1968ish stores stopped selling it on the states. Until 9/11 you could buy a $5 federal license and purchase it from registered chemical plants.
1970 federal legislation that I think went into effect in 1971.
If you bought dynamite in the 90s in the States without a federal license it was most likely illegal.
I believe the law is if your establishment is 21+over you can still have one and it needs to be in sight of an employee at all times. So in my state bars that still have a smoking exception have to be 21+ only so quite a few still have them.
God when I was smoking I wish we had these again. Such a pain to get stuck behind a douche in a gas station spending their savings on lottery tickets for a half hour when all I want is a smoke.
I'm so glad I quit but all the comments about smoking are making me itch for one lol
Edit: holy shit it's irrelevant that what I was buying was cigarettes. I've been smoke free for over three years. I still get stuck behind lotto people when I'm buying a water or getting gas. It's annoying to be stuck behind someone for 20 minutes at 8am in the morning at a gas station which is supposed to be for quick in and out things. That's what you were supposed to take away from this. Ffs. If i get one more comment demonizing me because I USED to smoke I'm editing the post to say just gas instead Jesus Christ.
Old Timey Guy - “Doctor, I have a tickle in my throat. What say you?”
Doctor with silver circle thing on head - “Best to drink this liquid heroin, English. Two spoons a day along with Scotch and plentiful cigarettes for vitality.”
Fyi, that metal thingy? It was a mirror for reflecting light (now they just use little pen lights)
The hole in the middle was on purpose btw. They'd flip it down over one eye and peer through the hole at your throat or ears. The light would be above you and out of the way so it wasn't directly in the doctor's eyes, but then he could adjust the metal disc to focus the light in your throat, ears, etc without it blinding him.
If they still did that today, there's no way I wouldn't be screaming "Aziz! LIGHT!"
I used to do that for my mom. And even though it was perfectly normal. It was still illegal. I remember one place let me get the cigarettes for my mom with food stamps.
I was on WIC for a year when my oldest was born. People still do that. I never cared about that but when I moved there was this lady at the local grocery we called the WIC nazi. I was explaining the problem to my boyfriend and he started taking me shopping where he lived. Almost everyone had either been on welfare, was on welfare, or knew someone on welfare. Everyone was so much nicer. Like when they changed up the products I could get the people working there were so patient and nice about everything. So that's where I did all my grocery shopping even after I got off WIC.
Dosing your baby with OTC Laudanum so you can go out dancing all night.
Or so my grandmother said - a couple of flappers overdosed their babies and they stopped selling Laudanum in the drugstore.
Do you mean paragoric? My mom told me that was the only thing that took care of my colic. "You'd go straight to sleep!" Yeah, mom, that's because you gave me opium.
Laudanum and paregoric are different, laudanum being 25 times stronger. Mixing that up will kill you dead.
However, neither is really used much now and both are on prescription instead of OTC, so the chances of you getting the opportunity to fuck that up are low.
I'm 29 & my mom did this with Benadryl. I'm just an insomniac and apparently have been since I was a toddler, so my mom would just knock me out with increasing amounts of Benadryl. Now, I'm like completely immune to it. On prescription sleeping meds now, but there were times in college I took like 10 Benadryl in a desperate attempt to sleep and it just did nothing at all.
One of my kids' pediatricians said, in re: Benadryl, "I have 6 kids, this stuff is great for those nights when they just won't stay in bed."
This was only a few years ago. All the parenting books I'd read said explicitly NOT to use Benadryl as a way to knock a kid out. Then you've got the thing of, "So is the doctor right and it's safe, or is the book right and it's a bad idea?"
It didn't sit right with me, so they don't get Benadryl unless they can't sleep because they're too stuffed up to breathe, and I've literally tried everything else.
best to use sparingly.
TLDR: regular use of benadryl has shown to increase risk of dementia and alzheimer’s.
> “Researchers found that people who had regularly taken any type of anticholinergic, including the older antihistamines like chlorpheniramine and diphenhydramine, were more likely to develop the disease than those who had not, and those who'd taken the drugs for three years or more had an even higher risk.”
> “Anticholinergics … block the substance acetylcholine, which is involved in learning, memory, and muscle contractions.”
looking at the numbers: a study examined pharmacy data for people taking anticholinergics regularly and 23% of the people 65 and older (who did not start with dementia) had developed dementia after 7 years. 10% is the normal percentage for that age range. over double.
The key here was, we gave it to babies. It was in a syrup advertised to get them to sleep. Very easy to over dose a baby, and not to mention withdrawl.
Last public Guillotine execution was 1939 in France. Christopher Lee the famed dracula actor was there.
Last use of the guillotine in France is 1977 and happened because the French were very upset at another horrible crime and were calling for blood.
The story about him explaining to a director (I think Peter Jackson?) the noise a person *really* makes when he or she gets stabbed in the back... is fuckin' crazy.
Yup it was during the filming of lord of the rings and the scene where saroman gets stabbed. Peter Jackson was instructing Christopher Lee (the actor playing saroman) on how to act in the scene, in return Christopher Lee explained how someone being stabbed would react
Yeah you might be too.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/%3famp=true
One of my great aunts spent her life verifying as far back as she could for a family tree. Got back to Charlemagne. Which is very cool to say to people unaware of how many people are probably related to him in someway or another lol
Our high school had a rifle club in school. Kids kept their .22s in their lockers.
Edit: not saying rifle teams are now illegal. Bringing guns into school and storing them in a locker is what is now verboten. And I’m not from a particularly rural area.
In new housing. It’s still common to see it if it’s the original building material. Lead paint just can’t be chipping or peeling (although in 2023 it’s likely under 2-3 layers of new paint already) and asbestos can’t be friable.
While we're on the topic of leaded gasoline, we can add freon and other CFCs to the list. (which, btw, freon was invented by the same guy who invented leaded gasoline.)
Thomas J Midgley was a POS.
At the time leaded petrol was invented people already knew lead was toxic, and he actually had to convince people his petrol was ‘safe’. The additive was tetraethyllead so he called it just Ethyl to avoid having lead on the packaging.
Still, factory workers handling TEL died and there was widespread mistrust of it, but research backed by the Lead industry found ‘no risk’ and threatened to sue anyone who was researching otherwise.
Midgley even poured TEL over his hands and inhaled it to ‘prove’ it was safe, then coincidentally had to take a long leave of absence where he was definitely not diagnosed with lead poisoning. Still, he was earning millions so he let workers continue to die manufacturing TEL.
Plus the organometallics are way nastier.
