<p>Few parents utter the phrase without thinking of the consequences:</p>
<p>"When I was your age..."</p>
<p>We know very well what we did when we were their age. But when we tell our sons and daughters what we did at their age, we tend to stretch the truth... maybe just a little. Did you really walk to school... uphill in both directions?</p>
<p>What did you really do... when you were their age?</p>
<p>Took 2 or 3 subway trains and a bus 1 1/2 hours each way to and from school on the east side of Manhattan. Smoked a lot of weed like everyone else going to school in the East Village in the mid-to-late 60s, and got all As (probably because of it rather than in spite of it.) Took a test to become a lifeguard even though I didn't swim well (still don't) and passed because the Great New York City blackout happened while I was pulling a 240lb man in the pool (and I might have drowned otherwise.) In spring, went straight from school on Fridays on a bus for 3 hours to work as a busboy on weekends at hotels in the Catskills. Hadn't a clue about anything except that the draft that was waiting for anyone (male) who didn't go to college. Looked forward desperately to escaping NYC. (now I'd love to go back!) The female gender was late hitting my radar screen.</p>
<p>well my oldest is 22. When I was 22 I had been living with my boyfriend for a couple years , we would marry in the next couple and have her the year after that!
( I won't say what I was doing before I met him, Im sure you remember the 70's!
I had been going to school, but I didn't realize that I could have gotten financial aid, and working, paying bills for our apt and attending school was tough, so I didn't finish)</p>
<p>Actually, I did walk a mile to and from high school until I got my first car - a VW bus. Mostly I was the kid who always won the "quiet" award. Ironic, because my oldest is least likely to ever win the "quiet" award.</p>
<p>I used to walk long distances to school too (various distances at various ages). Never did drugs. Read a lot of books.</p>
<p>Well.. although the local high school was about 5 blocks away, I attended an alternative school that was about 3 miles away, still it only took about 40 min, what took a long time was walking to my job ( in a nursing home kitchen) which was about a mile from school, then walking uphill at 9 30 at night when I had been going since daybreak.
I think I started dating one of the cooks just so I could get a ride home in his truck!</p>
<p>In high school:</p>
<p>I never burdened myself with actually taking any books home to do homework. (Wasn't that what study hall was for?)</p>
<p>There was a dance every Saturday night where, of course, we stared but never danced.</p>
<p>Friday night was for attending football or basketball games and then for cruising and finding someone to buy you beer. And if you succeeded, there was always one person in the car who would end up with his head out the window, his hands clutching his stomach, and his dinner streaked on the outside of the car.</p>
<p>Transitor radios tuned to the AM rock station was believed to be the absolute "cool" on the beach.</p>
<p>Our life was controlled by our gonads and we always dreamed and spoke about making it with girls with whom we didn't have a prayer's chance in the world.</p>
<p>I dated three girls in high school and I am certain none of them can remember me.</p>
<p>It was the age of the miniskirt, and the age of dropping your pencil in class.</p>
<p>Spitballs were a common hazard if you sat in the front of the class.</p>
<p>Claims of sexual prowess were always believed but never verified.</p>
<p>Jocks ruled. Girls got their letter jackets and class rings worn with a glob of tape to make them fit, and we nerds carried slide rules as our weapon of distinction.</p>
<p>And we all were madly in love with Miss Eckert, the 26 year old bombshell that was our English teacher.</p>
<p>Went to an all girls' boarding school and was told by my parents that only womens colleges could be applied to..(my sister was third generation Smith..my brother flunked out of Hobart supposedly because he was too involved with a girl!).....no drugs, no nothing......talk about towing the line !!</p>
<p>Walked a mile to work in the local library for a couple hours, walked another mile from there to school (cutting through woods, which included jumping over a stream--which I fell into on the way to my Physics final), then walked about a mile and a half home at night (school was on double session.)</p>
<p>My kids make fun of this endlessly, (the "both ways uphill in the snow" routine), but it's absolutely true, and they wouldn't've done this in a million years when they were in HS.</p>
<p>Does anybody else feel like they were raised in a Charley Brown environment - i.e. NO ADULTS in the picture? Seriously, there were kids on our street whose parents we NEVER saw - even once. Funny.</p>
<p>I can not imagine my parents driving me all over the country looking at colleges. If you got to visit any colleges you went with a friend, prayed the junky car would make it, only looked at the dorms and left.</p>
<p>In some ways we were so much more independent and street wise than kids today. In others, a little adult guidance probably would have helped. My generation of parents have now swung too far to the other end. We've become the great enablers.</p>
<p>Military brat here. Stationed in Turkey during high school in the 70's. Lived in a Turkish apartment building among the locals. Took a 30 minute bus ride to the base to a Department of Defense school where diplomats' kids and other military brats attended. Graduated in '76 in the Turkish ambassadors residence.</p>
<p>Living in Turkey in the 70's was interesting but I will not elaborate on anything that might incriminate myself.</p>
