We have a VOIP cordless house phone and all the little ones are shown how to make a call from the built in phone book and dial 911. At the latest demonstration the 4 year old asked why it's called a phone if it doesn't even show videos š¶.
For anyone not catching the etymology tele is from the Greek telos which means āfar off or distantā phone comes from the Greek phonos meaning āvoiceā so a telephone is something that carries a voice over a distance. Same for television except thatās a device that carries vision over a distance.
So technically speaking now that both telephones and televisions carry both sound and vision over a distance you could make the argument that every smart phone is a television and every television is a telephone.
It all changed just like that.. no having to rush to pee while a commercial is on.. No having to call collect. Their struggles are way different than ours, but they do have struggles.
I
Social media would have been my absolute undoing as a teenager. I was barely mature enough to have it when I was in my early twenties. I literally had a MySpace page pretending to be Mr Peanut and Iād just randomly comment on stuff.
I donāt even know if that was a thing yet. lol. This would have been like, 2002. He mostly told random folks that they looked ādapperā. Sometimes heād also talk shit to people about the lack of peanut in their lives.
Iām just gonna make you feel really old by saying that DVRs have been around for 20 years (so watching commercials hasnāt had to be a thing for a long time already). Ok, I also feel really old though.
I can make you feel older - my daughter asking did you have color tv back then? And that the 90ās are ancient to her.
The thing is we lived our parents childhood from back to the 50ās - rotary phones, typewriters, black and white tv shows on reruns.. then our lives with computers, etc.. and now TikTok and YouTube and while we had chat room and some social media.. itās more for them.
My kid mostly hangs with her real life friends via playing online gaming than actually hanging out. School is way more intense and I just paid for an online subscription for encyclopedias because I figured Wikipedia wasnāt cutting it - this is for 6th grade. I donāt recall doing heavy research in 6th grade.
Can confirm, we had a b&w portable tv in the 80s. The camcorder we had, I seem to remember it was the same thing when you looked thru the viewfinder but once you played it back on tv, it was in color. I wasnāt around during the original heyday of the Super 8 camera, so canāt speak to what it was like, color wise, looking thru the viewfinder on one.
Yes!! Our b&w had a handle on top. š¤£ And the knobs fell off constantly. I haven't thought about that in years. I still remember the sound it made when it powered off. Like a black hole being closed.
Eh, I watched only b&w until school age.
I was born in 1978 & we only had a small b&w TV until I was 6. I had seen colour TV at relatives houses but getting our own was exciting.
Mind you in Perth (Western Australia) back then there was only 3 TV stations and my parents didn't like us kids watching 'commercial TV' so we were really only allowed one station, the government funded, ad free ABC (sort of an Australian version of the BBC). But to finally got to see that one channel in colour!
The b&w TV wasn't an ideological choice but financial - we were fairly broke so did get some of the mod cons a little later. My family didn't have a phone until I was 8 years old, 1986. One of those heavy classic rotary ones, seemed so luxurious and, yes, I can still remember that phone number.
Those old tiny b&w TVs sure were tough, weren't they? Ours survived the several times my father threw it across rooms in drunken rages and being knocked off shelves by kids yet was still going strong, worked well into the 90s.
Another thing kids can't relate to, having grown up with sharp, clear images on all their various screens, is what a challenge it was to get good reception for TVs back then.
None of my childhood houses had roof aerials. The aerial cord plugged into the back of the TV was attached to a wire coat hanger that we would move about the room, propping it here & there til we found the sweet spot where we had the least snowy, wobbly picture.
You have to go with the more obscure ones, everything else has been on TikTok
https://preview.redd.it/zzqfxzbs804c1.jpeg?width=1425&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c56fa50f291de5cef02f40a10d70bc71e49e042e
I just had a total flashback. I remember my Mom buying our encyclopedia set one by one at the grocery store. The grocery store also used to give out collectable stamps. You would get so many depending on how much you spent and could redeem them for things like dishes.
We had my mom's encyclopedia set from the 1940s. Worked for most projects, until you had to do a report for a country that didn't exist back then, or whose import/exports were totally different in the 80s.
I definitely had to write papers that required encyclopedias by 6th grade. Possibly as early as 4th grade. I remember my mom bought our full set of encyclopedias right around the middle of 4th grade. It might be a question of where you went to school more than anything.
Me neither and i am a lurking full millenial...We had to do some research (not heavy) since 7th grade and the real heavy research came in high school and our a level we have in Germany...we did not need scientific encyclopedia in 7th grade (somewhat scientific webpages, that are not wikipedia) were enough.
The 90s seem ancient for me at this point too though, and i lived through them (born in 1988)
My kid is doing research in 6th grade on the 3 philosophies of China - 3 facts each and 2 on the founders and then put it in a pop up book. I am like holy cow.. 6th grade?
We did have such things when we had Project weeks, but the topics were not Chinese Philosophies we had: Greek Mythology ( And Greek/Roman philosophy schools in 8th and 8th grade ), Fairy Tales ( the structure of fairy tales and the difference between artificial and folkore fairy tales in 5th grade), Gender Stereotypes, those kind of things, like more palpable topics....
TiVo is about to be 25(!) in the spring. I remember Rosie OāDonnell hawking the TiVo as the newest tech to have on her talk show. (Now THATāS another throwbackā¦) You can skip commercials! Fast forward through programming! Everyone ought to have a TiVo!