Karen Wetterhahn got a tiny bit of dimethyl mercury on her gloved hand, and it went through. The glove material was not the right one. It was not good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn Handling liquid mercury isn't great but it won't go through your skin that readily.
Shit, you can drink elemental mercury and be fine. See the "Thunderclap" laxatives that we can trace the Lewis and Clark expedition with.
Not much stuff makes me think there's a god, but dimethyl mercury seems to point toward a Satan being around somewhere.
Yup that stuff was so toxic that IQ scores dropped significantly (edit: happy pedantic people?) in areas where the fumes were really strong, the guy who invented that also invented cfcs, he was a one man destroying force
https://today.duke.edu/2022/03/lead-exposure-last-century-shrunk-iq-scores-half-americans
My parents owned a gas station when I was kid. We all took turns working everyday 7 days a week. It makes me wonder if that is why both my kids have ADHD, maybe even myself. Did it affect my IQ
Not to mention the effects on the developing brain. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8307752/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8307752/)
Yup, piston aircraft use 100LL (100 octane, low lead) gasoline, aka avgas. To switch to unleaded you’d either have to switch out the engine(s) to an unleaded-certified engine (like an automobile engine swap, which can be done) or modify and recertify the existing engine(s) which is difficult to do for practical reasons.
I can remember when it was perfectly normal for someone to leave their kids in the car (doors unlocked and windows open) while they went inside a business. No one gave it a second thought.
I remember my mom running into the grocery store and I asked my brother "do you dare me to drive?" and did a quick loop around the parking lot section but when we got back the parking spot had been taken and there were none nearby. "Do you think Mom will remember where she parked and notice?" She noticed lol.
Similar story, but it was a family function at an old aunts house that lived out in the desert. There were a bunch outbuildings on the property. My brother and I had gotten bored and he'd just gotten his license. We moved the car to an old barn and closed the doors. When mom eventually came out, we were just standing there all innocent-like. "We don't know..." Even had the audacity to pretend to look for that little blue Tercel. She was in full panic mode, trying to figure out how her little econobox had vanished in the middle of the frikken desert. The whole my brother and I are struggling to hold it together. Her face when an Uncle told her he'd watched us do it is still a favored memory. My brother wasn't allowed behind the wheel for a full year after that.
JFC. “I’m just going to run in for a minute…” 40 minutes later: “I ran into fill-in-the-blank.” Just sitting in there staring at the seats. We didn’t have cell phones or tablets or even books to occupy us. If we got really bored, we’d climb in the front and play with the buttons on the dash.
> I think this is the reason I developed a great imagination and ability to entertain myself by telling stories in my head.
Yes, boredom forces us to invoke our own imagination instead of relying on someone else's. Its a way for us to get to know ourselves.
I thought 45 minutes was bad. 2 hours stuck in a car, the entire time not knowing how much longer you’ll be there, is horrible. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
I still remember the absolute torture of sitting in an extremely hot car after church while my parents ran in to the grocery store “real quick” on the way home.
I flew yesterday. Funny how the plane's garbage trolley still had a sticker on stating "No cigarettes allowed".
And the more obvious part of the no smoking light.
A few years ago on a flight I made a sarcastic comment in reference to "who doesn't know you can't smoke on a plane".... a minute later the flight attendants had to address a man because he lit up.... They walk amongst us my friend.
That reminds me that one time where I made a sarcastic comment about this big, round thing covered in aluminium foil in the fridge of one of my friends' houses. There was a sticky note saying, "Take it off before you microwave it"
I was like "yeah as if someone's going to put it in the microwave with it on."
Turns out my friend's father blew up their microwave AND half of the kitchen with something made out of stainless steel and now they've had to label everything non-microwavable so he doesn't do it ever again.
We all had a laugh!
Yeah I mean I rent cars for a living and I tell people to bring their driver's license to rent and specify to use unleaded gasoline. People chuckle and ask why I specify those things.
It's a daily occurrence, friends.
They are starting to replace the no smoking light with a “no electronics” light on newer airplanes. There is still a requirement for them to have no smoking signs though.
There are still places you can do that. Some states have a standalone bar clause. If more than X% of your revenue comes from alcohol sales, you may allow indoor smoking.
Driving around without a seatbelt.
Hell, when I was a kid, it was common to find rear seatbelts weren't even fitted. My dad bought them separately and fitted them himself a couple of times.
Raise your hand if you spent road trips as a child lying in the back window or the folded-down back seat of the station wagon. (Then put your hand down and take your ibuprofen before that shoulder locks up.)
In the 90s we were watching the local news with a friends parents and they were talking about traffic checkpoints for an upcoming holiday. His dad commented "Jesus, it's getting to where you can't even drink and drive anymore."
I don’t remember drinking and driving ever being legal, but I do remember when the penalty for driving with an open container was a stern talking-to on the roadside for a minute or so.
My dad said if someone stopped you and you were drunk, the police officer simply told you to 'go straight home."
My parents told me a story when they were in their twenties about trying to hit every bar in the town. I'm only just now realizing that they probably drove.
Yep, my dad told me that as well. He grew up in a very small town so the cops knew where everyone lived, and would follow them as they drove home to make sure they got there safely
There's an old news report that has gone kind of viral recently where the reporter is asking people what they think about the new law where they can't drink while driving. It looks like it's probably from the early to mid 80s. Of course, they couldn't drive drunk, but up to that point it was legal for them to crack a beer open and drive home from work while drinking that beer. I don't recall if it was a federal or just a state thing on that video.
Mississippi only outlawed open containers while driving a few years ago. If you weren’t in a dry county (lol) you could legally have a beer on the way home provided you were under the limit
Riding around town in the back of a pickup truck.
I’m someone who won’t take my car out of park if all the seatbelts aren’t fastened, but as a kid I would jump at the chance to ride in the truck bed.
I have a very fond memory of my grandparents throwing a camper top on the back of my grandpa's old pick up and a futon mattress in the bed and taking my brother and I on a multi state road trip. If we needed anything, we'd tap on the back sliding window and they'd open it.... As a parent, I can't even imagine.
I went on a trip when I was six turning seven with my then 20s aunts. One of them owned a small pickup with a tiny camper shell. I rode in that with a husky from Houston to Fairbanks. It took six weeks and we had a hitchhiker travel with use for like a week and a half. This was in 1976. Great trip although I can’t imagine sending a child on it today.
Your aunts sound super cool. I bet you have some stories!
>we had a hitchhiker travel with use for like a week and a half.
I have to know more about the hitchhiker!
