what will you be able to tell your children about when you were young as in?

Question

"when I was young we....."

I can tell my kids that we heated our home with wood AND cooked and baked on the woodstove (by choice) AND that we walked to school in 2 feet of snow UPHILL both ways....LOL

what can YOU tell your kids?

dear emmapeel66: I forgot about B&W TV.... and 2 channels ! LOL

dear tonalc1: LOL we had strap on skates with a skate key! LOL

dear oozɐƃ ʇɐǝɹƃ ǝɥʇ: AH yes! 1969 - I was 11 and my mom made us all stay up to watch the fuzzy pics from the moon...
We not only had rotary phones, but ours was a party line with 3 families on it! LOL

dear i am no one: THAT was hilarious! LOL

dear Raji: we might be old farts,but we are in GREAT company!! LOL

Answer 1

When I was young, my friend and I would rush home from the bus and make those loopy potholders that you weave. We would go around the neighborhood and sell them, 2 for a quarter. (I'll bet those ladies had drawers full of them! lol) Then we would take our hard earned quarter and buy 2 bottles of Tab cola and share 1 nickel bag of chips. Life was good!

Hey, we were entrepreneurs!

Answer 2

I think you should have another talk with them about cancer and explain that people don't always die from it and that a lot of people actually get better. You could try talking about Lance Armstrong, since he is in the news just now. You could bring up that he is taking part in that bike race after recovering from cancer. Hopefully then they will have a more balanced view about what it is if they need to be told about it in the future, and won't just think cancer=death. I would just go with the 'sick' and 'really sick' explanation. There is no point trying to explain something that they won't understand. As far as they are concerned, you are sick and they can understand that. If you are talking about (god forbid if it should be necessary) to explain to them that you are going to die, that is an entirely different question. I'm not quite sure what you're asking? But you would still just go with the 'sick' thing at first. Then if whoever it was with cancer, anyone, deteriorated, you would need to figure out how to explain the fact that the sick person is going to die or 'leave'. You could also try getting them pets like fish or hamsters, ones that don't live long, so they understand the concept a little. They will get attached to a living thing and it will die one day.

Answer 3

When I was a kid, break dancing was cool, you could not hear rap on the radio because it was underground and subversive, I stood on top of the World Trade Center, you would never see cops in the subway with machine guns during "elevated terror threats", I was never searched for bomb making materials, the US government didn't listen in on my phone conversations, I did use rotary phones, we didn't have cable or a microwave for a long time, gas was like $0.79/gallon USD, video games were 4-bit Atari systems, text messaging was an idea out of a **** Tracy comic strip, kids still watched Sesame Street, Mr Rogers, Scooby Doo, and The Flintstones, and a balenced diet was a slab of meat, canned vegetables, and some form of potato (often, at my request, french fries - my mom is not nutritionally literate).

Answer 4

When I was young we had one little small black and white television set and when the VCR came out we had to rent one from the video store because it was too expensive to buy. I didn't have a proper bed until I was about 8, just a mattress on the floor that I shared with my sister. The mall was 40 miles away and going there was a major undertaking because our car always backfired. There was no internet as we now know it and instead of cell phones, car phones were considered cool.

Answer 5

You Laugh, but that is exactly what I did (except for the uphill both ways part). NOt only that but MY daughter will ALSO be able to say the same thing. She was raised in a home where we heated AND cooked with wood (by choice). OK, so she took the bus to school (it was 27 miles away, she'd still be walking if she had to walk to and from).

We had a TV that yo actually had to get up off the sofa to change the channel, it was ONLY Black and White. GAmes were something that you went to the closet and grabed a box off the shelf and sat down on the floor to play. When the phone rang, it actaully RANG, and you had to get up and GO to answer it and you couldn't walk around the house while you talked on it. You were attached to the wall by a cord.

