I tend to always choose "anal rapist" when it is available as an option.

I assumed you would go that way.

Does age count in years or mileage?

42 in 11 days. LOL @ me. FML. Actually, aside from my own failings my life is great. Now if I could just get past my own failings it would be greater.

Posted by Nvr2loud Does age count in years or mileage?

lets not even count the miles!

Posted by Samurai lets not even count the miles!

Amen to that!

July of 1960,
Oh God there it is again in black and white, and blurry. I feel like I'm 20, Yet I can remember when windows 2.1 came out in black and white, We thought it was so cool. I can remember life without, Microwaves, pagers, cell phones, GPS, The Internet, Cordless tools. I'll stop now.

I spent the first part of my childhood only getting 3 channels on the TV... 2 were english and one was french. No cable. Saturday morning cartoons were still the best though.

Posted by Match Girl I spent the first part of my childhood only getting 3 channels on the TV... 2 were english and one was french. No cable. Saturday morning cartoons were still the best though.

Ditto. I also remember when you could only buy leaded gasoline. We snacked on RC Colas, moonpies and pop-rocks. Nobody owned a home computer. The only consoles were Pong and Atari. The pet rock was popular. 'Welcome back Kotter', 'Happy Days', and 'M*A*S*H' were the shows to watch. Baseball T's were hip. Etc., etc.

Posted by PorkChopExpress Ditto. I also remember when you could only buy leaded gasoline. We snacked on RC Colas, moonpies and pop-rocks. Nobody owned a home computer. The only consoles were Pong and Atari. The pet rock was popular. 'Welcome back Kotter', 'Happy Days', and 'M*A*S*H' were the shows to watch. Baseball T's were hip. Etc., etc.

The kid down the street from me had Pong. I was jealous.

I was allowed to stay up half an hour later then usual on Tuesdays to watch Happy Days, but I think Charlie's Angels was my favorite show growing up. I wanted to be Jill... she had a cool car, and even cooler hair...
The Six Million Dollar Man, and the Incredible Hulk were up there on my list too.

I also remember spending my allowance on "Star Wars" bubble gum cards. I wish I'd kept them.

I remember Atari...man that was something.

Also I remember when we had all of four channels, NBC (when it came in), CBS, ABC from Portland, Maine and Public Television.

We sat there amazed when they installed cable in 1983. First thing I ever watched on it...Annie. Before remote control, you'd get up and push a switch on the box. We sat on the porch waiting for the installers to get to our house for days.

Shael

I can remember HBO cable boxes, just one channel HBO, and whatever movie they were playing that's what you watched. You paid but you got no commercials. Now you pay alot more, and you're paying for commercials. Lots of them.

I was to cool / old for starwars toys, but years later came across a ton of star wars toys at a garage sale, I bought them all. I put them in the garage right next to my Hotwheels collection.

Intellivision TALKED......was awesome.

I still collect Hot Wheels, and Matchbox......refuse to listen to people saying "you are not a kid anymore". No, I am not. But I am not dead either.

Posted by cr400 I can remember HBO cable boxes, just one channel HBO, and whatever movie they were playing that's what you watched. You paid but you got no commercials. Now you pay alot more, and you're paying for commercials. Lots of them. I was to cool / old for starwars toys, but years later came across a ton of star wars toys at a garage sale, I bought them all. I put them in the garage right next to my Hotwheels collection.

the road i grew up on from 1973 to 1987 STILL does not have cable TV service. I never had cable until I moved down off the mountain and into Port Henry NY. We were cooler than everyone else because we didn't have the ancient clunky boxes. Ours was digital and even had a remote control!

my toy collection is a sorrowful tale... i had original issue Star Wars toys. I had the Millenium Falcon, X-wings, Y-wings... you name it, my brother and I had it. Not to mention the Voltron sets, the G.I. Joe toys, the boxes and boxes of Transformers and Go-bots and then, the hotwheels and matchbox car collection... mine was the 8th wonder of the world. Sadly, when i turned 15 i gave everything away. All of it.

Posted by Samurai Sadly, when i turned 15 i gave everything away. All of it.

And they're valuable now, because we all did that

Posted by metawaffle And they're valuable now, because we all did that

In my case, my sister destroyed most of hers. She had a huge transformers and hot wheels collection. You name it, the little shit had it.

How she managed to destroy those things, I have no idea.

Shael

I, as some of You, regret dumping the child hood toys. losing some to theft or stupidity. I can remember a schwinn apple crate bicycle 1969 or 1970, I was doing UE recon with my buddies at some old empty houses, that's the last time I ever saw that bike.

I still have the original Hot wheels in the wheel case, their not in great shape. I don't have any idea how I managed to keep hold of them thru, drug years, Evictions, living on a small 36' boat, marriag, divorce. Only to lose 1/2 of them to a friends little boy, who managed to pocket them one at a time over a series of years. (sneaky little bastard)

To any of you that might have recommended me for full membership, Thank you!!
I truly think this site has the best people on the web.

