The world is nothing today like what it used to be. Of course, the technology has changed, and I can remember when the Internet was never even a thing. But that’s not the only thing that is different now than what it used to be.

There are things that happened in the 80’s that you would never see happen today. The very first car wreck I was in I was standing in the seat of the truck and no one even thought a thing about it. I was five-years-old at the time!

When we got hit at an intersection and I got thrown into the floorboard of the truck, a lady that lived on the corner took me inside and gave me a glass of milk so I could rinse the blood out of my mouth. No one blinked twice, but that would never happen today.

The safety issues of driving in the 80’s however, is still just one thing that is different. Check out this list of 10 things from the 80’s and see how many of them you remember.

1. Not only were kids allowed to ride unrestrained in the front seat of a vehicle, but station wagons might have just been the coolest place on earth to hang out in. I can’t count how many road trips I went on laying on pillows in the back of my parents station wagon and playing games with my siblings. You’d never get to do that today even if you had the room.

2. Oh wait, it gets even better. Riding in the back of a station wagon was fun, but imagine doing something similar but with no top. That’s what it was like riding in the bed of the pickup. And if you were really lucky, your dad put the tail gate down so you could sit on it with your feet hanging off. Hang on tight because one bump and your behind isn’t going to be sitting on the tailgate anymore.

3. The 80’s were the days before cordless phones were even a thing, let alone cell phones. So if you got to go and hang out with your friends and you were going to be late, guess how you had to reach your parents? With a pay phone. And if you didn’t have change, you had to call collect and hope that your parents would accept your phone call! Do kids now even know what a pay phone is?

4. Vehicle isn’t the only safety hazard that a child had to face in the 80’s. Bicycles were a hazard too, or so everyone must think these days. We never wore bicycle helmets, not even when we were ramping our bicycles off of made up ramps we built with stuff from dad’s garage. Yet somehow we managed to survive.

5. The 80’s saw an increase in both parents entering the work field. Mothers no longer stayed home just to take care of their kids, so with that came the era of latchkey kids. We were independent and managed to get ourselves home from school. If we were lucky, we had remembered to take our house key to school with us, and if not, well, there had better be a back up plan because we didn’t have cell phones either.

6. Because adults were so busy working, by the time they did get home from work the last thing they wanted to do was make a run to the store to buy cigarettes or alcohol. Luckily, they had kids that they could send to the store for them. Yep, you could buy almost anything you wanted to just by having a note from mom or dad that asked the store clerk to sell it to you.

7. Today we read news about how spanking children is bad for them, but in the 80’s that wasn’t a concern at all. If you messed up and got yourself in trouble in the 80’s you were destined to get a spanking. And it didn’t matter where you were. It might be the neighbor, the principal, or your family, but someone was going to bend you over their knee.

8. In the 80’s it wasn’t that we didn’t care about the environment, but people didn’t know how serious it was. So it wasn’t a huge surprise to see people throwing their McDonald’s wrappers out the window of their car as they were driving down the road. Besides that, only weird hippies recycled back then.

9. Do you remember old fashioned water beds? You know, the big balloon type mattresses that were full of water and you could literally cause one person to be thrown out of the bed just by sitting down hard on the opposite side? Everyone thought they were so cool, that is, until we all realized how terribly uncomfortable they really were. If you told someone these days you slept on a bed full of water they’d think you were crazy.

10. Classes in school now include both genders. No longer are just girls taught to sew and cook and boys taught to work on cars. But in the 80’s that’s exactly what happened. Girls took home economics classes to learn how to handle their duties at home and boys took shop class to learn how to work with tools and handle the outside chores.

So how many of these 80’s memories can recollect? I can remember every single one of them like it was yesterday. I think times were much more simple then. How about you? Be sure to share this list with your friends and family and see how many memories they recall.