"In my day"

[factotum]

I need to stop reading IMDB. It makes me feel really old to look up some programme I enjoyed as a kid and find that practically all the main cast are now dead, as in the case of "Rentaghost"...

[veti]

Wait, in what part of the world was this a thi---

Britain.

... I, uh, take these two are somehow related...?

Not particularly. Perhaps I should have included "I remember when we were proud of our country".

I feel young. I think I am young.

Enjoy it while you're there. Middle age has its upsides, but you only get one shot at each chapter of life.

In my day we typed "kill troll with sword" repeatedly because we didn't have an "again" command AND WE LIKED IT!

Wait, you mean pressing an up arrow wouldn't repeat the last line typed? What system was that on?

[FinnLassie]

Britain.

Not particularly. Perhaps I should have included "I remember when we were proud of our country".

Enjoy it while you're there. Middle age has its upsides, but you only get one shot at each chapter of life.

Honestly, in my head where you're from sounded like some Orwellian type of shizznicks. Britain, eh? I dunno. Feels weird. I would've never connected that stuff with the UK.

I'll try my best. Can't wait for the middle agey part of my life where I have to pay back all of my loans...

[BannedInSchool]

Wait, you mean pressing an up arrow wouldn't repeat the last line typed? What system was that on?

I may be speaking out of my behind there. I'm not sure I ever knew what specific breed of mainframe that terminal was attached to, and maybe I could have used an up-arrow but just didn't know it. I was in the single digits of years.

[Fri]

Honestly, in my head where you're from sounded like some Orwellian type of shizznicks. Britain, eh? I dunno. Feels weird. I would've never connected that stuff with the UK.

I'll try my best. Can't wait for the middle agey part of my life where I have to pay back all of my loans...

Nah, a lot of countries play national anthem before stuffs. It's just culture. Dunno if it's considered orwellian these days. I think it's just culture?

Like from where I'm from (and also in japan, if you watch japanese shows) students stand up and greet their teachers before class, even in high school. I just can't think it happen in any western countries, really.

[FinnLassie]

Nah, a lot of countries play national anthem before stuffs. It's just culture. Dunno if it's considered orwellian these days. I think it's just culture?

Like from where I'm from (and also in japan, if you watch japanese shows) students stand up and greet their teachers before class, even in high school. I just can't think it happen in any western countries, really.

The only things in Finland I can think of it being used is during international sports competitions, some specific national holidays (independence day, christmas, those at least) and I've sometimes heard it sang in graduation ceremonies. But, I dunno, before watching a film in the cinema? Something so ordinary? The only place where I could imagine it happen it today (and, well, at least back down to the 60s) is probably Best Korea

Finnish elementary schools still have this custom. Language classes have it til the end of 9th grade I think because it's connected to the culture, but in upper secondary the custom vanishes.

[Feytalist]

Like from where I'm from (and also in japan, if you watch japanese shows) students stand up and greet their teachers before class, even in high school. I just can't think it happen in any western countries, really.

We did that, in primary school at least. And in home room in high school, but rather less formal.

You can decide for yourself if South Africa falls under Western society. (Honestly, not even we who live here can agree on that )


The only place I can remember our national anthem being sung with any regularity - aside from international sports events, that is - is during Assembly at school, and that was once a week. We're not big on our national anthem, strangely. We don't even really play it during special holidays.

Might be due to the fact that it's in five different languages.

[Scarlet Knight]

In my day, no one had clothes dryers; we had clothes lines, and in the winter the clothes would get all stiff.

[Wardog]

Most of what I would have said has already been said, but a few new (or particularly significant) things:

No internet no mobile phones (for ordinary people at least) and "microcomputers" were rare things that only one or two of your friend's might have had.

But we did have Teletext.

Powercuts were a regular thing. If when they happened, you just got the candles out.

To start a car, you first had to pull the choke lever on the dashboard.

Battle of the Planets, Mysterious Cities of Gold, Masters of The Universe, etc.



