Comments on: Here’s how old I am

by: Paul

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:11:29 +0000

Ugh.

Learned to type on an IBM Selectric 2 Typewriter.

Cell phones had a hand carry bag with a huge antenni sticking out of it.

In elementary/middle school, all of our worksheets were purple and if they were just ran off. they were slighty damp, with a wonderful smell..

I can remember Green Stamps

Power steering was an option/luxary item on cars.

Gas cost .69 gal. and you could choose between leaded and unleaded?????

My firt car was brand new with only twelve miles on it, and there were no airbag(s).

I remember pull top beer tabs.. remember making necklace….???

ooohh too old…

by: pog

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:03:31 +0000

I’m with H. AND I learned to type on manual typewriter.
love,
Pog (aged 143 1/2)

by: andy

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 21:19:12 +0000

FYI adidas Rom are STILL the height of fashion

by: daddy'slittledemons

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:54:56 +0000

when you wanted to make a toll call, you had to phone the operator and ask them to put you through. The operator phoned the number you were looking for and if, after much hissing and beeping, the particular individual you wanted to speak to was there, they connected you (a person to person call, I believe).

no photocopies - you wrote things on a carbon paper thingy, clipped it into the Gestetner machine turned the handle and it ran off pages written in smelly purple ink.

my ma made my clothes (using natty patterns bought in a haberdasher) and knitted my jumpers

computer games? I do not understand the significance of this. Could they mean the tv tennis machine with the two white lines hitting a white dot back and forth on the black and white telly?

Oh and I liked soda stream. Free fizzy! (at my posh friend’s house, anyway)

by: fishy

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:47:57 +0000

When I started work I had to type on a typewriter, but it was modern, it had a built in correction ribbon.
I worked for Telecom when it was a monopoly.
Each phone number had an index card which were stored on big round wheels called rotodecks.
We had to dial the phone with a dial.
When the number was busy, we had to start again.
If you didn’t get to the phone in time you wondered who it was because there were no answering machines.
We hand wrote our disconnection and connection orders and manually did the billing.
Photocopying happened with some smelly machine which you had to turn a big handle to operate.
When we finally got computers almost everyone over 50 took voluntary redundancy.
Our computer screens were orange writing on a black background. Within a year I had spectacles.
The cash truck came on payday and we were paid with cash.
When they started putting it in our bank accounts you had to go to the bank before the weekend and draw out enough money to last until Monday.

by: nc

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:58:06 +0000

Born in the summer of love and the Manson murders (what contrasts!), I don’t remember them, but they imprinted my childhood.
Too young for the JFK assasination, but I remember when John Lennon died.
ditto the airplane hijacking in Mogadishu.
Not old enough to remember Nixon resigning, but do remember the last troops being pulled out Vietnam.
My older brother’s Supertramp album was an object of desire and my first own LP’s (The Stones) were more precious than gold.
Was just the right childhood age for ET and Star Wars (my whole class went to see the first Star Ward together).
Copy machines? Bah! Long live the eery blue Ditto’ machine!

by: town mouse

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:15:27 +0000

I think we must be of a similar vintage but across the Irish sea:

We wore clothkits clothes (this may just be a North London thing rather than an age thing).

I remember where I was when Thatcher resigned, but was not born for the JFK assassination

We loaded our computer games up using cassette tapes or typed them in ourselves from the back of magazines (this never worked)

I spent a whole summer walking around with my head on one side to keep my asymmetric carefully-touselled hairstyle in the right position.

I had a donkey jacket and pixie boots and I probably did wear them at the same time.

My Blue Peter dogs were Shep and Goldie

Our home movies were on super-8. Oh the excitement when someone turned up at a party with a video camera that RECORDED SOUND

by: cha0tic

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:10:53 +0000

Pretty much Snap!
Except I didn’t have the The Charlie’s Angels Annual or The Abba Album. Oh. I wasn’t wearing those clothes either, but I thought girls wearing them looked fit. (The word at the time.)

by: This is How Old I Am « Charlotte’s Web

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:09:15 +0000

[…] With thanks to the lovely Ms Waffle for the inspiration. How old are you? […]

by: Eimear

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:20:53 +0000

Black and white TV, check. But we had more channels due to proximity to NI.

A high proportion of my clothes were made rather than bought.

We did get a computer when I was young - a ZX81 (my brothers and I bought it with our saved pocket money.)

I bought albums on cassette tape. In fact my christmas presents one year were a Walkman (the latest technology) and the first Now That’s What I Call Music album.

When I started work, there was one computer in the office so I used a typewriter for my letters.

I spent a summer in West Germany.

You could send real telegrams (not just a “telemessage” in the post) and I earned some extra money delivering a few of them on my bicycle.

As for the dictaphone, I still use one every working day.