High School then and now.

Ahhh, High School.

That institution that brings together a multitude of varying personalities under one roof. Eventually, like static laced Styrofoam peanuts, the similar personalities tend to clump together into small groups known as cliques.

I’m sure a lot of things have changed in High school since I attended (that would be shortly after the Jurassic period). I am guessing the cliques still rule. Only the names have changed. 

When I went to high school we had hippies instead of stoners.  There were jocks, cheerleaders, drama and band geeks…oh wait, those still exist!

While the cliques may still be there, other things have changed:

In high school, I learned to type on an electric typewriter, which today, would be called a keyboarding class.

Young adults today (and possibly pre-teens and toddlers) can text faster with two thumbs than I ever could with all ten fingers.

“Sexting” was done in the back seat of a car, or the local park. Face to face, hand to…well, whatever. 

“Chatting” was done face to face, or over the telephone, which was ALWAYS hard wired to a wall. In some cases it actually hung on the wall and the amount of privacy you could get was limited by the length of the cord. Our wall phone at the time was in the kitchen.
I was not a big one for phone talk chatting.

 

If you didn’t have a phone at home, there was a pay phone at almost any gas station or store. Try to find one today.

If you were one of the lucky seniors who had access to a car, you wouldn’t even have to get out to have the gas pumped for you. An attendant would come out, pump the gas, clean your windshield, check the oil if you asked, and when you paid your 25-30 cents a gallon he might even give you a free glass, S&H green stamps, or some other gift. 

Of course, you had to get there before they closed at 8:00 PM, and you had to get there before Sunday. Almost every station and store was closed on Sunday. You paid with cash. I can’t even imagine the look you would get if you said you wanted to pay with a debit card.

Today’s high school teens who own cars have numerous safety features to protect them from their bad driving: Seat belts, air bags, ABS brakes…it’s a long list. We had bumpers.

The cars back then usually rusted out or broke down completely before even the worst teen driver could crash it more than twice.

If we wanted to go somewhere, we had to know where we were going, ask someone for directions, or get a map. We used the library to get information instead of typing in some text and magically having the info available on a Dick Tracy watch…er, I mean cell phone.

 

Calculators were not allowed in school. Mostly because they were called adding machines and were about half the size of the typewriter. Not exactly something you could stuff in your pocket.

 

There was no daylight savings time, so no matter what time of year it was, in my opinion, it was ALWAYS to early to get up for school.

And last but not least, when I was in High School, Facebook meant a photography book of portraits.



That's all I can think of for now. What kinds of things have changed since you were in High School? Did you belong to a clique?