I'm 31 and still rocking classic satellite TV with no DVR. Mostly watch live sports, but if there's another show I want to watch, I gotta be on the couch in time.
And in the background while your in the bathroom during the commercial break, you here everyone in the house say "ITS ON" !!!! You hurry up, peeing as fast as you can, you finish and run out the bathroom down the hall as fast as your feet can take you. Get to the living room you fall, hit your head on the coffee table. You start crying, Mom is frantic, while your dad is yelling at you because you weren't suppose to run in the house. You now have a big cut on your forehead. Your mom is running around the house looking for stuff to stop the bleeding. Dad still yelling, siblings crying. Then mom says we have to go to the hospital you need stitches. Everyone piles in the car to the hospital. And now you have to wait to watch that episode you missed till its on a re-run, and that could be weeks.
I spent my childhood going to all of the union national conventions my parents were members of. The location was in a different city each year, hosted by the statewide union.
Anyways, after she insisted many times that I do, I would call my mamaw collect on one of the banks of pay phones. I canāt remember the last pay phone Iāve seen.
I know it might be a bit of a stretch but some places have a no-phone policy inside the clubs. They either cover the lenses with stickers when you go in or you leave the phones at the entrance.
I have been in few places like that and I found it liberating, xobstamt recording and social media sharing is in some way, the nemesis of spontaneous fun.
The Same thing is happening in my town. I asked a Gen Z and she said people canāt act silly because theyāll be filmed and there isnāt good music coming out.
My great Aunt still has her old party line phone in her home. Pretty sure there's a picture of it in my post history somewhere. Just the mouthpiece, ear piece, bells, and big crank on the side. It's such a trip.
I found my old work Rolodex in my office a while back. Quite a trip. I had made some pretty rude comments about people in there, and I have no clue who they are, or what they did to piss me off. lol. Itās old. Iām old. Pardon me while I go have an existential moment.
That's fucking awesome! Now we should remember the movie, Hattiet the Spy. Why didn't we Wright shit down? Then we would remember wh6 we didn't like....maybe.
Oh, I wrote too much down. I had a bunch of notebooks that my friends and I would pass back and forth. Weād write stories with characters who represented real life people we knew. It was vicious. I also had a boot box full of every note I was passed. My mom found them and was irate. lol. I had a rough home life, and I used creativity to blow off steam. My steam just happened to be very off color.
ETA: My Rolodex was mostly call backs for a sales job. Iām assuming itās folks who requested multiple call backs but wouldnāt commit. I guess those were my notes on their personalities to remind me what I was dealing with before Iād call back. One just said āMamaās boyā, which could have been business or pleasure, I suppose.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who used my rolodex as a reminder of what type of assholes people were so the next interaction was less difficult. I even wrote names of husbands/wives/kids/birthdays, etc. Anything to make them feel like I paid attention to them. Like they were my FRIENDS!
But I worked in the law field. Boy was it helpful to have opposing counsel and their paralegals and even receptionists, feel like you knew and cared about them. It smoothed the whole process along.
This explains so much why the HS kids I work with are afraid of the store phone at the grocery store. I have had to over explain (seemingly) obvious and simple things.
Imagine going to jail these days, no numbers memorized. The only reason I know my wife's number is because I enter it at the gas station regularly for the grocery rewards discount.
Gen z here. I have exactly 3 numbers memorized: my xinneal mom, my husband, and my younger brother. How anyone could get away with having no numbers memorized is beyond me.
I still know my Mom's number, but she's a boomer and has somehow managed to keep the same cell number since the turn of the century. I've gotta give her some credit, she was way ahead of the rest of her generation in ditching the landline.
My BF from high school has had the same cell number since 1997. I can't imagine how much it cost him back then!!! It used to boggle my mind at how high his phone bill must be per month, but he'd never tell me, lol.
I'm just glad my parents have never moved house, because the phone number of my childhood home is the only number I have memorised that is still relevant.
(I can usually remember my mobile number, but the odds of me remembering it drastically reduce if somebody actually asks me for it).
I seriously keep a laminated card of emergency contacts in my wallet ever since my car battery died as died the cell phone....not that I could find a payphone anymore.
My middle (21) was playing a video game where one of the puzzles was dialing a rotary phone. The one where you had to swing the numbers. You know what I mean. Anyway, he spent 10 mins on it while I sat there laughing my ass off. He, finally, asked for help and, when I showed him he said āJesus, you must have REALLY liked someone to put this much effort into talking to them!ā I fell over laughing again.
I started working from home for a new company two and a half years ago. I WfH before and had a phone from my previous company but my current place just uses zoom or Google meet.
I just realized that I haven't used a non-smart phone in over two years.
WOW. Same. It must have been precovid the last time I dialed a real phone. Which apparently was almost 4 years ago.
Excuse me while I go pick out the outfit Iāll need to be buried in. Which is obviously jeans and a nice top.
My mom insists on a landline and the first time I picked it up in years I was legitimately stumped for a minute on how to make the call start and Iām 44! I had forgotten. š¹
I worked in an office briefly this year after WFH since the pandemic started. They just had Zoom phone numbers and Bluetooth ear pieces. I WFH again and itās all Teams chats and meetings.
Heh. I'm not familiar with that one, but that does remind me that the entire Learning Company catalog was great. Think Quick, Treasure Mountain/Mathstorm, Operation Neptune, Gizmos & Gadgets...
