I’m pretty firmly in Millennial territory, but I’ve become increasingly aware that I, in fact, have some serious Boomer habits. Grocery shopping? I stock up! Remember at the start of the pandemic when millennials were like — WTF, how do we EAT for weeks at a time? Ya gurl was solid. Grumpy “kids today!” frowning? You betcha, even at people older than me!
So you know I got a kick out of the list we’ve got for you today.
Boomers flocked to Reddit, of all places, this weekend in a recent Ask Reddit thread from u/MatsGry. The user asked
“What’s something today’s youth would never understand?”
Let’s check out the best answers.
1. Calling the theater
“Calling the movie theater to hear the recording with the movie times on it.” —u/StanePantsen
2. The Draft
“There was a military draft for the Vietnam War. We’d have to watch a draft lottery to see if our number would be low enough that we’d be drafted to fight in a war.” —u/randomcanyon
3. Peace
“Because we didn’t always have cellphones, people could not always get a hold of you, and it was a good thing.” —u/TechFiend72
4. You have to use a real library
“Needing to do a report on a topic. No internet. No encyclopedia on CD. You’d have to go to the actual library — just to find someone in your class already grabbed the one book on the subject.” —u/ImCaffeinated_Chris
5. TV guides
“Opening up the newspaper to look at the TV guide to see what was on that night.” —u/Actuaryba
6. Smoking
“OMG, smoking EVERYWHERE — in theaters, planes, offices, hospitals, trains, restaurants, schools. And then the outrage when it was finally banned.” —u/MagentaX
7. Choose your show
“If there were two shows on TV at the same time that day, you had to make a choice. There was a time with no DVR, VCR, OnDemand, etc.” —u/hellyea63
8. Radios
“Waiting for your favorite song to come on the radio. I would call radio stations requesting a song, just so I could tape it.” —u/RedditOnANapkin
9. Rental stores
“The excitement of going to a video rental store on the weekends to pick out a movie. Actually picking one out was just as exciting as watching the movie.”—u/brokendowndryer
10. Remember
“Memorizing phone numbers.” u/usmcmech
11. Film processing
“Taking photos using those little rolls of film and having to take them into a shop for processing. You often wouldn’t know if any of the photos were good until a couple of months later. You also had to manually wind on the camera after every shot.” —u/Orlando_the_Cat
12. No evidence
“In a bar or at a party, you could dance on the table naked and do the craziest stuff. The next morning, you could categorically deny that it ever happened and no one — absolutely no one — could ever show you a video on their phone that it did happen.” —u/rolex42069
13. No phones!
“Being stuck on a toilet for a little bit and reading the shampoo bottles, packages on bars of soap, and whatever else might be within grabbing distance of the toilet. You didn’t have a phone to entertain you.” —u/Habsfan1977
14. Drive in places
“Drive-in restaurants with car hops. A line of parking places under a canopy. Each had a speaker. They brought the food on a tray that attached to the driver’s open window. Dad ate off the tray. Mom opened the glove box and used the door for a tray. It had little indentations for cups. The kids just ate off their laps. We could have eaten inside, sitting at a table, or taken the food home, but this was more fun.” —u/Sparky-Malarky
15. Actual learning.
“History Channel, Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, and a bunch of other cable networks that are now dedicated to absolutely bottom-tier garbage reality TV shows. Those networks used to play amazing nonstop documentary TV.” —u/Chubby-Tumbles
16. Gas was cheap!
“Getting in your vehicle and driving to your friend’s house to see if they were home. No cellphones. Gas was cheap. Driving was freedom.” —u/SoCalRc