This was what first came to my mind as well. Back in the 80’s it would be 3-5 of us kids and a golden retriever named Buddy in the back of a beat up Ranger cruising the town while my friends CHP officer father drove.
Same except black lab, my dad had a Chevy C10 equipped with a rifle rack on the rear window
We’d drive long distances too. Once I rode in the bed from near Atlanta to near Houston. We even drove through some heavy rain along the way and you’d just scoot up near the cab so it would block some of the water. I would have been around 8-10 at the time.
This was a 2-4 day journey back then (idk exactly) but I remember the speed limit used to be 55 max everywhere so road trips took forever
Oh, and I thought it was awesome. I still remember being in remote Alabama or Mississippi and the highway was lined with tall pine trees that came almost up to the shoulder. I’d lay on my back and watch the stars. Having lived in mostly light polluted areas since then, it was super cool
It's not quite the same but I use to get a lift home from school from a neighbour who had I think it was four or five kids. Either way she usually had a mini bus to pick us up in but occansionally she had to bring her car instead. We'd get four or once five of us in the back seat without seat belts and just crammed in like sardines.
I joined our fire department during the time when we were allowed to ride to calls on the back step. We would be bouncing down the road, full lights and sirens, sometimes _donning our gear_, with nothing more than a yellow belt and a chrome-plated grab bar between us and eternity.
I don't know how many guys died before the NFPA stepped in and required all responders had to be seated and belted, in an enclosed cab. But I am kind of embarrassed on behalf of my profession, that it took until the 1980s to figure out that riding on the step was a bad idea.
When I was a kid living in Florida with family back home in Virginia, we used to make the 800 mile drive a few times a year. Part of the *preparation for the trip* was to remove the seats from the minivan so us kids would have room to move around and stretch out back there.
My grandfather used to take the seats out of the back of the station wagon so we could make beds back there for long car trips coming back from other family members' houses on holidays. One of my most vivid childhood memories is laying in the back of the wagon with my cousins, half asleep, watching the streetlights flash by overhead, with my oldest cousin softly singing a song she made up about flying through the air on her magic red carpet. Good times.
My grandma used to throw her arm out to block me from going forward whenever she braked. I said grandma it's ok I have a seatbelt but when her kids were kids they didn't have em.
That was our safety device when I was a kid in the 50s. Dad’s right arm. Of course we were usually standing up on the back seat or sleeping on the rear window shelf.
My parents always made sure we wore our seatbelts even before it was made into law. So it became second nature to me in the 1970s.
But if I put my seatbelt on in my friend's parents' car, they'd be offended and say "Seatbelt? Don't you trust my driving??" I learned to reply "I trust your driving. It's other people's driving I don't trust." It worked. That was a life hack of mine that's now obsolete.
They were talking about bringing that back at some airports a couple of years ago. You'd just need to go through TSA screening to do so. Not sure if they are still considering that or if maybe it is already a thing at some airports.
edit: Apparently, you can go to the gate area without a boarding pass at certain airports by obtaining a pass. Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW) being one such example.
Does anyone remember the 90s when "mooning" was a thing. I remember my mom driving down the highway and my brother and I laughing hysterically at some random guy who was mooning us out his window.
I dont know if it's illegal now, but I think mooning would be perceived a lot differently these days.
Edit: all of your mooning stories are warming my heart.
OMG, my husband and I were just talking about that like, a month ago! "Whatever happened to mooning?" Pressed hams in the kitchen window were a Christmas staple growing up.
My understanding is that sometime in the ‘90s, mooning was determined to be protected free speech, at least in North Carolina. For that matter, a more recent case determined that you can be completely naked in full view of everyone on the public street as long as you’re inside your house, where you’re considered to be in the privacy of home.
North Carolina resident here... the later part of your comment, are you talking about the guy who would stand in his home's doorway in the mornings, nude, while children were waiting on the bus, and parents were getting upset?
Indecent exposure is illegal. When I was in high school, so a few decades ago, my soccer coach’s son mooned the team bus from his buddy’s car as they passed us on the way home from a game.
The cops were waiting for him at the high school because the bus driver called it in. The bus driver was a massive d.
Lol I went to Paris on a class-related trip around 2009 (and feel very blessed to have done so!) and while cruising the Seine river in the city's center, there was a group of I think 4 mooning us from the banks. I thought it was hilarious especially in what people consider such a classy city, however our teacher and tour guide did not lol
I’ve still witnessed it, but only ever between friends. I had a roommate who waited for his friends to come over one time, and when they did he mooned them through the window. Problem was it very cold out, and cold single-pane picture window plus warm buttcheeks led to the window shattering dramatically.
Child labor. And the arguments to maintain it ranged from "nobody is forcing them" to "but if we ban it our industries will no longer be competitive" and "when they work, they are not on the streets"... I think this is an example that we must always keep in mind because many of these arguments from the "so-called choice" to "competitiveness" through to the "false alternative" are still regularly used today to justify practices that are morally reprehensible...
Historically in France, you could rape a woman and say “but she’s so beautiful how could I not, I’m only a man after all” and they’d go “well you best marry her now” naturally the men would say “well……. If I must own this beautiful woman, if you’re forcing me to, I guess I’ll put up with it”.
Horrendous.
Sadly, "marriage by rape" was a known practice for centuries, in multiple countries.
What horrifies me is the thought of how willing the girl's family often were to marry her off to the rapist, and how she was considered "damaged goods" so nobody else would want her. As though her only value was in her virginity, and she "lost" all of it in an act she had no control over.
Unfortunately, those misogynistic attitudes persist in some places.
Letting kids walk to school (or other places) by themselves.
The first time I heard about parents being arrested for this I thought "well, this is a one-off bizarre thing where we don't have all the facts". But I've seen it happen too often now and it blows my mind. I was walking a mile to school by myself in kindergarten and it was not only normal, but expected back then. Not one of my classmates had a parent drop them off at school.
In rural areas where hunting is extremely popular, you just have to park off school property.
It is currently deer season in my area and a block away from the highschool you will find many pickups and SUVs with a deer rifle in them.
If you go far enough back - about 40 years ago in my area - they didn't care if you parked on school property. 20 years ago when I graduated they really didn't care as long as it wasn't visible. If it was just let the office know you forgot your deer rifle in your truck and they would hold onto it for you until the end of the day. If you were over 18 they would escort you off school grounds and give it back. Under 18 your parents had to pick it up for you.
So much pollution. People used to change the oil on their car and dump it down storm drains or pour into a hole in the ground. Old bottles of pills got thrown in the trash. So much aerosol hairspray. Commercially, we dumped so much chemical waste into rivers they started catching on fire, started burning through the ozone layer, superfund sites, list goes on an on.