And then a few years later:

Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. (Because the UK censors thought Ninjas were too violent).

[noparlpf]

Why, when I was a wee lad we didn't even have cars. If we wanted to go somewhere we had to go out and trudge through ten feet of snow, uphill all the way, then wrestle a bear and ride it to where we were going.

[shawnhcorey]

Why, when I was a wee lad we didn't even have cars. If we wanted to go somewhere we had to go out and trudge through ten feet of snow, uphill all the way, then wrestle a bear and ride it to where we were going.

Four Yorkshiremen - Monty Python

[Scarlet Knight]

In my day, you had to go to a circus sideshow to see a woman with a tattoo.

[Callin]

I am surprised nobody has mentioned Microfiche yet.
Computer sources were not recognized for term papers.
Dewey Decimal System
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
Amy Jo Johnson... aw yes
On the same note Kennedy from MTV
Saturday Morning Cartoons
Playing with the Original Star Wars Action Figures
45s
Crystal Clear Pepsi
Classic Coke
Anderson Cooper on Channel 1 News covering Bosnia
The OJ Simpson Circus
I started driving when gas was 90 cents a gallon
I saw ET in theaters (it was a reshowing a few years after release)
Hurricane Hugo

[Dire Moose]

The first movie I remember seeing in theaters is Jurassic Park.

[Gopher Wizard]

I keep hearing about this thing called a "Blockbuster" where people checked out these things called "VHS tapes" which based on what I've seen are some kind of brick.

[Brother Oni]

Battle of the Planets, Mysterious Cities of Gold, Masters of The Universe, etc.

M.A.S.K. was also a big thing for a while. Thinking back on the comics series, a fair part of it was the protagonists conducting counter-terrorism operations against the antagonists, V.E.N.O.M., who would be clearly a terrorist organisation these days rather than a criminal one.

Ulysses 31 had some amazingly creepy episodes (some of which still holds up today) and a fairly dark ending for characters in an otherwise children's cartoon (Sisyphus for example).

I also remember Godzilla ("and Godzoooookiiiiii!") and the first Thundercats series.


For the UK folk, does anybody remember the old fortnightly Storyteller magazine that had various stories and fables, along with a narration on a tape?

[factotum]

I keep hearing about this thing called a "Blockbuster" where people checked out these things called "VHS tapes" which based on what I've seen are some kind of brick.

Hey, *I* remember Betamax video tapes being a thing, and nobody knowing whether they or VHS would win the video format wars!

[Feytalist]

For the UK folk, does anybody remember the old fortnightly Storyteller magazine that had various stories and fables, along with a narration on a tape?

Oh wow yeah I remember that.

Only I had a translated version. I actually had no idea it was a British thing.

[JustSomeGuy]

Oh wow yeah I remember that.

Only I had a translated version. I actually had no idea it was a British thing.

I remember a magazine that had these amazing illustrations of monsters, it was about a boy who was somehow in a fantasy world and had to journey somewhere to do something to return (yeah, i paid that much attention)

I think there was one about a giant spider, one for these wierd underwater 'critters' style things, and maybe one about some giant mountain birds. It was cool stuff back then anyway.

[noparlpf]

I keep hearing about this thing called a "Blockbuster" where people checked out these things called "VHS tapes" which based on what I've seen are some kind of brick.

Blockbuster only actually closed down like three or four years ago. We had one sitting on the corner by the middle school until then. But of course by then it was mostly DVDs.

[randman22222]

They've stopped teaching cursive? The teachers must be slowly learning to love.

