The Nostalgia Thread

[rduffy24]

Kids? Bah, I've been asked by junior clerical assistants how to work typewriters...and what we did before computers did word processing!



I remember it was a big deal when we got a record player in the house. We had precisely 2 albums - both compilations because that's what my parents thought my brother and I would like. I was 11.



Some of my godchildren have never seen a real record (you know, big , round, hole in the centre, generally black plastic).



*is feeling really old*

[xita]

How appropriate, a friend just sent me this in the mail:

Quote:

---

I'm officially OLD!!!!!











THE CLASS OF 2003



Just in case you weren't feeling old enough today, this will certainly change things. Each year the staff at Beloit College in Wisconsin puts together a list to try to give the Faculty a sense of the mindset of this year's incoming freshman.



Here is this year's list:



The people who are starting college this fall across the nation were born in 1985.



They have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan Era and probably did not know

he had ever been shot.



They were prepubescent when the Persian Gulf War was waged.









There has been only one Pope in their lifetime.



They were 8 when the Soviet Union broke apart and do not remember the Cold War.



They are too young to remember the space shuttle blowing up.





Tianamen Square means nothing to them.



Bottle caps have always been screw off and plastic.







Atari predates them, as do vinyl albums.



The statement "You sound like a broken record" means nothing to them.





They have never owned a record player.



They have likely never played Pac Man and have never heard of Pong.



They may have never heard of an 8 track. The Compact Disc was introduced when they were 1 year old.



They have always had an answering machine.





Most have never seen a TV set with only 13 channels, nor have they seen a black and white TV.



They have always had cable.



There have always been VCRs, but they have no idea what BETA was.



They cannot fathom not having a remote control.



They don't know what a cloth baby diaper is, or know about the "Help me, I've fallen and I can't get up" commercial.



Feeling old Yet? There's more:



They were born the year that Walkmen were introduced by Sony.



Roller skating has always meant inline for them.







Michael Jackson has always been white.



Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show.



They have no idea when or why Jordache jeans were cool.



Popcorn has always been cooked in the microwave.



They have never seen Larry Bird play.



They never took a swim and thought about Jaws.



The Vietnam War is as ancient history to them as W.W.I, W.W.II and the Civil War.



They have no idea that Americans were ever held hostage in Iran.



They can't imagine what hard contact lenses are.



They don't know who Mork was or where he was from. (The correctanswer, by the way, is Ork)



They never heard: "Where's the beef?", "I'd walk a mile for a Camel," or "De plane, de plane!"



They do not care who shot J.R. and have no idea who J.R. was.



Kansas, Chicago, Boston, America, and Alabama are bands, not places.



There has always been MTV.



They don't have a clue how to use a typewriter.

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"The suspense is terrible. I hope it'll last."

-Willie Wonka

Edited by: xita  at: 8/8/03 12:27 pm

[itsnotaspell]

I thought I was just soooo cool...I'd lock myself in the bathroom (wait..not what you think) with my transistor radio tuned to WABC (in NYC) and my Panasonic tape recorder and make "mixed" tapes from the radio - alot of Temptations and Four Tops as I recall. I'd get furious if my sister knocked on the door because, of course, that sound would come through and ruin the tape (not that it wasn't crappy enough) and I'd pray for the disc jockey (Cousin Brucie most of the time) to stop talking over the song. Lots of songs started and ended with "77 WABC degrees". Then I'd take my little tape recorder and sit on the stoop and just groove - oh and get into arguments with the other kids about who was better - the Jackson 5 or the Osmond Brothers. Hot fun in the summertime.

[xita]

I remember that, recording from one radio to a recorder somewhere. And you get all the background noise , your sister yelling something etc. lol oh times have changed lol

- - - - - - - - - - -
"The suspense is terrible. I hope it'll last."

-Willie Wonka

[maudmac]

Okay, what's lamer - taping stuff off the radio or taping stuff off the TV? Because I spent many a late night sitting in front of the TV with a tape recorder pressed up against the speaker...



We didn't have MTV, either, but there was this show on called Night Tracks (or they probably spelled it "Trax" actually). I think it was on Friday and Saturday nights.

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Green green grass surrounding me / Wind is blowing through the trees / Sun is bright and I feel happy -- Shonen Knife

[rduffy24]

My first tape recorder was an old reel to reel one. And I do remember the whole trying to tape things while holding a microphone thing.



You know I have several old walkmans lying about upstairs. I've not used one in years. I do however use the mini-teeny-weeny radio that can clip onto whatever I'm wearing and walk the dog while using it.