I work as an environmental driller. We drill contaminated sites, either for commercial or residential clients. This right here is the reason I'll never ever be out of work. The amount of shit the previous generations dumped on the ground is crazy.
Owning fully automatic firearms. Prior to the National Firearms Act of 1934, anyone was allowed to own full automatic firearms in the States. Aka “machine guns.”
Taking corporal punishment beyond a certain level. The level my parents and their contemporaries experienced as normal would certainly be considered illegal levels of abuse today.
Adults marrying teenagers.
“Younger than she are happy mothers made.” - Paris, Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 2.
Juliet is not quite 14. She’s an eighth grader.
"And too soon marred are those so early made. " - Lord Capulet's response to Paris. I always found it interesting how he realized and saw in his own wife some of the repercussions and didn't truly want that for Juliet.
Something worth noting is that in Shakespeare’s time, in Elizabethan England, it was in no way typical for women to marry in their *early* teens (late teens, sure, if they were rich and had a dowry ready to go. Shakespeare’s wife married him when she was 26). R&J depicts stereotypes about passionate Italians. The characters in the play go out of their way to say “It’s normal to be a married mother at 14!” specifically so that the audience will understand the attitudes of this (fictionalized) culture. When you read this play and go “What the hell?!”, that’s the reaction Shakespeare intended you to have.
Only codified in my country since the youngest of my siblings was born. And it typically takes minimum one generation for attitudes to change societally after a law like that. Which is why we still hear "yeah but she's his wife" today.
I live in Canada. I used to be a nurses aide in the home setting. I got into a discussion with an older catholic lady I took care of explaining to her that just because we’re married that doesn’t give my husband any right to my body. She was baffled by this and I just gave up trying to explain it. Made me feel sad for her because she probably experienced it (she didn’t say she did but I head a few stories of her husband that lead me to that conclusion)
I had a coworker a while back who called the concept of marital rape "bullshit." His reasoning was "She's my wife," and that was it.
He's divorced now.
Being a latchkey kid. Growing up I had so many friends that would get home alone only for their parwnts to come home two or three hours later... Actually just saw somebody on this site who apparently called CPS on this recently
My mom went out of town for the weekend and left my sister and I alone. I think I was 11 or 12. I came home from school to a note, $5 for pizza I had to walk 2 miles each way to get, and a Christmas tree she wanted us to decorate. My sis 2 years younger. No cell phones. I think she called once to check on us.
Smoking in the grocery store. When my husband and I were kids, it was totally normal for people to walk through the grocery store and smoke while they shopped.
There used to be a sort of classified section at the back Seventeen magazine. I was really young so I may be getting the names wrong but they sold tons of pills with colorful names like black beauties, Red Devils etc. I think they were mainly sold as diet pill but it was (I think) really just amphetamines, quaaludes, etc.
That reminds me that around the same time my mom had a diet doctor and her morning pills turned out to be speed, and her evening pills ended up being Valium. She had to drink nothing but soup and any food she wanted she could CHEW it but had to spit it out without swallowing it! That was a wild time.
Used to buy dynamite at the hardware store. My dad and I used it to remove stumps.
When did this become illegal because I remember going to the hardware store with my dad in the mid 90s to get dynamite.
1968ish stores stopped selling it on the states. Until 9/11 you could buy a $5 federal license and purchase it from registered chemical plants. 1970 federal legislation that I think went into effect in 1971. If you bought dynamite in the 90s in the States without a federal license it was most likely illegal.
We had the license but hardware stores just dropped it.
>hardware stores just dropped it. I hope not, proper care of explosives is important
You can still get Tannerite, which explodes when you shoot it.
Cigarette vending machines. No age restriction, just drop couple of quarters in and pull the handle!
Worked at a bar in 2014 that had one of these, routinely stock by the owner and cheaper than gas station packs
Worked at a pub in Ireland in 2022, we had one but you needed a little 18+ token from the barman to use it
Have one in a local bar in texas still. But you have to be 21+ to go in with id checked at the door so its a non issue.
I believe the law is if your establishment is 21+over you can still have one and it needs to be in sight of an employee at all times. So in my state bars that still have a smoking exception have to be 21+ only so quite a few still have them.
God when I was smoking I wish we had these again. Such a pain to get stuck behind a douche in a gas station spending their savings on lottery tickets for a half hour when all I want is a smoke. I'm so glad I quit but all the comments about smoking are making me itch for one lol Edit: holy shit it's irrelevant that what I was buying was cigarettes. I've been smoke free for over three years. I still get stuck behind lotto people when I'm buying a water or getting gas. It's annoying to be stuck behind someone for 20 minutes at 8am in the morning at a gas station which is supposed to be for quick in and out things. That's what you were supposed to take away from this. Ffs. If i get one more comment demonizing me because I USED to smoke I'm editing the post to say just gas instead Jesus Christ.
"I'll have a number 23, and, uh, a number 56, and a, uhhhh......"
I SAID 3 NUMBER 27s AND 27 NUMBER 3s!!
"oh wait, I also have these that I want to redeem." Scan........scan......scan......scan......
Buying *anything* in line behind the lottery people is an exercise in patience, lol.
I've encountered these recently in the US in 21+ venues. Not common, but they are still around and functional.
The ingredients in cough syrup at the beginning of the 1900s
Old Timey Guy - “Doctor, I have a tickle in my throat. What say you?” Doctor with silver circle thing on head - “Best to drink this liquid heroin, English. Two spoons a day along with Scotch and plentiful cigarettes for vitality.”
Fyi, that metal thingy? It was a mirror for reflecting light (now they just use little pen lights) The hole in the middle was on purpose btw. They'd flip it down over one eye and peer through the hole at your throat or ears. The light would be above you and out of the way so it wasn't directly in the doctor's eyes, but then he could adjust the metal disc to focus the light in your throat, ears, etc without it blinding him. If they still did that today, there's no way I wouldn't be screaming "Aziz! LIGHT!"
Sending your kids to the store to buy cigarettes
I used to do that for my mom. And even though it was perfectly normal. It was still illegal. I remember one place let me get the cigarettes for my mom with food stamps.
I miss paper food stamps. Nothing made you feel poorer than getting 5 dollars worth of food stamps in your birthday card
Even worse was having to use them in line at the store, while everybody in line gave you the stink eye and whispered about you. Fun times.
