Back in my day, we only had one computer in the whole house. And we couldn’t use it if anyone was talking on the telephone! The world around us is changing at an incredible pace, and it’s extremely easy for young generations to forget or simply be unaware of what our grandparents experienced growing up.

So to remind ourselves how different the world was back then, one Reddit user recently asked older adults to share their favorite “pieces of trivia” that people their age know but younger generations might not. Below, you’ll find some of their most fascinating responses, so enjoy scrolling through. And be sure to upvote the replies that remind you of childhood or teach you something new!

#1

Ashtrays everywhere. Homes, businesses, restaurants, hospitals, malls, schools (designated area), etc. Even if you didn't smoke you had ashtrays, at least on your coffee table, for guests.

Image credits: oldcatsarecute

#2

That when you watched TV you had to watch what was on and if you wanted to watch something in particular, you had to wait for it to come on.

Image credits: BreakfastBeerz

#3

My 20 yo son liked this one:

When driving to anywhere new, you had to get directions or stop at the gas station and ask for them…

Or you could buy a map/atlas.

Image credits: littlemissnoname-

#4

When the internet first came out, you couldn't talk on the phone and be online at the same time.

Image credits: LosBrad

#5

Not that long ago, but you no security screening at airports. You could literally walk the person to the boarding area and watch them board the plane.

Image credits: LCCR_2028

#6

Phone numbers were memorized, and there was no speed dial, caller ID, or voicemail. I still remember my home # and my best friend's # from 50+ years ago.

Image credits: ethottly

#7

There was a room called the “coal room” in the basement of our house. We’d shovel coal from that room into a coal furnace to heat our house. The coal was delivered by a truck that had a coal chute that was inserted through a basement window in the coal room.

Image credits: Logybayer

#8

Drunk driving wasn't a serious crime until a group of moms got together and advocated. (MADD).

Image credits: MizzGee

#9

That it was normal for an entire household to share a single phone number.

Image credits: AlexMango44

#10

MTV was all music.

#11

If you misbehaved in school, the teacher could and would dish out some corporal punishment. I had a couple of teachers who absolutely loved hitting kids on the a*s with big wooden paddles made by other students in wood shop class. They had a system. The students wanted to make the most gnarly and painful looking paddles, not even thinking about WHY they are making them.

Image credits: Felon73

#12

Leaving kids in the car to run into a store was no big deal.

#13

Tv stations used to just go off at midnight. They would play a test pattern and a tone until resuming broadcasting around 6am.

Image credits: shavemejesus

#14

Milk was delivered to your house every week in a gallon glass bottle.

Image credits: walkawaysux

#15

We used to make our Christmas or birthday wish list from looking in a Sears & Roebuck (or other store's) catalog. You could actually order and pay for things via snail mail, and it was safe to do so.

Image credits: LeeAnnLongsocks

#16

There were telephones EVERYWHERE. Streets, shops, sidewalk corners, etc., etc.

You paid for calls with COINS.

Image credits: PawzzClawzz

#17

Cigarette machines pretty much everywhere, as long as you put the money in you could get a pack of smokes no matter what age you were

Image credits: No_Worldliness_6803

#18

I remember that you couldn't know the sex of your kid until the baby was born. Apparently, there were ways to tell, though. I remember my mom's friends would hold a necklace with a weight over the woman's belly. They thought that you could tell the sex by whether the necklace swung up and down or back and forth.

#19

The world was way more colorful.

Cars were cool colors, not just gray, white or black. Like, a mall parking lot would look spectacular.


Now it seems like everywhere is just a ubiquitous, low profile, architecturally acceptable sea of blah.

#20

A 15 minute phone call coast to coast was about $12 in 1977. Equivalent to about $60 today.

Image credits: timeflieswhen

#21

Kids could leave home, and people didn't bat an eye about it. My grandfather was 8 when he left home and made his way in the world. He had no education, worked jobs for people, etc, and no one even questioned why an 8 year old was alone. He signed up for WW2 when he was 17 because no one checked for identification.

#22

I'm just old enough to remember smoking on planes. It still blows my mind that that was a thing!

Image credits: Linzcro

#23

My boss blew my young co-workers mind the other day when she explained that there is a special kind of black paper, that you can put between two regular pieces of paper, and when you write on the top one, it shows up on the bottom one!

#24

There used to be a phone number you could call to get the time. It would update every 10 seconds. “At the tone the time will be…”

#25

Seat belts weren't taken seriously by most people until the 90s.

Image credits: Top-Philosophy-5791

#26

My adult children and all their friends didn’t believe me when I first told them that married women weren’t allowed to have a credit card in their own name until 1974. Before that, they could only have one through their husband.

Image credits: jmac94wp

#27

Houses in the same area had to share a telephone "party line". And you could listen in to their conversations.

Unless you sneezed or something...

Image credits: mrxexon

#28

We had a Tylenol scare where several bottles were tampered with. Those that took them died (if I remember that correctly).

Until then, nothing was ever protected. So you could open any bottle or box from drug store items like Tylenol all the way to food and drink.

