Road Trips Before Digital Entertainment

Chdamn

Chdamn

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What did y’all do before digital entertainment.

As a kid we used to play either license plate bingo (you saw how many states you could get) or we played animal graveyard.

That was where you counted every animal on your side of the car and someone else did the same on theirs. If you passed a graveyard all your animals were lost. Whoever had the the most at the end of the trip won.
 
We held our breaths going over bridges. That's about it.

It wasn't really a game, but my mom made the mistake of telling me my step dad couldn't stand anything touching his Adam's apple. That's why he always wore v-neck shirts. On that trip, I reached from the back seat and pressed it with my finger. He made this God awful gagging noise and nearly wrecked the car.

It took every ounce of pleading my mom had to keep him from beating me severely. I must have been 10 or 11 at the time.
 
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My brother and I would try to be the first to yell out the manufacturer of each tractor-trailer we saw. So for instance, when we saw one coming we'd strain to see the decal on the front and then yell, "Peterbilt, I said it first!" Of course my brother (5 years older) always won because he could tell the make by the body style long before it got close enough to read the decal.

One of my fondest childhood memories was driving to gulf coast Alabama in mid-July 1979 in a '68 Ford Torino (no AC) to visit the USS Alabama. We played that game probably most of the way both ways. I'm sure it was miserable hot in the car, but it's amazing how we didn't seem to notice things like that back then.
 
Read your book, there will be a quiz when we get there and better not mess up if you want to have dinner.
 
Diablos said:
We played shut the hell up before i pull this car over
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I remember a trip to Michigan from Charlotte we took in the 80’s. I was probably in 6th or 7th grade and have a younger brother and sister. Dad warned us once at the start of the trip. Ended up pulling over on 77 probably before Statesville. All three of us spread eagle on the side of the car getting licks. Set the tone for the trip. Future trips involved leaving late at night so we would just sleep and dad would drive.
 
Only child with severe motion sickness and two parents who smoked.

I played wallow in my own misery.
 
walkman.
read.

I am an only child, so roadtrips could be super boring for me
 
On a slight tangent... When I was young, if you had to sit in a car and twiddle your thumbs fir two hrs. while your parents did something, that's what you did. Now days parents feel this obligation to entertain their children.
 
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I was always watching and analyzing what my dad did, the way he shifted through the gears and made his way through traffic intrigued me. My mom, not so much, and to this day a back seat ride makes me sick as a dog without the window open, so we didn't travel much.

These days most all kids are entitled, and you owe it to them to prevent their boredom at all cost because they exist.
 
We didn't go on road trips lol. We went on excursions into the abyss of sibling rivalry and parental rage lol.

We took a 'camping' trip to Florida with 3 kids in a 1982 Ford Escort. Dad got drunk and backed into the water pipe and it 'rained' on our tent all night. Next day we packed up and drove back up I-95
 
Road trips? We only went into NC about three times (Land of Oz twice, Tweetsie Railroad once). Until I turned 14 and started going to Clemson for 4-H and school type trips (2 hr drive), the longest trips we went on took about 45 min. I just thought.
 
Every summer the six of us would hop in the Bonneville and take the 9 or 10 hour miserable drive down to Myrtle Beach. I was the youngest so I had to sit up front between Mom and Dad until about the age of 10. After my two older brothers got their driver's licenses I could finally sit in the back.

I remember we would each pick a certain kind of car and we would each count how many we saw. We would look at the odometer and pick a mileage, 30 miles for example, and whoever had counted the most of their car at the end of 30 miles would win.
 
Me. said:
Did so many of you really have a "shut up or get hit" policy in the car?!
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You obviously had a sheltered childhood. Some of us lived in war zones. Ever wonder why some of us decided to never have children? Not knocking my dad but he never had parents who gave a crap about him. He never knew how to interact with his kids. Punishment was swift and at times severe. If we were told to shut up and be quiet, you had best do as told. When I turned 16 and got my liscence, I didn't hang around home much if I wasn't at work.

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kcult said:
We held our breaths going over bridges. That's about it.

It wasn't really a game, but my mom made the mistake of telling me my step dad couldn't stand anything touching his Adam's apple. That's why he always wore v-neck shirts. On that trip, I reached from the back seat and pressed it with my finger. He made this God awful gagging noise and nearly wrecked the car.

It took every ounce of pleading my mom had to keep him from beating me severely. I must have been 10 or 11 ar the time.
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I’m dyin here!! [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]


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IMO there is a fine line between good parenting and being an overbearing ass. If my parents told me to shut up and be quiet it was because I was being a PITA and same for my kid.

But just like them if we were just being kids (which are easily bored) they came up with games for us to play to keep us engaged and out of their hair so they didn’t have to tell us to shut up and sit quietly.

Trying to raise kids in the digital age without having them turn into screen addicts is hard. We severely limit our sons screen time at home and on trips. At home he gets 2 games on the weekend. None on weekdays. On trips he gets about 15 minutes every hour. The rest of the time it’s road games, read or be quiet.
 
Ferrisfan said:
Only child with severe motion sickness and two parents who smoked.

I played wallow in my own misery.
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This was my childhood too. Going on trips for me involved breathing in second hand smoke and keeping a grocery bag handy for that road trip vomit. I hated road trips as a kid. Always got sick, and always got yelled at by my dad as if I could choose to not get motion sickness.

Now that I'm an adult, I love road trips. But I ALWAYS drive. I hate being a passenger in a car to this day.
 
Walkman played loudly until I was told to "turn that shit down!" Then read.
 
If I remember correctly my older brothers beat the crap out of me on road trips and my Mom would reach over the seat and smack them with a wooden spoon to save me from certain death.

Assholes.
 
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CZfool68 said:
If I remember correctly my older brothers beat the crap out pf me on road trips and my Mom would reach over the seat and smack them with a wooden spoon to sabe me from certain death.

Assholes.
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My brothers did that to me as a kid. I was the youngest and smallest. Til I got about 15 and was pulling tobacco and throwing hay bales during the summer. They couldn’t touch me then
 
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