Ah, the advantages of technological development!

[Urn of Osiris]

Ohhhh reel to reel. I remember having a hi fi setup in the living room. I pretended it was a sound studio. Had a radio with am, fm and tv channel audio up to channel 13, A turn table and a reel to reel. I would sit there for hours making reel to reel tapes then we got cassette recorders for christmas and I discovered how to splice two headphone jacks and make a dubbing cord so that I could copy the reel to reel to a cassette. But the best was when we could record to an 8-track. We could mix our own music for the van. We had the complete dialogue from the movie 'Star wars' on 8-track and I would listen to it over and over as I fell asleep at night.



How about the commodore vic 20. Anyone get that? I remember making a V fly across the screen and having the entire family come and watch it.



Holy crap I really am a geek.

Urn of Osiris

Peace is not the absence of conflict; it's the absence of inner conflict. Unknown
When we stand up, we are standing up for everybody. Each of us needs to know, in fact, that we are rainbows in the clouds... for everybody. MAYA ANGELOU

[oneyedchicklet]

Not too long ago, I was walking through Best Buys and I came across Atari Arcade Hits for the computer. I turned it over and saw Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, Pong Super Breakout and Tempest. It was a definet "had to have". I sat here until about 3 in the morning playing. Thats when I had the flashback of Friday and Saturday nights during high school. We used to go to the local skating rink and in the center of the floor there were all these video games. After about the first year, they stopped charging our group to get in. We could skate to all the hits and take a break to play video games. Now would you like to talk about who's the geek?

As for cereal, didn't a lot of them used to have "Sugar" in the title? Sugar Smacks, Sugar Pops etc. But I'm still coo coo for Cocoa Puffs.



Love to All,

Barb

I'll just put it in a bubble and blow it away!!!.

[The Smee]

I'm feeling nostalgic and I'm only 16.



But it's for stuff like Lemmings, that Cool for Cats Milk advert on telly and Dangermouse.



I loved all of those. *sigh*

Relax?! With three giant alligators knocking the house down?!?.

[rduffy24]

Dangerouse? That's classic tv, Smee. Penfold was the best side kick ever!

[maudmac]

This site is a good setting for a stroll down geek memory lane. Stop and smell the Commodore VIC-20s.

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Green green grass surrounding me / Wind is blowing through the trees / Sun is bright and I feel happy -- Shonen Knife

[xita]

After visiting some of those sites and remembering old games. I remember some old text graphics RPGs. All I could remember was exploring dungeons and your character was represented by an @. I found some sites about it. They were called roguelikes. And you can play one here. God I thought this was so cool back when.



Oh and also with the old computers, I remember the first one we owned which was a Tandy 1000 that is still in operation in my classroom!

- - - - - - - - - - -
"The suspense is terrible. I hope it'll last."

-Willie Wonka

[willowtarafan18]

Okay so I'm suffering from nostalgia of a weird kind. I saw an commercial on tv the other day asvertising the return of the cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles this fall. I started talking to my girlfriend about how I loved that show and was completely obsessed with them. My favorite turtle was Michelangelo but I had all their action figures and everything. When I was little my parents would have this chart of chores I had to accomplish everyday and I would get a smile stamp or sad face stamp next to each chore and if I got enough smiles for the week I could go to the store and pick a new ninja turtle to buy. Well, this week I got a package in the mail from my girlfriend and I opened it...she'd found on ebay the original Ninja Turtles comforter from 1988! ?I was completely surprised because she didn't tell me she'd even been looking for it and now she's tracked down the bed sheets and pillowcase to go with it. Of course I do realize in November I will be turning twenty and my having Ninja Turtle bedsheets will be sad I am proud to say I don't care. I think that's part of it though, I'll be turning twenty in November no longer a teen and I yearn for the easy days of being a little kid losing myself in obsessions with action figures and playing kid games not being wrapped up in growing up being a Junior in college and having to decide my future. So that's my nostalgia story. Thanks for listening kittens!





Michele

[JJtheCool]

When I think of the word "nostalgia" to me that speaks to a mind set that people have when they look back on the past and think about how things were sooooooo much better back then. From having pretty much grown up in the 80's, there is little about that decade worth reminiscing about since I was a target in school for bullying and home offered little relief. But as the line in one of my fav Rush songs goes: "Any escape might help to smooth the unattractive truth", so whenever I see the classic video games available for download on Shockwave or hear an 80's song on the radio that I liked, I can't help but at least be grateful for the momentary trips down to my own private fantasyland that kept me sane and alive during my teenage years; and maybe even smile a little.

