Material Things of Which the Younger Generation Has No Idea

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Transistor radios you took to the beach.

Or the schoolyard, or the stairs leading to the apartment building.

Rabbit's Ears TV's.....where you had to manually carry the antenna to a certain point, then stomp the floor on a strategic spot so you could get a decent picture. Also: you had to manipulate the "dial" (the channel-changing thingee) in order to get a good picture.

Anybody seen cuff links recently?

8-track tape players.

Every summer I still see bags of marbles, but I don't think any kid has a clue on how you play them. My brother and I had marbles as kids but I think we just liked their appearance. One time my brother and I made pretend pinball machines from old shoe boxes and used marbles for pinballs and stuck pencils in the sides for flippers.

wringer washers

Clothing before the days of Permanent Press.

Clothes irons without automatic shut-off timers. (Yeah, as a boy we had a small house fire due to one of those. )

Super 8 film

Sorry, you had that fire, Marky9.

Patience (instant gratification seems to be all the rage these days).

Privacy (everyone for some bizarre reason these days feels the need to be in constant touch with everyone else on the planet, there are surveillance cameras all over the place, people have 'friends' of Facebook et cetera).

Spending money you actually have; now people buy with credit, and the bankers laugh all the way to the bank.

Getting lost, because of not knowing how to read a map.

Not having a car, or even a driver's licence and, what's more, not needing them either.

Cigarette advertising on television (monochrome T.V. of course).

Those old-style, red screen digital watches. What were they called again? You know, the ones where you had to press a button to see the time, and the digits would glow red.

Quality T.V. programming - now it's just 'reality this, reality that', and violent crime shows.

Electronic gadgets that one could easily enough fix. Now they make them so that you can't even open them, so that when they malfunction you have to throw them out and buy a new one. Such waste! Speaking of gadgets, none of them - not one - was ever made in China.

And last, but certainly not least - freedom! To be free to do whatever stupid and dangerous thing one desired, without some nosy bureaucrat coming up to you and saying, "No, you can't smoke in your own home, because you've got children, and they are inhaling all the 'passive smoke', and I've also noticed you are having too much fun, and that's not good for you, blah, blah, blah".

I'm 23 and you people are old.

(Actually I remember most of the things in this thread and you're all making me feel old....a**holes!)

^^ LOL

Wind-up watches.

When the label "Made in Japan" meant something was cheap and very poorly made junk. Today it is usually quite the opposite.

Thanks! Gratefully no one was harmed.

Slide projectors
Slide rules (though I never really used one, I saw one. My mom used one.)
Camera film
Polaroid instant photos
Drive-in movie theaters (still exist in a few places, but rare)
Small-town amusement parks
Sticker collections and the accompanying wide variety of types of stickers (I really wish we still had these)
TV channels that shut off at the end of the day

Oh yes, including channels that would start their broadcast day with a test pattern, and end it with the National Anthem.

I remembered things like that, but I couldn't remember whether the day was started or ended with the National Anthem. LOL.

Yep, 19 year old guy at work wears them all the time. Actually a bunch of the things on this thread are still in use. Ice cube trays. I still listen to cassettes and I couldn't get TV without an antenna. Unfortunately perfume is still widely used. The smell makes my nose hurt.

With manual typewriters- the little white out paper, where you had to manually adjust the cartridge back to the right spot and try to type over what you had done wrong.

Actual chalk boards in school and having to beat the chalk dust out of the erasers.