Things I Miss (AKA the Old Fart Thread)

[Viin]

I miss being ignorant and not worrying about all the crazy assholes out there that seem to vote every time they can, while us "normal" folks just go about our merry way.

[Stormwaltz]

I'm sure I could keep at this forever, but a few things that resonate strongly with me, in vaguely chronological order.

Riding a bike everywhere. In the street if you want, on the sidewalk if there's traffic. (No one had yet had the "brilliant" idea to make laws that bikes should travel among the high-speed multi-ton death machines instead of among the slow, easily avoided pedestrians.) No bike helmets or pads.

Games on the Apple IIs in elementary school.

Being taught metric.

Phones with actual bells. Walking to the bedroom or kitchen to answer the phone. Phone cords.

Writing batshit insane stories in sixth grade that made my class laugh. I started writing before I even learned that you have to start a new paragraph when switching to another speaker.

Reading a lot. Literally hundreds of books a year. Kid-length books, but still.

Spending an entire day at the library and going home with a pile of books. All of which I'd finish. Even the ones that sucked.

TV shows I planned to watch all week. The A-Team, the Dukes of Hazzard, and Knight Rider. Robotech, Voltron, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors. Saturday morning cartoons in general. Rudolph, Frosty, and Charlie Brown at Christmas.

Big Damn Christmases. I was an only child, and my dad was Navy, so we got housing, school, and medical gratis courtesy of the American taxpayers. Christmas was piles of GI Joes, Transformers, Matchbox and Hot Wheels, Legos, Go-Bots, and so on. I always look on what I can give my own boys with dissatisfaction.

Speaking of Legos, Lego sets that were just a bunch of bricks, or maybe a generic space rocket or police station, and not some IP tie-in.

Swivel-arm battle grip. I could never play with Star Wars figures afterwards.

For that matter, spending a whole day playing GI Joes or Transformers or toy cars. For the cars, digging roads and using the hose to make rivers. Spending the whole day drawing the interior of the Autobot Ark on long scrolls of paper my dad would bring home from work.

Trading toys. This may have been unique to the culture in my area, but kids swapped toys all the time.

Watching MASH and Star Trek in syndicated reruns during dinner. That's "Star Trek," with no suffix.

My dad was a space enthusiast. Our house was full of books and pictures of Saturn Vs, the moon, and later space shuttles. I grew up thinking that I'd be able to raise my own kids on the moon. Now I don't expect they'll have the option of raising their own kids on the moon. I still can't watch footage of the Challenger explosion without dissolving into tears, much to the alarm of my children.

The miracle of the VCR.

The necessity of encyclopedias, phone books, and maps.

Sweating buckets while playing Atari 2600 games until my legs went numb - which took a lot longer in those days. Flipping the score in Asteroids. All-day Adventure marathons.

In junior high, spending hours on the Commodore-64 playing SSI and SSG wargames or building sprawling, never-completed Adventure Construction Set modules. For that matter, games in general that required neither internet nor graphics cards. The weird Epyx 500XJ ergonomic joystick I used for years and years. Portable computers that weighed 20-30 pounds. The novelty of modems.

My first cat, Sneakers. Our only dog, Chuk.

Crushes. They always turned out unpleasantly for me, but there's no emotion as intense and all-encompassing as a high-school crush.

Weighing 155 pounds for 15 years straight. Having a 32-inch waist. Being able to eat and drink whatever. I can drink more now than I could before, but it all goes straight to my gut.

[Lantyssa]

Hah.  I think you're my spiritual sibling.

[Engels]

So I was raised in Spain, so this is an interesting thread to me. The only thing I have that I'd say is an irretrievable part of the past is being able to spy on prostitutes from the tree tops of the field where taxi drivers would park for their mid-afternoon blow jobs. I'm pretty sure that is not a common childhood experience.

I see one big common experience; care-free bike riding. What changed? Are the suburban streets that more dangerous, or is it a societal change in the perception of danger? I know that when I was growing up, we never even thought about pedophiles, yet nowadays, it seems that that's the first thought in anyone's head when they see a stranger even so much as glancing at child.

It seems that the world hasn't changed, its just that we're now victims of our own media.

[Merusk]

Change by perception.  It's as safe as it was, but with all the sex offender registries and media saturation most parents don't let their kids even leave their yards in my neighborhood.

[Malakili]

Change by perception.  It's as safe as it was, but with all the sex offender registries and media saturation most parents don't let their kids even leave their yards in my neighborhood.

I wonder how much of it is about knowing neighbors too.  I feel like with all the social media/internet there is little reason to actually KNOW the people in your community.  It is a lot less scary to let your kid play in old man Bob's yard when you actually know old man Bob.  Hell, I'm guilty of this myself (although I don't have kids).  I know barely anyone that lives in this neighborhood, but when I was a kid, there was nothing to do inside, so you went out and met people.

