“Calling the movie theatre to hear the recording with the movie times on it.”
“I also miss not knowing where anyone was on a Friday night. You just had to drive around to all the regular spots looking for your friends. You didn’t always find them but sometimes you met other cool people and had other adventures. There’s less chance for serendipity when everyone knows where everyone is 24/7.”
“People could not always get a hold of you and it was a good thing.”
“If there were 2 shows on tv at the same time and day you had to make a choice. No dvr no vcr no on demand.”
“The excitement of going to a video rental store on the weekends to get to pick out a movie. Actually picking one out was just as exciting as watching the movie.”
“You go see a movie and that’s it. There’s no getting a VHS/DVD 6 months later and certainly no streaming it a week later like movies now. Maybe MAYBE two years later it would be on TV, interrupted by commercials and edited for time and content. If you were really really lucky, maybe someone who had a projector could get their hands on a film copy – that’s how I saw Star Wars Ep. IV for the first time, projected onto a bedsheet.”
“Opening up the newspaper to look at the TV guide to see what was on that night.”
“Needing to do a report on a topic. No internet. No encyclopedia on CD. Going to the actual library to find someone in your class already grabbed the one book on the subject.”
“Omg smoking EVERYWHERE! In theaters, planes, offices, hospitals, trains, restaurants, schools… just everywhere (and the outrage when it was finally banned lol)”
“Picking up or saying goodbye to airline passengers right at the gate.”
“Having to call your best friend on a landline and the ensuing anxiety that: A. Their mom might answer. B. They might not be home and who the hell knows where they are?! C. Nobody answers and how long do I wait to call back???”
“Memorizing phone numbers.”
“Taking photos using those little rolls of film and having to take them into a shop for processing. You often wouldn’t know if any of the photos were good until a couple of months later.”
“Insert disk 2”
“In a bar or on a party you could dance on the table, piss drunk, pants on you knees, helicoptering your wiener. The next morning categorically deny that it ever happened and no one, absolutely no one could ever show you video on their phone that it did happen… Damn…those were the days.”
“The satisfaction that comes with slamming down the phone, to hang up on someone.”
“Hovering over your stereo with your fingers ready to hit play and record simultaneously while the radio DJ intros the song you’ve been dying to hear. Recording movies straight off the TV onto VHS tapes and having the dedication to stop the recording to cut out the ads.”
“Hell, when I was little it wasn’t uncommon for a group of us under the age of 12 to just disappear into the forest/woods/desert for the entire goddamn day. As long as you were back before the streetlights turned on and didn’t come back injured your parents just did not give a f@#k so long as you were out of the house and out of their way.
Also, and this is definitely a guy thing, but every friend group had that friend with an older brother who at a certain point would bequeath their entire porn collection onto the younger kids, usually by telling them where it was hidden.”
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The majority of this stuff was around in the 80's which is when the millennial generation started....