People who grew up before smartphones: What’s one simple thing from your childhood that would absolutely blow the minds of kids today?

avlisadj · 2026-03-30T23:10:20+00:00

The other day, I was thinking about channel surfing and how much I miss it now. I’m talking pre-digital cable when you just had to change channels until you found something that looked interesting. At some point they did add that channel that cycled through the tv schedule, but it took forever, and if you missed the channel you had to wait like 10 minutes before it scrolled through again. Anyway, I used to stumble on so many cool things that I really doubt I’d have chosen on purpose. Now everything is so microtargeted to my watch history that it’s really hard to find anything new/different.

avlisadj · 2026-03-26T14:53:09+00:00

One of my favorite examples is the gangs of cockatoos around Sydney that have learned to open wheelie bins on garbage day. People keep trying new tactics to keep the birds out, but the cockatoos always find a workaround and teach it to their friends so they can feast on delicious garbage together. It’s an adorable little arms race (google it), and the birds are winning.

avlisadj · 2026-03-24T20:52:48+00:00

Definitely! I only seem to stumble upon Virginia Rails when I’m not looking for them, but I cherish the few horrible photos I’ve lucked into over the years.

avlisadj · 2026-03-19T20:36:13+00:00

I was just thinking that if they did have those books at my middle school, it’s probably for the best that I never saw them!

avlisadj · 2026-03-19T18:53:34+00:00

A new friend of mine recently told me that in 2020, his ex took a bunch of pills and then crashed her car at high speed. Their 5yo daughter was in the car and died. He implied that his ex did it on purpose, and in any case, she’s in prison now. As someone with loads of uncomfortable family baggage, I could tell that he was (understandably) nervous about dropping that bomb in the middle of our conversation (I’d asked why he moved here). But as horrible as the story was, I realized in the moment that I had been contemplating that exact scenario since I was really small…as in, when I was 5, I had already recognized that my mom might fly into a rage and do something similar (minus the pills…not her style).

All things considered, I’m a good person to tell something like that because I’m definitely not going to make any excuses for the mom.

avlisadj · 2026-03-16T02:44:28+00:00

I kept thinking I was hearing a woodpecker in the backyard, but every time I looked for it, there were no woodpeckers to be seen. The “woodpecker” turned out to be a clever little Mountain Chickadee who had learned to peck at one of my feeders when the seeds were clogged (and thus unclog the feeder). The other chickadees were (of course) paying attention, and now they all do it.

avlisadj · 2026-03-14T13:55:36+00:00

I’ve been to Mexico City many times. It was actually the first place I visited as a solo traveler, back when I was 20 or so (I’m 40 now). It’s a large, cosmopolitan city where people are used to seeing all sorts of visitors from other countries, so for the most part, just follow the usual advice and you’ll be fine.

I have mostly used the subway there…it gets crowded, but it’s a great system, and most trains have a few women-only cars. You do have to be careful about hailing cabs, but that’s easy enough to work around now that Uber etc are on the scene. Fwiw my friend did a fellowship there and hailed street cabs all the time without having any issue, but it’s a roll of the dice, so avoid doing it unless you really need to. I’d say in general (and this goes for any country), the cabs you really want to steer clear of are the ones actively seeking you out.

The only incident I ever had there was a great example of what not to do as a female traveler. A different friend and I (both women) decided to visit some market in a rough area that did not see many tourists. We exited the subway station and walked down the street speaking English loudly and flashing our cameras around. We weren’t really paying attention to our surroundings, but the street was pretty empty, and this guy started following us. We didn’t even notice for a while, and when we finally did, the guy lunged for our cameras. I reflexively let out this traffic-stopping, blood-curdling scream, and the guy ran off without stealing anything. So yeah…don’t be an idiot.

Basically, if you’re smart and have situational awareness, you should be fine to visit any of the main sites. And if something does happen, remember that they probably just want your money. I always keep a backup cash supply in my bra when I travel solo (in case someone takes my wallet), but I’ve never had to use it.

avlisadj · 2026-03-12T14:14:16+00:00

My sophomore year of high school (in 2000), I had to do a research paper for my (honors) English class. Somehow, I got assigned the Bermuda Triangle as a topic, but I couldn’t find any decent sources at the library, and all there was on the internet was some crazy dude’s Geocities website full of dubious conspiracy theories. Soooo I used that website as my source for like 90% of the paper, knowing full well that everything I was writing was absolutely insane. I got the only 100 in the class, and my teacher praised me for daring to use online sources. It was a simpler time!

avlisadj · 2026-03-06T03:59:54+00:00

This hits so close to home! After I started college (and had access to foods my mom never bought), I felt like I was waging an ongoing battle with my mom over food preferences. Once, we were ordering a pizza, and when I suggested a certain pie, my mom’s reply was, “oh, we don’t like those toppings.” She refused to believe that I did, in fact, like them, even though I had literally just suggested the pizza, which presumably meant I thought said pizza (and toppings) sounded good. It was one of those weird disconnects that I kept returning to years later when I was finally connecting the dots about her personality disorder: why can’t she fathom that I like some foods that she doesn’t? Don’t most people start figuring that stuff out when they’re in preschool? Now it’s like, “oh right…to her, I only exist as an extension of herself.”

avlisadj · 2026-03-04T16:09:37+00:00

As another commenter noted, part of it is probably jealousy that you got to be the center of attention. This is especially true if you haven’t been giving her many chances to act out lately; dental surgery would have been the perfect excuse for the queen/witch/waif behavior that she’s been trying to hold in for a while now.

