Back to the 1980s - Normality

N is for "Normality", and in the 1980s normality was offline.

Today's kids can hardly imagine having just one landline phone in the house, long-distance calls waited until 5 pm when the prices dropped, checking the bus schedule or booking a ticket online was unthinkable, playdates were arranged the old-fashioned way, by pedaling around the neighborhood on your bike to see where “the others” were.

In Switzerland, with four national languages plus the expectation for business folks to speak English, our shelves were stacked with dictionaries, no AutoCorrect, no Google Translate, no DeepL.

Miss your favorite TV show, tough luck, no DVR, no streaming, no pause-and-play, same with the radio, if you wanted a song you had to sit by your cassette recorder ready to capture it off the air, praying the tape didn’t jam, then rewinding manually when it did. Making a mixtape taught patience, planning, and problem-solving, skills today’s Spotify kids rarely get to practice.

News traveled slowly, if something happened locally or globally, you waited for the next morning’s paper, deadlines were real, reporters had to submit their articles and photos before the presses rolled, no “publish now, edit later.”

And photos, film needed developing, miss the shot and the moment was gone forever.

Home life, often Dad went to work in the morning, returned by dinner, Mom ran the household, with local schools, shops, and public transport in Switzerland, many families managed with just one car, kids biked independently to sports and hobbies, in the U.S. school buses likely handled more of that independence.

Teachers had authority, if a student misbehaved they handed out detention, extra homework, or removed privileges, parents usually didn’t question it, if anything they reinforced it.

Work was slower too, imagine Dad as a car dealership manager, he needed replacement parts, his secretary typed a request on a typewriter, mailed it, and waited sometimes days for a reply, long-distance calls were too costly, and the single phone line couldn’t be tied up for hours, ordering parts online or emailing quotes was science fiction.

Life in the 1980s was slower, simpler, and maybe more authentic, our bubble was smaller, but our experiences were shared, I’d say the middle class was larger back then, and lifestyles were more uniform, same cars, same holidays, same expectations, today life feels polarized, many live paycheck to paycheck, while others enjoy far greater wealth, a single “normal” lifestyle is harder to define.

Thinking back on all of this, I wonder which of those offline skills we developed back then we secretly miss today? 

I'll go ahead and share mine:

When we wrote an essay, we were first instructed to create a draft in pencil. We had to structure our thoughts, come up with content, watch our grammar and spelling, and only then copy the final version neatly into our school notebook using a fountain pen. Oh, and careful, no smudging!