TV had only 3 channels (ABC, NBC, and CBS), After a while we actualy got a 4th channel (PBS). If yo were home sick from school, there was NOTHING to watch on the TV except Soap Operas (talk about boring for a kid) BUT, Saturday Mornings were WONDERFUL for a kid, ALL kid shows until 12:30 when Bowling or pro wrestling would come on (more boring stuff). We went outside to play, (rain, snow, sunshine, hot, it made no diference), we played with things like dolls,(for the girls) trucks and cars that you actually had to push to get them to move. We played baseball in the summer, touch football in the fall, slid down hills in the winter on sleds or peices of cardboard from old boxes. Played games like "hide and go seek", "tag", "Red Rover", "Cops and Robbers", "Cowboys and Indians", And other imagintaive games. We would be outside from 8 in the morning, come in for lunch and right oustide till dinner and outside again till dark.Two words that were NEVER heard were "I'm Bored!". And if they WERE said, then our parents said, "Well go outside and play and you won't be".

Believe it or not, I raised MY Daughter that way too, and teh words "I'm Bored!" rarely came out of her mouth either. Parents today, hear those two words and get all panicky and rush out and buy a new video game for their kid. Today's kids are spoiled rotten (for the most part), the words "I'm Bored!" are words that parents are terrified of. They should just tell the kids, "Well, go outside and play and you won't be.", just like OUR parents did.

Bored people are BORING people too. It takes imagination on the parts of children to actually "PLAY". We teach our kids to seek joy and happiness from OUTSIDE, material things. Somehow, todays kids seem to seriously lack the skills to find imaginative ways to entertain themselves. They must be ENTERTAINED from some outside influence, and THAT is a crying shame. They reach maturity and many have NEVER felt the wonder of REAL play time. And we wonder why there is so much wrong in the World around us today. The young people of today can ONLY find joy in material things and are NOT able to find it within themselves because they've NEVER experienced and learned HOW to find it within themselves.

This rant has been brought to you by an old fart.

Raji the Green Witch

Answer 6

Many years from now when I'm old and gray, I will be sitting by the fireplace, warming my bones on a cold, winter night.

At some point I will here the patter of my warped grandchildren's little feet, - they will gather around me and beg me to tell them stories of yore.
At first, - I will tease them for a bit by refusing them their requests, but once they have quieted and settled into their places around the hearth, I will tell them about days long-forgotten by most, and spoken of by even fewer:

The Oppressive Times of Big Brother Yahoo!Answers; the illogical deletions, the unwarranted suspensions

The spam battles fought against innumerable Troll Invasions.

The R&S "God-or-Nothing" Wars, and the many companions I was honored to meet there:

Jack (the 'B.' is for 'Bi') of the Face,... the Battering 'ramjet',... John the Baptist (not the original),... The Grits of Good and Evil,... Moreth, ...Lord Patrick of Carpathia,... Jesus, King of the Laptops,... Orion of the Wolf,... Good Uncle Wayne,... Bobby of the Small Japanese Tree Sculptures,... Pangel the Mystic,... Lady Morgana... Queen Yack...
... I'm sure I've forgotten a few, and I imagine I will forget even more by then as my senile dementia takes its toll...:-))

And, when I've finished the telling of the saga,...
I will look into their awe-stricken faces and I will smile, knowing that they will tell these stories to their children and their children's children and, in their tellings,...
...will add the tales of 'I Am No One' to them...
-

Answer 7

There was no such thing as a VCR, or cordless phone much less a cell phone. Nobody had computers except major corporations and they filled huge rooms, I couldn't wear pants to school until a law changed in about 1972. I played vinyl records and my first tape player was reel to reel. We didn't have game systems like Nintendo although a friend had a foos ball game (full sized).

Answer 8

I tell him I never had air conditioning in school until I got to high school. I also had to wear a dress to school EVERY DAY until my sophomore year in high school. I graduated in 1972.

I also had 3 channels on TV and no color until I was 11 or 12. When color came out my father said. "We don't need color TV"! THEN he saw a football game in color, we had a color set the very next day. LOL!

Answer 9

That I had to struggle in terrible snow storms and 2 feet of snow,just to skip school. I had a pretty good hiding place. LOL Not really,I was a good boy.

Black and white tv...no xbox,no playstation no computer...primative life.

Answer 10

My first skateboard was a piece of wood attached to a separated roller skate.

I had to go to the library to get information.

Gas was $.20/gallon.