"What was normal when you were a kid, but you never see anymore?"
Honestly... Rude then, Rude Now!
"Showing up to someone’s house without a text or call."- lpkrew
Walking In Season 2 GIF by FriendsGiphyBefore There Was Bluetooth...
"Cassette tape innards strung out along the highway, glimmering in the sunlight."- bigolfurryhead
No More Second Hand Smoke!
"Parents smoking in a car with kids with the windows rolled up."- WonderfulEmergency77
"Everybody smoked everywhere. At restaurants, the office, airports, everywhere."
"There's a picture of my grandma holding me as a baby in one hand and a cigarette in the other."
"Nobody thought that was the least bit strange."- MeghanFI
mothers day smoking GIFGiphyNow We Have Google!
"Using a set of 20 y/old encyclopedias as reference for my homework."
"JFK is president!"- ResplendentAmore
It Got Them Off Shelves...
"Toys in the cereal box"- NightDreamer73
How Sad...
"Fruit bats."
"There used to be a *ton* of them in my neighborhood as a kid and every evening you could look at the sunset as twilight set in and see flocks of bats flying around."
"Apparently, around the time I was in middle school, a fungal disease ravaged the local bat population and they never recovered."
"You never see them anymore."
"Funnily enough though, at the time, a local high school girl had this huge campaign to set up bat feeders to help bolster the local bat population and help them survive the fungal disease by giving them easy access to food."
"Said local girl has since become a federal Park Ranger as an adult and currently works for a state fish and wildlife service."- DoctorWatchamacallit
Now They'll Just Send Them A Text...
"Moms yelling from the front door to their kids to come home for dinner."- sflogicninja
Depending On Your Circle
"People talking about the Bermuda Triangle."- GarconMeansBoyGeorge
Best Not To Give Them Bad Ideas
"Candy Cigarettes."- Mechhammer
They're a dying breed indeed...
"Pay phones and answering machines."- Mondayslasagna
phone call mall GIF by South Park GiphyEven Printers Are Uncommon, Thanks to PDFs...
"Computer paper filled with lightly printed numbers and it had tear-off sides."
"My dad used to bring lots of it home for us kids to draw on."- reverendgrebo
...what were you watching?...
"Quicksand in movies and TV shows."- kzab81
Well That's Poignant
"Fireflies."
'I swear I saw them every year, in our back yard or when we went camping etc."
"Now I never see them no matter where I am, except for a few nights in the summer of '21 after I moved to a new house."
"It was so nice to see them again."- ModernCivilWar
North America Lights GIF by BBC AmericaGiphySadly, Not Because People Started Reading Maps...
"Printing out directions from Map Quest."- Keone_710
To think there was actually a time when we couldn't say "I'll text again when I'm close" and had to ask a friend to record a movie or tv show we wanted to watch.
Simpler times...
Redditor Apart-Scale wanted to reminisce about the glory days.
They asked:
"What was normal in the 1990s but rare or non existent now?"
For me... it's Madonna having a #1 song. It can still happen, but highly unlikely.
Music
New Music Football GIF by Black PrezGiphy"A disc man plugged into a cassette tape with a wire to play music in your car."
freehi_5
Call Me
"Hotlines for the weather report, current time, and movie show times."
redacted_4_security
"The time and temperature phone number for my small hometown still exists to this day. Same Pre recorded voice and everything. It still advertises caller-id as an add on feature for land lines. Know who’s calling you. It’s easy and convenient with caller id. The time is x. Temperature y."
Bushelsoflaughs
Let's Chat
"Talking to your friends mom to see if they were home."
Espeon2022
"I've always thought that having to go through the parents to talk to your friends made things more controlled and respectful. Now kids can just blast each other with every thought that pops in their heads 24/7, that must make things more toxic."
RupFox
Fly Away
"When picking someone up from the airport, you could wait for them at their gate."
Facelesspirit
"When I have flights going through cities with people I know I will intentionally schedule a couple hour layover so I can go hand lunch with them and then just go through security again and board the next flight."
