20 Wonderful Nostalgic Experiences Future Generations Will Never Understand

Who remembers wing windows in vehicles? They were perfect for sticking your toes out to catch a cool breeze during hot and humid road trips. Or staying in line for concert tickets? You usually got to chatting with the people in line next to you and made some great connections.

#1 Sitting at a red light jamming to a good song on the radio and looking over to notice the neighbouring driver is jamming to the same song, so you both start an impromptu jam session until the light turns green.

Image source: BackItUpWithLinks, Daniel Hansen

#2 The freedom that comes with your parents not really knowing where you were. We just rode our bikes, all with out being tethered to a cell phone.

listenyall replied:
That whole ‘delaying the inevitable’ period of time when you knew that your parents were probably already mad because you were late, but you stayed out anyway because they couldn’t yell at you until you were home!

Image source: Montana-Mike-RPCV, Alan Kotok

#3 Simple, cheap cars that any ham-handed shade tree mechanic could fix.

Image source: DistinctRole1877, Riley

#4 Phone booths. The feeling of privacy while making a call was unique to the time – being able to step out of the noisy world for a moment and still see it in motion, living, pulsating. The quiet desperation of taking notes on scraps of paper, or worse, on a page of a phone book, then ripping that page out to keep the note.

Image source: Desertbro, Jisun Han

#5 here was a high standard in journalism. Striving for facts and objectivity was required. We had a limited number of channels on the TV, so all three broadcast news programs chose and reported pretty much the same news stories with identical, essential facts. Opinions of political parties over bills and whatnot were reported, not critiqued.

i_hate_this_part_85:
Back then, our journalists were actually held to a standard and would get fired if they knowingly lied. Yes, there were more gatekeepers, but there was much less divisiveness built into every damn thing.

Image source: Top-Philosophy-5791

#6 Walking a loved one all the way to the departure gate and watching their plane take off.

chasonreddit replied:
And meeting them at the gate when they returned.

Image source: bkdunbar, Skitterphoto

#7 Waiting for the mail to see if you had a card or letter

Image source: Zorro6855, Suzy Hazelwood

#8 They will never know the anticipation of waking up, seeing snow on the ground, turning on the radio and waiting for the announcer to say if your school will be closed or not. He’d have a list and be reading it and you’d wait for him to get to your school… almost there… here it comes… and then YESS!!!!!!!

My dad actually worked as a DJ at a radio station which did the school closings. They had a list of passwords given to each school, so that when the school called the radio station, they could verify it was not a prank. The passwords were literal words, like “daisy” or some such.

Image source: Bidi_Baba, Jess Zoerb

#9 Albums and perusing record stores. The posters, album artwork and the incense smell.

Image source: samarijackfan, Mick Haupt

#10 Wing windows.

Image source: Apprehensive-Cry-376, artistmac

#11 Road maps. The person in the passenger seat would tell the driver where to go, etc. There was almost always a stop at a gas station for directions on long trips thru unfamiliar areas. Great times, always an adventure!

Image source: Yankee_in_Madrid, Sergey Tarasov

#12 The satisfaction of flipping open a newspaper and bending it just so, so that it would stay open in front of you while you held it, crinkling slightly (and turning your fingers black.) I didn’t realize I missed this until recently when I needed to use some newspaper at work and there was a stack of them, and I flicked open a double-page expertly despite not having done it for…decades?

Image source: KAKrisko, Gül Işık

#13 Music festivals where everyone is just sitting and enjoying the vibes. No recording, no filming. Why can’t we do this again? Prohibit devices at live venues.

Image source: carolathome, Yan Krukau

#14 Analog controls in cars and appliances — touch screen and digital displays are far less functional than knobs and springs and stuff —

Image source: Affectionate_Sky658, Eric Friedebach

#15 Slamming the phone receiver down as hard as you can when you’re mad and hanging up on someone.

Party lines on the telephone. Literally sharing a phone line with someone else and being able to listen in on their phone conversations. It was also annoying when the ‘other party’ was using the line and you needed to make a call.

Being gone all day and no one could reach you.

Image source: moviesandcats, Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu

#16 Going to a cell phone free concert

pbrooks19 replied:
No cellphones at theme parks, or any place of interest, really. So many people nowadays just shoot self-absorbed videos or just get in the way and distract everyone by being annoying with them.

Image source: DamnGoodMarmalade, Johannes Havn

#17 Being able to buy tickets at concert venues without having to worry about associated fees and s**tty broker companies. KonaKathie replied: We met so many people while waiting in line to buy tickets. Oftentimes, they became good friends.

Image source: threerottenbranches, hildgrim

#18 The communal experience of television or radio entertainment. Growing up in the 70s and 80s we didn’t have cable. We had like 4 TV stations. Everyone was pretty much watching the same thing in the evenings and folks would discuss the shows at school or work the next day. Same with radio – as teens, we all tried to catch Rick Dees or Kasey Kasem on the weekend so we knew what was cool and new.

Image source: i_hate_this_part_85, Mike Spasoff

#19 [Encyclopaedias] and other reference books – not many left now except ones on subjects students might need. There used to be books for everything, and you’d always end up learning about more things than you opened the book to find.

Image source: Kobbett, Pixabay

#20 This is actually from the late 90/early 2000s, but I still really, really miss it: cell phone manufacturers competing over who could have the SMALLEST cell phone. It was REALLY NICE to have a phone you could actually put into your pocket!

Image source: ReactsWithWords, José Miguel S