In this day and age, take the Wi-Fi away from a kid and it’s quite likely they’ll go crazy.
With Star104.5’s Club Troppo reunion just around the corner it’s got a lot of Coasties remembering the ‘good old days’ and begs the questions:
What used to send us troppo?
As toddlers, we rode in supermarket trolleys without padded antibacterial trolley liners.
Our mothers wiped our faces with spit on a hanky not an antibacterial wipe.
There was one kind of milk, it was full-cream and it was delicious.
Meat was bought at the butcher, and was packed without a use-by date. Our parents used their noses to tell if the mince was off.
Our sandwiches contained leftover roast chicken; we didn’t have fridges in classrooms or ice bricks in our lunch boxes, but we didn’t get food poisoning.
The tuckshop sold sausage rolls and cream buns but kids were still fast and skinny.
There were two options for dinner: you ate what your mother served up … or you starved.
Cubby houses were built by kids not bought from Toys R Us.
We rode bikes without helmets or adult supervision or bike paths but we mostly just ended up with scarred knees, and better skills for next time.
Our trampolines didn’t have safety nets, and we sometimes even hosed them down with water and a squirt of Palmolive for extra slipperiness.
There was no padding on netball hoops or footy field posts.
A playdate was walking to a friend’s house, ringing the doorbell and saying, ‘Can they come and play?’
What was said on the playground stayed on the playground- there was no Principal/Parent interview or other intervention required.
When a kid was injured, people just accepted it happened and gave First Aid. They didn’t ask what the hell were the parents thinking letting their kid climb that tree anyway.
Generally, we went to the closest school, not the best one.
A teacher could put mercurochrome on a scraped knee without having to get our parents’ permission or completing an ‘incident report’ form.
School excursions happened without a ‘risk assessment’, or a 2:1 kid to adult ratio.
We went on camps without 18 forms to be signed and witnessed.
Kids got scared before parent-teacher interviews, not the teachers.
Angry teachers were treated with caution. We just hoped for a nicer one next year.
Our parents rarely knew our teachers’ names, let alone their NAPLAN prep strategy.
If you did badly on a test, you got a talking to, not a cuddle.
If the bus driver yelled at you, the bus driver didn’t get in trouble, you did.
You had to do something great to get a ‘student of the week’ award. Not just show up at school.
Helping with the washing up was as important as homework.
If anyone in the family had air conditioning in their bedroom, it was mum and dad.
Weekends were about our parents’ social lives. As kids, we played ‘murder in the dark’ or ‘spotlight’ while the adults talked.
Family holidays came before kids’ sporting schedules.
We got ourselves to Saturday sport and told tall tales about how the win was won (even if we lost).
If you didn’t make a team, you tried harder next time or you tried something else.
We had to be first past the post to win a ribbon, not get a participation award for simply showing up.
Your dad’s desire to watch ‘Four Corners’ trumped your need to watch anything else.
There was no remote control – you had to get off the lounge and change the channel…there weren’t a lot of those to choose from either.
Any drive longer than an hour didn’t require supplies of rice crackers and juice, and there was no portable DVD player.
Going to the shops/church/the nursing home to visit Nan could be endured without some sort of screen.
School holidays were about not being at school- not attending soccer training, art classes or pony camp.
Birthday parties were fairy bread and Fanta, not fruit kebabs and face painting.
No one wrote names on cups at parties.
You could offer your friend a bite of your hot dog.
Pass the parcel had only 1 winner.
Getting 1 present on your Christmas wish list was a good result.
A pocket-knife was a perfectly acceptable gift for a 10-year-old.
For more about the times of low-tech childhood, click here
See what life on the Central Coast was like ‘back in the day’ here
And relive the good times of Club Troppo, for one night only at The Entertainment Grounds, Saturday May 6th.
Tickets are on sale now, click here for more.
And keep listening to Star104.5 for your chance to win your way there!