ItsEntsy
I'm Out
Bye Bye Goodbye GIF by Mickey MouseGiphy"Being unreachable."
BTW_The_Names_Marcus
"I still do this to this day. I'll go on vacation for a week and just turn the phone off, or be far enough out in the boonies that there is no cell signal whatsoever."
libra00
I wish I could put my phone down. Who knew we'd never be without them?
Let's Fandango
Movie Theater Popcorn GIF by filmeditorGiphy"Calling the movie theater or looking in the paper for movie times."
yepitsjen22
Music Library
"Keeping a binder full of CDs in your car."
PMMeUrHopesNDreams
"I once left the door on my car unlocked and came back to find my car stereo gone but not my full 100 disc binder. The stereo had completely died 2 weeks prior and I just hadn't gotten around to swapping it out yet. I just laughed."
v1ct0r326
"My car CDs were stolen in 1998. I’m still pissed."
Whatwhyohhh
Multitasking
"Pressing play and record at the same time."
MoistnSquishy
"I don't know why but this one made me feel the saddest. I guess it just snapped me back to a moment when I was bored and had no where I had to be, no where I planned to go. My life's todo list completely empty. Just me and the weird 90's dust that seemed to float around in front of sunny windows."
bannablecommentary
"Putting tape over the security tab/square so you could record over any tape you had in your collection."
candiebelle
Dial Up
"Telephone booths."
Zen_Anarch
"I had to check for the phone booth that I used the most as a teenager (not in NYC, in the beach town where I spent my summers) and it was still there in the most recent Street View! I'll have to see if it's there now when I go by tomorrow. This was where I checked in with my parents and friends circa 1990 to see what was going on. The arcade was just down the street."
superluke
And the White?
yellow pages GIFGiphy"Yellow Pages."
zekesaltspider
"I got a phone book in my mailbox the other day. First one in years. It was about the size of a Goosebumps book."
dragon_book_hoarder
Well those were the days. Weren't they?
Sound familiar? That may be because they've become conditioned or socialized to believe in how certain things are in real life.
Curious to explore this strange phenomenon about delusions, Redditor CoverYourself-inOil asked:
"What do people complain about like it's everywhere constantly but is actually rather rare?"
What goes on in the neighborhood is likely nothing at all.
Wrestling Alligators
"Being from Florida, the amount of people that think I have to fight off gators daily. Lol"
– kaybee666
Danger Down Under
"The frequency of dangerous australian animals. Like yes they are there but not really at the same time."
– RainbowPoopicorn
Trick Or Treat
"People giving out edible pot for Halloween. Can guarantee that no stoner is gonna give those away for free."
– painfully--average
Violent Neighborhood
"According to my suburban Nextdoor feed, apparently there are gun shots going off all day every day 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄"
– slykido999
Caution While Traveling
"The danger of the Bermuda Triangle. I honestly thought it would be a regular threat in my adult life when they kept talking about it while I was young."
– InvisibleMe21
These are questionable behavior, and the jury is still out as to what's actually happening.
Witching Hour
"Satanist out sacrificing."
– finding_harmony
What Everyone Is Not Talking About
"People complaining about people complaining about something, but it's just one guy on Twitter. Or someone they entirely made up...."
– crap_whats_not_taken
Tormented In School
"I was bullied relentlessly in elementary school. But it took me longer to realize it than it should have, because no one ever demanded my lunch money."
– MFWicantusername
Not everything we learn comes in handy.
Cartoon Disasters
"I have not had a single anvil, piano, or sandbag dropped on my head."
"Pretty upset about it, tbh."
– garden_and_grump_
Cute Bait
"A van giving away puppies to snatch you."
– Complete-Fudge-2888
Snuffing Out The Flames
"10 years old me thinking we'd need to know how to 'stop drop and roll' a lot more in life."
– YeahILiftBro
Many of these mentioned were either from urban legends or seen depicted in the movies.
