Pages


Friday, February 14, 2025

I'm This Old - School Edition

1)


2)


3)


4)


5)


6)


7)


8)


9)


10)

 

60 comments:

  1. #4: well after my time. We had 16mm film, and opaque and transparent overhead projectors. Oh, and filmstrips! (Also, there should be a mimeograph machine here.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Filmstrip with the audio tape 'beep'...

      Delete
    2. Came here to say the same thing. I didn't see that setup until college. And didn't you just love taking a big whiff of the mimeograph test sheets?

      Delete
    3. Mimeograph? Surely you mean the ditto machine?!?!?!?!? Becuz, you know... you ran off dittos on it. ;-)

      Delete
  2. I remember movies and other on 16mm (?) reels and one of the AV class setting up and running the film projector.
    Overhead slides and mimeographed tests.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. film reals with audio that was always out of sinc with the video by about half a second.

      Delete
  3. Yep. Nothing like the prospect of fall 20 feet to the hardwood gym floor to motivate you to not try very hard

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No knots on our ropes. Still remember the lovely sound of THUMP when somebody hit the mat after a fall of 10 feet or so. I did bounce well in those days.

      Delete
  4. #6- Nuclear Shelter.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shit, you had separate desks and chairs? In grade school, we had the flip top desk/chair combo. Who else here was a 6th grade crossing guard? Badge and all.

      Delete
    2. Yup, a nuclear shelter in a classroom with one wall of glass bricks. Half the classroom were Air Force brats and the other half belonged to DOD civilian employees, none of us were impressed. Next drill we were moved to the storage area under the bleachers.

      Delete
    3. I was a crossing guard in 5th and 6th grade. Made it all the way to Captain. We had different colored belts to show your status. I lived across the street from the school so it was kind of natural for them to pick me.

      Delete
    4. Not a crossing guard. I was the best in math of the kids that walked to school and thus could come in early, so I sold the lunch tickets.

      Delete
  5. God I'm old ....knew all of those things. Better times for sure.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I remember all that except for the Driver's Ed simulators. We just squeezed into a VW Bug with the coach and drove around the block a lot. Now Driver's Ed with or without simulators doesn't exist because that is an actual skill most people will use in Real Life.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 1980ish Georgia -- dad taught me in a bug, driving around a quite residential block.
      Driver's ed was to get the insurance price break. Drove myself to driver's ed, across town in rush hour traffic to then do the driver's ed stuff in a land yacht with an automatic transmission.
      When my son got his license, he had to do driver's ed before getting his learners permit.

      Delete
    2. Kid in our class was the son of the guy that owned the local Chevy dealership, so our high school driver ed car was a nice sedan. Had to have room for the two other students who rode along on road outings. We'd switch off so all three got a chance to drive.

      Delete
    3. 1969 in small-town Michigan: Drivers Ed was a one-semester class in high school. There were no simulators. They had several old cars, including one with a manual transmission. And you learned to drive on snow and ice. The certificate from Drivers Ed let you get a Learners Permit so you could drive with a parent in the car. Once they thought you had enough practice, you took a drivers test with a state employee.

      2010's with my grandchildren, about 30 miles from the first town: Driver's Ed was outside the school system and I paid for it. It was in the summer, so the only preparation for winter driving was a few minutes on the skid pad. It was much shorter than when I went through it.

      If a kid's family didn't pay for Driver's Ed, he could still test for a license at 18 or older. I think it shows in the way many drive nowadays... I assume there was some similar policy for kids that didn't get Driver's Ed in school, but everyone I knew passed it, except maybe Billy the future Village Idiot.

      F

      Delete
  7. Dude, wayback machine, I remember all of it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I’ familiar with all but the last, haven’t seen it before, what’s the point? Learn how to tune the radio while driving?

    ReplyDelete
  9. #4 - way too new for me. We had the very rare occurrence of a film projector.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. With the accompanying vinyl record and "Beep!"

      Delete
  10. Ahh yes, the good old days were a wonderful time to grow up..
    JD

    ReplyDelete
  11. Memories of a better time.

    ReplyDelete
  12. #7: did you know that using carbon paper makes writing lines go MUCH faster?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I actually learned to write with my left hand, I'm right handed, good enough that the teachers never noticed the difference
      JD

      Delete
    2. I fastened 5 pens to a ruler to write mine. Next time I was simply assigned 5 times as many.

