Visiting nightclubs when you're 5

[abefroman329]

In Delaware, I recall one time in college I wanted to buy a case of soda at a liquor store. Because I wasn't 21, I wasn't permitted to purchase *anything* within that liquor store!

In Oklahoma, you have to have a medical marijuana card to even go into the main room of a dispensary. Dispensaries sell products like pipes, rolling papers and Boveda packs that contain no THC, but you can't buy anything there unless you have a card.

You have to be 21 to enter any dispensary in Illinois, recreational or medical.

[formulanone]

No, not that I can remember. I would probably remember being that bored and remind my parents ad nauseum.

My folks never rarely drank nor went out with us kids to anywhere other than restaurants; but they had a bong in their bedroom, which may have explained a lot.

[bugo]

You have to be 21 to enter any dispensary in Illinois, recreational or medical.

Minors can get a medical card in Oklahoma with permission from a parent and a recommendation from two different doctors (which is easy to get). I have never seen anybody obviously under 18 in a dispensary, so I don't know if a parent has to accompany them or how it works.

[Rothman]

You have to be 21 to enter any dispensary in Illinois, recreational or medical.

Minors can get a medical card in Oklahoma with permission from a parent and a recommendation from two different doctors (which is easy to get). I have never seen anybody obviously under 18 in a dispensary, so I don't know if a parent has to accompany them or how it works.

Glad we got that cleared up over a year later.

[bugo]

When I was in 9th grade, the PE coach taught first period math, and sometimes when he didn't feel like teaching, he would put a movie on. We watched several R rated movies including Maximum Overdrive and one of the Freddy or Jason movies (I can't remember which). We also watched a Star Trek movie. I don't remember the name, but it seemed like it had something to do with pigs, so I don't know if it was rated R or not. Back then, kids openly traded pocketknives in class. If you had a Buck knife, you were cool, but if you had a Pakistan knife, you were a loser. Bullies thrived in this environment, and those classrooms were not safe when the teachers left the room.

This is the same coach who got the bright idea that for PE, we should remove the padded mats that hang on the wall of the gym behind the basketball goal and put them in the middle of the floor and have wrestling matches. The rules were simple: a takedown wins. He put me up against this guy who I thought was going to kill me. I was taller than him, but back then I was scrawny and this guy was much bulkier than me. He ducked his head and charged at me and tried to spear me with his shoulder, and I grabbed his head and DDT'ed him on the mat. If you aren't a professional wrestling connoisseur, a DDT is where a wrestler puts a front face lock on another wrester and falls back, causing the opponent's head to hit the ring, knocking them unconscious. I was shocked that I won. I apparently injured the kid, because he didn't participate in PE for several weeks after that. I asked the coach why he wasn't doing any of the activities, and he made a vague comment about him having a neck injury. I wasn't trying to hurt him. It wasn't my fault or his fault: it was the coach's fault for coming up with such a dimwitted idea. This would have been the late 1980s, which really was was a different time. Had that happened today, I'd have been trending on Twitter and Youtube.

[kkt]

All the Star Trek movies are rated either PG or PG-13.

What a horrible coach.

[bandit957]

When I was a high school senior, they kept censoring books.

[bugo]

I began first grade going to public schools, but my parents got the bright idea of sending me to a Christian school, so in the middle of the first semester, I started riding a bus 15 miles a day to a compound out in the country. If you forgot your books at home, you got a paddling, no exceptions. That school was boring and I didn't like it. and I didn't care about Jesus. and I didn't fit in. The teacher lady told my mom that God told her to "hold me back" and basically not allow me to get smarter or learn anything so my parents said "hell no" and a few weeks after the beginning of second grade, it was right back to Mena Public Schools. It was somehow a huge improvement. Back on topic: The Christian school had a set of Childcraft encyclopedias. I had a set at home of my own, and I learned a great deal from reading them from front to back. One of the encyclopedias had a chapter about dinosaurs, and the teacher lady ripped those pages out of the book before she would let us read them. That school was a cult, and I don't know why they sent me there in the first place, but I'm glad I got out. Somebody I know went there until eighth grade and transferred to Mena, and they had to take remedial classes because the school didn't teach him things like basic grammar. He's a really smart guy too, and it really bothered him to have to be in the resource room because his teachers were too busy teaching him about Jesus to teach him 4th grade science.

[Max Rockatansky]

I found more often than not I was free to read whatever book I wanted as a child, no matter how obscene the content within might be.  I found that contrast odd because I certainly didn't get the same leeway over movies or video games.  I still vividly remember parental types being "outraged"  over silly shit like Night Trap.  I guess books supposedly were "good for the brain"  whereas the others fell into the "brain rotting"  category. 

[bugo]

My parents tolerated my video games, but they weren't thrilled by them. One year for Christmas, my parents got me a Nintendo Entertainment System and my sister a Sega Master System. The Sega was lasted less than a month when it simply quit working. The leading theory is that it was hooked to the cable TV line, and a bolt of electricity came in and fried the Sega. I don't know why they didn't just take it back to the store.

[bandit957]

My parents tolerated my video games, but they weren't thrilled by them. One year for Christmas, my parents got me a Nintendo Entertainment System and my sister a Sega Master System. The Sega was lasted less than a month when it simply quit working. The leading theory is that it was hooked to the cable TV line, and a bolt of electricity came in and fried the Sega. I don't know why they didn't just take it back to the store.