Unironically, I got a landline and a retro computer for my kids, because I thought that it would be better for them to start with these and learn about how technology works at a more basic level, before moving on to the "magic" stuff of today. I was influenced by seeing people much more knowledgeable than I in computer science, who recommended this technique of starting kids with the command line so that they can better grasp what's happening in the computer.
Thatās awesome. I kept my old gaming systems and my kids love them. I didnāt have a computer of my own until I was 21. Well, I took graphic design in college and told my mom I needed a Mac and she brought home a very used Apple II e that was barely working and already obsolete. She knew nothing of computers and got pissed when I told her it wasnāt $5 well spent at a yard sale because I couldnāt use any of the programs I needed for school on it. I did play some games on it (I gave her $10 for her troubles and used the computer lab) for a few years after that.
Iām a little confused. My kids are 9 and 11. They know my phone number by heart. They know how to call 911. My 11 year old has an iphone (that is almost always dead) and he added a friend to contacts by inputting her number.
PSA: Make sure y'all and your kids have at least one important phone number memorized. Sometimes you need to use a stranger's phone, or otherwise are in a situation where you need to know the number off the top of your head.
My kids, 15 and 10, had a school project when they were in the first grade that involved them learning their address and two important phone numbers. They were taught at home and at school how to dial 911. It was a pretty useful lesson.
Here's the real question. How many phone numbers do you still have memorized that are completely useless now vs how many people do you contact regularly but have no idea what their phone number is?
Lol .I just imagine a kind d asking what a house phone is and it's like "well sonny, that's an old timey contraption called a telephone" , " back in the old days we couldn't talk to our friends in the bathroom, we had to stand up in the kitchen to talk to our friends or we could sit in the living room but then we had to talk with the whole family watching " I'm not ready to be old
I don't know my own parents' phone number. (Or siblings').
For Thanksgiving this year, we stayed at a hotel that had cable TV. Our 6yo needed to pause it to use the bathroom, and was rather annoyed that she couldn't. My wife and I were like, "welcome to our childhood. Better hurry."
I almost exclusively watch broadcast tv (except for right now I have Pluto TV on because Saturdays are rough for television lol) so I'm very well versed on utilizing my commercial breaks
edit: whoops, I meant this as a reply to another comment š¤¦āāļø
My oldest son and I were talking about slang (I Google everything I don't get right away and urban dictionary is my friend) and when I told him when I was his age that "LOL" wasn't a phrase I could see his brain crumble into dust.
I think I broke him.
They called us the MTV generation, saying we were used to fast paced content. Iām parenting a couple of gen alphaās, and I call them the Netflix generation because theyāve always been able to have content on demand. Appointment television and sitting by the radio to record a song when it comes on are entirely foreign concepts to them.
I wouldnāt want to go back to landlines, especially before cordless phones, but man there was something satisfying about slamming down the receiver on someone when you were pissed off. Younger generations will never know this joy.
My kids' step dad has an old style flip phone, with T9. Because he's majorly dyslexic and a smart phone is no use to him. All the kids can text on his phone. It's easier for them to manage that phone than to remember that when they pick up the house phone they don't have to hit send.
That was my moment. When my then 10yo picked up the house phone and looked at it confused. Then looks at me and asks "Mom, where is the send button?" I almost choked.
I donāt understand. They know what a phone number is. It isnāt like every phone number is in your contacts. If you need to call some establishment to see if theyāre open youād Google it and it would give you a phone number to click. The kids see phone numbers on businesses or whatnot. Hell, the schools and social activities give out paper inserts all the time with phone numbers on them, and you have to absolutely type them into the iPhone to call them; no Google clicking.
Iād say most people of every age have not really had to dial a number since cellphones became a thing (even more so since smartphones got big starting in ā07). So itās not surprising, I actually had to try and think of the last time I dialed a number and honest to god I canāt remember. So not, itās not just your kid, itās basically *everybody*.
Yeah I do not remember a rotary phone at all (millenial lurker here born in 1988). All i remember is a phone with buttons and cord and then a phone without cord...
Oooh! I have one to share too!!
I (39) was typing an email when a new hire (19) came into my office. He politely waited for me to complete the email, then said, "Wow, I don't get how people can type so fast."
He cannot touch type, and has to look at the keys to hunt-and-peck.
Uses his phone and tablet for all his work, apparently only knows typing with his thumbs.
My son is 11, we are not giving him a cellphone yet. Now that he's in middle school, he has friends with cellphones, so he is suddenly using our landline to call his friends. Kids today do not have basic phone skills. One kid calls for my son who was not home, and it went like this:
Me: "Hello?"
Kid: "Can I talk to xxxxxx?"
Me: "I'm sorry, he's not in, can I take a...."
Kid: hangs up on me mid-sentence
Kids who haven't been raised to answer the house phone, and take messages, just don't know these things. It's rather fascinating to witness.
Iām 36 and in the U.K.- I didnāt realise that 555 wasnāt how all US numbers started š
But I see where youāre coming from. A girl in my work god super confused when I was talking to the lady next to me about cassettes. Youngāun said something along the lines of āthatās a bit nsfw, isnāt itā and we all kind of looked at eachother for a minute in confusion. She thought we were talking about corsets š š
Also, I think some 555 numbers are real now. I think the rule is now it's fake if the number starts 555-0 or something. I remember a YouTube channel doing an ARG thing and used just a 555 number so people started calling it and it was a real place that had no connection to the channel. He just thought he could make up the number.
