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?
My dad drank Schlitz beer, we had black and white TV, 6 TV channels, no cable yet, had a corded rotary phone attached to the wall, cartoons only on Saturday mornings, used my brother's Atari game system complete with Asteroids, Space Invaders and Pong, went to drive-in movies, went on Sunday drives, didn't have a car booster seat, listened to my other brother's 8-track tapes and then his cassette tapes, then my sister's albums, in my school there weren't copiers, but mimeograph machines, getting a microwave was a big deal.
As a teenager:
No computer, no internet, no cell phones, pay phones were still around, MTV was new, cable was new, satellite TV was new (we got a gigantic dish on our house that the neighbors loved), dot matrix printers, still used a typewriter
We were one of those families with one of the first B&W TVs. I watched the Mickey Mouse show every afternoon while my mother made supper, calling her in all the time to read me the words on the screen because I didn't learn to read that well until I was about 5.
We also had one of the first Volkswagens in our state in 1956, rarer than Teslas are now. It came with a subscription to "Small World" magazine where you could read about other people's VWs. The convention was to flash your lights when you saw another one!
When I wanted to call my grandmother on the phone, I picked it up and told the operator I wanted to talk to my G'anny. She always knew who that was. We had 3-digit numbers-- Pop and G'anny's was 980, ours was 101, and our neighbors' was 103 (we lived at #101 on our street, and they were at #103).
When dial telephones came in I made the first call from our house, to PI(for Pilgrim)6-0980 to talk to G'anny. Area codes and the end of named "exchanges" didn't come in for years.
In summer I'd get up in the morning, put on my bathing suit, and go to the beach. Home for lunch, return to beach. Home for supper when my mother rang the old school bell out the back door, then up the hill to play with the summer people's kids until I heard the bell again.
The Beatles came when I was in what was then called junior high. I thought they were kinda dumb, but I got over that in a hurry. JFK was killed that year.
Then there was high school, MLK, RFK, and the beginnings of Vietnam. Tear gas, riot police, long bus trips to DC and NYC for more tear gas and riot police. More Beatles, Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Fugs ... I was going to go to Woodstock but I had to work as the OR wench that weekend, so I missed it.
Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.
My grandmother would pick up hitch-hikers. Never worried about 'stranger danger'.
Toys that didn't do everything for you. Lots of pretending/imagination in playing.
Addiction to books and reading. Spending hours at the library because it was FUN.
Dump-picking. GREAT fun!
Being allowed to canvas the whole town on Halloween, all by ourselves. Not coming home until we could find no more houses w/ outside light on indicating 'no more candy/treats'. (Usually between 9 +10 PM)
Taking frozen wash off the line to thaw and finish drying while draped over the radiators. Mom hired a woman to help with ironing because with four kids and two adults in the household, their was lots of ironing required. Being taught the 'correct' way to iron: collar first, cuffs, sleeves, back of shirt/blouse, then the front. (I don't think I have one single piece of clothing now that requires ironing.)
Never locking the door to our house; only exception being if we went away on a two week camping vacation.
No one using leashes to walk their dogs. Putting the dogs and cats outside unsupervised until they came back and wanted to be let back in. Only vet visit was for rabies shots or 'fixing' female animals so they couldn't have any more litters.
Being allowed to practice driving the big'ol push-button Mercury in the driveway at age 10 and up. If we got new, dark blue, stiff denim blue jeans, we would lay them down on the dirt driveway and run over them repeatedly in an effort to age them a little, soften them up. (It didn't really work, but it sure was fun to drive onto the jeans so they were under the tires and then gun the engine so the car would jerk forward and spin the jeans out from under the tires. The theory was that the friction produced would help in the aging process.....of the jeans.)
Our first cable box was actually attached to the TV by a cord, prior to that there were just 13 stations.
TV shows, Sat am cartoons: RoadRunner, Felix the Cat, WOnderful World of Disney, Emergency, Adam 12, Love American Style, Lassie, Room 222,. Brady Bunch, Partridge Family and on and on....
Walking home from Elementary School for lunch, open campus in HS all 4 years and being able to leave for lunch in the mall next door. Hi beam button on the floor of the car. Drinking age was 18. Race riots in HS. MLK, RFK. John Lennon, the Challenger, the attempt on President Reagan....
Clinical in all whites, not a spot or wrinkle to be found!!! Wearing my nursing cap for clinicals my senior year (and for about a month after I graduated!)
Mom was a nurse and she worked night shift private-duty, complete with white hosiery w/ a girdle, white uniform, white 'Clinics' shoes, and her linen cap required soaking in a thick starch-laden water, shaping to dry and then dampening it again w/ water to iron it, so it kept its shape.
I was born in 1950. I remember a turquoise Studebaker. Kaptain Kangaroo, Gene Autrey, Howdy Doody and Bozo ... All on black and white TV. I remember the long skirts, veils and clicking rosaries in sister (pronounced ss'teh) school.
I remember the day John Kennedy was shot. I watched the first U.S. moon landing on TV. The Ed Sullivan Show. Walt Disney, Bonanza, The Lone Ranger and the original Dragnet, Twilight Zone and Perry Mason.
I remember the Latin Mass and Vatican II. Roe v. Wade. The first Civil Rights bill, the War on Poverty. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, the Urban League and bussing in Boston.
I remember when you couldn't get birth control unless you were married. I remember when New York was the only place you could get a legal abortion. Many doctors in New York were known to be contributing to anti-abortion group in neighboring states. Making hay while the sun shines, so to speak.
I remember vaccines and tb testing in school. I remember when DNR didn't exist and my first code cart that had something like 50 meds in little compartments on the top, intubation, IV solutions and other supplies on shelves underneath. No ACLS back then. ICUs had only been around a few years.
I remember the smell of paraldehyde, given rectally with glass syringes to dt'ing alcoholics on their bellies in four point restraints.Trust me, placing a condom cath on those guys was an adventure. Not to mention the inevitable fever work-up.
Our portable monitors weighed something like 25 pounds and were a little bigger than a milk crate. "Telemetry" outside ICU consisted setting one of these monsters up on a bedside table in the hall with looong cable connecting it to the patient. I remember counting PVCs and titrating the lidocaine with a roller clamp while I counted drops. That was while doing q4hr ippb treatments with mucomyst on 8 or 10 lungers, hanging q4 or 6 hr abx on addicts with cellulitis or endocarditis, giving chemo and hanging blood on the gi bleeder down the hall. We mixed all our own iv's, including chemo, and KCl was standard floor stock. Patient load on 11-7 in acute medicine was 28 - only one nurse on the unit at night - they had two on evenings and days.
I remember when we stopped wearing caps ... And started wearing those horrendous white polyester pantsuits.
I remember watching Sesame Street. So much better than what it is now. Now it just one big long product placement tool.
I remember our first computer. It was a Compaq. We had dial up internet and I remember the modem sound.
In high school in the early 2000s, the social network that everyone was on was MySpace. Remember that monstrosity? People could put whatever wall paper they wanted and set up whatever theme they wanted. Ugh. Some profiles took forever to load because it was laden with so much garbage.
I remember when the iMac was candy colored.
9/11. I was getting dressed when I saw the 2nd plane hit the 2nd tower. I was eating breakfast when the 2nd tower fell. By the time I left for school, the 1st tower also fell. It changed my world, and since then I have come to realize not all is as it seems.
I remember the awe when man walked on the moon, when a transistor radio was a huge luxury to have and when people had party lines for their phone. I remember talking off and running around with my cousins as kids for hours on end with adults around and no one really knowing where we were for sure. I remember the first TV show in color was Bonanza and having a color TV was scandalously decadent. Flying was fun, the food good, people dressed up and seats were large and spacious. If you got in trouble at school the parents automatically sided with the school and expected you to explain your actions and apologize. I am boggled at the thought that my MacBook Air has more computing power than the millions in equipment NASA had when they put a man on the moon. I remember before health insurance when a hospital stay cost about $15.00-$20.00 per day.
brido
27 Posts
I was born in 1982
I was also able to take a note to the convenience store and buy cigarettes for my father. Everyone knew everyone in my neighborhood and trusted me :-)
I used to hand write letters to my favorite celebrities and be CRUSHED when they never responded
Being disciplined by any adult-family or not
TGIF
Playing outside all day long and then racing home before the streetlights came on
I remember going to my pediatrician with bruised legs and scraped knees from playing outside. He was very happy to see a "healthy active child."