      Delete
    3. I broke my right hand when I was 11, so I learned to write with my left. It wasn't great, but probably more legible than my normal writing is nowadays.

      Delete
  13. Everything except the driving simulator............................

    ReplyDelete
  14. I graduated High School in 1960 so the first 9 are very familiar and bring back great memories, however #10 was not an option since the local Chevy dealer provided a sedan for our on the road experience.

    #3: We used to draw boobies on our brown-bag covers. Pissed off the old bat maiden teachers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was a doodler in school, start with a line in a corner and expand from there... More often than not it would become something way beyond what I intended at the beginning..
      JD

      Delete
  15. For most of those I am OLDER than that! No TVs, but I was on the AV team in 5th grade. We ran the portable movie projector (#4). And who could forget Big Chief tablets (#1)?

    ReplyDelete
  16. You can almost smell the mimeograph ink, can-cha.
    -lg

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. With the first comment I read I was imagining that same thing..

      Delete
    2. Did anyone here know to get those stencils out of the garbage for a copy of the test before Animal House?

      Delete
  17. #9 the return date for a library loan card. Up until just a few years ago the library in my city was still using those.

    Nemo

    ReplyDelete
  18. #10) My school system had no money. So the driving simulators were hand-me-downs from the 1950s. They were large and looked kinda like bumper cars. Probably had vacuum tubes in them. I did enjoy "Red Asphalt", "Signal 30", "Mechanized Death", and the other 50s and 60s driver's ed scare movies. For me, it was all about the musical score. Good times, good times.

    ReplyDelete
  19. I remember ALL of them!

    ReplyDelete
  20. #8 ... I've got that very same paper cutter on a shelf in my garage right now. Bought it 20 years ago at a yard sale, and it was likely 50 years old then. I look at that ten ton paperweight and try to imagine how many adolescent fingertips were sacrificed to it. Imagine seeing one of those in today's middle school art classes.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I'm so old, dirt was new when I was born.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I can remember when MacDonalds had only sold 100 hamburgers!

      Delete
    2. Ah! That new dirt smell!

      Delete
  22. Where's the microfiche?

    ReplyDelete
  23. Starker here,
    I still have a paper cutter. Had that desk & all in one. Never had the simulator.
    Would like to add Flannel / Felt board.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Unfortunately, I was afflicted with homeschool, but I still remember #1,3,4,5,8,9 from church, general life, homeschool video lessons, etc. Most of these were still in use in the 90s.

    These days, textbooks are digital rentals. I.E the publisher takes your money and you get nothing in return. Online homework which is registered to a book-key really needs to be made illegal so this practice stops.

    -Arc

    ReplyDelete
  25. Number 4 meant “Substitute Teacher”.:

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yours didn't drink, eh?

      Best time with it was watching the shuttle go partway up, then "...OK, back to work..."

      Delete
  26. Never got to the top of the rope until I was at MCRD San Diego.in 1972. For some reason I was motivated.
    Paul J

    ReplyDelete
  27. #1 Big Chief red cover tablet. I remember the printing practice sheets turned over every day to our 1st - 2nd grade teachers.

    #10 - Driver's Ed, I used pretty much the same while film was playing on wall.

    ReplyDelete
  28. No driver’s simulators. No tv or tape players either.

    ReplyDelete
  29. My fav the mimeograph not shown.
    I can still hear it and smell it.

    Who would ever try to keep home made book covers clean? To me and everyone I knew, they were blank canvas for doodling and other customizing.

    ReplyDelete
  30. #8 - I have one of those paper cutters in my home office.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Wow major flash back. Took awhile to get off memory lane;)

    Thx WC
    Novalt

    ReplyDelete
  32. The girls in 1st through 6th grade used to put a dollop of elmer's glue on the inside lip of the desk and make fake fingernails after it dried. Then they used a little library paste to stick them on and paint them. This was before their mommas let them get actual fake nails. I remember everything except the simulator. We had a 1976 Plymouth Volare when I took driver's ed.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Replies
    1. Yup. Me too. America was another country then. We will never be the same. Sad.

      Delete

All comments are moderated due to spam, drunks and trolls. Keep 'em civil, coherent, short, and on topic.
Posted comments are the opinions of the commenters, not the site administrator.