[Signe]

I miss my family.  I have so few left.  I desperately miss my husband.  Not the one who cheated, the one I married and was happy with for the best part of two decades.  I miss Portsmouth, Hants, and zipping around all over England and Scotland in the TVR.  I miss cheap weed.

[Bunk]

Change by perception.  It's as safe as it was, but with all the sex offender registries and media saturation most parents don't let their kids even leave their yards in my neighborhood.

Sadly I grew up in a neighborhood that had a child molester/murder stalking it, so I really never had that freedom to explore freely until I hit my teens. Years later I understood why my mother was so strict about knowing where I was, but I sure didn't understand it at the time.

You're right though, today everyone knows about every incident - I would expect most parents in urban settings to be pretty paranoid now a days. Back then, we only really knew that Olsen was out there because my mother's best friend knew one of the victims.

[Tmon]

Add me to the list of people who miss riding a bike, everywhere all the time, everybody seemed to have a bike.  I can remember seeing 20 bikes laying around the edge of the 4 backyards we used for football and whiffle ball games.  I was so jealous of my cousin when he got a Schwinn Manta Ray 5 speed in Kool Orange.  http://theselvedgeyard.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/2087334202_a94becb58d_b.jpg

[MisterNoisy]

Speaking of Legos, Lego sets that were just a bunch of bricks, or maybe a generic space rocket or police station, and not some IP tie-in.

Look at the City/Creator/Technic lines.  They're mostly as you remember them, though they're surrendering more and more space to Star Wars/LotR and whatever in-house TV tie-in nonsense they're doing this year (Chima/Ninjago, etc.).  I really like the City stuff, in particular:

[Engels]

I had a schwinn manta ray -in Spain-. The jealousy was off the damned charts. Best bike EVAR.

[Nebu]

I had a schwinn manta ray -in Spain-. The jealousy was off the damned charts. Best bike EVAR.

My childhood bike.  Eat your heart out!



That's right.  A FIVE speed!

[Signe]

It's very pretty!  It looks brand new!

[Chimpy]

Dudes riding bikes with banana seats had gone out of fashion by the time I owned a bike.

[Evildrider]

I had a schwinn manta ray -in Spain-. The jealousy was off the damned charts. Best bike EVAR.

My childhood bike.  Eat your heart out!



That's right.  A FIVE speed!

My childhood bike was better!

[01101010]

Mine was better...



This was my pride and joy till it got demolished by my dad plowing the driveway. Lesson learned, don't leave your shit out in the driveway...ever.

[rk47]

Is it weird when you still get phone calls when you're 30 from mom who tells you to go to bed early before 11 and whether you've brushed your teeth or not?
Cause that is a bi-weekly thing going on for me.

[Engels]

Especially since she could just open the door to the basement and shout it down to you. 

[Cyrrex]

They still make those Green Machines.  I never had one, but one of the neighborhood kids did and it was AWESOME BEYOND COMPARE.  I tried to get both of my kids to believe they needed to have one, but they just looked at me like I was stupid.

Also:  Banana seats were for the lame kids.  Might as well have rainbow tassles hanging down from your curved handlebars, Ralph Wiggum.

[Ashamanchill]

I miss thinking about what I was going to be when I "grew up', and wondering just how awesome it would be. As opposed to being (sort of) there, and finding out that it doesn't quite rock as much.

I also miss the pre-wikipedia days, as much as I love it. I miss my best friend and I getting into a huge argument about WWII (because we were nerds), then going over to my place to settle the dispute by looking for the answer in my father's extensive WWII encyclopedia.

I miss being in a house with one phone, which was right in the kitchen, which made talking to girls really challenging.

I miss going to the local game store to pick up a new game, then sitting in the food court of the mall for like 3 hours looking over the cool maps, and booklets, and tech tress, and other printed paraphernalia that came with it.

I miss when the world, myself included, had an attention span.

I miss sneaking into concerts, and when the mosh pit was still around (yeah that thing was fun as hell for a 16 year old).

-Installing car stereos in cars that were more expensive than the car

Haha, yeah.

[Merusk]

Is it weird when you still get phone calls when you're 30 from mom who tells you to go to bed early before 11 and whether you've brushed your teeth or not?
Cause that is a bi-weekly thing going on for me.

Certain moms just never think of their children as grown-up.  I still get that plus 'don't swear' (she says "oh, shit" and "damnit" all the time) and tips on how we should be cooking and inquiries about if I've had the car checked.  I know there's a lot more that I can't think of because my siblings and I are immune to it, but it drives my wife and brother-in-law up a wall because they receive the same treatment.

