I wish I had enough true credentials to start this thread.
Granted, I'm only 26, but tonight, I had an experience that not only grounded me,
but made me question the very nature of my own existence.
When I was driving my car earlier, my daughter (6 years old) answered the phone to my wife's sister.
She had a fully fledged conversation, and then hung up, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

This got me thinking, when I was growing up, there were no such things as cell phones (mobile phones).
Which got me to thinking, when I, or anyone of my generation reached a certain age we could say,
without any bullshit,
that,
"when I was growing up, we didn't have those things".
Although true, does this turn me/us into the same generation
as the older people we mock now who never had internets/webs or even tv's.

This leads me to my point, what the hell are we going to have in the near future that will
dwarf my 6 year old daughters perspective on "modern" technology?
After all, when i was born, 1983, cell (mobile) phones were fantasy.
For the older fazer's what has amazed you growing up, and what did you think you would never see? 

Back in my day...

we didn't have internet so i just said shit to myself.
naked. 

where is my freaking hover car???????/// 

Though seriously baba,
what did you do with the time that you now spend on fazed? 

This thread and the Saddening Realizations thread capture the zeitgeist. We feel our age. We thought something cool should have happened, because it's the future god damnit and we're still getting old. 

ladyalthea said:

where is my freaking hover car???????///

Those don't reach the mainstream until just before 2015, sorry. 

what did you do with the time that you now spend on fazed?

i used to watch a lot of tv. 

Back in my day, we watched Land Before Time on VHS.
There wasn't Land Before Time 11. 

I remember having those Land Before Time puppets from Pizza Hut.
Ahh, the good 'ol days 

Back in my day...

We roamed the neighborhood with out a care in the world.
Movies were 50 cent at the matinee and it took less than $1.00 to fill up the tank on the go-kart to get us there.
We didn't have drive by's and gangs wandering around(or catholic priests giving out candy)

We left the house at noon and usually didn't come home until midnight in the summer.

Now, my kids won't play outside. They have seen 3 drive by shootings in person in the last 3 years.
They each know a child their age that has been killed and can point out the crack house and meth lab to you in our old neighborhood.

I guess you never can go back. 

Yyz said:

We roamed the neighborhood with out a care in the world.

We left the house at noon and usually didn't come home until midnight in the summer.

I guess you never can go back.

this 

How old are you Yyz? 

I used to jerk off with the help of magazines 

38.
39 in March. St Patty's Day! 

I've taken this from a larger more extensive list
of what it was to grow up in my home town in the 90's.
At the start of the 90's Iwas 7. So this all holds up.

Throwing a Tyre over a lamp post and trying to get it off again.

The teenage mutant hero turtles

Watching night rider and the A team on a Saturday afternoon.

L.A Gear lights.

Nike air max, which you wore into the ground

Saying its a free country to everyone

Happy hardcore music.

Adidas 3 striped tracksuits.

Knowing someone with the six striped market tracksuits.

Saying the Adidas poem, After Dinner I Did A Shit

And then doing it back ways, Soon After Dessert I Did Another

Getting grounded and goin up stairs to play the recorder with the door open so your mom would let u out again. 

Luke E Pierre said:

I used to jerk off with the help of magazines

Whoa. That is old school. 

At the start of the 90's Iwas 7

Damn. I graduated high school in '89. 

I can't take a shit without playing on my cell phone. That's where most of my creativity comes from. 

I'm turning 37 today. 

F nk Dr Spok said:

I can't take a shit without playing on my cell phone. That's where most of my creativity comes from.

tetris? 

My wife and I like to watch commercials and ask where the fuck were those toys we were growing up. 

(bear in mind that im only 23)

we where little shits growing up, but it still seems like things have really gone downhill and then some.
for all the petty hoodrat crap we got up to, other than the odd scrap, violence was never even thought of.

i found out last year a (younger) guy i used to hang around with ended up killing someone with a piece scaffolding. 

ben m g said:

tetris?

Facebook, Sudoku 

wittyname said:

My wife and I like to watch commercials and ask where the fuck were those toys we were growing up.

Yes!
I look at all those laser toys on the market now and think to myself,
"you fat pieces of shit modern kids, not only are you all fat from not running about and shit,
but you don't appreciate what a problem it was to go and play (and have your parent pay) for lasertag!" 

Back in my day I was young and the earth was green blue and brown.
We danced and we sang.
We planted and we hunted. 

F nk Dr Spok said:

Facebook, Sudoku

nah, sod that.
next time tetris, time it for when you get one of the long straight bricks and a four line spree.
the satisfaction would totally be worth the rectal failure. 

PSYCH 

NOT! 

Yyz said:

We roamed the neighborhood with out a care in the world.
Movies were 50 cent at the matinee and it took less than $1.00 to fill up the tank on the go-kart to get us there.
We didn't have drive by's and gangs wandering around(or catholic priests giving out candy)

We left the house at noon and usually didn't come home until midnight in the summer.

Now, my kids won't play outside. They have seen 3 drive by shootings in person in the last 3 years.
They each know a child their age that has been killed and can point out the crack house and meth lab to you in our old neighborhood.

I guess you never can go back.

We can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where was I... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn't get white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones... 

NOT!

haha that too

kids these days don't have family matters or step by step or full house or FRESH PRINCE
so i don't care what they have that i didn't! 

TGI FRIDAY UP IN HURRR 

espritdescalier said:

haha that too

kids these days don't have family matters or step by step or full house or FRESH PRINCE
so i don't care what they have that i didn't!

But they have The Office and that's like a long day of TGIF. 