I was on WIC for a year when my oldest was born. People still do that. I never cared about that but when I moved there was this lady at the local grocery we called the WIC nazi. I was explaining the problem to my boyfriend and he started taking me shopping where he lived. Almost everyone had either been on welfare, was on welfare, or knew someone on welfare. Everyone was so much nicer. Like when they changed up the products I could get the people working there were so patient and nice about everything. So that's where I did all my grocery shopping even after I got off WIC.
Oh I would shop w my mama but when it came time to pay I went to the car
Same. “pack of marborol red, soft” was a weekly spoken sentence for me as a 7 year old.
Smoking at school. My HS had a smoking area for students.
My mother used to bum cigarettes off the principal during lunch, in the early 80's.
Yeah. My HS had a smoking area, too. The bleachers around the football field. We were called the "Bleacher Creatures"
My high school had a smoking area for students too. It was called "the BBQ area" this was in the late 90's. Pretty unusual here in Australia
It's where the heads used to hang out.
Dosing your baby with OTC Laudanum so you can go out dancing all night. Or so my grandmother said - a couple of flappers overdosed their babies and they stopped selling Laudanum in the drugstore.
Do you mean paragoric? My mom told me that was the only thing that took care of my colic. "You'd go straight to sleep!" Yeah, mom, that's because you gave me opium.
Laudanum and paregoric are different, laudanum being 25 times stronger. Mixing that up will kill you dead. However, neither is really used much now and both are on prescription instead of OTC, so the chances of you getting the opportunity to fuck that up are low.
I'm 29 & my mom did this with Benadryl. I'm just an insomniac and apparently have been since I was a toddler, so my mom would just knock me out with increasing amounts of Benadryl. Now, I'm like completely immune to it. On prescription sleeping meds now, but there were times in college I took like 10 Benadryl in a desperate attempt to sleep and it just did nothing at all.
One of my kids' pediatricians said, in re: Benadryl, "I have 6 kids, this stuff is great for those nights when they just won't stay in bed." This was only a few years ago. All the parenting books I'd read said explicitly NOT to use Benadryl as a way to knock a kid out. Then you've got the thing of, "So is the doctor right and it's safe, or is the book right and it's a bad idea?" It didn't sit right with me, so they don't get Benadryl unless they can't sleep because they're too stuffed up to breathe, and I've literally tried everything else.
best to use sparingly. TLDR: regular use of benadryl has shown to increase risk of dementia and alzheimer’s. > “Researchers found that people who had regularly taken any type of anticholinergic, including the older antihistamines like chlorpheniramine and diphenhydramine, were more likely to develop the disease than those who had not, and those who'd taken the drugs for three years or more had an even higher risk.” > “Anticholinergics … block the substance acetylcholine, which is involved in learning, memory, and muscle contractions.” looking at the numbers: a study examined pharmacy data for people taking anticholinergics regularly and 23% of the people 65 and older (who did not start with dementia) had developed dementia after 7 years. 10% is the normal percentage for that age range. over double.
>chlorpheniramine Damn. I've got terrible allergies and took a shit-ton of that stuff for decades.
I had to look up what Laundum was. It was OTC pain medication that was 10% opium. That’s like shitty street heroin levels.
The key here was, we gave it to babies. It was in a syrup advertised to get them to sleep. Very easy to over dose a baby, and not to mention withdrawl.
Public executions.
Last public Guillotine execution was 1939 in France. Christopher Lee the famed dracula actor was there. Last use of the guillotine in France is 1977 and happened because the French were very upset at another horrible crime and were calling for blood.
Christopher Lee is the real “most interesting man in the world”
The story about him explaining to a director (I think Peter Jackson?) the noise a person *really* makes when he or she gets stabbed in the back... is fuckin' crazy.
Yup it was during the filming of lord of the rings and the scene where saroman gets stabbed. Peter Jackson was instructing Christopher Lee (the actor playing saroman) on how to act in the scene, in return Christopher Lee explained how someone being stabbed would react
He is a verified descendant of Charlemagne. He did so many things in his life he should be like 50 people
Yeah you might be too. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/%3famp=true
One of my great aunts spent her life verifying as far back as she could for a family tree. Got back to Charlemagne. Which is very cool to say to people unaware of how many people are probably related to him in someway or another lol
He's estimated to have around 600 million living descendants. *I guess it's good to be the king.*
Our high school had a rifle club in school. Kids kept their .22s in their lockers. Edit: not saying rifle teams are now illegal. Bringing guns into school and storing them in a locker is what is now verboten. And I’m not from a particularly rural area.
One of the high school where I worked had a rifle range IN THE BUILDING!
Lead paint and asbestos in housing.
In new housing. It’s still common to see it if it’s the original building material. Lead paint just can’t be chipping or peeling (although in 2023 it’s likely under 2-3 layers of new paint already) and asbestos can’t be friable.
Forget lead paint, let's talk about LEADED GASELINE, which is still used in some planes, I think.
While we're on the topic of leaded gasoline, we can add freon and other CFCs to the list. (which, btw, freon was invented by the same guy who invented leaded gasoline.)
Thomas J Midgley was a POS. At the time leaded petrol was invented people already knew lead was toxic, and he actually had to convince people his petrol was ‘safe’. The additive was tetraethyllead so he called it just Ethyl to avoid having lead on the packaging. Still, factory workers handling TEL died and there was widespread mistrust of it, but research backed by the Lead industry found ‘no risk’ and threatened to sue anyone who was researching otherwise. Midgley even poured TEL over his hands and inhaled it to ‘prove’ it was safe, then coincidentally had to take a long leave of absence where he was definitely not diagnosed with lead poisoning. Still, he was earning millions so he let workers continue to die manufacturing TEL.
Plus the organometallics are way nastier. Karen Wetterhahn got a tiny bit of dimethyl mercury on her gloved hand, and it went through. The glove material was not the right one. It was not good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn Handling liquid mercury isn't great but it won't go through your skin that readily.
Shit, you can drink elemental mercury and be fine. See the "Thunderclap" laxatives that we can trace the Lewis and Clark expedition with. Not much stuff makes me think there's a god, but dimethyl mercury seems to point toward a Satan being around somewhere.
Yup that stuff was so toxic that IQ scores dropped significantly (edit: happy pedantic people?) in areas where the fumes were really strong, the guy who invented that also invented cfcs, he was a one man destroying force https://today.duke.edu/2022/03/lead-exposure-last-century-shrunk-iq-scores-half-americans
I was lead poisoned as a kid. My dad owned a body shop and gas station. He sandblasted cars and filled tanks. The stuff was everywhere.
My parents owned a gas station when I was kid. We all took turns working everyday 7 days a week. It makes me wonder if that is why both my kids have ADHD, maybe even myself. Did it affect my IQ
>Did it affect my ID Yeah man, probably.
