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goobster  ·  714 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: April 13, 2022

My wife and I were chatting about The Past last night, and remembering what things were like in the late 1980's and early 1990's. (We both graduated high school in the late 80's.)

Money. You had cash or checks. That was it. Banks were not open in the evenings or weekends, so you had to figure out what you were going to do/eat/drink all weekend, budget for it, go to the bank, get out that much money before they closed, and ... that was it. If you ran out of cash you didn't buy anything. (A grocery store would take a check, but a bar would not let you pay your tab with a check.)

There were no ATMs. There were no credit cards. (Well, your parents may have had ONE credit card that they used for very specific things. But nobody I knew could get a credit card. You had to have excellent credit - like be a homeowner - to get a CC.)

Communications. There were no cell phones amongst normal everyday people. You had an answering machine at home, and had to go home to check your messages to see where/when people were meeting up.

There's no GPS. Just a post-it note with turns noted, stuck to the rear view mirror. "I5 N -> Olive St -> R onto Olive -> R on 12th -> L on Ramona -> 4th house on right, blue truck"

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There's parts of that I miss. I do wish there was some sort of hybrid Google Maps that didn't literally show me a map, but showed a list of turns in order, and as I come up to the turn it enlarges the map view so I can see the road map clearly. Then, after turning, the text list of turns zooms up again until I approach the next turn...

And prior to COVID I did almost all of my buying in cash. I didn't like the idea of "being tracked" by my purchases. And now? I like it when my bank calls and says, "hey this purchase didn't follow your pattern... is this legit or was your card/ID stolen?"

There's no point to this post. Just reminiscing.