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?
Mom yelling from the front stoops: hilarious. PA-TREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-SSSSSSHHHHAAAAAA!!!!! SUPPPPPPPPPER!!!!
Not Dinner. Supper.
I must have blocked that out.
Yeah, because if you couldn't hear Mom, you were outside your mom-approved neighborhood play zone.
Once... only once... I was too far out and didn't hear Mom for quite awhile. When I finally did, Mom had already been calling and calling for so long, she was in tears
Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.
Amazing- all mine have been mentioned already so I'll go with...
Powder blue porthole T-Bird (even my 5 year old self knew that was b****in' (an innocuous word for really good thing that gave our mothers apoplexy, the vapors and caused them to suggest a trip to the confessional might be in order.
Selling my Catholic Christmas seals door-to-door without getting Mom's permission. Our almost 100% Jewish neighbors were so kind and most bought them. I won two plastic Pietà statues.
Going to the premiere of Mary Poppins at Graumans Chinese Theater for my 9th birthday.
Seeing the fire from the distant Watts Riots from the back patio of a hillside home.
Morticia Addams hair. I wanted that hair so bad.
Air Raid Sirens on one Friday per month at 10am
1974 and 1979 gas shortages. Was allowed to leave work to get gas when the line was less than a block long.
My first skateboard (basically a wooden plank with roller-skate wheels).
The first "Stingray" bicycles.
1965 Mustang (love at first sight)
1971 Sylmar Earthquake
Black ankle boots with little zippers on the sides.
"granny gowns"
Laugh-In
Watching John Dean testify with his horn-rimmed glasses at the Watergate hearings
Most homes had one B&W TV, one rotary phone, families had one car-some families didn't have a car. Some families didn't have a telephone either so they would give a neighbor's phone no. for an emergency-people were more helpful back then.
Playing in the sprinkler during summer.
Only taking a bath once a week-eeeeeppps!
Only washing your hair once a week-eeeeewwwwwww!
Skinny Dip cologne
White nail polish & lipstick
Skirts so short you literally could not bend over
As to events:
Cuban Missle crisis
Kennedy Killed-school let out early that day & we all got the following Monday off for the funeral-remember watching that & can still visualize the riderless horse.
Chicago Democratic convention
Kent State, and
(be still, my heart) Woodstock
I wore a black armband to school the day Janis Joplin died.
As to 911, I didn't know a thing about it until that evening. I had worked the night before & slept all day. When I got to work that evening, that's all anybody was talking about. The AM shift said all the bigwigs cleared out around 1PM that day & their parting words to the nurses was that if "anything happens here, you know you are all required to report back to the hospital"-imagine that:)
As to nursing, I went to school in the 80's & I was a little older:
Glass IV bottles
Checking diabetic's urine-our hospital got blood glucometers toward the end of my first year
Cloth isolation gowns
Metal bedpans, urinals & bath basins
Calculating IV drip rates
Instructors making you clean up poop with your bare hands "so you don't offend the pt."
Bulk bottles of pills in the med room-where you set up your meds
I remember when we were the only house on the road who had a telephone-calling another country was not easy and you had to book a call
I remember we had a day off school when the first man walked on the moon!
I remember riding my bike all the time and playing out all summer
I remember when air travel was a luxury
I remember being slapped and told it was for my own good
Time out was in my room with nothing including no food!
My favorite TV shows included the A team, Starsky and Hutch, Kojak,
I remember my mother crossing the road so she didn't have to speak to a neighbor who had cancer! I remember feeling disappointed in her and vowed never to avoid a sick person
I remember being frightened of the police but knew I could go to them in an emergency
I remember being frightened of the Soviet Union and thinking the world was going to come to an end any moment
I remember growing up in the UK and there were lots of bombings-we were taught to report suspicious packages
I remember 9/11 when the world seemed to stop turning
I remember laughing a lot!
I remember horrible toilet paper, nasty cold remedies, splinters
David Cassidy or Donny Osmond or Michael Jackson! Such choices
Chopper Bikes
Wax lips I can still remember the smell
Charlie Brown
Bay City Rollers in the UK
Princess Diane the saga's and then the horrific accident! The rumors around it are called conspiracy theories. For my 10 cents I firmly believe and will do until I die that she was killed
Being able to ride in the back of my dad's pickup truck with the neighbor kids.
Your parents would smack you at the supermarket for being fresh, and nobody thought anything of it.
Huey Lewis and the News.
Having my aunt come over and tease up my hair and put four different colors of eyeshadow on my eyelids.
Being terrified of nuclear war with the Russians.
Chernobyl.
I came home from school when I was 8, let myself in, no babysitter. Cooked myself a snack and watched tv.
Getting an Astro Pop at the ball park after softball games.
My grandparents both worked at the state mental hospital.
Good Times, Fame, Alice, Taxi, WKRP in Cincinatti.
Tight rolling my stone washed jeans and wearing those big fluffy socks with them. L.A. Gear sneakers. Vuarnet- who remembers Vuarnet shirts? Chic jeans?
Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
Tight rolling my stone washed jeans and wearing those big fluffy socks with them. L.A. Gear sneakers. Vuarnet- who remembers Vuarnet shirts? Chic jeans?
I had three pairs of LA Gear shoes in the late 1980s. I remember the stone-washed jeans, slouch socks, Jordache, Chic, Calvin Klein, and Sassoon Jeans.
Remember carbon copy paper anyone? It was frequently used at my elementary school. I do remember record players during "Library" at school. I grew up outside and read lots of books.
Mmmmmm.......the smell of the purple ink......old school huffing!!!
Hygiene Queen
2,232 Posts
Yeah, because if you couldn't hear Mom, you were outside your mom-approved neighborhood play zone.
Once... only once... I was too far out and didn't hear Mom for quite awhile. When I finally did, Mom had already been calling and calling for so long, she was in tears
Then I got my butt whooped