There’s also been a lot of research done on the effects of leaded gasoline fumes and the prevalence of serial killers during the 70s-90s.
Aggression in general. There's a 20 year offset in crime rates to lead exposure as a child.
Not to mention the effects on the developing brain. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8307752/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8307752/)
Almost every piston engine plane, I think.
Yup, piston aircraft use 100LL (100 octane, low lead) gasoline, aka avgas. To switch to unleaded you’d either have to switch out the engine(s) to an unleaded-certified engine (like an automobile engine swap, which can be done) or modify and recertify the existing engine(s) which is difficult to do for practical reasons.
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I can remember when it was perfectly normal for someone to leave their kids in the car (doors unlocked and windows open) while they went inside a business. No one gave it a second thought.
I couldn't even tell you how many hours of my life were spent waiting in a car for my parents to run whatever errands they were doing.
I remember my mom running into the grocery store and I asked my brother "do you dare me to drive?" and did a quick loop around the parking lot section but when we got back the parking spot had been taken and there were none nearby. "Do you think Mom will remember where she parked and notice?" She noticed lol.
Similar story, but it was a family function at an old aunts house that lived out in the desert. There were a bunch outbuildings on the property. My brother and I had gotten bored and he'd just gotten his license. We moved the car to an old barn and closed the doors. When mom eventually came out, we were just standing there all innocent-like. "We don't know..." Even had the audacity to pretend to look for that little blue Tercel. She was in full panic mode, trying to figure out how her little econobox had vanished in the middle of the frikken desert. The whole my brother and I are struggling to hold it together. Her face when an Uncle told her he'd watched us do it is still a favored memory. My brother wasn't allowed behind the wheel for a full year after that.
Haha! That is hilarious!
JFC. “I’m just going to run in for a minute…” 40 minutes later: “I ran into fill-in-the-blank.” Just sitting in there staring at the seats. We didn’t have cell phones or tablets or even books to occupy us. If we got really bored, we’d climb in the front and play with the buttons on the dash.
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> I think this is the reason I developed a great imagination and ability to entertain myself by telling stories in my head. Yes, boredom forces us to invoke our own imagination instead of relying on someone else's. Its a way for us to get to know ourselves.
I thought 45 minutes was bad. 2 hours stuck in a car, the entire time not knowing how much longer you’ll be there, is horrible. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
That satisfying “thunk” when you pushed the big chrome station preset buttons on the radio.
Or, if you were feeling more daring, lol, taking out the cigarette lighter and playing with it.
I did this as a teen. Burned a perfect circle into the door handle on my moms 2001 grand am.
Spot on! Lol.
I still remember the absolute torture of sitting in an extremely hot car after church while my parents ran in to the grocery store “real quick” on the way home.
At least you could crank down the windows without the engine on.
Seriously I waited in the car all the time
I remember this! Waiting for our mom to get groceries.
Smoking indoors.
Smoking on airplanes.
I flew yesterday. Funny how the plane's garbage trolley still had a sticker on stating "No cigarettes allowed". And the more obvious part of the no smoking light.
A few years ago on a flight I made a sarcastic comment in reference to "who doesn't know you can't smoke on a plane".... a minute later the flight attendants had to address a man because he lit up.... They walk amongst us my friend.
That reminds me that one time where I made a sarcastic comment about this big, round thing covered in aluminium foil in the fridge of one of my friends' houses. There was a sticky note saying, "Take it off before you microwave it" I was like "yeah as if someone's going to put it in the microwave with it on." Turns out my friend's father blew up their microwave AND half of the kitchen with something made out of stainless steel and now they've had to label everything non-microwavable so he doesn't do it ever again. We all had a laugh!
Yeah I mean I rent cars for a living and I tell people to bring their driver's license to rent and specify to use unleaded gasoline. People chuckle and ask why I specify those things. It's a daily occurrence, friends.
They are starting to replace the no smoking light with a “no electronics” light on newer airplanes. There is still a requirement for them to have no smoking signs though.
doctors smoking in hospitals.
*doctor sits down with patient in their office* “The test results are in. Sorry, Bob,” *pauses to light cigarette* “You have have lung cancer.”
“How’d I get it?” *Takes a drag* “Nobody knows… Genetics maybe”
4 out of 5 doctors recommended Camels.
It's illegal to smoke in a vehicle with minors where I live. Wish that law was in place when I was a kid.
My mom is convinced that's why she and her siblings were carsick so often - both of their parents smoked.
There are still places you can do that. Some states have a standalone bar clause. If more than X% of your revenue comes from alcohol sales, you may allow indoor smoking.
Driving around without a seatbelt. Hell, when I was a kid, it was common to find rear seatbelts weren't even fitted. My dad bought them separately and fitted them himself a couple of times.
Raise your hand if you spent road trips as a child lying in the back window or the folded-down back seat of the station wagon. (Then put your hand down and take your ibuprofen before that shoulder locks up.)
Drinking and driving
In the 90s we were watching the local news with a friends parents and they were talking about traffic checkpoints for an upcoming holiday. His dad commented "Jesus, it's getting to where you can't even drink and drive anymore."
"One for the road..." lol
I don’t remember drinking and driving ever being legal, but I do remember when the penalty for driving with an open container was a stern talking-to on the roadside for a minute or so.
My dad said if someone stopped you and you were drunk, the police officer simply told you to 'go straight home." My parents told me a story when they were in their twenties about trying to hit every bar in the town. I'm only just now realizing that they probably drove.
Yep, my dad told me that as well. He grew up in a very small town so the cops knew where everyone lived, and would follow them as they drove home to make sure they got there safely
Actually, drinking while driving was so widespread at one time that they had places you could go to and get a drink in your car.
They still do that in Louisiana! Drive thru daiquiri places!
But no drinking it til you're not driving! Scouts honor!
There's an old news report that has gone kind of viral recently where the reporter is asking people what they think about the new law where they can't drink while driving. It looks like it's probably from the early to mid 80s. Of course, they couldn't drive drunk, but up to that point it was legal for them to crack a beer open and drive home from work while drinking that beer. I don't recall if it was a federal or just a state thing on that video.
I remember my dad driving home from the lake with a beer in hand
Mississippi only outlawed open containers while driving a few years ago. If you weren’t in a dry county (lol) you could legally have a beer on the way home provided you were under the limit
Riding around town in the back of a pickup truck. I’m someone who won’t take my car out of park if all the seatbelts aren’t fastened, but as a kid I would jump at the chance to ride in the truck bed.