Ah yes, TV sitcoms that actually were funny. I remember those old days.

I also remember Mom limiting our time in front of the TV and making us go outside and play. I remember reading a book and building models with info that I got from the library and not the Internet.


I also remember the old theme song from City TV ("People City" by Tommy Ambrose). Nice tune. Shame they did away with it in the early 80s.

Posted by rainman8889 Ah yes, TV sitcoms that actually were funny. I remember those old days. I also remember Mom limiting our time in front of the TV and making us go outside and play. I remember reading a book and building models with info that I got from the library and not the Internet. I also remember the old theme song from City TV ("People City" by Tommy Ambrose). Nice tune. Shame they did away with it in the early 80s.

isn't that the truth... I built a 1/48th scale model of a Republic F-105F Thunderchief as a sophomore in high school. Rather than do it in the color scheme on the box, i researched different camouflage patterns used on the Thud out of a book... imagine that? A book. Today, i'd hit the internet, find what I was looking for in about four minutes, hit PRINT and go from there.

Speaking of models, did anyone else here build them? My dad was a modeling geek and I started to get into it. My crowning achievement was a 1995 Chevrolet S-10 SS pickup. I even made little wires for the spark plug wires, coated the little radiator hoses in rubber to give them that look. For aircraft, it definitely was the F-105F... i even tried using some different techniques to make the thing look real. Ever try using watered down paint to make it look like fuel splashes or oil leaks? It sounds easy, but what a bastard to get proper.

My TV time was pretty limited too... however, we always watched the evening news. I suppose that was where I get my liberal politics from. My parents were very liberal democrats so that was how my house leaned... My mom hated shows like CHiPs... we never got to watch it. In retrospect, I'm kind of glad I grew up watching shows like The Waltons, M*A*S*H, The Incredible Hulk... when the A-Team came out, along with Knight Rider, my mom had pretty much given up on us doing anything intellectual after 8pm.

One thing that I'm glad my parents did do was teach me to read very young and keep a radio in my crib. Even today, I cannot function without music. My house growing up was like a library. There were books everywhere and what was cool was that my mom and dad didn't care what I read as long as the book went back where it belonged. At four years old, i was reading at a seventh or eighth grade level with full retention of the contents of what I was reading. I was groomed to be a prodigy... until i got to grade school and learned a harsh lesson that exceptionally bright kids are not popular or well-liked.

We had these books called "Pug" in kindergarten. I'll never forget them. "See Pug run. Pug can run fast." Me, I'm like... "Ok, Pug is running fast from what? Is there something chasing him or are we just out for a stroll? Who is this Dick guy with Jane? Are they dating? What gives with the umbrella?"... you know, looking for context in this blathering morass of language introduction. For my intellectual troubles, I got stood in the corner. Again and again and again... Finally, the school called my parents and told them I was a menace and a disruption. They told the school to accelerate me. They told them that wasn't policy (this was 1978)... So there I was, all smarted up and no where to go. So I said fuck it and let myself fade into the background. And here I am now.

i think that technology has gone a long way to stupidifying us all. J.G. Ballard once proposed this: What is the definition of a dullard? Someone who opens an encyclopedia to what they're looking for, read it and then close the book.:

Sam, two years later after your situation, they tried to push my mom into letting me skip the rest of the 2nd and the entire 3rd grade because of some stupid test scores and that I sat in the back of the class, bored out of my skull because I'd read every book in the bookshelf by Christmas vacation.

I didn't fade until 7th grade. When there was a mistake made, my math grade was figured out wrong and my teacher didn't discover it until the last day of school. So, I was put into a homeroom class and other classes with idiots and slugs that didn't care about learning anything.

After that, I spent my time repairing and learning to play musical instruments from 7th grade on. My parents broke down and bought me my own flute for my birthday and I spent a lot of time upgrading and replacing parts on that. I learned a lot about pads, cork, springs...I put lots of fine, delicate work into that instrument. I miss it now.

When I sold my flute in college, it nearly broke my heart because I'd put so much time into taking care of it. Every year, I replaced the key pads, the springs, the cork...I had saved for and replaced the head (where you blow over the hole) and the foot (where the register keys are) with solid sterling silver replacement parts and I had been planning on replacing the body keys with sterling silver open hole keys when I had to part with it to pay for school. I just didn't want to think about buying another whole new instrument, I put time and care into it, even though the body was silver plate over nickel I still couldn't get the same sound from others I tried, so I put the money into the peripheral parts that I would have spent on buying a whole new instrument.

I spent upwards of 1200 dollars on that instrument, I ended up parting with it for 400, which barely covered what I owed on tuition. Still makes me ill to think about it.

Shael