In Response To Chel Owens’ 11/3/2024 Post About Things I Did As A Kid

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 23649 – 1225

Here’s the haps:

I read with interest Chel Owens’ post called, “I Wish I Was Special… But I May Be Like Everyone Else” about (apparently) growing up in the 80’s and 90’s. She watched this video and then made a list of all 30 things the guy does stating she had done almost all of them as a kid. I started to respond but it became unwieldy to me as a comment so decided it would make a fun post. Here’s the video she shared:

I notice by a couple of words he used that he grew up in the UK or some other English speaking country. Now, I grew up in the 60s and 70s so some of these things were not even around. My response to the thirty things in this video goes like this:

I didn’t know any girls and my mom never used hairclips like that. those were probably an eighties thing.

Our little portable black and white TV did not have a remote. Except me, if my dad wanted to watch a different channel. “Go change the channel son, It’s time for The FBI.”

Never sproinged a ruler like the guy in the video because they were all wood with that metal edge that you could pull out and use to make sculptures with and that really stung if you got hit with them in a sword fight. However, balancing them on a pencil like a real see-saw (they had those in my day) and setting a piece of paper on one end and launching it through the air could work. A real teacher would have used this as a teaching moment to explain all about the physics involved in your wadded-up gum wrapper flying through the air instead of snatching it and smacking you upside the head with it like you deserved.

We never had headphones when I was growing up. I don’t think I ever saw a pair in real life until the Seventies sometime. I might have seen an adult with a fancy stereo system who was a friend of my parents that had a big pair of ear muff type but kids would never have been allowed to touch them. Most of the people I knew had portable record players and transistor radios which, come to think of it did have an earpiece that sometimes worked.

Playing in the water in the sink never occurred to me, really.

I had friends who poked pencils into their erasers but I just thought that was dumb.

We did do the safety pin through your skin thing. Now it’s a real thing anymore with no shock value.

Drinking soda from the cap wasn’t a thing because the bottles were heavy glass and there wasn’t much room in a bottle cap. I would have thought that was dumb anyway, though.

I grew up in Wisconsin and knew from an early age what would happen if you stuck your tongue to something metal.

Spinning an apple by its stem seems pretty timeless. Get it going one way then back the other until it breaks and the apple bounces onto the floor and your mom says, “Quit playing with your food! There are children in other countries that would just love to have what you have!” I was still gonna eat it, Ma.

Putting your finger over a flashlight, well your hand over it because there weren’t the small ultra-bright little lights.

Wrapping a rubber band super tight around your finger? I did that until someone told me that it would cut off the circulation and my finger would fall off. It really is a bad idea in case anybody was wondering.

Never sucked a soda bottle onto my tongue. They were too heavy and the idea never occurred to me. I don’t remember if I ever did the cup thing or not.

I have dipped my fingers into candlewax. It was a dare that turned out to be a dud.

Talking into a running fan has always made a cool sound. I still do this.

Trying to balance a light switch I have done.

Blowing chalk dust? I’m not sure of the context of this one but I do know that the good kids always got picked to take the erasers outside and bang them together to clean them.

I know I sharpened a pencil down to a stub one time but I don’t remember why.

Kids put Elmer’s glue on their hands and let it dry and then peel off their “skin.” Some kids ate it but I thought that sounded gross. I have used the glue thing for a Sunday School lesson about leprosy. Mixed with red and using different thicknesses can create quite a gruesome effect.

I still will pull a leaf off of something as I walk by and then tear the green leafy parts off until it’s just the main veins. Why? Because.

Balancing on things was okay back then but nowadays I keep both feet on the ground. We never had any brick or cobblestone streets like he shows but I do remember, “Step on a crack and break your mother’s back.”

I never did the hopping thing on the edge of a table either. It never would have occurred to me at all.

I’ve always launched any “clicker” pen like a rocket. I take the pen apart and stretch the spring to make it go just a little bit higher. I would never purposely break off the pocket clip, though. That doesn’t even make sense to do. The protractor-airplane looks fun to do, though.

A thing we did when pocket calculators first came out was we learned that certain numbers could make words if you punched them in and turned the calculator upside down. Then give some victim a problem that would come out to 71077345 or *gasp* 7345 or *snicker, snicker, chortle* 5318008. What‽‽‽ Of course it’s juvenile. We were kids.

In the Sixties we had real GI Joes. Full-sized action figures with guns. We had candy cigarettes that came in packages that looked like the real thing along with bubblegum cigars.

I may wax further nostalgic in a future post. I am suddenly feeling old, though. The Eighties happened forty years ago. Yikes. I should have known when I started hearing “Classic Rock” as shopping music in the grocery store.