There are so many things I miss.
I never seem to give them any thought, though. Sometimes one or two things will quietly slip into my mind and remind me of good times long past. It may sound maudlin, but I am sure I’m not the only one that has a thought spring up like that.
I miss running after the ice cream truck. It was a challenge to see who could get to it first. Saving nickels and dimes every week just so you could get a Drumstick™ was fun, but eating it all before it melted into a sticky mess was an achievement.
I miss being able to slam down a phone. There was a satisfaction of hearing that BAM!! and knowing you had really made your *ahem* dissatisfaction known to the person on the other end.
I miss the card catalog. I loved, LOVED running my fingers down the index cards, reading the books’ information, pretending to be a detective trying to figure out the cryptic synopsis. It’s not as fun to look it up on the computer and have the whole plot outlined already.
I miss roller skates. Not roller blades, mind you. But the metal, scrappy, key-to-adjust kind that you put over your sneakers. That screech the wheels made as you tried to glide gracefully on the sidewalk was like music to my ears.
I miss Polaroids™. It was fun to wait for the film to develop right before your eyes, and yes, I shook the heck out of them. Before Photoshop™, before Instagram™, all you had to do was wait a few years and the film would antique itself quite nicely.
Anyway, I have been sentimental long enough. Time for me to take advantage of current technology and do some laundry in my high efficiency washing machine 🙂
Sithy Things 
January 27th, 2014 at 10:43 AM
Walking home from school along a crik catching tadpoles and bringing them home.
January 27th, 2014 at 12:07 PM
Indeed, though I was guilty of going swimming before catching any tadpoles 😀
January 27th, 2014 at 4:09 PM
wasn’t deep enough. 😉
January 27th, 2014 at 4:20 PM
Never stopped me 😉
January 27th, 2014 at 9:28 PM
…wait….are we still talking about small bodies of running water?
January 28th, 2014 at 7:13 AM
Ankle deep?
January 28th, 2014 at 8:34 AM
Indeed 😉
January 27th, 2014 at 11:51 AM
I miss walking to the local K-Mart (roughly about 2 city blocks away from my house) when I was 11 to spend my allowance.
I would freak out now if my daughter tried that today at the same age.
January 27th, 2014 at 12:08 PM
Blue Light Specials! They were great, too.
And my kids walk a few miles to and from HS, but stores are too far and not enough sidewalks.
January 27th, 2014 at 12:40 PM
Being Wyoming and Windy (BIRM) I would end up buying kites to fly.. Then I moved into GI Joes..
January 27th, 2014 at 3:38 PM
I usually got school crap 😀
January 27th, 2014 at 12:07 PM
Yeah, slamming the phone!! If you do that now…all you have left is a mess of plastic and electronic parts.
I miss collecting all the old (glass) bottles you could find, taking them to the local grocers for the “refund”, and then going to the local drug store or Ben Franklin (before it morphed into a craft shop) and spending your money on penny candy, gum, and comic books (back when comics were 10/12 cents each….yeah I’m and old fart!!).
January 27th, 2014 at 12:14 PM
Bottles for refund. That was awesome, and kept the streets clean.
January 27th, 2014 at 1:36 PM
I miss gum tasting like real gum. It’s all sugar-free tasteless blobs now, nothing worth getting stuck in your braces.
One summer, I typed and filed those cards for the card catalog for all the new books that came in.
January 27th, 2014 at 3:39 PM
I want to get a card drawer and use it as a photo holder 🙂
January 27th, 2014 at 3:45 PM
I remember when comics went from 3 cents to a nickel. after a three day sulk I switched to paperbacks. 25 cents, but lasted for two days instead of two hours.
January 27th, 2014 at 3:51 PM
I get used paperbacks from the thrift store that are marked $.50 and STILL they want a dollar for them 😀
January 27th, 2014 at 12:44 PM
They talk about the environment these days…seems to me, when I was a kid…we (at least at the local individual level) did a better job of it. Paper bags were the rule…glass bottles (that were re-used)…metal cans which were tossed in the local junk yard….but they broke down into their basic parts….returning to the land. You get the idea. And yeah, the “refund” was kinda what made it fun…and easy to do.
Getting back on topic. Did your mom save bacon grease to re-use when frying eggs or other things? Mine did.
January 27th, 2014 at 3:39 PM
All. The. Time!!
Still does, actually. I’m looking at a jar of it right now 😀
January 27th, 2014 at 6:36 PM
I remember the paper bags…those got saved for covering our textbooks during the school year. After spending enough time doodling on the covers that I had to really search to discover the subject (or nearly getting in trouble for doodling caricatures of my teachers), I’d toss that one and grab a new paper bag.
Bacon grease was never saved….bacon was cooked first, then the eggs were fried in the same skillet with the grease, then gravy was made to go over the biscuits. Hamburger meat grease was saved, but I never really saw any use made of it.
January 28th, 2014 at 8:37 AM
We would just turn the paper cover over and start drawing again 😀
January 27th, 2014 at 6:56 PM
Guy, yes, she did. I do to. Bacon grease to make gravy for your biscuits and gravy, for frying eggs, for frying tortillas when making enchiladas. Oh, hell yeah!
I also remember comic books were a dime. MAD magazine was a quarter. (Does anyone remember Dave Martin’s The Nearsighted Man and the Telephone Booth? My mom busted a gut laughing at that one, then chastised me for wasting my money on Mad magazine.) And, every quarter, the comic book publishers put out a special that was 25 cents.
Hamburgers were a quarter, cheeseburgers were a dime more. Candy bars were a nickel, and they were bigger than the ones you pay a dollar for now.
Gasoline was 25 cents a gallon. Sometimes less if two stations were having a price war. Diesel was 10 cents a gallon.
There was no internet, because there were no personal computers. Computers where machined owned by government or big corporations. They were as big as a house, or larger. Nerds carried slide rules on their belts.
January 28th, 2014 at 8:38 AM
*hides slide rule*
😀
January 27th, 2014 at 7:29 PM
A grand-cousin (is that a thing?) got one of those new Polaroids for Christmas. Spits out about 2 1/2″ polaroids that do the instant develop – just add shaking. 🙂 It was completely new to her – she’s 14 and has never seen one. Too much expense for someone used to taking pictures of any little thing that interests her. 🙂
January 28th, 2014 at 8:40 AM
I think my dad has the one he bought in 1976 😀
January 27th, 2014 at 7:49 PM
I miss those strings of banana flavored candy. The corner store had them. We’d collect enough soda bottles to buy them, or maybe a Zero and a Frosty Root Beer.
January 28th, 2014 at 8:40 AM
I regret missing out on the banana flavored candy 🙂
January 28th, 2014 at 6:36 AM
I miss actual human interaction in public places. These days, everybody’s looking down, focused on their little… “devices”. It seems like no one knows how to talk to someone in person anymore. Our phones are getting smarter and we’re getting dumber. 😦
January 28th, 2014 at 8:45 AM
We have a rule: no devices at the dinner table or out in public places. Also, no text spelling. If the phone rings you let it go to voicemail, unless the number keeps ringing in case of emergency.
Einstein said, “It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.” We are there.
January 30th, 2014 at 2:06 PM
LC, if you check my posts for the 27th you’ll find the 45th anniversary of something special.
I posted something else nostalgic by the same folks at noon today.