How things have changed?

Question

I'm a 26 year old mother of a one year old and I find myself thinking about how much things have changed since I was a kid! We never wore seatbelts (much less five point harnesses), no one had a bike helmet, we ate candy cigarettes, our "cell phone" came in a breifcase (and this was the height of technology), and although we had a computer (the comodor 64) no one even dreamed a computer could do what they are capable of now! How have things changed since you were a kid?

Answer 1

Pretty much the same as you considering I am 25. I remember when you were allowed to smoke inside grocery stores and airplanes! We would leave our doors unlocked at night. We new our next door neighbors and actually were friends with them just because they were our neighbors and that's what you do. I remember thinking that Atari was the peek of technology.

Answer 2

In 1950 (I was 6) we did NOT have the following:

Color TV. Shucks, most folks didn't have ANY tv. 1950 was the year we got ours.
computers of ANY kind.
CD's, DVD's, cassettes or even 8-tracks (ask your own grandparents what those were).
push-button phones, much less cell-phones that take pictures, call up your friends for you and give you internet access (no internet).
Most people couldn't afford the new-fangled automatic transmission cars.
microwaves
heating/AC units.
permanent press textiles
Tupperware
interstate highways
any building in the world taller than the Empire State Building.
the Verrazano Narrows Bridge
instant communication from anywhere to anywhere.
NASA

We also didn't have or at least didn't know if we had or not:
a pedophile on every street corner.
a nationwide drug problem that reached into every level of society.
a bunch of desert dwellers doing their level best to kill us all (we'd clobbered the Nazis and the Japanese and the Commies weren't yet a major threat).
2 locks, a deadbolt and a steel door for every dwelling. Most of us could lose our housekeys and not notice it for days, because we didn't feel the need to lock our doors.

Things we DID have:
parks you could go into at night in safety.
Coca-Cola (which like love, covered a multitude of lacks).
parents who were parents, NOT buddies!
teachers who weren't so afraid of the politically correct police that if you smarted off they could swat your well-padded posterior and send you to the principal's office without being sued. You jolly well learned or they tossed you. And then your parents swatted you again when you got home. By cracky, you bloody well learned!
a car where your dad could teach you how to drive at the age of 3 by sitting you in his lap and letting you "steer". And the cops just smiled and waved.
skates with "keys" that clamped onto your Mary Janes and made your Mom furious because those were your good shoes!
Trees you could (and DID, every chance you got) climb!
Dolls that didn't walk, talk, wet, sweat, nurse or curse. Just lay there and let you cuddle them.
a sense that you were valuable just because you were you and it was the grownups' job to help you reach for the stars.
A feeling of security, even when the bomb drills at school sent you under the desk. No kid REALLY believed anything like that would ever happen. We were blissfully ignorant of just how bad people could be (no live news from the front in living color to eat dinner by).
No artificial preservatives, no MSG, no excess sodium, no excess sugar. Cheerios was health food. And best when drenched with root beer.
There were still small grocers. And they had pickle barrels. And you haven't LIVED until you've spent a hot summer afternoon quietly sucking and munching on a gigantic icy-cold dill pickle that cost you a whole nickel.

Oh I could go on and on.

Thanks for the memories! I needed that!

Answer 3

When I was little my mother never had to worry about me getting abducted when I go to the store by myself, but I'm 18 now and I'm not even allowed to walk to places because of the fear of being abducted.

Answer 4

Just a lot of stuff has changed since I was a kid.