion
Shirley Temple perms as a small child; pixie haircuts as a teen
Cheerleading skirts almost down to the ankles and weighing a ******* ton
Oxfords
Poodle skirts
My first bikini (which my mom, of all people, bought me for my honeymoon)
Entertainment
Not having a TV, then when we got it, Winky Dink, Howdy Doody and Ed Sullivan
Watching my first show in color (Bonanza . . . I remember because I wanted to see the fire burn the paper at the opening) at my rich friend's house.
"Gone with the Wind" in black and white in the theater where smokers were on the right and nonsmokers on the left (My dad always tried to grab aisle seats!); "Old Yeller"; "African Queen" (ugh, I still remember those leeches!); and my first and last Elvis Presley movie, "Follow that Dream". Oh, and "Where the Boys Are", a big hit in FL . . . and rather sinful since it included a situation involving an unmarried pregnant teen.
Buying our first computer in 1989 and having my ten-year old son teach me how to use it; click a page to dl and going away for about ten minutes while it dl'd; free internet line offered through some club in our town which was ALWAYS busy!
Riding my horse in the Ocala National Park and finding a moonshine still (unguarded, fortunately).
Transportation
Believe it or not . . . NOT horse and buggy:).
All cars/trucks were manual shifts . . . and that's all I've ever owned. (I like to hit the gas pedal and know the car's going to build up speed fast.)
Dimmer on the floor board; a button on some car I drove that you pressed if the car started to stall; running boards on cars
Watching the airplane propeller and wondering when it was going to fall off.
Living
Going to school with no AC and having sweat drip off my nose onto my papers as well as into my eyes and having to blow gnats out of my eyes, constantly! (Everyone in FL before AC had the "gnat blow".)
First phone . . . answered by an operator! Later, we had "party lines" that consisted of only four digits and you could listen into what your neighbors were up to.
Milk delivered in bottles to the house.
Ah, well, enough reminiscing . . . gotta go pop a frozen dinner into the microwave and then dl some movies to convert to my iPhone codec.
Thanks, ixchel, for fun topic! I'm archaic . . . well past the Crusty Old Bat stage and into the Cantankerous "I don't give a crap" Batty stage. Some of my earliest memories, or some of my "firsts":
Medical
Wanting to visit my best friend when in 6th grade who was in the Harry-Anna Crippled Children's Home in Umatilla, FL, in an iron lung. She was in the hospital for a year and discharged with braces and a permanent limp. I was not allowed to visit her.
I don't remember, but I remained in the hospital after birth for four months due to pertussis.
Only town physician making home visits. I remember seeing him once when I was sick at home and then being taken to the hospital.
My brother had tonsillectomy in his office. I don't know how I escaped with my tonsils as I'm told it was the "in" procedure during that time.
PoliticsMy father returning home from Japan (post reconstruction?) with a pair of Japanese shoes for my brother and me and a Japanese doll for me.
Cold War in early '60s, bomb shelters, Bay-of-Pigs, and building of Berlin Wall.
Being scared ****less after reading Pat Frank's book, Alas, Babylon, especially since he lived in the same county as I and wrote the book about the area. No one we knew could afford to build bomb shelters, so we were all doomed.
Fashion
Shirley Temple perms as a small child; pixie haircuts as a teen
Cheerleading skirts almost down to the ankles and weighing a ******* ton
Oxfords
Poodle skirts
My first bikini (which my mom, of all people, bought me for my honeymoon)
Entertainment
Not having a TV, then when we got it, Winky Dink, Howdy Doody and Ed Sullivan
Watching my first show in color (Bonanza . . . I remember because I wanted to see the fire burn the paper at the opening) at my rich friend's house.
"Gone with the Wind" in black and white in the theater where smokers were on the right and nonsmokers on the left (My dad always tried to grab aisle seats!); "Old Yeller"; "African Queen" (ugh, I still remember those leeches!); and my first and last Elvis Presley movie, "Follow that Dream". Oh, and "Where the Boys Are", a big hit in FL . . . and rather sinful since it included a situation involving an unmarried pregnant teen.
