Niche things that clue me in to who younger writers are in the fandom:
- Little mention, use, or reliance on phones and telecommunications
ie. calling ahead to see if someone is home, calling your parents once you’ve arrived someplace, having to knock on the door of a random house in the middle of the night to ask to borrow their phone during an emergency (or hoping there’s a pay phone nearby), calling and having to speak to your friend’s parents “hi, is Billy home?” And be at their mercy as to whether or not they could talk.
- That every landline phone makes a dial tone when picked up off the receiver
If there’s no tone, you’re not making a call.
- That telephone lines were ran via wire from nearby power lines to people’s houses
- That you could steal your neighbor’s cable
- Rabbit ears and aluminum foil
- The concept of hitting or kicking something to make it work
- That a fair amount of phones had coiled cords
- That most television remotes at the time had hard plastic buttons, you would ‘click’ on
- That type writers were still in use in the 80’s
- That some household appliances had turn dials, not digital touch screens
- That most households had only analog clocks
- The verbs xerox and fax
- That fax numbers work similar to phone number dialing
- Yellow Pages vs White Pages (yes there was a difference)
- That all pay phones had a phone book attached under them (they went missing a lot)
- That all automobiles had a carburetor (an auto part under the hood that assisted the internal combustion car engine control air and fuel entering in) until late in the 80s
- That Tupperware was a brand and not just a word for plastic food storage
- That the staple colors of the 80s were: Brown, Orange, Yellow, and Olive Green
- That you truly did need to keep some spare change on your person just in case
- That credit cards used to have raised numbers and letters
- That most cars had roll-down (hand crank) windows, and locks (knobs) you had to push or pull to lock the car
- That most cars did not have an alarm system
- What a slim Jim, or ‘to jimmy’ something means
- That most electronic children’s toys were remote controlled
A handheld controller, usually with an antenna.
- A newspaper boy, or a newspaper subscription
- That all mail-order catalogs had a paper ordering form in the middle of the magazine
You would fill out your order, mail it, and wait for products to be shipped
- In the US in the 1980s, football was the number one watched sport
- RadioShack was the Best Buy of the 80s
- That cars had cigarette lighters (which generated heat) and were not a charging port
- That the majority of cars had a radio antenna on them
- That garage doors were motorized and came with a remote button
There was no password/combination needed
- A higher presence of sewing machines in the household
- Floor-to-ceiling mirrors were popular
- What a Rolodex is and what it’s for
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