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Topic: When I was a kid ....
(Read 11038 times)

FearlessF · « **Reply #56 on:** March 10, 2021, 03:59:06 PM »

smart brother

he should have also charged for admission to his room

longhorn320 · « **Reply #57 on:** March 10, 2021, 04:02:58 PM »

growing up we never had central air

My dad installed one after I left home

Thanks a lot Dad

OrangeAfroMan · « **Reply #58 on:** March 10, 2021, 04:07:46 PM »

Quote from: betarhoalphadelta on March 10, 2021, 02:15:29 PM

My graduating class was around 500 lol..

It's strange that I'm one of those people who can fit in with just about any social group, but I don't feel like I belong to any of them...

Same here. I was cool with all the different clicks.
My main set of friends were all sports nerds - I was the only one who actually played football. One of them played baseball, but just FR year. Another was in band.
I was in all of the honors classes, so I was cool with the smart kids -many of which were in the cool kids group. Jocks, band geeks, black kids, artists - I could hang out with any of them. The only group of any size I didn't really know anyone or hang out with was the drama kids. Turns out years later that the drama teacher was getting frisky with some of them, so there's that.

My SR class was around 350.

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #59 on:** March 10, 2021, 04:11:47 PM »

Quote from: bayareabadger on March 09, 2021, 10:22:11 PM

I think about this and how it changes in a specific area with stranger danger in the 1980s. The world for a lot of people was not considerably more dangerous that in previous decades (at least a lot of people who got super afraid of strangers). But the threat of strangers to your kids felt so much more real, in part fueled by rabid consumption of cable TV. It's ironic because the chances of a stranger doing something terrible to your kid are far lower than you or a relative/trusted friend doing something terrible to them, but that's another story.

I grew up during the kidnapping panic of the 70s and 80s and, I've looked back on it and realized what caused it and how fundamentally silly the whole thing was, allow me to explain:

When you think of kidnapping, you probably think of a stranger. This is true for most people which explains the fact that when the authorities saw a massive increase in kidnappings, they started the "Stranger Danger" campaign in an effort to teach kids not to get into vans with creepy looking guys who offered them candy. That makes sense if you are working under the assumption that the kidnappings are by strange, creepy looking guys offering candy.

The irony is that the increase in kidnappings was NOT due to a sudden inexplicable increase in creepy guys offering candy to kids. It was something else entirely:

In 1960 the US Divorce rate was rough 2 per 100,000 people. It started climbing in the mid 1960's and roughly tripled by the late 1970s/early 1980s.

It is hard to tell exactly how much, but it is likely that nearly all of the observed increase in kidnappings was due to custody battles. In 1960 divorce was quite rare. Modern, "no fault" divorce didn't come along in most states until much later so back then one party had to allege a wrong committed by the other then prove it. Under the modern "no fault" regime that went away. If a couple can't stand each other then they can just get a divorce.

When divorce skyrocketed, custody battles ensued. Nearly all of the increase in kidnappings was caused by the non-custodial parent (usually dad) picking up the kid without the custodial parent's (usually mom's) permission.

FearlessF · « **Reply #60 on:** March 10, 2021, 04:23:25 PM »

guess the kidnapping panic never made it to Iowa

never heard of it

OrangeAfroMan · « **Reply #61 on:** March 10, 2021, 04:27:13 PM »

I don't believe the past was a safer time, just a less-reported time. A news-only-spreads-so-far time.
.
With all those unlocked doors, yeah, messed-up stuff was going on.
And don't even get me started with the in-family horrors going on back then that went unreported.
.
The modern day isn't more dangerous, just more informed.

betarhoalphadelta · « **Reply #62 on:** March 10, 2021, 04:34:59 PM »

Quote from: medinabuckeye1 on March 10, 2021, 04:11:47 PM

I grew up during the kidnapping panic of the 70s and 80s and, I've looked back on it and realized what caused it and how fundamentally silly the whole thing was, allow me to explain:

When you think of kidnapping, you probably think of a stranger. This is true for most people which explains the fact that when the authorities saw a massive increase in kidnappings, they started the "Stranger Danger" campaign in an effort to teach kids not to get into vans with creepy looking guys who offered them candy. That makes sense if you are working under the assumption that the kidnappings are by strange, creepy looking guys offering candy.

The irony is that the increase in kidnappings was NOT due to a sudden inexplicable increase in creepy guys offering candy to kids. It was something else entirely:

In 1960 the US Divorce rate was rough 2 per 100,000 people. It started climbing in the mid 1960's and roughly tripled by the late 1970s/early 1980s.

It is hard to tell exactly how much, but it is likely that nearly all of the observed increase in kidnappings was due to custody battles. In 1960 divorce was quite rare. Modern, "no fault" divorce didn't come along in most states until much later so back then one party had to allege a wrong committed by the other then prove it. Under the modern "no fault" regime that went away. If a couple can't stand each other then they can just get a divorce.

When divorce skyrocketed, custody battles ensued. Nearly all of the increase in kidnappings was caused by the non-custodial parent (usually dad) picking up the kid without the custodial parent's (usually mom's) permission.

Yep. My ex's dad was with the LAPD, and for a while he was involved in kidnapping cases. I recall once seeing in his house a manual on kidnapping, and I remarked that hopefully it was about catching kidnappers, and not a how-to manual

But in truth, his job was actually pretty boring. Actual kidnappings where someone sends a ransom note or something like that--what we've seen on TV--were basically FBI matters.