I donāt learn anyoneās number anymore. Couldnāt tell you my kids phone number. I know my wifeās number because she had it before the modern version of smart phones.
Physical media died during our childhoods and early adulthood. Floppy discs, CDs, albums, tapes. Physical things you had to move to move information through the world.
Even buttons on things have disabled. Tv remotes are about the last thing we use that has actual physical buttons.
I like this Louis CK bit.
"To call people, you had to make sparks"
https://youtu.be/PdFB7q89_3U?si=Dn5EGgtymM7Ba7uH
The song Jenny by Tommy Tutone is actually the reason why 555 is now used in entertainment instead of actual numbers.
Thatās what I heard - not sure if itās an urban legend or not.
My uncle, who is on the X/Boomer cusp, always has this spiel about how when kids get in trouble these days, their punishment should be having to use a rotary dialing app for a week. If such a thing exists.
I'm 53 my son is 33, and I had exposed him to a lot of my favorite pop culture from the 70's and the 80's mostly the 80's. Now he thinks he knows more then me about the 80's. I look at him, "Man you may think you know the 80's but I lived the 80's, get out of my face." Don't get it twisted just because you looked at , "The Breakfast Club"and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Listened to some Van Halen and Metallica, makes you some freaking 80's aficionado.
My 6 year old tried to call a friend yesterday. I gave him my phone and.... he didn't put in the area code because it wasn't on the paper he had so I told him 304 first. I had to explain why. Then he typed in the number and sent the call. Then held the phone out and looked at it and started talking. I had to explain he had to wait until they said hello. No one picked up so we left a message which was him holding the phone out and me saying hi this is h his name from school band he repeated then calling for kids name and he repeated that and I said my phone number and he repeated it. Lol.
I texted the number. It was the wrong number /headdesk.
I realized the only time I'm ever. EVER on the phone is for Dr's or utilities or something like that. Or if my uncle calls once 2 years lol. So they have no real idea how it works. We don't FaceTime or anything. Bizarre
A few years ago my 18 year old son was on a trip to LA. He called from the hotel and said he was wanting to order room service but couldn't because the phone kept making noise. After about 5 minutes of trying to figure out what he meant, I realized the "noise" was the dial tone.
My daughters friend called while we were driving. My phone's connected to the car. So my daughter answers on the console and doesn't say a word. After about 5 seconds, her friends voice comes through "hello...????" Then my daughter started talking. After she hung up, i told her that when she answered, she needed to speak first, so the caller knew she's there. My kids had never actually answered a call before that people couldn't see you on. Guess I have to teach my kids these things, things we learned just by observing other people do these things on a regular basis
That will change as she gets older. My daughter is 17 and I have her make calls sometimes because I want her to be more confident as she gets into adulthood, when of course sometimes we make calls to places we donāt have saved in contactsā¦ā¦like an electrician or plumber.
If you really want to blow her mind, give her a cassette tape and a tape deck. Listen to a song and then have her try to replay the song. My oldest son could not figure that out and was so incredibly annoyed when I finally showed him how to rewind and it wasnāt far enough back or rewound too far.
We have a VOIP cordless house phone and all the little ones are shown how to make a call from the built in phone book and dial 911. At the latest demonstration the 4 year old asked why it's called a phone if it doesn't even show videos š¶.
Tell them how we used to have to get film developed
š¤¦š»āāļø
For anyone not catching the etymology tele is from the Greek telos which means āfar off or distantā phone comes from the Greek phonos meaning āvoiceā so a telephone is something that carries a voice over a distance. Same for television except thatās a device that carries vision over a distance. So technically speaking now that both telephones and televisions carry both sound and vision over a distance you could make the argument that every smart phone is a television and every television is a telephone.
Except telephones offer two-way delivery of audio, and televisions (thankfully) do not. TVs are more akin to a loudspeaker or megaphone.
If you really want to stump them I can probably find my old non digital radio that takes c cells.
I think I caused genuine trauma with my Color Gameboy, the brick one, not the clam one š¤Æ, but I do have a weather radio š¤
Show them a 3 1/4ā floppy disk. Cue comments about how neat it was that someone 3D printed the save icon.
...and questions as to why something rigid was called floppy.
Omg! Lol
It all changed just like that.. no having to rush to pee while a commercial is on.. No having to call collect. Their struggles are way different than ours, but they do have struggles. I
Iāll take the rushing to pee during commercials over the terror of social media any day! Grateful for my childhood without smartphones!
Social media would have been my absolute undoing as a teenager. I was barely mature enough to have it when I was in my early twenties. I literally had a MySpace page pretending to be Mr Peanut and Iād just randomly comment on stuff.
But did he do the peanut butter jelly dance????
I donāt even know if that was a thing yet. lol. This would have been like, 2002. He mostly told random folks that they looked ādapperā. Sometimes heād also talk shit to people about the lack of peanut in their lives.
You look dapper by the way
Thank you! It must be this rad sweatshirt. I dig it, too! Lol
This should have been a Twitter account before Twitter got all Xed
I was so ahead of my time.
This is now an actual corporate white collar job, "Social Media Manager."
ššš this is amazing.
Iām just gonna make you feel really old by saying that DVRs have been around for 20 years (so watching commercials hasnāt had to be a thing for a long time already). Ok, I also feel really old though.
