Thanksgoating - Day fifteen. Disco time

“I’m old. But I’m good with that.” I am proud to say that I’m right there with you. So many of the little memories you posted struck a chord with me…Yes, yes, and yes! No insult to anyone else who’s taken up the mantle of GOAT this year, but you’ve consistently had some of my favorite posts & I look forward to spending a little time in your head (hope I didn’t do any damage!) each day.

I’m a (ahem) bit younger than you. Yes, I remember when:
Seatbelts were a new thing and they stressed them in the driver’s ed classes.
Helmets were something you wore if you rode a motorcycle on the street. Maybe.
Lawn darts had points on the end and stuck 4 inches into the ground when you tossed them.
Riding in the back of a station wagon meant being without a seat, never mind a seatbelt.
Weekends and summer days meant going out to play in the morning, maybe coming it to eat at lunch then coming back for supper before going out til dark.
Having a bike meant you could ride 15 miles to the other side of the Mississippi River and watch the boats lock thru at the Alton locks.
If you misbehaved your parents knew the neighbors would handle it for them, call and let them know what you had done and what they had done about it, and then they would re-apply justice once you got home.
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My kids grew up having to go get the (insert letter here) encyclopedia whenever they asked a question at supper that was more complicated than I could answer easily on my own. Audubon field guides and map reading skills were something they were expected to master at a young age. TV was a treat they got when they went to see the grandparents. Chores were the price they paid for their “room and board”.
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We were at the nascent beginnings of computers becoming ubiquitous. They inherited some $$ from a family friend and pooled it to get their first computer. We looked thru the Computer Shopper, picked out the company we wanted to use, then ordered it to spec. When it came time to upgrade, we did it ourselves after reading up on it. The next several computers were custom built by the 3 of us (2 kids and I), and we did all the software installation of the OS etc. Old computers became Linux boxes and projects to use at the private school my wife taught at, getting re-purposed with Mavis Beacon typing software to teach typing skills. Both can type faster than I can write.
My son was active on several IRC and BB groups for martial arts, establishing contacts across the world that he eventually had a chance to meet in person (including one guy in Australia he “knew” for 20 yrs. before they actually met in person when he travelled there in his early 30’s).
We traveled by car to all 48 states, listening to books on tape, playing ‘auto-bingo’, looking for license plates and using AAA ‘trip-ticket’ maps and guide books as well as a copy of the Rand McNally atlas from Sam’s.
Both my kids wrote for the local newspaper, one travelled to Germany to work as an au pair at 16. We sent my son from AL to PA alone via Greyhound Bus when he was 15 for a summer program at Carnegie Mellon University.

TL:DR You’re right, and I wouldn’t trade my (and my kid’s) experiences and opportunities for the world.

Seatbelts?
The earliest car I remember riding in not only didn’t have seatbelts, it especially didn’t have seatbelts in the rear window area, which had a deck or porch-like scetion above the top of the seats. I liked climbing up into that nook and riding there, though my father often made me get down. That wasn’t so much for my safety but so that he had a better view when driving on the highway.

Speaking of safety, that was an era when everybody (at least the boys – I had no knowledge of girls at that point) had at least one pocket knife for “every day carry” to grade school and no adult gasped and considered them terrorists. It was common to see knives out and being thrown around as part of the recess games. (Teachers surely had witnessed this.)

I saw a few fights at recess, but I never saw a knife out for one, always just fists or kids rolling around on the ground. In fact, the first knife fight I saw was on TV with Sal Mineo or some such. And in high school we as a class watched “West Side Story” (as a parallel to Romeo and Juliet which we covered in Lit class) and most of us were generally shocked when Bernardo stabbed Riff and then Tony stabbed Bernardo.

Different era. Now kids taking scissors or nail files to school causes a scene. I liked it better before. Technological progress but cultural regress.