I told this to my 34 year old daughter and she was shocked that there was a time when we didn’t worry about such things.

#29

We went to the moon before we put wheels on suitcases.

#30

I’m not that old….

But my mom said that when she gave birth (early 60s), hospitals had no AC…

#31

Drinking age was 18 in my day, but you could walk in a bar at 16 and order a drink, because nobody cared.

#32

People used to actually write letters, put a stamp on them, and mailed them to their friends and relatives! As a kid, I would write letters to my school friends over summer break just to tell them how my summer was going and most would write back telling me how things were with them.

I still remember when stamps went from 18 cents (US) to 20 cents and my Grandma complained about how outrageous that was. Today a first class stamp is 66 cents, and I only mail Christmas cards and thank you notes nowadays.

#33

At one time, Top 40 radio was comprised of real musicians and singers.

#34

There was such a thing as penny candy. A store near my school sold lots of it. Little Tootsie Rolls, many flavors of gumballs, and lots of other tasty things. A group of kids could come away with a big haul if one of them had a quarter.

#35

That breadboxes were a thing cause a loaf of bread came wrapped in paper or cellophane.

#36

Whenever you wanted to download something online, you'd have to basically threaten everyone in the house with their lives if they picked up the phone during the amount of download time it took. It would take hours to download a game or an image, and if someone used the phone, the download would START OVER from the beginning. Plus, in the mid-'90s, you'd have to pay by the hour.

#37

There were racks of free maps in gas stations.

Nobody bought bottled water.

The coffee was terrible.

They sold DDT infused wallpaper

You could hang up a No Pest Strip in your house and all the bugs would die

When the TV acted up (often), you took the tubes to the drugstore and tested them and bought replacements

Threw your trash out the car window

Emptied the ashtray right in the street

Piles of burning coal to thaw frozen streets for repair

Everyone burned their trash right on their property

Many buildings heated with coal, the cities were a grubby dark grey

5 Day Deoderant Pads

Saturday was Bath Day (with shared bath water)

#38

When you went to a concert, you made sure to take a lighter — even if you didn’t smoke.

#39

On the evening news every night they would show the Doomsday Clock. An analog clock that when it hit midnight, we would be in nuclear war. It was usually very close to midnight, like 5 minutes til midnight.

Imagine having the very real threat of nuclear war looming over your head every, single, day.

#40

Jim Fixx, author of the 1977 "Complete Book of Running" - every home with a jogger in the family had one of these - died of a heart attack. While jogging.

#41

911 wasn’t ‘invented’ till the 70s, I think…. Before that, you’d call your local police. And they came…

#42

TV stations went “off the air” after midnight and played “The Star Spangled Banner”. Then they showed a test pattern.

Ask me what a test pattern was.

#43

You manually defrosted your refrigerator's freezer. Scraping the ice out.

#44

"Credit scores" were invented in 1989. People who already owned their homes and cars and got their educations before then, got those loans without having their credit checked.

#45

you were sick, and got a appointment at your village GP The same day... well you waited for 2 hours will a waiting room full of sick people, and your GP didn't believed you. but you still have your appointment the same day you called.

#46

(M69). Gas station attendants would put gas in your car, cleaned your windshield, and check your oil as a part of buying the gas. Then you paid him through your car window without getting out of your car.

Pop / soda came in glass bottles.

Grocery stores only sold food and the stores were about a quarter of today’s sizes.

When you needed wood and such for a home project, there was no Home Depot. You went to the lumber yard for wood and anything else, a small local hardware store.

#47

Where we lived, Connecticut, all forms of birth control were illegal. The US Supreme Court overthrew the law in 1965, but the decision explicitly referred only to married people. We young people had sex, but it was illegal to do so responsibly.

#48

You could register an automobile without any insurance.

#49

Movie Phone. Want to go to the movies? Call Movie Phone, where the man's velvet recorded voice guided you through the movies showing that day. Push a number for the theaters, another for the movie and again for the times.

Or find the week's showings in the newspaper.

Sometimes you found out once you got there the movie time was sold out so you got to decide on seeing something you didn't know about, buy tickets for a later showing and occupy yourselves in the meantime or go find a pay phone to call Movie Phone again.

#50

you could dial 555-1212 to get the exact time

#51

Fallout shelter under our Jr. High School.

#52

No ATM or debit cards. You would have to withdraw enough cash to cover you for the weekend, since the banks were closed.

#53

That "Help wanted" ads in the back of the newspaper were a good way to find jobs, and they were segregated by sex.

#54

We had a fire department call box, down the road, If your house went on fire, you run to this red box and pull the lever.

#55

All of us kids, as young as toddlers, used to pile into the open bed of a pickup truck and just be driven all over hell and gone by adults who didn't even have seatbelts in the cab. No one ever questioned this. It was a perfectly legitimate method of transporting small kids.

#56

The very first Grammy Awards were in 1959.

#57

Morning and evening newspapers. Mail delivered twice daily.

#58

Party lines.

God am I old

#59

We actually grew up having face to face conversations.

#60

Every year I teach my students about Y2K and they think it’s hilarious.