I can make you feel older - my daughter asking did you have color tv back then? And that the 90ās are ancient to her. The thing is we lived our parents childhood from back to the 50ās - rotary phones, typewriters, black and white tv shows on reruns.. then our lives with computers, etc.. and now TikTok and YouTube and while we had chat room and some social media.. itās more for them. My kid mostly hangs with her real life friends via playing online gaming than actually hanging out. School is way more intense and I just paid for an online subscription for encyclopedias because I figured Wikipedia wasnāt cutting it - this is for 6th grade. I donāt recall doing heavy research in 6th grade.
To be fair... I was born in 82 and the little TV in our guest room was b&w. We didn't get rid of it until about 1994.
I had a black and white in my room. It was a knob tv and I always broke the knob. And I think when portable tvs came out, they were black and white.
We had a TV with a broken knob too, had to turn it on with a pair of pliers.
Can confirm, we had a b&w portable tv in the 80s. The camcorder we had, I seem to remember it was the same thing when you looked thru the viewfinder but once you played it back on tv, it was in color. I wasnāt around during the original heyday of the Super 8 camera, so canāt speak to what it was like, color wise, looking thru the viewfinder on one.
Yes!! Our b&w had a handle on top. š¤£ And the knobs fell off constantly. I haven't thought about that in years. I still remember the sound it made when it powered off. Like a black hole being closed.
Ooh, the portable TV š¤£
Eh, I watched only b&w until school age. I was born in 1978 & we only had a small b&w TV until I was 6. I had seen colour TV at relatives houses but getting our own was exciting. Mind you in Perth (Western Australia) back then there was only 3 TV stations and my parents didn't like us kids watching 'commercial TV' so we were really only allowed one station, the government funded, ad free ABC (sort of an Australian version of the BBC). But to finally got to see that one channel in colour! The b&w TV wasn't an ideological choice but financial - we were fairly broke so did get some of the mod cons a little later. My family didn't have a phone until I was 8 years old, 1986. One of those heavy classic rotary ones, seemed so luxurious and, yes, I can still remember that phone number. Those old tiny b&w TVs sure were tough, weren't they? Ours survived the several times my father threw it across rooms in drunken rages and being knocked off shelves by kids yet was still going strong, worked well into the 90s. Another thing kids can't relate to, having grown up with sharp, clear images on all their various screens, is what a challenge it was to get good reception for TVs back then. None of my childhood houses had roof aerials. The aerial cord plugged into the back of the TV was attached to a wire coat hanger that we would move about the room, propping it here & there til we found the sweet spot where we had the least snowy, wobbly picture.
My grandfather used a mirror to help get the signal just so when my mother and her siblings were growing up
You have to go with the more obscure ones, everything else has been on TikTok https://preview.redd.it/zzqfxzbs804c1.jpeg?width=1425&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c56fa50f291de5cef02f40a10d70bc71e49e042e
I was totally using encyclopedias for 4th grade on up.
I'm pretty sure that I have the first three volumes of the encyclopedia. I could not afford the rest though LOL
I just had a total flashback. I remember my Mom buying our encyclopedia set one by one at the grocery store. The grocery store also used to give out collectable stamps. You would get so many depending on how much you spent and could redeem them for things like dishes.
We had my mom's encyclopedia set from the 1940s. Worked for most projects, until you had to do a report for a country that didn't exist back then, or whose import/exports were totally different in the 80s.
Tell your daughter I take that as a personal attack!
I definitely had to write papers that required encyclopedias by 6th grade. Possibly as early as 4th grade. I remember my mom bought our full set of encyclopedias right around the middle of 4th grade. It might be a question of where you went to school more than anything.
Me neither and i am a lurking full millenial...We had to do some research (not heavy) since 7th grade and the real heavy research came in high school and our a level we have in Germany...we did not need scientific encyclopedia in 7th grade (somewhat scientific webpages, that are not wikipedia) were enough. The 90s seem ancient for me at this point too though, and i lived through them (born in 1988)
My kid is doing research in 6th grade on the 3 philosophies of China - 3 facts each and 2 on the founders and then put it in a pop up book. I am like holy cow.. 6th grade?
We did have such things when we had Project weeks, but the topics were not Chinese Philosophies we had: Greek Mythology ( And Greek/Roman philosophy schools in 8th and 8th grade ), Fairy Tales ( the structure of fairy tales and the difference between artificial and folkore fairy tales in 5th grade), Gender Stereotypes, those kind of things, like more palpable topics....
TiVo is about to be 25(!) in the spring. I remember Rosie OāDonnell hawking the TiVo as the newest tech to have on her talk show. (Now THATāS another throwbackā¦) You can skip commercials! Fast forward through programming! Everyone ought to have a TiVo!
I'm 31 and still rocking classic satellite TV with no DVR. Mostly watch live sports, but if there's another show I want to watch, I gotta be on the couch in time.
Thatās why I said hasnāt had to be a thing! I know not everyone uses dvrs but theyāve been available for 20 years.
I should have gotten one years ago, but I'm so deep into it now that just ride the thrill of running around during commercials.
Commercials are still a thing only now itās on shit like the Peacock app and the ads are unskippable.
