So many things have changed over the years that it's easy to forget what was considered "normal" to do back in the day. So when we asked the BuzzFeed Community: "What's one thing normal at your time but is now bizarre to even think about?" over 300 people shared their thoughts. Here's what they said below:
1. "Reading Sears and Wards Catalogs to order or find anything, and looking forward to the Christmas Wish List catalogs."
2. "Sitting in the far back of the station wagon, facing the people behind you."
"My sister and I would tease the driver behind us with crackers, we thought we were hilarious (at 4/5years old). So silly!"
โwitchy
3. "Manual roll up/down car windows. You would pull up next to someone and do the circular motion with your hands to get them to roll down their window to talk."
4. "Full-service gas stations and the ding-ding that accompanied. One lasted in my hometown until the '80s! Windshield cleaned, tires and oil checked and topped off! Yessiree."
โawfulorc56
5. "Looking in the TV Guide to find out what was on TV instead of a TV guide being on the screen."
6. "Calling the Time Lady to sync your clocks after the power went out."
7. "No seat belts. Turning the television antenna. Operator to call long distance, dressing up to go out to dinner or church. Party lines on telephones. 8-track tapes. Smoking and drinking while pregnant. Paper scoring cards for bowling. Ashtrays everywhere you went. Cigarette lighters in our car. Paper prices on merchandise."
8. "Having the newspaper delivered to your front porch. Read the sports page first, then the main section for news, then finish with the comics (Thanks for everything, Charles Schulz!)"
โhomeycloud42
9. "The employment ads were separate for men and women."
10. "Having air conditioning or power windows on your car was a LUXURY. I also remember when a new car on Price is Right with five numbers in it's price was EXPENSIVE."
11. "Not being able to watch movies or shows any time we wanted. You had to wait until the broadcast time and date. If you missed a regular season episode of your favorite show, you had to hope it came on during summer reruns. And movies that weren't in theaters anymore were, for the most part, only shown once a year. We used to wait months to watch The Wizard of Oz each year!! And if you had to go to the bathroom, you tried to wait until a commercial break, then hurry so you wouldn't miss anything on your show/movie."
12. "Older men will remember this: You could only buy condoms by going to the pharmacy counter and asking the pharmacist (male) or pharmacy assistant (female) for them! As a teenager, this was embarrassing as hell because they would give you 'that look'!!"
13. "How about drinking water out of the garden hose?"
14. "Answering machines with tapes that you had to rewind."
15. "I would forget my watch a lot, and therefore would go for long periods without knowing what time it was, and in hindsight, that was remarkably charming and refreshing."
16. "Handing a kid a box of matches and telling them to re-light the pilot light on the furnace. By the age of 8, I knew exactly what to do without asking and was completely unsupervised."
17. "Going trick or treating without parents, playing outside in the summer until the street lights came on, looking things up in the encyclopedia and/or dictionary, or watching Saturday morning cartoons on TV with only three channels. Life was a little harder but so much simpler."
18. "A party line on your phone. It was cheaper but you had to wait until the line was free before you could call someone."
19. "A little round sink next to the dentistโs chair to spit into."
20. "Walked to school at age 5 without an adult."
โsillycan4984
21. "This one will blow your mind. We would leave babies in carriages outside the supermarket and shop. There were carriages lined up all with babies asleep. Of course, they were small markets in NYC. Not those like today with big parking lots."
22. "The worst was my best friend moving to Germany with his family in high school and then writing a letter and getting a reply 2-3 weeks later. Or needing calling cards to talk to my husband when he stayed behind while I moved back a couple of months before him. We got ten minutes. Then the call would simply drop. Good times. Good times."
23. "Chicken soup vending machines."
