Hey Pandas, What Was Common When You Were Young, But Is Rare Now That You’re Older? (Closed)
Let's take a nostalgic trip down memory lane! What was once a common sight during your youth but has become increasingly rare as you've grown older? Share those unique experiences and fascinating shifts in culture.
Let us know what has become a rarity in your eyes!
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Homophobia, misogyny and racism on TV and in culture in general. There is still work to do, but we are heading in the right direction at least.
Kids sitting down at the table and having a conversation after eating. I was the game boy era and that was the expectation. Now, I have dinner with my little cousins, they are on their phones until food arrives then they eat and get up and leave or slip on headphones and go back to playing phone games. My slightly older cousins can barely hold a conversation and usually feels more like an interrogation than a conversation with them adding very little. I took my little cousin and her friends to the theatre, while on vacation the entire time in the car they didn't speak just watched tiktoks on their individual phones. I don't know how so much changed etiquette and social skills wise between mid 90s babies and esrly-mid 2000s babies but my god it's actually painful. I'm saying that as an introvert.
My family has a no phones at the table rule and then reserves the right to make kids sit there however long the parents want which is annoying for me as a kid but fixes this problem and I can definitely see why they do it
- Smoking everywhere, the office, the restaurants, the train station etc. I don't miss it
- Downloading music and films illegally.
To know your home phone number, and that of your grandparents and closest friends by memory.
When I was a teenager I didn’t even write any numbers down anywhere, I just had them all memorized. My whole family’s and all of my friends. Now that my brain has offloaded my memory into my phone, I know my number, my wife’s number, and my childhood home phone that I last used in 1989. As a professional dog walker and cat sitter I can still memorize about 30 or 40 codes to get into condos or set home alarms, so the capability is still there.
Parents accepting teachers' reports of their child's misconduct as presumptively valid, rather than assuming their little angel must have been wronged by the school or other children.
Nah, that always happened. Except it was the kids getting picked on who retaliated that would get in trouble because the bullies were always the popular kids picking on the less popular kids, and the schools would just think there was something wrong with the less popular kids that caused the popular kids to pick on them, thus being their fault. Every. Damn. School.
Meeting people in the neighbourhood just by hanging out in your front yard, or going to the big parks for a picnic and tossing a frisbee and inviting others to join. People being open to looking for new friends.
Now, if people don't know you through their social media friends list they want nothing to do with you. Do people still picnic?
Waking up refreshed
Everyone watching the same TV shows at the same time (before VCRs, TIVO, etc.), giving us a common experience to share the next day.
-beanie boos
-terrible resolution tv's
-sleep
Optimism and hope for a better world? Haven't felt that for years...
I was born in 2007, so it's not like much has changed, but I noticed that there seem to be fewer people with pet birds. I remember in my old neighborhood, many people had pet birds, and now I don't know anyone but a few people with pet birds. For the record, I did not have a pet bird, but my aunt (who I live with) Inherited a parrot from her mother last year, so Yay (I guess).
Having no clue where your kids are and no way to get ahold of them when you send them out to play.
Rotary dial phones. I remember being so impressed when the first push button phones came out. Also, black and white CRT TVs, video games you had to type in yourself, and cars with chokes.
Y’know when you’re younger and parents kind of tip-toe around certain subjects or cussing? Yeah, not common anymore for me lol. I know way too much and hear stuff way more than I used to. Also something common that is rare now: free time. School school school, dance dance dance, theater theater, all this stuff… and reading! Before I got a phone- no, before the lockdown, I read much more avidly. Ever since I was stuck at home day by day, I played roblox and other stimulating games and lost most interest in books. I also lost my wonder and exaggerative recalling of places. When I was younger, everything was so large and much more fun. Now it’s just eh. Except nature. Nature is alright.
Phones booths used to be everywhere. Half of them worked, most you wanted to hold a few inches from your ear.
Quiet restaurants! I keep hoping the concrete and glass fad will die out so I hear myself think while I’m eating. Also, coffee shops don’t need to play music at nightclub levels.
The noxious smell of cars used to be common. You know how you occasionally see a vintage car drive by and its exhaust smells like unburned gasoline and poison? They pretty much all used to smell that way.
Smoking sections. I loved being seated in the non-smoking section one foot from the invisible barrier that designated the smoking section. 🙄
People used to rake their lawns and sweep their sidewalks. Now it’s all leaf blowers at full blast on hot dry days, blasting dirt and allergens a hundred feet around and thirty feet into the air. Lazy bästards.
Planning your social schedule around your favorite TV show. Can’t hang out on Sunday because the X-Files is on at 9! Have to work? Better hope your crappy VCR will work right and record it while you’re gone. Mine never did.
Seeing kids playing out in the street, riding bikes, playing footy, just hanging out together. I could not imagine growing up without my neighbourhood friendships.
Seeing kids playing out in the street, riding bikes, playing footy, just hanging out together. I could not imagine growing up without my neighbourhood friendships.