<p>My friends and I hung out on the "economy", took shared taxis everywhere, spoke fairly decent Turkish, snuck out at night to party, had no TV, participated in the usual after school activities. Ate at Turkish restaurants, watched movies in English with Turkish subtitles in the local theaters where there was always an intermission so you could buy food and drink. For football games and tennis matches and other sports we all piled into big charter buses and went to other military bases hours away. Thus we got to see the Mediterranean area and the Anatolian plain. Visited Istanbul with friends on the "Midnight Express" train.</p>
<p>Family vacations would find us in Paris, or Germany or Spain. It was very cheap back then, especially for the military.</p>
<p>Missed the U.S. but took advantange of the situation.</p>
<p>I wish I had taken my high school classes more seriously. But even though I "only" went to a community college I'm doing okay now as an RN. Actually enjoy my job.</p>
<p>Lord, Weenie, hadn't thought about it until you said that. I was in the band, and, up until I could drive as a junior, the most contact anyone had with parents was peripheral. We would walk en masse to the country store on the highway next to the school entrance to meet our carpools after practice, then several of us would rotate turning up in the school cafeteria on Fri afternoon before the f'ball game to help make the hot dogs sold at the game (ever made 500 hot dogs before?) - that was it! After f'ball season parents ceased to exist.</p>
<p>My county was dry, so the beer was WELL hidden! Sex, now that's another thing - girls married as young as 14-15, lots of babies with and without husbands, all but about 5 of us girls married within 1 year of graduation (this in 1976).</p>
<p>We all did drive (most of us starting at 12-14) because it was out in the country, and riding the bus was SSSOOOOO UNCOOL! My Mom in the 1940s was the one who walked 3-4 miles cross-country to a one room schoolhouse until high school.</p>
<p>I was in the first trig class (no calculus back then) to not learn to use a slide rule, we very briefly were shown how to use one, then just never did. There was a giant slide mounted on the wall of the classroom to use as a teaching tool. For the yearbook picture, the math club took it down and had our photo made with it to show how advanced we were _ can you get any nerdier?</p>
<p>The 2 big scandals I remember were people getting caught driving to B-ham to sneak into "The Exorcist" underage, and some TV movie (remember the heyday of TV movies?) about homosexuality that was discussed in the gym at lunch in extremely hushed tones! Wow, the way we were!</p>
<p>When I was your age I jumped off a bridge---not some dinky little bridge over a stagnant puddle, mind you. The bridge I jumped off of was a tall draw bridge over a river that was moving briskly out to sea---and the path to that sea was lined with stone rip-rap jetties that extended several hundred feet out into the ocean: Shark River Inlet along the Jersey shore. Soon after coming to the surface, I was carried along past those large rocks covered with sharp barnacles that I wanted no part of. I floated out past the twin jetties, and then swam around to one side and back towards the sand beach.</p>
<p>I have no idea why I did such a crazy thing, but it seemed to set my life on a course that included several other ill-advised (if not quite so dangerous) adventures.</p>
<p>That fall, I knocked on many doors asking neighbors on my street to vote for John F. Kennedy. The next month I was overjoyed and nearly certain that it was my door-knocking that put him into the White House. Three years later it all fell apart.</p>
<p>Like you, Weenie, I remember a world of kids. "Lord of the Flies" comes to mind.</p>
<p>Did ALL the things I'd KILL my son for doing now. And still was captain of this and National Merit that, etc. Maybe it was easier then--I don't know. Maybe I had a real brain then--could do it all through a purple haze. I DO remember a great column by a newpaper writer where I used to live directed at the liberal parents of conservative children, saying, "We told you that if you did drugs, your children wouuld be mutants!"</p>
<p>Took a couple core Sociology courses at a Big 10 University without going to class except for tests. How, you say? There was a lecture notes service that hand-delivered next-day on campus three times a week for the extreme cost of $7.50 PER SEMESTER! I split the cost with my roommate--$3.75 apiece. And the notes were typed up, mimeographed (what's that, my D says!) and good. I got B's in the classes.</p>
<p>If I find out that D is doing this next year wherever she ends up, my first response (not my final) will be to pull her out of school after screaming that she's wasting my money...'do as I say not as I do...'</p>
<p>I hate that "when I was your age thing." Somehow it makes me think that the person has a "holy than thou" attitude just because someone is older than someone else. Older folks don't know everything...imo.</p>
<p>idler:
"Lord of the Flies" - that's about it! Ah, look what our kids have missed...</p>
<p>I see I spelled Charley Brown wrong - should be Charlie Brown. Senility setting in.</p>
<p>My daughter school had a LOTF experience.
In 8th grade they read LOTF, and the kids planned a backpacking trip in November to the Olympic Peninsula.
THe teachers that accompained them had their own equipment and food and stayed well away from the students as this was to teach them "responsiblity". IT was pouring rain as you might expect, and my daughters tent collapsed and she had to sleep in one of the boys tents. Other highlights include trying to make a fire with wet wood, someone had found lighter fluid somewhere and poured it on the fire in the attempt to get it going. My daughter saved the day by suggesting that they use hair clippings as a firestarter ( she saw it on StarTrek)
They no longer read Lord of the Flies but read Cold Mountain instead for a Odyssean experience.
I think I like the Cold Mountain influence better :-)</p>
<p>"I dated three girls in high school and I am certain none of them can remember me."
--Drusba</p>
<p>Each of those girls remembers you just fine... and each is certain you don't remember them.</p>