I have had a few, "Damnit, Mom, I'm almost 40. I know how to take care of myself." breaks in the last year though.  The last was when she was on me about doing taxes.. when I'd done them in March. 

Still; I'd rather have her nag me than not be around to do so like Dad.

[Sky]

Also:  Banana seats were for the lame kids.  Might as well have rainbow tassles hanging down from your curved handlebars, Ralph Wiggum.

I had the one that looked like it was from a 70's motorcycle, the long padded rectangle. And I needed that, because I use to jump the heck out of that bike. The local playground had excavated the side of a hill to fit in the basketball court, so you could ride down the road (which was a hill) to gather speed, hop the curb and ride across the half court and then up the back wall of the excavated hill. Massive air, it was basically a half pipe back when almost nobody knew what they were (I didn't see a wooden half pipe until a Tony Hawk video tape a few years later).

I was the running champ for the obstacle course at that park for years. Stuff we used to get away with (coordinating with the park summer staff) there's no WAY you could do today. Yay litigation.

This thread mostly makes me glad I was a kid in the 70s. I don't miss a lot but I'm glad I was there then.

[Falconeer]

I miss Christmas Eve 1982. 8 years old me had been dreaming about getting an Intellivision for months, and I knew it was in that big rectangular box under the tree, teasing me, waiting for the clock to finally hit December 25th. I think I've never wanted anything else that bad in my life.

[Ingmar]

At least it wasn't a Colecovision?

[Nebu]

I miss Christmas Eve 1982. 8 years old me had been dreaming about getting an Intellivision for months, and I knew it was in that big rectangular box under the tree, teasing me, waiting for the clock to finally hit December 25th. I think I've never wanted anything else that bad in my life.

Thanks for reminding me of my age.... I was playing Intellivision with friends in high school.  It was, without a doubt, my fondest memory of console gaming. Ship combat and baseball were 

[Ingmar]

This is what I got in 1982:



Video games (at home) were still several years off in the future for me.

[01101010]

At least it wasn't a Colecovision?

Hey wait, I liked my step-brother's coleco.

[Sky]

In 82 I had been playing D&D for a few years already (78 or 79), but my first video game was a few years earlier than even that. My grandfather was president of a regional road construction firm (they built a lot of the NYS Thruway) and he'd take me into work and plop me down in front of a terminal. I learned to use the command line and navigate to the games directory and play stuff like ADVENT and some Star Trek game with ascii graphics and a couple others. I loved me some ADVENT, though. It was a pretty amazing thing to discover in 75 or 76. Dumping the buffer to the large-format printer, not so amazing :p

Pong console, atari and then the C-64 that began my pc gaming snobbery. Summer camp for BASIC programming around 83?

[Tmon]

I had a Colecovision , I traded an Atari 800 computer for one plus 10 or so games.

[Miasma]

I had an intellivision and it was great but that E.T. game on my friends colecovision rocked.

[Shannow]

I remember ordering the Dragon Warriors books (lite RPG system) from my local book store and waiting about 4 months for them to arrive because they were on back order. I don't really miss it but ordering stuff that way makes you appreciate it more.

I also went on a ww2 minitaures kick when I was about 15 (again pre internet) and since my town had basically no really hobby stores I literally went down to the local library , found yellow pages for various Australian cities and starting calling up hobby stores asking them if they had things like '4 Sherman tanks in 1/76th scale' (fuck 1/72th you clumsy oaf) then I'd ask them to hold em for me and mail a check. Then it was come home from school everyday to check the mailbox if we'd gotten a missed package notice from the post office.

[HaemishM]

D&D Basic Set

That was my Christmas present when I was 12. Little did I know it wasn't the same as AD&D but it still rocked so much ass. Keep on the Borderlands, which later led to the "Expert" set and the Isle of Death (think that's what that module was called).

[Ingmar]

Close - Isle of Dread. Still have my original, though at some point along the way I lost a couple of the tear-out maps in the middle.

[Ruvaldt]

Keep on the Borderlands was great.  I remember running that module twice.  They recently made a 4th edition adaptation, but it'd never work in my Ptolus campaign.

[kaid]

At least it wasn't a Colecovision?

Hey wait, I liked my step-brother's coleco.

I loved my coleco vision. I got mine towards the end when the company was pretty much out of business or going that way so KB toys had the games on sale for like 1 or 2 dollars. So every time we went to the mall mom would give me and my brother a few bucks and we would pick up like 2 or 3 games. We wound up owning just about every game ever made for coleco and played the heck out of all of them. It really is the only system I have ever owned that I wound up actually owning most of the games available for it. My nintendos I owned maybe 2 or 3 games and just rented everything else.