That's like the time we had a power outage and it fried the TV and a whole bunch of other things.

[bugo]

Speaking of the NES, if you are of a certain age, this image will make the area between your index finger and your middle finger on both hands hurt. On weekends I'd play over 12 hours a day and stay up late playing. After 4 or 5 hours, your hand starts aching but you keep playing, because it's the 1980s and that's what you did in the 1980s, you kept playing. One of these days I'm going to find an old NES to keep around the house, but I'm getting the newer dogbone controllers.

[bugo]

When it would start thundering, my paternal grandparents would unplug the TV from the wall and from the cable. They had apparently had a TV destroyed by a power jolt in the antenna/cable components. My dad did it when I was very young, but he got out of it and now he doesn't raise an eyebrow when it thunders.

[Rothman]

Speaking of the NES, if you are of a certain age, this image will make the area between your index finger and your middle finger on both hands hurt. On weekends I'd play over 12 hours a day and stay up late playing. After 4 or 5 hours, your hand starts aching but you keep playing, because it's the 1980s and that's what you did in the 1980s, you kept playing. One of these days I'm going to find an old NES to keep around the house, but I'm getting the newer dogbone controllers.

Wut?  Somebody needed to work on their technique.  I played NES for hours on end and I don't think it ever hurt my fingers like that.

[GCrites]

When it would start thundering, my paternal grandparents would unplug the TV from the wall and from the cable. They had apparently had a TV destroyed by a power jolt in the antenna/cable components. My dad did it when I was very young, but he got out of it and now he doesn't raise an eyebrow when it thunders.

My grandparents bought a new TV in 1963 for their family room. Within 6 months it got fried by and electrical storm. It sat in the same place until at least the year 2000 when my grandma passed and the house was sold. They didn't use that room much. The screen had 2 inches of white stuff all the way around the inside from the incident.

[Max Rockatansky]

The NES controller on occasion made my right thumb sore.  Things got way more ergonomically friendly with the dog bone design of the SNES controller.  I never understood why Nintendo went away from a similar design with the N64.  Sony ultimately perfected the SNES dog bone design.

[bandit957]

We buyed a new TV set in 1984, and it was a great set. But around 1993-94, not long after I moved out, was our big blackout that fried everything.

TV set. Gone.

Clock radios. Gone.

Almost everything else. Gone.

Gone into thin air. Fried. Destroyed. Dead.

My mom acted like it was no big deal, since our insurer would just pay to replace them. But there was a big deductible, and the quality of electronics was going downhill, so the replacements weren't going to be as good or last nearly as long.

The board of directors of the electric company should have been required to eat the appliances they ruined.

[formulanone]

Speaking of the NES, if you are of a certain age, this image will make the area between your index finger and your middle finger on both hands hurt. On weekends I'd play over 12 hours a day and stay up late playing. After 4 or 5 hours, your hand starts aching but you keep playing, because it's the 1980s and that's what you did in the 1980s, you kept playing. One of these days I'm going to find an old NES to keep around the house, but I'm getting the newer dogbone controllers.

Wut?  Somebody needed to work on their technique.  I played NES for hours on end and I don't think it ever hurt my fingers like that.

I recall that these NES controllers hurt your hands after playing for an hour or two, but then you became used to them after a while. Sony's Playstation controllers hurt my thumbs but you eventually got used to that as well...

Controller ergonomics weren't really a thing back then, but then again, neither were most input devices. When carpal tunnel syndrome became a serious worry, it's almost as if the industry changed everything in the next few years to actually have a measure of comfort (or maybe we just became so much more used it from repetition and increased usage).

[bm7]

Speaking of the NES, if you are of a certain age, this image will make the area between your index finger and your middle finger on both hands hurt. On weekends I'd play over 12 hours a day and stay up late playing. After 4 or 5 hours, your hand starts aching but you keep playing, because it's the 1980s and that's what you did in the 1980s, you kept playing. One of these days I'm going to find an old NES to keep around the house, but I'm getting the newer dogbone controllers.

How were you holding the controller? I'm not sure how you'd hurt your hands in that way unless you were holding it in some strange way.

[Rothman]

Then again, I still have my NES hooked up.  I should conduct an endurance test.

[Max Rockatansky]

I still have a lot of them installed in my game room.  Playing some NES games on SNES remasters (Super Mario All Stars as an example) I've found to be less straining.

[SilverMustang2011]

When it would start thundering, my paternal grandparents would unplug the TV from the wall and from the cable. They had apparently had a TV destroyed by a power jolt in the antenna/cable components. My dad did it when I was very young, but he got out of it and now he doesn't raise an eyebrow when it thunders.

I'm pretty sure my grandmother's living room TV was destroyed in a similar manner last year. She was not happy about having to replace it. I think it also knocked out half of the power in her house, so it was likely a larger issue with the breaker or something.

[JayhawkCO]

Doesn't anyone use surge protectors anymore?

[Max Rockatansky]

Doesn't anyone use surge protectors anymore?

I use them for my vintage game systems.  But that's more a function of me being lazy and keeping them plugged in constantly than actual protection. 

[JayhawkCO]

All of my main electronics are all plugged into surge protectors. About the only thing of any value that doesn't get plugged into one is my cell phone, and even that is largely wirelessly charged.