Buying our first computer in 1989 and having my ten-year old son teach me how to use it; click a page to dl and going away for about ten minutes while it dl'd; free internet line offered through some club in our town which was ALWAYS busy!
Riding my horse in the Ocala National Park and finding a moonshine still (unguarded, fortunately).
Transportation
Believe it or not . . . NOT horse and buggy:).
All cars/trucks were manual shifts . . . and that's all I've ever owned. (I like to hit the gas pedal and know the car's going to build up speed fast.)
Dimmer on the floor board; a button on some car I drove that you pressed if the car started to stall; running boards on cars
Watching the airplane propeller and wondering when it was going to fall off.
Living
Going to school with no AC and having sweat drip off my nose onto my papers as well as into my eyes and having to blow gnats out of my eyes, constantly! (Everyone in FL before AC had the "gnat blow".)
First phone . . . answered by an operator! Later, we had "party lines" that consisted of only four digits and you could listen into what your neighbors were up to.
Milk delivered in bottles to the house.
Ah, well, enough reminiscing . . . gotta go pop a frozen dinner into the microwave and then dl some movies to convert to my iPhone codec.
Instead of "archaic", we'll go with "oldie but goodie". 😂 I love your post!
Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.
FLAlleyCat--
Yup, I remember our small town doc doing home visits! He did not believe in removing tonsils, which I was always so thankful about!
And my sister had a poodle skirt; I was envious.
Ducking under the school desk during the "Bomb Drill" Honest to Pete, my heart pounded whenever a plane flew overhead, I was so afraid we were about to be bombed!
We also had home delivery of milk (in bottles). My parents hogged the cream for their coffee.
My grandmother took me to the theater to see BYE BYE BIRDIE and bought me the sound-track album. Two other friends and I would act it out (especially the scene where the mayor's wife fainted and her knees splayed apart. We thought that was hysterical!) and sing all the songs. In fact, to this very day I am able to sing every word to every song : "Hiya Hugo, Hiya stupid, whatchya wanna go get pinned for?"
Got a severe sunburn at 4, and wouldn't drink: ended up in the hospital for dehydration. They put an IV in my right arm, wrapped with an arm board to immobilize it, and I could not suck my thumb, which upset me a lot because the left thumb just didn't do it for comforting myself. I remember my nurse asking me what flavor each thumb was and I told her the left thumb tasted like sawdust and the right thumb tasted like chocolate.
I remember loving my encyclopedias and my Atlas that my Dad bought for my 8th birthday. If I wasn't outside playing I was at the library checking out books on the weekends.
I remember the year Cabbage Patch kids came out and parents were fighting over them in the stores.
Movies that cost 2.00, and going to the drive in. My dad hid me in the car so we could all watch The Blues Brothers at the Drive In. Do they even have Drive In's anymore??
I remember loving my encyclopedias and my Atlas that my Dad bought for my 8th birthday. If I wasn't outside playing I was at the library checking out books on the weekends.
I remember the year Cabbage Patch kids came out and parents were fighting over them in the stores.
Movies that cost 2.00, and going to the drive in. My dad hid me in the car so we could all watch The Blues Brothers at the Drive In. Do they even have Drive In's anymore??
There is a drive in within a 45 mike radius where I live.
I remember going to the drive-in to watch ET and The Last Starfighter.
I believe seasonal drive ins have a place in society.
The After School Specials with the social message of the week...some of those terrified me! Followed up years later by the fried egg add...This is your brain, this is your brain on drugs. Any questions?
School House Rocks. To this day I can recite the Preamble as long as I sing it..."we the people..." and I'm Just a Bill, yes I'm only a Bill.
iPink, BSN, RN
1,414 Posts
Yup, Gore vs Bush.