What do you remember that shows your age?

Everything else
41

I remember when flat tires were quite common, and needing to use my jack and lug wench more than a few times.

I’m jinxing myself now I suppose, but I haven’t had a flat or blowout (other than gradually losing air) in years now, maybe decades.

Either tire technology has gotten better, or the city is cleaning the streets better.

Which leads me to: finding these long, thin metal sticks in the streets and gutters, maybe a foot long. I collected them, and Dad used to incorporate them into these very abstract metal sculptures he used to weld together.

Many years later, I finally figured out what those thin metal sticks were; they’d fall off of those spinning street cleaner brushes as they’d go by.

42

Ideal to make lock picks out of. There is actually a market for them.

43

LOL Leave it to you to have that one figured out. :)

44

Heh. I have eclectic interests, that’s true. But it’s pretty common knowledge in the hobby.

45

Thanks for the link. I was just in the middle of looking for such evidence, but wasn’t having much luck.

46

Wait, @RichVR is a rogue? Cool.

48

Another fan! Cool. My intro to them was Stratosfear.

50

I had one of these as a kid, back when guns and cowboys were cool.

paper%20cap%20gun

I still remember the smell of the paper caps after they went off.

The thing looked like a real gun other than a tiny orange plug at the tip, that was almost entirely pushed in the barrel.

51

My high school girlfriend and I used to fool around to the Tangerine Dream cuts off the Risky Business soundtrack. Some of the happiest memories of a largely misspent adolescence!

52

I would go with my mom to the A&P grocery store because they gave stamps and I liked pasting them into the stamp books. This one time we couldn’t get the stamps because the ladies at the checkout were bawling inconsolably. Elvis had just died.

53

Car Radio Antenna!

I remember being 10 years old in Brooklyn and walking the five blocks to my grandma’s house. I was walking along and this guy was waxing his car. 6 other guys jump him and he looks around desperate and breaks off his antenna and proceeds to whip the 6 guys and they couldn’t get near him!

I always thought growing up from that experience that would be my backup defense plan and then they had to make the radio’s without antennas. The nerve of them!

54

Greetings fellow Brooklynite. Great story.

Parts of car antennas were used to make zip guns. Back when guns were much harder to get.

55

I think we are now fellow Orlandoians too.

56

Car antennae are also great for breaking side windows.

57

I was thinking that the old pull out pointers could work but now we have laser pointers.

58

Oh man, what about shrinky-dinks? I forgot about those for thirty-plus years, then my kids come home with some. I guess they’ve been lurking out there, amusing kids without flash or marketing?

59

Creepy Crawlers still a thing?

60

Oh fuck. The Thing Maker. Creepy Crawlers. Toys with a hot plate that had no ground wire. That children had to have a bowl of water right next to it. The 60s were a special time. And of course, when we were not actually cooking lizards, we would pour water on the hot plate to watch it boil and steam. The smell of PlastiGoop cooking. The smell of PlastiGoop burning. A truly horrible smell. I miss those times.

My friend Alex and I spent weeks and months making those little lizards to go with our Lego space ships. The scorpions on the same mold became their enemies. We literally made hundreds of them. All in different colors to show what army they were in. Nostalgiasplosion!!

61

Having to eat things from the Easy Bake Oven is another experience too!

Nothing like food cooked by a light bulb!

62

I remember it because we had taken Flight 104 to Frankfurt the day before, and returned to the US on Flight 103 (obviously not the same aircraft) a week or so later.