JJtheCool

---

*Sigh*

[BytrSuite]

I've been thinking about posting in this thread. The holiday season always makes me nostalgic in some ways. Putting up the tree makes me think of when my grandma would insist on putting garland on it. All the rest of us sucked at it, so we'd do up the whole tree and she'd put the garland on last, I think. It always made the tree look *warmer* somehow. More inviting.



And she used to do all the cooking, and damn was she good at it. She was up before all of us for years and years and years getting the turkey in the oven and the vegetables cut up. Later on, she's start waking me up so I could help her, getting what was needed so she didn't have to get up and lifting the heavier stuff, but she always did the parts that made it taste good. heh



And for the record, I have played both Atari and Pong on the original equipment. I think we still have an electric typewriter somewhere in the attic. And we still have a rotary phone, that is still hooked up and in use.

________
"Boogers are true."

[xita]

Yes the holidays bring that feeling don't they? It's like.. for me christmas is childhood and that is long gone. It never feels the same as when you flet it for the first time.



I went to the toy store to shop for nieces and nephews and I bought myself a rubik's cube. It's been a looooooooong time since I played with one and I was so proud to have solved it now! hee

- - - - - - - - - - -
"Hard work often pays off after time but laziness always pays off now!"

[urnofosiris]

You changed the stickers, admit it already.

I still have that thing lying around somewhere, maybe this is the time to dust it off and try to see if I can manage it now.

[maudmac]

I was just watching The Legend of Billie Jean earlier and it made me nostalgic for ear cuffs. I had many, many of them back in the day and I thought they were the coolest things ever. Damn things either kept falling off because they weren't tight enough or, if they were tight enough to actually stay on, they hurt like hell. Maybe I just have deformed ears...



Anyway, I miss them. Hee, they were always a good excuse to touch a girl's ears - or encourage one to touch mine. I'm quite fond of ears.

---

i got a dance ain't got no steps  /  i'm gonna let the music move me around

[Krazy Dreamer]

That’s funny you mention the Rubik’s Cube. When I was 10, Rubik’s Cube was a big thing in my family. At one of our family gatherings, I got sick and tired of hearing my uncle bragging that he had solved the “Cube,” so I took my Rubik’s Cube, locked myself in the bathroom, and instead of taking the stickers off, I broke the cube apart and snapped it back together with the pieces in the right position. I waited like an hour, just to make it seem realistic, then I went out and showed everybody. They were all amazed and clueless and thought I was some sort of child genius. It was hilarious. And the look on my uncle’s face was priceless. Needless to say, he never mentioned the Rubik’s Cube in front of me again. To this day, only my mother knows the truth. I think she was getting annoyed at my uncle too. Hey, does anybody else remember that Saturday morning Rubik’s Cube cartoon? I used to love the way he would say, “I’m Rooo-bik.”

[RosenbergLover]

Hmm....it was about the end of August this year. WE were doing crew for the fall play and Sara spilled yellow paint all over. So Dominic, Sara, Holly, AMG, myself, and this totally hot girl Maggie had to spend an hour and a half cleaning up paint. Maggie had baggie camoflage pants, a pink homecoming shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a blue bandanna. God she was hot. My reaction was ......



Damn she was good looking. But every time I see yellow paint I remember meeting her for the first time.

[late prada fall]

i was watching tv the other night and lo and behold... full house is now on nick at night. it made me feel really old, which is kind of silly because i'm all of what, 17?



anyway, it brought me back to the days when i'd swoon over uncle jesse every tgif and also the time when i made my mom take me to the mall super early so i could be the first one in line to meet candace cameron aka dj tanner! that rocked.

-----

i'm thinking it's a sign that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images and when we kiss they're perfectly aligned...

[sprhrgrl]

Care Bears are coming back. It was so weird at Christmas to watch my six year old cousin opening her peresents, because she had somehow gotten all of the things I loved when I was her age - she got an American Girl doll and a couple of Care Bears. . . And it's strange because Care Bears at least went out of style between these times. Game Boys, too, make me nostalgic.



we'll skip our early classes? (smile)

Sweetie, I'm a fag. I been there. - Tara (Dead Things shooting script)

A muscle cramp? in your. . . pants? - Tara (Older & Far Away)

I can scramble an egg, I won't eat it but I can scramble it. - Amber

[maudmac]

Got this in the mail. It's made me all wistful for the good old days of falling out of trees.