His job was basically tracking down people who fled the state or county with kids they weren't supposed to have based on custody battles, traveling there, working with the local judges to secure an order to get the local cops to go retrieve the kids and turn them over to him, and to transport them back to LA County.

He enjoyed it, because it was free travel, and was probably a lot more interesting than plenty of other assignments he could have had. But it wasn't what most people think of when they hear the word "kidnapping".

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #63 on:** March 10, 2021, 04:40:33 PM »

Quote from: Honestbuckeye on March 10, 2021, 06:28:51 AM

Driving home from an early morning visit to the gym the other day I passed six or seven bus stops. At the first one I saw a group of what appeared to be about six or seven middle school aged kids and just happened to notice that every single one of them was standing there just staring down at their cell phone. As I continued to drive home I started checking and I’ll be damned if the roughly 40 kids I saw weren’t 100% on their cell phones.

Now this isn’t anything new for any of us as we all see this all the time, especially if you go somewhere like an airport. But the stark reality of it hit me hard as I could not believe that not one of those children was socializing with another or playing or laughing- but just staring at their phone.

I am not passing judgment on if that is good or bad, but just shockingly different from 45 years ago when I was that age, and what is so different about our world today.

Ironically- I sit here in my back patio area, enjoying my morning coffee- writing this post on MY CELL PHONE.

I think there have been two humongous changes for HS kids within my lifetime. The first was the explosion of the internet from a "geeks only" domain prior to Netscape Navigator into something for everyone soon after Netscape's release in 1994 and the second was the explosion of smart phones.

The Internet:
Netscape Navigator was released in 1994. Prior to that the internet was well outside of the mainstream. I graduated from HS in the early 1990's and I've said before that I think my HS experience was more similar to that of people 20-30 years older who graduated in 1963-1973 than it was to people 5-10 years younger who graduated in 1998-2003.

Cell phones and then smart phones:
I didn't have a cell phone until my final quarter at Ohio State and the only reason I got one then was so that I would have voicemail in case any potential employers called. Then, after I graduated, I went back to no cell phone for a couple years before I finally got one permanently in about 2000. Even at that, my circa 2000 phone was just a phone, I couldn't even text.

When I was in HS I didn't know any HS students who had phones and only a very few parents did. I saw a rerun of Cheers a while back in which some boyfriend of Diane's was being presented as a pretentious jerk and one of the ways that the show made that point was for the character to use his cell phone (which was a HUGE device) to call for some reason or another. It took me a second glance to recall that time to get the joke.

I think that this is another tectonic shift in the experience of HS Students. The comment above about modern kids having no concept of passing notes in class illustrates this point. Everyone my age, whether we passed notes ourselves or not, was clearly aware of the concept. Now why bother. Everyone has a cellphone so you can send a text and all the cellphones are smart so you can send an email or whatever the kids are using these days.

betarhoalphadelta · « **Reply #64 on:** March 10, 2021, 04:46:50 PM »

Yeah, I'm technically GenX but in what they call the "Xennial" generation. The bulk of GenX didn't have the internet until adulthood. The bulk of Millenials never really remember what it was like not to have the internet. It was already there when they were growing up.

Xennial is basically analog childhood to mid-teen years, digital teenage/college world and beyond. We're the ones who really grew up and came of age right at the time where the internet became A Thing™.

FearlessF · « **Reply #65 on:** March 10, 2021, 04:49:10 PM »

kids these days don't understand the idea of ethernet cables

everything is "wireless"

utee94 · « **Reply #66 on:** March 10, 2021, 04:49:30 PM »

FearlessF · « **Reply #67 on:** March 10, 2021, 05:13:43 PM »

nothing like that when I was that age

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #68 on:** March 10, 2021, 05:22:38 PM »

Quote from: betarhoalphadelta on March 10, 2021, 04:46:50 PM

Yeah, I'm technically GenX but in what they call the "Xennial" generation. The bulk of GenX didn't have the internet until adulthood. The bulk of Millenials never really remember what it was like not to have the internet. It was already there when they were growing up.

Xennial is basically analog childhood to mid-teen years, digital teenage/college world and beyond. We're the ones who really grew up and came of age right at the time where the internet became A Thing™.

The speed of the change is also fascinating to me.

My brother is 5.5 years younger than me, and was six grades behind me. When I started at Ohio State in the fall of 1993 only one guy on my entire floor of about 100 had a pc and there were obviously no laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc. There were two word processors which you might be familiar with and kids of today would have no concept of. Word processors were like half a computer. You typed a document into them and they printed it. They had a tiny screen that showed a few lines of text but this was a HUGE improvement on typewriters because you could actually make changes to the document without starting over.

Six years later when I helped move my brother to Ohio State in the fall of 1999 he and his three roommates had a combined total of six computers because everybody had a PC and two of the four had laptops as well.

I realize that is only an anecdote and not solid data but I would guess that it is somewhere near correct overall and based on that we went from:

0.01 computers per student in 1993 to
1.5 computers per student in 1999

Even if my anecdote is off by a LOT, the difference is still enormous.

My parents bought their first PC right about the time I left for college and I never owned my own PC or laptop while I was in college so the first time I had a PC of my own was after I graduated. Amazing how much different that world was from this one.

utee94 · « **Reply #69 on:** March 10, 2021, 05:28:05 PM »

Quote from: utee94 on March 10, 2021, 04:49:30 PM

I'm a couple years older than Zack Morris. I didn't know anyone in high school that had one of those, but my best friend's dad did have one of these in his car (a Mercedes convertible):

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Topic: When I was a kid ....

FearlessF

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