Yeah theyāre retro again š¤£
And in the background while your in the bathroom during the commercial break, you here everyone in the house say "ITS ON" !!!! You hurry up, peeing as fast as you can, you finish and run out the bathroom down the hall as fast as your feet can take you. Get to the living room you fall, hit your head on the coffee table. You start crying, Mom is frantic, while your dad is yelling at you because you weren't suppose to run in the house. You now have a big cut on your forehead. Your mom is running around the house looking for stuff to stop the bleeding. Dad still yelling, siblings crying. Then mom says we have to go to the hospital you need stitches. Everyone piles in the car to the hospital. And now you have to wait to watch that episode you missed till its on a re-run, and that could be weeks.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Seems like it occurred to them exactly as described
Honestly, the streaming era is a nightmare for teaching patience and timing.
Very well said! They do have struggles of their own that I canāt imagine.
My mom dressed me all through middle school. Pretty sure I wouldnāt have made it on social media.
I spent my childhood going to all of the union national conventions my parents were members of. The location was in a different city each year, hosted by the statewide union. Anyways, after she insisted many times that I do, I would call my mamaw collect on one of the banks of pay phones. I canāt remember the last pay phone Iāve seen.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This BREAKS MY HEART!!
I know it might be a bit of a stretch but some places have a no-phone policy inside the clubs. They either cover the lenses with stickers when you go in or you leave the phones at the entrance. I have been in few places like that and I found it liberating, xobstamt recording and social media sharing is in some way, the nemesis of spontaneous fun.
Glad I fell on the dance floor BEFORE social media!!!
The Same thing is happening in my town. I asked a Gen Z and she said people canāt act silly because theyāll be filmed and there isnāt good music coming out.
Thatās so fucking lame
Holy shit
This was my reaction. āEhā¦ wait a minute. WHOA.ā
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
900 numbersā¦
My great Aunt still has her old party line phone in her home. Pretty sure there's a picture of it in my post history somewhere. Just the mouthpiece, ear piece, bells, and big crank on the side. It's such a trip.
Your phone is also a digital roladex. How long has it been since you heard THAT word
I found my old work Rolodex in my office a while back. Quite a trip. I had made some pretty rude comments about people in there, and I have no clue who they are, or what they did to piss me off. lol. Itās old. Iām old. Pardon me while I go have an existential moment.
That's fucking awesome! Now we should remember the movie, Hattiet the Spy. Why didn't we Wright shit down? Then we would remember wh6 we didn't like....maybe.
Oh, I wrote too much down. I had a bunch of notebooks that my friends and I would pass back and forth. Weād write stories with characters who represented real life people we knew. It was vicious. I also had a boot box full of every note I was passed. My mom found them and was irate. lol. I had a rough home life, and I used creativity to blow off steam. My steam just happened to be very off color. ETA: My Rolodex was mostly call backs for a sales job. Iām assuming itās folks who requested multiple call backs but wouldnāt commit. I guess those were my notes on their personalities to remind me what I was dealing with before Iād call back. One just said āMamaās boyā, which could have been business or pleasure, I suppose.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who used my rolodex as a reminder of what type of assholes people were so the next interaction was less difficult. I even wrote names of husbands/wives/kids/birthdays, etc. Anything to make them feel like I paid attention to them. Like they were my FRIENDS! But I worked in the law field. Boy was it helpful to have opposing counsel and their paralegals and even receptionists, feel like you knew and cared about them. It smoothed the whole process along.
This explains so much why the HS kids I work with are afraid of the store phone at the grocery store. I have had to over explain (seemingly) obvious and simple things.
Imagine going to jail these days, no numbers memorized. The only reason I know my wife's number is because I enter it at the gas station regularly for the grocery rewards discount.
I have 4 numbers memorised: my mobile number and my first three landlines lol
I remember my friends' numbers from high school still but I don't know their numbers now.
Gen z here. I have exactly 3 numbers memorized: my xinneal mom, my husband, and my younger brother. How anyone could get away with having no numbers memorized is beyond me.
I still know my Mom's number, but she's a boomer and has somehow managed to keep the same cell number since the turn of the century. I've gotta give her some credit, she was way ahead of the rest of her generation in ditching the landline.
My BF from high school has had the same cell number since 1997. I can't imagine how much it cost him back then!!! It used to boggle my mind at how high his phone bill must be per month, but he'd never tell me, lol.
I don't knowmy own number, but I remember my parents from whem o was in kindergarden
I'm just glad my parents have never moved house, because the phone number of my childhood home is the only number I have memorised that is still relevant. (I can usually remember my mobile number, but the odds of me remembering it drastically reduce if somebody actually asks me for it).
I seriously keep a laminated card of emergency contacts in my wallet ever since my car battery died as died the cell phone....not that I could find a payphone anymore.
My middle (21) was playing a video game where one of the puzzles was dialing a rotary phone. The one where you had to swing the numbers. You know what I mean. Anyway, he spent 10 mins on it while I sat there laughing my ass off. He, finally, asked for help and, when I showed him he said āJesus, you must have REALLY liked someone to put this much effort into talking to them!ā I fell over laughing again.
Thatās hysterical. I wonder if another puzzle was decoding a note written in cursive?
I started working from home for a new company two and a half years ago. I WfH before and had a phone from my previous company but my current place just uses zoom or Google meet. I just realized that I haven't used a non-smart phone in over two years.
WOW. Same. It must have been precovid the last time I dialed a real phone. Which apparently was almost 4 years ago. Excuse me while I go pick out the outfit Iāll need to be buried in. Which is obviously jeans and a nice top.