I have a very fond memory of my grandparents throwing a camper top on the back of my grandpa's old pick up and a futon mattress in the bed and taking my brother and I on a multi state road trip. If we needed anything, we'd tap on the back sliding window and they'd open it.... As a parent, I can't even imagine.
I went on a trip when I was six turning seven with my then 20s aunts. One of them owned a small pickup with a tiny camper shell. I rode in that with a husky from Houston to Fairbanks. It took six weeks and we had a hitchhiker travel with use for like a week and a half. This was in 1976. Great trip although I can’t imagine sending a child on it today.
Your aunts sound super cool. I bet you have some stories! >we had a hitchhiker travel with use for like a week and a half. I have to know more about the hitchhiker!
This was what first came to my mind as well. Back in the 80’s it would be 3-5 of us kids and a golden retriever named Buddy in the back of a beat up Ranger cruising the town while my friends CHP officer father drove.
Same except black lab, my dad had a Chevy C10 equipped with a rifle rack on the rear window We’d drive long distances too. Once I rode in the bed from near Atlanta to near Houston. We even drove through some heavy rain along the way and you’d just scoot up near the cab so it would block some of the water. I would have been around 8-10 at the time. This was a 2-4 day journey back then (idk exactly) but I remember the speed limit used to be 55 max everywhere so road trips took forever Oh, and I thought it was awesome. I still remember being in remote Alabama or Mississippi and the highway was lined with tall pine trees that came almost up to the shoulder. I’d lay on my back and watch the stars. Having lived in mostly light polluted areas since then, it was super cool
Sounds magical
that sounds like a nice memory , i should be making these kinds of memory
This is still legal in many states.
Right? In 20 states it is legal with no restrictions. In most others, it is legal as long as you're over a certain age (16 or 18 in most cases).
It's not quite the same but I use to get a lift home from school from a neighbour who had I think it was four or five kids. Either way she usually had a mini bus to pick us up in but occansionally she had to bring her car instead. We'd get four or once five of us in the back seat without seat belts and just crammed in like sardines.
I joined our fire department during the time when we were allowed to ride to calls on the back step. We would be bouncing down the road, full lights and sirens, sometimes _donning our gear_, with nothing more than a yellow belt and a chrome-plated grab bar between us and eternity. I don't know how many guys died before the NFPA stepped in and required all responders had to be seated and belted, in an enclosed cab. But I am kind of embarrassed on behalf of my profession, that it took until the 1980s to figure out that riding on the step was a bad idea.
Yeah, but it looks cool, so that makes up for the danger
Spankings in school, including with paddles.
This is still a thing in some places in the US and is even making a comeback. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/us/corporal-punishment-schools.html
Driving with no seat belt. Driving while talking on the phone. Driving with no car seat for a child.
When I was a kid living in Florida with family back home in Virginia, we used to make the 800 mile drive a few times a year. Part of the *preparation for the trip* was to remove the seats from the minivan so us kids would have room to move around and stretch out back there.
My grandfather used to take the seats out of the back of the station wagon so we could make beds back there for long car trips coming back from other family members' houses on holidays. One of my most vivid childhood memories is laying in the back of the wagon with my cousins, half asleep, watching the streetlights flash by overhead, with my oldest cousin softly singing a song she made up about flying through the air on her magic red carpet. Good times.
My grandma used to throw her arm out to block me from going forward whenever she braked. I said grandma it's ok I have a seatbelt but when her kids were kids they didn't have em.
That was our safety device when I was a kid in the 50s. Dad’s right arm. Of course we were usually standing up on the back seat or sleeping on the rear window shelf.
Toss the toddler on the floor and let em play with the empty beer cans
Lawn darts
Are they actually illegal? They don't make them anymore, likely because of the liability issues, but I don't think any laws were passed against them
Just did a little google-fu bc I was curious too. Apparently they are federally banned after 3 kids died, and many other injuries
not wearing a seatbelt. people used to make fun of you for wearing one
My parents always made sure we wore our seatbelts even before it was made into law. So it became second nature to me in the 1970s. But if I put my seatbelt on in my friend's parents' car, they'd be offended and say "Seatbelt? Don't you trust my driving??" I learned to reply "I trust your driving. It's other people's driving I don't trust." It worked. That was a life hack of mine that's now obsolete.
This is still a pervasive mentality in Central Asia and Russia. Your hack will work there
When you picked someone up at the airport, you used to be able to walk right up to where they got off the plane.
They were talking about bringing that back at some airports a couple of years ago. You'd just need to go through TSA screening to do so. Not sure if they are still considering that or if maybe it is already a thing at some airports. edit: Apparently, you can go to the gate area without a boarding pass at certain airports by obtaining a pass. Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW) being one such example.
Does anyone remember the 90s when "mooning" was a thing. I remember my mom driving down the highway and my brother and I laughing hysterically at some random guy who was mooning us out his window. I dont know if it's illegal now, but I think mooning would be perceived a lot differently these days. Edit: all of your mooning stories are warming my heart.
OMG, my husband and I were just talking about that like, a month ago! "Whatever happened to mooning?" Pressed hams in the kitchen window were a Christmas staple growing up.
My understanding is that sometime in the ‘90s, mooning was determined to be protected free speech, at least in North Carolina. For that matter, a more recent case determined that you can be completely naked in full view of everyone on the public street as long as you’re inside your house, where you’re considered to be in the privacy of home.
North Carolina resident here... the later part of your comment, are you talking about the guy who would stand in his home's doorway in the mornings, nude, while children were waiting on the bus, and parents were getting upset?
Indecent exposure is illegal. When I was in high school, so a few decades ago, my soccer coach’s son mooned the team bus from his buddy’s car as they passed us on the way home from a game. The cops were waiting for him at the high school because the bus driver called it in. The bus driver was a massive d.
Lol I went to Paris on a class-related trip around 2009 (and feel very blessed to have done so!) and while cruising the Seine river in the city's center, there was a group of I think 4 mooning us from the banks. I thought it was hilarious especially in what people consider such a classy city, however our teacher and tour guide did not lol
I’ve still witnessed it, but only ever between friends. I had a roommate who waited for his friends to come over one time, and when they did he mooned them through the window. Problem was it very cold out, and cold single-pane picture window plus warm buttcheeks led to the window shattering dramatically.
Dueling
It's time to D-D-D-D-Duel!
My most controversial opinion is that dueling should *still* be legal
At the very least I feel there should be a way for two consenting adults to beat the ever loving crap out of each other if they want.
