Feeling Old? Then feel better

Discussion Open Forum
21

[quote=“MJB”]Bicycles? Nah…

For us it was saving up enough money to buy the newest skateboard technology that is still being used to this day…The polyurethane wheel. We scrimped, babysat, mowed lawns, cleaned dogshit, whatever it took.[/quote]

Ah yes, the mow the neigbourhoods lawns, weed the gardens, watering the flowers and cleaning house windows, and raking leaves. But then I had to hide the proceeds from my oldest brother, who would steal anything I didn’t hide well enough.

I lived on the last street on a mountain and had my share of accidents in the billy cart. Never did get the brakes working. The real blast was stopping the front wheels from going into the tank slapper mode. Skate boards were another thing you couldn’t control at speed.

The cops came around after I hit a car in the brakeless cart. I was around 10 at the time. If we could get all the way down the street we travelled about 3/4 mile.

And now for the many firsts of our youths…

A rewind … Remember the …

first digital TV STBs
first MP3 players
first flash memorys
first flat screens
Colombia Space Shuttle distaster
The World Trade Center.
De-Orbit of MIR Space station
First DVD burners
The Sydney Olympics
New Years 2000
First DVD players
First Digital cameras
First CD burners
Mobile phones could fit into your pocket
First Digital Satellite Receiver
1GB hard drives !
Release of Windows 95 (on floppy disks !)
First PCI bus
VESA Bus
100MB hard drives
80486 processors
First Snowboards
First CDROMs
80386 processors
9600 bps modems
Linux on 2 floppy disks
Mobile phones could fit into a briefcase
First CD Walkmans
10-base-T ethernet
EISA
10MB Hard drives
80286 processors
The 3.5 inch floppy
MSDOS 5.0
8087 math co-processors
8086 processor
BMAC, EPAL, SCPC and FM^2 on Aussat
First Ku Band home satellite systems (analog)
Rollerblades overtake rollerskates
The fall of the Berlin Wall
First C band home satellite systems (analog)
Chernoble distaster
Challanger distaster
Lanuch of Aussat 1,2,3
8088 processor
ISA bus
2MB hard drives, RLL, MFM, Winchester etc
8085 processor
First CD’s and CD players and Video Laser Disks (CAV/CLV)
First Walkmans
The first VCR’s, VHS & Beta
MSDOS 1.0
Comodore 64, ZX80, TRS-80, Apple 2e PC’s.
6800 series CPU’s
First Space Shuttle Launch
Sydney Tower being built
BMX bikes !
AM radio stations were cool and FM radio sucked !
5.25 floppy drives (Hard Sectored !)
De-Orbit of Skylab
Granville Train Disaster
Somebody who could afford 64Kb or RAM
64Kb RAM Memory limit !
8 inch floppy drives (single sided, single density 128Kb)
CP/M
6502 CPU
Z80 CPU
8080 CPU
First cheap Household Microwave Ovens
Cassette Audio Tapes
Introduction of Colour TV
Cyclone Tracey
Colour Burst inserter
Colour TVs
8008 CPU
Transistor Radios
Launch of Voyager, Mariner, Pioneer and Viking Spacecraft.
4004 CPU
Apollo Moon Missions
Valve TVs

The list just goes on ! But this is where I get off :slight_smile:

22

The other day I was chatting with my brother about days on the farm and how we essentially discovered extreme sports. One of our inventions was to flatten out a sheet of corrugated iron and tie it with binder twine to the rear of the ute (pick up) to form a sled.

We then had a driver, a rider, and a spotter. The driver’s job was to slalom the ute through the hay bales, the rider would hang ten on the corrugated iron and the spotter would ride in the back of the ute keeping an eye out for my father who’d of murdered us if he ever caught us. The sled had to be hidden under the shearing shed so that he wouldn’t wisen up.

He eventually found out at the pub, however, when one of our neighbors was giving him a ribbing about the insane antics of his kids.

In fact we had many variations on the truck skiing thingy. Another was to hang off the back holding on to the tailboard and sliding along the gravel road. It was the quickest way known to man to wear out a pair of dunlop volleys. This one was quite acceptable to my father or he didn’t realise what we were doing. He’s dead now so there’ll be no asking him. It required a great deal of precision. If you were too slow to hop back on the truck before the speed got greater than about 40km/hr then you’d just have to let go and take a tumble on the road and walk home.

23

The sad thing is that we are the parents of the new sanatized youth. If I had had a kid, and that is a big IF, the year after I got married it would now be 10 yrs. old. And, I got married late. We are the parents giving our choldren every new thing and sueing each other over every possible liability. Parents who take their children on 10 day camping trips are few and far between.

24

When I were a lad we lived in a shoebox at the bottom of a lake.

25

^^ Luxury

26

I am this thread.

27

I must be getting old :help:

28

I send my 6-year-old and 9-year-old to the park and our neighbours tell us that they will be kidnapped! All that’s happened so far is that one of them ran over another kid on her bike causing a deep wound…on the soul of my daughter not the kid she injured -he didn’t notice till his father said “Ooh, blood”
I did dreadful, unsafe things at this age! I expect my kids to do adventurous things or life ain’t worth living…except incest and folk dancing :rainbow: