Posted on 04/18/2015 5:32:00 PM PDT by Daffynition
Mommyshorts.com asked their readers to submit childhood throwback pictures from the 70's and 80's. Judging by these pictures, it's a miracle the generation survived. Here are 20 things parents did back then that would be considered completely questionable today:
{snip pix at source]
(Excerpt) Read more at distractify.com ...
AHAHAHAHA!
I was allowed to play all over the neighborhood—and take a city bus to school, which required a transfer to another bus—in the first grade.
A real Christmas party with a tree and everything. There was this one kid whose family didn't believe in secular celebrations of Christmas, so he didn't come that day. Somehow his parents resisted the urge for a lawsuit.
I think it was second grade we memorized the Bible passage from Luke on the nativity.
Our PE Coach took us boys aside in 6th grade or so, and told us to ask our fathers about athletic supporters. He said it was important for us to get one, and our Dads would explain. Back then, everyone had a Dad.
Sex education was non-existent, except in the vaguest terms during science class. "Male mammals fertilize the egg inside the female, and the young are gestated inside the mother. Ask your parents to help you understand."
When we were a bit older, us boys would go the bathroom at every gas station we were at, with the hope of getting a condom. Gas station bathrooms (not all, but some) were the only places we knew to get one, and it was a big deal to own a condom. The idea that they would one day be available in school was too outlandish to even be considered.
Cap guns for sure, but we also had bottle rocket wars, in which we actually fired them at each other.
Triple the fun if our Dads joined in!
We had *real* holidays....Veterans Day/Armistice Day...Flag day with lots of reciting of American patriots verses and song.
No, MLK day .....no Ramadan.
We had a party line in the country. We answered 2-ringers. Neighbor bitches always picked up to snoop on our phone conversations.
Peroxide? More like iodine, and that hurt for a few secs.
It hurt, but only for a little while.
At 16 I was hired part-time as a telephone operator and was the person that said “number please”.
Maybe it was rubbing alcohol...I’m not sure. :)
But there was always boric acid ointment involved.
He won the bid and put us boys to work mending fence, hauling rock and grazing cattle. Sometimes Mom would stay with us for the week. Sometimes we were on our own until the next weekend. An old hand pump supplied the water in the house. There was an outhouse up a hill outside to do our other business and a clear creek which ran through the property for skinny dipping when the day's work was done.
One evening, we decided we wanted to go into town about four miles away to get some ice cream. My brother drove the tractor. I stood on the tongue and in we went. Of course the neighbors told pa and we caught hell when he drove down the following weekend. Since we had gotten most of the assigned work done, I don't recall that our punishment was very severe. But we didn't do it again.
Imagine what would happen to parents today if they left two preteen boys on a run-down farm 100 miles away for the week.
Bought a Ruger .22 auto at age 14 with paper route money. Put $37.95 plus tax on the counter and took it home on my bicycle. Passed it on to my step daughter a few years ago.
My three daughters lived with us in Japan 1988-2002. The youngest one was born there. We lived in the Tokyo area 1988-1994 and the Kobe area after that.
One summer, the two youngest wanted to go visit friends in Tokyo, who had invited them to spend a week.
They begged until we relented and rode local trains all the way there and back, roughly 6 hours each way. In those days, the trains offered a set of five or six all day tickets for around 10,000 yen. They were good only during the vacation season and on the local trains since the local trains ran under capacity and the express/Shinkansen were more crowded than normal.
What's more, they met other kids on the train doing the same thing. We used to have a country where kids could so that too.
Pretty much just like that, except we usually weren’t alone..
As a Sophomore in HS @14 had a job setting pins in a bowling alley. Did double alley, double shift mostly 5 nights per week (unless Sports got in the way). This is BEFORE the semi auto pin setters, had the treadle and pegs coming out of the deck.
Walked/rode bike 1/2 mile home after shift over.
Was making 30 +- per week which was excellent money for a kid in 1953.
Also went swimming —sometimes alone —in an abandoned limestone quarry.
Read story about the parents with ‘free range kids’ and wonder what all the ‘fuss’ is....HA....
My mother raised me and my sister alone and since she worked would sometimes go a week or so without seeing her.
Course in small town everyone looked out for the ‘kids’ and since ‘they’ knew my mother ‘alone’, got my share of lectures and a swat or two from people in town when I got out of hand....
Was in the care of ‘Nuns’ (in school) through 9th grade so what the townspeople had to offer was miniscule to say the least...
I used to drop in on my grandma and grandpa for a breakfast treat, then sneak a can of sweet from MawMaw's pantry shelves to use as fishin' bait down at the lake. Fish and swim all day, then drage the carp and Bream home for her to cook or feed to the dogs. ... God blessed me with a great childhood! And great Grandparents.
My how times change. When I was in sixth grade (1974), I was the only kid whose parents had divorced. When My youngest was in sixth grade (1997), she was the only one whose parents were still married.
In elementary school, boys could attend *rifle club* after school. It was a sport shooting program. My brother carried his .22 LR to school for that day....left it standing up in the coat room.
Depending on how *strict* your teacher was....either you kept your ammo in your pocket....or put it on her desk until dismissed for the program in the school basement.
We kids were raised with guns and the ability to *plink* anytime...and I was always very jealous of the boys, that girls were excluded from this target practice. Don’t recall who ran the program, civil marksmanship, maybe?
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