Some of them could even be examples of the Mandela effect, where false memories are shared by multiple people.
Regardless of where these thoughts and beliefs stem from, there's not much to say other than acknowledging how extraordinary the human mind is.
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Redditor just__Steve wanted to hear about all of the things some of us have seen and many have not, so they asked:
"What extremely rare thing did you witness in person?"
Car crashes in real time.
Like, death defying crashes on the highway, the kind you see in the movies.
I saw two and watched people walk away.
A miracle.
On a Par
"I witnessed my buddy hit a hole in one on a par 4. Dude had never played golf minus frequent driving range visits and was having a horrific day before it." ~ KNGSlick
GiphyMarch 1989
"I witnessed the effects of the coronal mass ejection in March 1989. I was driving home on the west end of Prince Edward Island Canada. There was plenty of snow on the ground still."
"I stopped at a stop sign on a slight rise of a hill and while stopped I noticed the snow was glittering in weird very vibrant colours. This slight rise was in an area with no trees in sight. I could see the horizon 360 degrees."
"From the north horizon I noticed a waterfall of color flowing across the night sky from north to south. It flowed quickly like a fast flowing river and it encompassed the entire sky from horizon to horizon."
"It was absolutely astonishing. It lasted hours and I watched it for quite a few of them. Even with today's CGI I have not seen anything that compares to that night." ~ Ibmeister
A Bad Spiral
"An airborne decapitation. At an air show as a kid (30ish years ago). They were doing a skydiving trick, where two divers spiraled downward, then two planes spiraled around them downward. One of the planes hit a skydiver, killing him. Last air show I ever went to." ~ everythingsasandwich
Holy Fork
"In South Africa thunder storms are quite common, but they were always the usual sheet or fork lightning, nothing special. The one time there were these strange looking storm clouds very high up above us (much higher than regular storm/thunder clouds) and the lightning was these slow moving bolts (think of a short laser beam of lightning) shooting between these clouds. It was the wackiest thing I ever saw." ~ MeltdownInteractive
Wheel Away
"I saw a wheel come loose off a van as it attempted a right hand turn. The wheel rolled through traffic into the open bay of a tire store across the street. One in a million odds. I was on a train and nobody else in the train car saw it happen." ~ dipper1985
GiphyYou can't trust the wheels on any bus.
That round and round often spins off for disaster.
Never trust a shaky wheel.
Fallen
"Huge section of cliff falling into the Gallatin River. Easily the size of a football field came down all at once." ~ Hotspur2924
GiphyBarracuda...
"1996 Maldives. I am sat in the bar, alone drinking a cocktail and enjoying the view over the flat calm lagoon. The bar juts out into the lagoon, so it is surrounded by water apart from a little bit joining it to the island. Suddenly a small fish jumps out of the water. Then it jumps again but higher, and then a 3rd time a little higher still."
"It takes the 4th jump at about 90 degrees to the other three... and then a f**k off big fish with teeth and everything jumps out of the water and catches it in the air. Then the lagoon went back to flat calm. A couple of suggestions that the f**k off big fish was a Barracuda - I have looked up Barracudas and I reckon the suggestions are right. That's cool. I'm glad I posted. Thank you." ~ plentyofeight
In S.C.
"Saw a manta ray leap out of the water and over a family playing in the water just off the coast of South Carolina. It didn’t make a sound or as much as a splash. I was pretty young but remember it as clear as yesterday. One of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed. Also quite amazing how big those things are." ~ StupidOldAndFat
Iced Out
"My grandfather took me to the hockey game where Buffalo Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuk had his carotid artery cut and his jugular vein partially sliced by an errant hockey skate. He was bleeding out on the ice in front of our eyes. The Sabres trainer, who had been a US Army combat medic in Viet Nam, knew to reach in the wound and pinch off the artery to save his life." ~ Tsujimoto3
I would pass out if a bird pooped in my mouth.
That is gross.
And also incredible aim.
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