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This is a "just for fun" trip down Memory Lane, and was prompted by another thread on another forum. I'll start, and the following refers what I personally experienced in the lower middle class communities I lived in during the 1960's. (I do realize that not everyone will have had the same experience I did!)
1. Showers and kids' birthday parties were inexpensive and very simple. Children's birthday parties consisted of just cake and ice cream and games of the"Pin the Tail on the Donkey" variety, and there were no goodie bags.(!) Showers also had just cake and coffee for refreshments, and games were those like cutting a ribbon to guess the girth of the mom-to-be or memory-type games that required no expenditure whatsoever. These parties were personal and fun and not meant to impress anyone.
2. Company Christmas parties were fairly extravagant (and, yes, it was Christmas parties back then and not holiday parties), and almost everyone received a Christmas bonus. (When I was a teen, even the owners of the small Mom and Pop sub shop where I worked hosted a Christmas party for their employees, and even us teenage part-timers received a $10.00 bonus, which was about six times our hourly wage back then, and it was very much appreciated.)
3. Babysitting was done by girls as young as 11 years old (and no, none of us had American Red Cross certification). Standard rate in my area in the mid-to-late 1960's was 50 cents an hour.
4. A child hardly ever heard the "f-bomb" in public -- I personally never heard that word until I was in my mid-teens -- and most mid-60's TV sit-coms did not even hint at the act of sexual intercourse. (In 1968, "Romeo and Juliet" was almost scandalous because Olivia Hussey very briefly flashed her breasts and there was about a five-second view of Leonard Whiting's bare bottom. I saw it with my 10th grade English class, but many of my classmates' parents refused to give permission for their children to see it.)
5. High school students at least pretended to respect their teachers; and no one I knew worried about, or even thought about, school safety except during fire drills. Female teachers wore skirts, and male teachers wore suits.
What else can you add from your own personal experience?
Last edited by katharsis; 06-19-2019 at 07:41 AM..
All my dogs lived their entire lives outside, free to roam wherever their heart and hormones took them, and their diet was just table scraps, no dog food.
All my dogs lived their entire lives outside, free to roam wherever their heart and hormones took them, and their diet was just table scraps, no dog food.
Yes, and none of the dogs I knew had dental treatments, either!
Here we are conversing over the internet with our computers at hand.
While I am going this, I have been sending emails and files to a gallery curator who is accepting some of my work for an upcoming exhibition. I also activited my credit card awards for next month.
Yesterday, my wife spent the afternoon on the computer preparing some digital artwork for juried show at another gallery. I worked on downloading and printing out forms to activate a small annuity.
In a few minutes we will leave for an appointment. Of course we will check the address online and then follow Google maps when we drive.
Duck and cover. I don't think these last couple of generations understand the fear that could generate in young children. That's why the first version of Red Dawn did so well. The Russians and Cubans taking over the U.S. was a real life threat. There was no similar fear to use in the remake.
We had bikes that we road miles from home. Not hunched over and racing but sitting upright and taking in the sights. No funky jerseys no helmets no holding up traffic we just pulled over to let cars pass. We played in open fields and fruit groves all afternoon.
Speaking of play, we had recess twice a day at school. Plus after lunch. There was none of this home schooling boondoggle. We had educated teachers and were all on the same page scholastically. We had physical education, once a week music, and art. We wrote book reports on paper and presented to the class. We played “thumbs up “ to break the seriousness every so often. Good times really.
It's gone from bad to worse -- but then every generation has said that.
I think the worst thing that has happened is that we have come to think and believe that interdependence is as bad as dependence, and, consequently, we've become a very lonely and isolated people. Independent people. And I think it's literally tragic.
On a MUCH lighter note LOL: I and my ex-husband had the first Apple when it came out (wish I had it now -- it's worth a small fortune), and I've never been without a computer since then. But I didn't have internet until 1994 (it really wasn't available to the general public until about then). I wish I had had it in HS and college. Would have been doing research papers A LOT easier. I can't believe what I can research on a computer -- all that is available on Internet. It's still a miracle to me. //// I have a neighbor who got his doctorate in Theoretical Mathematics in the early 80s. His university didn't have internet (at least not for general use) but it did have a mainframe and computers with word processing capability. And it is really funny to hear him laugh about how difficult it was 'back then' to do his thesis on a word processor -- every equation was so very difficult and took so much time.
Here we are conversing over the internet with our computers at hand.
While I am going this, I have been sending emails and files to a gallery curator who is accepting some of my work for an upcoming exhibition. I also activited my credit card awards for next month.
Yesterday, my wife spent the afternoon on the computer preparing some digital artwork for juried show at another gallery. I worked on downloading and printing out forms to activate a small annuity.
In a few minutes we will leave for an appointment. Of course we will check the address online and then follow Google maps when we drive.
Yes, and cellphones!! It seems that everyone now has at least a cellphone if not a Smartphone!
Yes, and none of the dogs I knew had dental treatments, either!
...and if the dog bit someone, dad took it out back and shot it. There were no "misunderstood" breeds like pitbulls that could get away with mauling a kid and not be put down.
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