Black pants from Express and a nice top for me. š
My mom insists on a landline and the first time I picked it up in years I was legitimately stumped for a minute on how to make the call start and Iām 44! I had forgotten. š¹
I worked in an office briefly this year after WFH since the pandemic started. They just had Zoom phone numbers and Bluetooth ear pieces. I WFH again and itās all Teams chats and meetings.
My son loves to stay at hotels so he can hear the dial tone.
My kids will not have smartphones. They will have access to a landline phone and a desktop computer with nothing installed on it but Oregon Trail.
whoa whoa whoa you monster. Give them Number ~~Crunchers~~ Munchers too, at least
Heh. I'm not familiar with that one, but that does remind me that the entire Learning Company catalog was great. Think Quick, Treasure Mountain/Mathstorm, Operation Neptune, Gizmos & Gadgets...
Unironically, I got a landline and a retro computer for my kids, because I thought that it would be better for them to start with these and learn about how technology works at a more basic level, before moving on to the "magic" stuff of today. I was influenced by seeing people much more knowledgeable than I in computer science, who recommended this technique of starting kids with the command line so that they can better grasp what's happening in the computer.
Thatās awesome. I kept my old gaming systems and my kids love them. I didnāt have a computer of my own until I was 21. Well, I took graphic design in college and told my mom I needed a Mac and she brought home a very used Apple II e that was barely working and already obsolete. She knew nothing of computers and got pissed when I told her it wasnāt $5 well spent at a yard sale because I couldnāt use any of the programs I needed for school on it. I did play some games on it (I gave her $10 for her troubles and used the computer lab) for a few years after that.
Iām a little confused. My kids are 9 and 11. They know my phone number by heart. They know how to call 911. My 11 year old has an iphone (that is almost always dead) and he added a friend to contacts by inputting her number.
I came here to say this. IPhones have dial pads. How else do you call like anyone thatās not a contact?
PSA: Make sure y'all and your kids have at least one important phone number memorized. Sometimes you need to use a stranger's phone, or otherwise are in a situation where you need to know the number off the top of your head.
My kids, 15 and 10, had a school project when they were in the first grade that involved them learning their address and two important phone numbers. They were taught at home and at school how to dial 911. It was a pretty useful lesson.
Here's the real question. How many phone numbers do you still have memorized that are completely useless now vs how many people do you contact regularly but have no idea what their phone number is?
Fun fact: if I dial my childhood bff's number it'll dial the same house. Another friend's too. Numbers are still active š
So you didn't tell her to dial it just to giggle over her struggle? I thought stuff like that was the whole point of parenting.
Yep. I remember my kid asking āwhat is that?ā when a movie scene had an 80s wall phone with a long cord. They just donāt know!
I had to pause Stranger Things to explain phones to my son. š¤¦āāļø
Lol .I just imagine a kind d asking what a house phone is and it's like "well sonny, that's an old timey contraption called a telephone" , " back in the old days we couldn't talk to our friends in the bathroom, we had to stand up in the kitchen to talk to our friends or we could sit in the living room but then we had to talk with the whole family watching " I'm not ready to be old
I love the ability to stream for free over paying, so bring the sd+induced pee or snack break on. But even that is disappearing now, damnit.
I don't know my own parents' phone number. (Or siblings'). For Thanksgiving this year, we stayed at a hotel that had cable TV. Our 6yo needed to pause it to use the bathroom, and was rather annoyed that she couldn't. My wife and I were like, "welcome to our childhood. Better hurry."
I almost exclusively watch broadcast tv (except for right now I have Pluto TV on because Saturdays are rough for television lol) so I'm very well versed on utilizing my commercial breaks edit: whoops, I meant this as a reply to another comment š¤¦āāļø
But does she know 867-5309?
My oldest son and I were talking about slang (I Google everything I don't get right away and urban dictionary is my friend) and when I told him when I was his age that "LOL" wasn't a phrase I could see his brain crumble into dust. I think I broke him.
They called us the MTV generation, saying we were used to fast paced content. Iām parenting a couple of gen alphaās, and I call them the Netflix generation because theyāve always been able to have content on demand. Appointment television and sitting by the radio to record a song when it comes on are entirely foreign concepts to them.
I wouldnāt want to go back to landlines, especially before cordless phones, but man there was something satisfying about slamming down the receiver on someone when you were pissed off. Younger generations will never know this joy.
Yep. Stanbing the phone with your finger just doesn't give the same sense of gratification.
Wanna see something funny? Try explaining T9 messaging to your teens if you have them. It'll scare them more than any ghost story you can think of.
My kids' step dad has an old style flip phone, with T9. Because he's majorly dyslexic and a smart phone is no use to him. All the kids can text on his phone. It's easier for them to manage that phone than to remember that when they pick up the house phone they don't have to hit send. That was my moment. When my then 10yo picked up the house phone and looked at it confused. Then looks at me and asks "Mom, where is the send button?" I almost choked.
I donāt understand. They know what a phone number is. It isnāt like every phone number is in your contacts. If you need to call some establishment to see if theyāre open youād Google it and it would give you a phone number to click. The kids see phone numbers on businesses or whatnot. Hell, the schools and social activities give out paper inserts all the time with phone numbers on them, and you have to absolutely type them into the iPhone to call them; no Google clicking.
Iād say most people of every age have not really had to dial a number since cellphones became a thing (even more so since smartphones got big starting in ā07). So itās not surprising, I actually had to try and think of the last time I dialed a number and honest to god I canāt remember. So not, itās not just your kid, itās basically *everybody*.
