Mirror Magazine
21st May 2000

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How it was then

Want a glimpse of life in your parents' time? What it was like before civilisation hit the world? Read on about life at the beginning of the Naughties (get it, 1980-89 was the eighties, 1990-99 was the nineties, so 2000 to 2009 is the Naughties).

Reviewing life at the end of the '90s.

Therese and I were born before television, penicillin, polio shots, frozen foods, contact lenses, videos and the pill. We lived before radar, credit cards, split atoms, laser beams and ball point pens, before dishwashers, tumble-dryers, air-conditioners and drip-dry clothes and before man walked on the moon.

We got married first and then lived together - how quaint can you be? We thought fast food was what you get in Lent. We existed before computer dating and dual careers; when a meaningful relationship meant getting along with your cousins and sheltered accommodation was where you waited for the bus.

We were before day-care centres, condoms and condominiums. We never heard of FM radio, tape decks, electric typewriters, heart by-passes, word processors and men wearing earrings. For us time sharing meant togetherness, a chip was a piece of wood or fried potato, hardware meant nuts and bolts and software was not even a word. The term 'making-out' referred to how you did in your exams; a stud was something which fastened a collar on a shirt and 'going all the way' meant staying on a bus until it reached the depot.

Pizzas meant lunatics. There were Dutch burghers. We never heard of Hambur–ghers. In our day, cigarette smoking was fashionable, grass was what we grew on the lawn; a joint was where the bones bend like the elbow and pot was something you cooked in and a gay person was the life and soul of the party.

There were three choices of toilet paper; the daily paper, the evening paper and the Sunday paper. People had the toilet outside their homes and ate meals inside the home. A porn shop was a pawn shop. The recycling unit was the rag and bone man. Debt and illegitimacy were family secrets and McDonalds only had a farm.

We who were born before the 50's must be a hardy bunch when you think of the ways in which the world has changed and the adjustments we have had to make. No wonder we are so confused and there is a generation gap. But look!

We have survived so far.

Adapted from Skal

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