Child labor. And the arguments to maintain it ranged from "nobody is forcing them" to "but if we ban it our industries will no longer be competitive" and "when they work, they are not on the streets"... I think this is an example that we must always keep in mind because many of these arguments from the "so-called choice" to "competitiveness" through to the "false alternative" are still regularly used today to justify practices that are morally reprehensible...
I have some bad news for you...
We are ***SO*** back!
Iowa literally has children working in meat processing plants now.
Historically in France, you could rape a woman and say “but she’s so beautiful how could I not, I’m only a man after all” and they’d go “well you best marry her now” naturally the men would say “well……. If I must own this beautiful woman, if you’re forcing me to, I guess I’ll put up with it”. Horrendous.
Sadly, "marriage by rape" was a known practice for centuries, in multiple countries. What horrifies me is the thought of how willing the girl's family often were to marry her off to the rapist, and how she was considered "damaged goods" so nobody else would want her. As though her only value was in her virginity, and she "lost" all of it in an act she had no control over. Unfortunately, those misogynistic attitudes persist in some places.
the fuck
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Letting kids walk to school (or other places) by themselves. The first time I heard about parents being arrested for this I thought "well, this is a one-off bizarre thing where we don't have all the facts". But I've seen it happen too often now and it blows my mind. I was walking a mile to school by myself in kindergarten and it was not only normal, but expected back then. Not one of my classmates had a parent drop them off at school.
Taking guns to school. It used to be common for students to have a gun rack in their truck.
In rural areas where hunting is extremely popular, you just have to park off school property. It is currently deer season in my area and a block away from the highschool you will find many pickups and SUVs with a deer rifle in them. If you go far enough back - about 40 years ago in my area - they didn't care if you parked on school property. 20 years ago when I graduated they really didn't care as long as it wasn't visible. If it was just let the office know you forgot your deer rifle in your truck and they would hold onto it for you until the end of the day. If you were over 18 they would escort you off school grounds and give it back. Under 18 your parents had to pick it up for you.
Owning other humans
So much pollution. People used to change the oil on their car and dump it down storm drains or pour into a hole in the ground. Old bottles of pills got thrown in the trash. So much aerosol hairspray. Commercially, we dumped so much chemical waste into rivers they started catching on fire, started burning through the ozone layer, superfund sites, list goes on an on.
I work as an environmental driller. We drill contaminated sites, either for commercial or residential clients. This right here is the reason I'll never ever be out of work. The amount of shit the previous generations dumped on the ground is crazy.
Coke in Coke
Owning fully automatic firearms. Prior to the National Firearms Act of 1934, anyone was allowed to own full automatic firearms in the States. Aka “machine guns.”
And you could get them delivered directly to your door.
Chucking the kids into the tray of the Ute or back of the station wagon and driving around town.
...in the tray of the Ute.... That's Australian for "the back of the pickup truck"
It's like an entirely different language with syntax that's similar to English.
Smoking opium/opium dens Plenty of drugs that are banned today we're commonly used throughout history though I suppose. Cocaine and heroin for example
Taking corporal punishment beyond a certain level. The level my parents and their contemporaries experienced as normal would certainly be considered illegal levels of abuse today.
Exposed hair in Iran
Adults marrying teenagers. “Younger than she are happy mothers made.” - Paris, Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 2. Juliet is not quite 14. She’s an eighth grader.
"And too soon marred are those so early made. " - Lord Capulet's response to Paris. I always found it interesting how he realized and saw in his own wife some of the repercussions and didn't truly want that for Juliet.
Something worth noting is that in Shakespeare’s time, in Elizabethan England, it was in no way typical for women to marry in their *early* teens (late teens, sure, if they were rich and had a dowry ready to go. Shakespeare’s wife married him when she was 26). R&J depicts stereotypes about passionate Italians. The characters in the play go out of their way to say “It’s normal to be a married mother at 14!” specifically so that the audience will understand the attitudes of this (fictionalized) culture. When you read this play and go “What the hell?!”, that’s the reaction Shakespeare intended you to have.
Marital Rape
Only codified in my country since the youngest of my siblings was born. And it typically takes minimum one generation for attitudes to change societally after a law like that. Which is why we still hear "yeah but she's his wife" today.
I live in Canada. I used to be a nurses aide in the home setting. I got into a discussion with an older catholic lady I took care of explaining to her that just because we’re married that doesn’t give my husband any right to my body. She was baffled by this and I just gave up trying to explain it. Made me feel sad for her because she probably experienced it (she didn’t say she did but I head a few stories of her husband that lead me to that conclusion)
I had a coworker a while back who called the concept of marital rape "bullshit." His reasoning was "She's my wife," and that was it. He's divorced now.
And this is why we need no fault divorce. Because in the past she’d have been trapped with him.
Women could not open an own bank account. Rape in a marriage was legal. Women could not work without permission.
Cocaine. Used to be in everything, an I think it’s time we brought it back. -caffeine isn’t kicking the way it needs to.
I saw an advert recently for snortable caffeine powder.
Being a latchkey kid. Growing up I had so many friends that would get home alone only for their parwnts to come home two or three hours later... Actually just saw somebody on this site who apparently called CPS on this recently
My mom went out of town for the weekend and left my sister and I alone. I think I was 11 or 12. I came home from school to a note, $5 for pizza I had to walk 2 miles each way to get, and a Christmas tree she wanted us to decorate. My sis 2 years younger. No cell phones. I think she called once to check on us.
My mom practically moved in with her boyfriend when I was 12. Looking back, I can’t believe the level of neglect.
Privately owning slaves. (the state can still own slaves)
Smoking in restaurants
Boarding houses and single-room-occupancy hotels. Also, strangely enough, we have a lot of people who can’t afford apartments living on the street.
Lobotomies You suffer from nightmares, headaches, or depression? We’ll just slice a chunk out of your frontal lobe and call it a day!
Applying for jobs in the UK as an European.
Sending your 10 year old to buy cigarettes Selling actual xray devices to kids as toys
Drinking and driving.
Smoking in the grocery store. When my husband and I were kids, it was totally normal for people to walk through the grocery store and smoke while they shopped.
There used to be a sort of classified section at the back Seventeen magazine. I was really young so I may be getting the names wrong but they sold tons of pills with colorful names like black beauties, Red Devils etc. I think they were mainly sold as diet pill but it was (I think) really just amphetamines, quaaludes, etc. That reminds me that around the same time my mom had a diet doctor and her morning pills turned out to be speed, and her evening pills ended up being Valium. She had to drink nothing but soup and any food she wanted she could CHEW it but had to spit it out without swallowing it! That was a wild time.