[SirKazum]

Regarding pressing up to recall the last line, *I* remember when you had to run DOSKEY in order to enable that newfangled "saving previous commands entered" thing

And the first computer I've used (it was my dad's) was a TK-85, a Brazilian clone of the Sinclair ZX81 (back when crippling imports policies meant foreign electronics were pretty much impossible to obtain in Brazil). That makes me sound a bit older than I really am though, I was like 5 years old when I started messing around with that computer. It had rubber keys and a sticker that read "16 kb" - that was RAM, I guess, since hard-drives weren't a thing. Data was stored in cassette tapes, and you had to run a tape for like half an hour in order to load a program. And it had no screen of its own, you just hooked it up to your TV (kinda like a videogame console). Speaking of which, I remember when Pong was the only videogame we had at home That was before I got an Atari 2600 for my 5th birthday. Ah, the joys of Pitfall...

As for other stuff... well, people have already said it all, I guess. I went completely bonkers over both E.T. and Neverending Story when they came out. My parents gave me an inflatable E.T. - I got really excited when they said they got E.T. in our home, but I kicked it away saying "it's only a balloon". Neverending story went better - my dad got me the book, and I still love it to this day, it's absolute genius. Reading it again and again at different ages, it's a different book each time. I remember the price of everything going up every day, to the point that the concept of "price" sounded completely arbitrary and unpredictable. And I remember my mom putting me on the bus, alone, at age 7 or so, for a four-hour cross-state bus trip to my grandparents'. That would be completely insane today. And I remember our train getting hijacked by what looked like guerilla fighters when we went on a trip to Peru, but that's another story for another time

[FinnLassie]

They've stopped teaching cursive? The teachers must be slowly learning to love.

Cursive is making a slight comeback in Finland, as they noticed that children's handwriting got worse and more unclear without proper cursive

[noparlpf]

They don't teach script (I got a bit in a private school) but they expect us to know it a couple of times in high school.

Technically my handwriting is "cursive" because half my letters are connected, but that doesn't mean "legible". I need to practice some more for proper doctor handwronging though.

[thirsting]

I remember the "WHIRRRRR-BEEEEEEP.WHIRRRRRR-BEbeBEbeBEbeBEEEEEP" of connecting to the internet.

With that sound, I blocked our phone line for two hours to play free MMORPG while mom was waiting for an important call. Rest of the month, I had to play outside - with "real" friends.

(this is doubly shameful, because I was not THAT far from reaching legal adulthood)

The first movie I remember seeing in theaters is Jurassic Park.

Lion King.

[thorgrim29]

First movie I saw in theaters (that I remember) was Alaska. I was 6 or 7. The novelization of the movie was also my first novel. Which is a bit od because I remember a lot of stuff from before that age but no specific movies.

I was a bit young when Jurassic Park came out but I remember getting it on VHS for my birthday a few years later... I remember using Altavista and Yahoo, Microsoft Encarta, Dial-Up modems. I remember when Diablo II Lord of Destruction taking up one GB was a huge deal because our hard drive had only 4 GB of space... You know, basically I remember most stuff from the second half of the nineties and early 00s


Also this is a bit more Quebec-specific but I remember seeing the first season of "Dans une Galaxie près de chez vous" on tv (note for the vast majority of people: It's a spoof of Lost in Space and pretty much any other sci-fi franchise you can think of, and launched the careers of some of our most talented actors and comedians)

[factotum]

First movie I saw in theaters (that I remember) was Alaska.

In my case it was a double bill of "Warlords of Atlantis" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark". I have absolutely no idea why the cinema felt those two would make a good match, but there you go!

[Spanish_Paladin]

In my case it was a double bill of "Warlords of Atlantis" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark". I have absolutely no idea why the cinema felt those two would make a good match, but there you go!

If i recall correctly, my first movie in theatres was the "Return of the jedi", i think it explain a lot of things about myself

[BannedInSchool]

I was told I slept through Star Wars, but I have no memory of that.

[Lord Torath]

The first movie I remember seeing in theaters is Jurassic Park.

I think mine was "Aristocats" at a friend's birthday party. I saw "Song of the South" in elementary school. Which also reminds me of Filmstrips - a reel-to-reel movie projector with a separate soundtrack that made a beep each time you were supposed to advance to the next image.