I never stayed up for Hangin' with Mr Cooper.

He wasnt worth it 

Also, Sabrina the teenage witch and Sister sister. 

In the Summer you would get up before 6:00 to watch the test pattern until the Star Spangled Banner played to an image of the American flag flying, because at 1:00 a.m. T.V. went off. There wasn't any fucking T.V. untill 6:00 a.m. the next day. Sometime in the 70's they dropped the National Anthem started playing some hippy bullshit version of Here Comes the Sun with a video of a dirty hippy couple walking on a beach at dawn. That's when I knew this country was fucked.

We would sit in a hot car during a South Carolina Summer for an hour or more while our mother got her hair teased up really big.

We would ride in the back of a pickup truck on the highway at 70 mph like big old hunting dogs. We loved it.

We could get into a fight at school without any of the following happening:
1. Having the Police Called
2. Having Psychological counseling or drugs suggested by the school
3. Being suspended or expelled
4. Having to worry about getting shot in retaliation

We had commercials for cigarettes on T.V. because cigarettes were cool, dammit.

We would wander far, far afield on our bikes and catch crawdads because there were really big ones in the undeveloped part of the neighborhood.

Penny Candy was actually a penny and for less than a dollar you could walk home from the 7-11 with a little brown bag full of brain blasting sugary treats.

The world was really a better place. You should have been there. 

sister
SISTER!
Never know how much I missed ya.

oh
and
NICKELODEON.
Legend of the Hidden Temple!

I want a LHT shirt so bad. 

We would ride in the back of a pickup truck on the highway at 70 mph like big old hunting dogs. We loved it.

And I'll bet you there was no mention of seatbelts. 

T.V. - they had to warm up for a few seconds before they would come un.

During the afternoon in the Summer on the public channel, I learned to cook from Julia Child and the Galloping Gourmet. I learned about music from some old gray haired chick and I learned science from a Mr. Wizard type of guy. I managed to avoid learning how to be a little bitch from Mr. Rogers, but I learned how to spot them.

I developed the desire to work in advertising just like Darrin Stevens (Dick York, not that other fucking imposter)

I sold my Adam 12 viewing rights to my sister for a coffee can full of ZOTZ fizzing candy so she could watch Room 222.

I would nearly piss myself laughing at the Carol Burnett Show.

I would try to stay awake to watch The Midnight Special with my sisters because I liked Wolfman Jack and then watching the Star Spangled Banner when T.V. went off at 1 a.m. 

Mr Rory said:

And I'll bet you there was no mention of seatbelts.

When I was really little I would stand next to my mother in the front seat while she drove. 

My wife, who is only 29,
was in the BOOT for a 4 hour car journey one time.
RETURN. 

LOL

We had BB gun wars in the woods behind the house. Those fuckers would raise a welt. 

Everyone let their dogs run free, so packs of dogs would maraud through the neighborhood like wolves. They were fine unless you ran into them in the woods. Then the rules changed. 

My grandfather always said, “Don’t watch your money; watch your health.” So one day while I was watching my health, someone stole my money. It was my grandfather 

We would wander far, far afield on our bikes and catch crawdads because there were really big ones in the undeveloped part of the neighborhood.

I did a lot of this. Rode half way across the county once, did not realize how far I was and didn't get back to my house till 12 close to 1 am. I was either 12 or 13 at the time. 

Today, that's a kidnappin'. 

Also, this was during the time that going in the wrong neighborhood was unlikely. Not to say it didn't exsist but it wasn't as profound as it is now. 

Not everyone had a television and those that did watched on small B&W screens with no remote and only the local channels that you could get with the aerial on the roof.

Radios used to advertise how many transistors they had. I was envious of my neighbour Scotty, because his radio had 8 transistors and mine only had 3.

There was no such thing as stereo, let alone 7.1 surround sound.

They used to do Air Raid drills with sirens going off and official announcements on the radio.

There was no Diet Coke.

Farmers and cowboys wore jeans, almost no one else did.

/born in the '50s 

Practically every Sunday Morning paper had a story about a fatal or injury car crash with a picture of a the destroyed, twisted metal remains of the vehicles involved. 

i remember when i was young there was a long winter.
my first memories were of winter, only i didn't think of it as a season.
it is just what was.

the world was ruled by a thankless, grey sky with cruel winds of blinding, deafening white.
this lasted for most of my life. the old ones said this was how the world began
and always was and always would be.

people didn't travel or go outside, unless it was necessary,
but not because it was cold.

there were things out in the frozen storms of ice and madness.
not what anyone would call a man or an animal.
something abhorrent. something wrong.

i lost my young wife to them.
i'll never forget her last breath before her eyes went still.

she told me life was a fool's game.

you kids have it so easy. 

I remember my parents getting one of the first generation microwave ovens. It was a big deal. It had exactly one control - a big mechanical timer knob. Nothing else. No power settings. Just a timer.
All the kitcken appliances could be dismantled and fixed. You could order parts. There were three tv's in the house and only one was color. Rabbit ears. No remote. Five channels but only three came in clearly. The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. No VCR. Pong. One phone for the entire house and it was bolted to the wall. 45 rpm records. Neil Armstrong. Later, a succession of really goofy first steps to ubiquitous tech. Acoustic tv remotes that actually sounded a chime that the tv was supposed the hear and respond to. Then early cable tv remotes that were on a long cord and had a slider for changing channels. Early (expensive) calculators that didn't do much. Vacuum tube testors at the neighborhood grocery store. Bakalite.

And yeah, I'd go outside on a Saturday morning and wonder what the hell I was going to do all day.