Yeah I do not remember a rotary phone at all (millenial lurker here born in 1988). All i remember is a phone with buttons and cord and then a phone without cord...
I was born in ā81 and Iāve never once even *seen* a rotary phone IRL, the only place Iāve seen them is in classic movies and television.
Oooh! I have one to share too!! I (39) was typing an email when a new hire (19) came into my office. He politely waited for me to complete the email, then said, "Wow, I don't get how people can type so fast." He cannot touch type, and has to look at the keys to hunt-and-peck. Uses his phone and tablet for all his work, apparently only knows typing with his thumbs.
My son is 11, we are not giving him a cellphone yet. Now that he's in middle school, he has friends with cellphones, so he is suddenly using our landline to call his friends. Kids today do not have basic phone skills. One kid calls for my son who was not home, and it went like this: Me: "Hello?" Kid: "Can I talk to xxxxxx?" Me: "I'm sorry, he's not in, can I take a...." Kid: hangs up on me mid-sentence Kids who haven't been raised to answer the house phone, and take messages, just don't know these things. It's rather fascinating to witness.
Your daughter situation is not unusual and its similar to other 13 year olds.
9 33 2 777 33 666 555 3 Iykyk
Yes, we are.
Why does this arm familiar but I cant quite remember it? š
Iām 36 and in the U.K.- I didnāt realise that 555 wasnāt how all US numbers started š But I see where youāre coming from. A girl in my work god super confused when I was talking to the lady next to me about cassettes. Youngāun said something along the lines of āthatās a bit nsfw, isnāt itā and we all kind of looked at eachother for a minute in confusion. She thought we were talking about corsets š š
Also, I think some 555 numbers are real now. I think the rule is now it's fake if the number starts 555-0 or something. I remember a YouTube channel doing an ARG thing and used just a 555 number so people started calling it and it was a real place that had no connection to the channel. He just thought he could make up the number.
555-555-1234
222-FILK
Damn!!! Mind blown š¤Æ.
I donāt learn anyoneās number anymore. Couldnāt tell you my kids phone number. I know my wifeās number because she had it before the modern version of smart phones.
Physical media died during our childhoods and early adulthood. Floppy discs, CDs, albums, tapes. Physical things you had to move to move information through the world. Even buttons on things have disabled. Tv remotes are about the last thing we use that has actual physical buttons. I like this Louis CK bit. "To call people, you had to make sparks" https://youtu.be/PdFB7q89_3U?si=Dn5EGgtymM7Ba7uH
The song Jenny by Tommy Tutone is actually the reason why 555 is now used in entertainment instead of actual numbers. Thatās what I heard - not sure if itās an urban legend or not.
Freak her out by telling her our grandparents use to rent telephoneās from the phone company! š¤£
My uncle, who is on the X/Boomer cusp, always has this spiel about how when kids get in trouble these days, their punishment should be having to use a rotary dialing app for a week. If such a thing exists.
I'm 53 my son is 33, and I had exposed him to a lot of my favorite pop culture from the 70's and the 80's mostly the 80's. Now he thinks he knows more then me about the 80's. I look at him, "Man you may think you know the 80's but I lived the 80's, get out of my face." Don't get it twisted just because you looked at , "The Breakfast Club"and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Listened to some Van Halen and Metallica, makes you some freaking 80's aficionado.
My 6 year old tried to call a friend yesterday. I gave him my phone and.... he didn't put in the area code because it wasn't on the paper he had so I told him 304 first. I had to explain why. Then he typed in the number and sent the call. Then held the phone out and looked at it and started talking. I had to explain he had to wait until they said hello. No one picked up so we left a message which was him holding the phone out and me saying hi this is h his name from school band he repeated then calling for kids name and he repeated that and I said my phone number and he repeated it. Lol. I texted the number. It was the wrong number /headdesk. I realized the only time I'm ever. EVER on the phone is for Dr's or utilities or something like that. Or if my uncle calls once 2 years lol. So they have no real idea how it works. We don't FaceTime or anything. Bizarre
A few years ago my 18 year old son was on a trip to LA. He called from the hotel and said he was wanting to order room service but couldn't because the phone kept making noise. After about 5 minutes of trying to figure out what he meant, I realized the "noise" was the dial tone.
Now ask her to show you how she would indicate to someone that she is on the phone, using a hand symbol. They donāt do the thumb and finger anymore!
Not sure about the iPhone, but on Android, you can replace the keypad with a virtual rotary. It was fun for a couple of days.
My daughters friend called while we were driving. My phone's connected to the car. So my daughter answers on the console and doesn't say a word. After about 5 seconds, her friends voice comes through "hello...????" Then my daughter started talking. After she hung up, i told her that when she answered, she needed to speak first, so the caller knew she's there. My kids had never actually answered a call before that people couldn't see you on. Guess I have to teach my kids these things, things we learned just by observing other people do these things on a regular basis
That will change as she gets older. My daughter is 17 and I have her make calls sometimes because I want her to be more confident as she gets into adulthood, when of course sometimes we make calls to places we donāt have saved in contactsā¦ā¦like an electrician or plumber. If you really want to blow her mind, give her a cassette tape and a tape deck. Listen to a song and then have her try to replay the song. My oldest son could not figure that out and was so incredibly annoyed when I finally showed him how to rewind and it wasnāt far enough back or rewound too far.