---

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the30's, 40's, 50's, 60's , 70's or even the early 80's, probably shouldn't have survived.



Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.



We had no childproof lids or locks on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets.



Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking ..



As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags .. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.



We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors!



We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.



We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.



We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.



We would leave home in the morning and play all day , as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. No cell phones. Unthinkable!



We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.



We had friends! We went outside and found them.



We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.



We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents .. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?



We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.



We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen , we did not put out any eyes.



We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.



Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team .. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.



Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.



Horrors!



Tests were not adjusted for any reason.



Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected.



The idea of parents bailing us out if we got in trouble in school or broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the school or the law. Imagine that!



This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors, ever.



We had freedom, failure, success, and responsibility --- and we learned how to deal with it.



And you're one of them! Congratulations.

---

I have no professional training. I already gave my best. I have no regrets at all.

[cattwoman98111]

oh damn you Holley!



now i must find a tree to climb, ride w/o my helmet and turn off my cell phone. Not to mention find all those pictures of me with casts on, scraped up knees and elbows and bloody nose. time to remind the parents how lucky they are that i did not have more permenant brain damage other than liking girls.

You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty.-Sacha Guitry

[amberbensontotallyrules4e]

Okay, so I'm probably not old enough for the nostalgia of the real kind, but I'm feeling kinda nostalgic for the Fall, when I had all the time in the world with my baby. She just came back from Sweden to visit on Thursday, but she's leaving again on monday and I just wish I could turn back the time to the beginning of Fall, when we had three months together. She's gonna come back again in 4 weeks, but its too long.

I'm now also feeling nostalgic for all of twenty minutes ago when she was holding me and her smell was all around me. Awwww, the days when we had what seemed like forever together were the bestest. Not proper nostalgia probably, but in some kind of way it is.

Luv

Rachel

xox

*****************************************************************

"Baby have you got to go away? Don't think I can take the pain. Won't you stay another day...?"~ East 17, sad but true

[BohemianKitten]

I'm feeling a bit nostalgic right now, so bear with me, fellow Kittens, as I share my stupid feelings.



I was cleaning out my desk today and I found three of my old play scripts. Romeo and Juliet, Wizard of Oz and Willy Wonka. I was reading back over my parts (Mercutio, Wicked , Veruca Salt) and realized how much I miss acting on a regular baises. And so I've been lost in thought about those good times gone by.



and Forever

[KiwiAlcyone]

heya kittens,



Just had to add my wonderful memories of growing up in the eighties.

What fun it was, firstly the clothes, the poo brown cardigans, fluorescent bike pants and kung-fu shoes! I shiver when I remember that I owned at least four pairs of those adidas stirrup track pants, all with fluorescent stripes down the sides.



And the music, I was a huge Tiffany fan...I remember getting together with a bunch of school friends and learning on whole lip-synching routine to "I saw Him standing there" which we performed at a school assembly.



And going to school at 7am in the morning so I cold play on the computer, the old commodore 64, so we could play loderunner and frogger and other state of the art games.



And lastly, the shearing shed on my grandad's farm. (For those of you unfamiliar with sheep and New Zealand...there are about 14 million sheep in New Zealand, that's almost four sheep per person.) My brother and I used to jump up and down in the wool press, for those of you that have never seen one its a contraption used for compressing the wool up into big bales, scary looking thing. Anyway, we used to go home smelling like little sheep.



I miss the eighties...wait a sec, there was no playstation, dvds, i-pods, laptops or Different Coloured Pens...just how did I cope?!



-Alcy

“It’s just my imagination. Some people have flat feet. Some people have dandruff. I have this appalling imagination…”

The Seven Year Itch.

[BytrSuite]

woo, classic '80s games kick ass. I loved Pitfall. And one that I think was called Adventure. Hee, yes, here it is, www.atariage.com/screensh...eLabelID=1



ETA:



Heh, swearing Simon is funny.

________
"...the sharks got smarter."

Edited by: BytrSuite at: 3/19/04 12:33 am

[maudmac]

Here's some fuel for the nostalgia of my fellow '80s people who spent a good chunk of that decade living (and dying) by the quarter:



Classic '80s Games



Simon fans, check out SimonSwears. Naughty, naughty Simon!

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I have no professional training. I already gave my best. I have no regrets at all.

[cattwoman98111]

*runs downstairs to dig out the old Atari 800*

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.