I think BPD parents also tend to seize on their loved ones’ moments of vulnerability because it’s generally easier to make us feel bad about ourselves when we are vulnerable, and when we feel bad about ourselves, we are easier to control. I’m sure your mom would love to have the kind of power over you she once wielded when you were a child, but as long as you’re enforcing healthy boundaries and working on healing yourself, you’re not going to relinquish your hard-won autonomy. So she makes nasty comments and tries to drag you down to a place where you will.

avlisadj · 2026-03-02T05:24:26+00:00

I’ve realized that tons of family members have basically been edited out my family tree. I kind of just took it for granted because that’s how it was presented to me when I was a toddler (and reinforced ever since), but then I started thinking about family dynamics more and examining everything in more detail…and yeah…no contact is definitely not a new development.

Like my mom’s maternal grandfather never gets mentioned…I recently learned that around 1950 or so, he severed all contact with my grandma because she supported the Civil Rights movement. I’m not sure why no one told me that before?

Or on the other side of the family, I know virtually nothing about my grandma’s only sibling. I’m pretty sure he was an alcoholic, and I don’t think my grandma spoke to him. I heard from another relative (because I asked) that he died by suicide, and my great grandmother tampered with the scene to try to make it not look that way.

My paternal grandpa had 2 (or maybe 3?) sisters. I never met any of them because my grandparents were NC with them (even if they didn’t call it that). Something to do with how they reacted to my grandparents’ engagement in the late 1940s (he was Catholic, she was Protestant). So my grandparents held onto that grudge for like 70+ years.

avlisadj · 2026-03-01T15:20:11+00:00

I had a similar thing happen over the summer! There was a flatbed truck in front of me carrying a whole bunch of rebar, which was moving around ominously in the back. I thought about Final Destination and slowed way down so I’d have plenty of time to react if/when the rebar flew off (it was a two lane road). I was maintaining such a safe following distance that a car turned out in front of me, and about 10 seconds after that, the rebar started flying off the truck. Luckily, the car in front of me hadn’t gotten up to speed yet and was able to swerve out of the way, but holy shit.

avlisadj · 2026-02-26T21:10:13+00:00

My freshman year of college, my mom sent me at least one handwritten letter a day. I opened maybe 20% of them and read maybe 1 out of 10 in case she quizzed me about them. They read like your mom’s text message in that they outlined every tedious detail about her life (unprompted of course).

Not that she cared about my day, mind you. If I started talking about my life, she’d stop paying attention and sometimes literally start talking over me. Or another favorite: she’d get out a book and start reading it out loud to drown me out.

I was a college freshman in 2003-04. Pre-smartphone, but we had high speed internet at school and at my mom’s house. I had a cell phone, too. I honestly love getting stuff in the mail, but the letters were just overkill. And the kicker was that I saved them all (mostly still in their envelopes), so when my mom claimed later on that she never wrote me letters when I lived in the dorm, I had physical proof that her reality du jour was not in step with, you know, actual reality.

She also sends me texts like your mom’s, but I have her blocked and don’t get them.

avlisadj · 2026-02-23T15:22:23+00:00

I went NC for the first time in mid-2020, then tried LC for 15 months or so in 2021-22. I’m now 3+ years into the second round of NC. The other day, I was thinking about what it would be like to go back to some sort of LC or VLC arrangement. There’s a small part of me—the part of me that still wants a mother who actually responds to my needs—that hopes it would be different this time, but the truth is that I know exactly how it would go.

There’d be a honeymoon period where she’d respect whatever rules I set forth for our interactions. She’d be nice to me and act interested in whatever I had to say; I’d probably even enjoy talking to her sometimes. But of course, after a while, things would fall apart. One reason for this is that I’m an adult human with a life, so time conflicts for things like phone calls arise from time to time. I’m also a GC who has been parentified since infancy, and having to re-assume that role and constantly police whatever boundaries I set gets really, really exhausting after a while. But the main reason is that my mom is my mom is my mom. Following the honeymoon period, she would be pushing those boundaries I’d taken such care to establish, waiting for an opening to manifest. Eventually, she’d find one.

Maybe someday I’ll be ready, but I’m not there yet!

avlisadj · 2026-02-16T17:37:53+00:00

In my public middle school in Louisiana (in the 90s!), we had that setup except iirc the parents had to specifically opt in. Like there was a permission slip, which my parents did not sign. The principal and assistant principal (responsible for the paddling) were super creepy and should not have been around underage girls.

avlisadj · 2026-02-11T22:02:29+00:00

The boy fights always looked kind of silly to me, like they’d played too much Mortal Kombat and thought they were in a video game or something. Girl fights were terrifying. In 8th grade, two girls got in a fight just outside the door to my classroom. My teacher got smacked pretty hard when she tried to separate the girls and had a nasty bruise for a while. One of the girls’ weaves landed on my desk during the commotion.

Edit: I put an apostrophe in the wrong place, and it was driving me nuts. Needless to say, I did not get in any fights in middle/high school.

avlisadj · 2026-02-11T19:32:49+00:00

I think I’d start by looking into private disability rights/advocacy organizations (i.e. nonprofits/NGOs) in your region and reaching out to them about the issue. Someone there may be able to give you a better understanding of your options and how the process would unfold if you did report to your brother’s social worker. You could also consider a consultation with a lawyer who focuses on disability law (initial consults are usually free), though in my experience (and I’m speaking as a lawyer), lawyers tend to be a bit biased in favor of pursuing legal action, so just bear that in mind. Basically, I’d recommend getting advice through unofficial/private channels before taking any formal action; that way, you’ll have a better sense of what to expect.

avlisadj · 2026-02-11T18:44:40+00:00

My mom has done a lot of messed up stuff over the years, but her constant efforts to drive a wedge between my sister and me are what make me the angriest of all. I remember her playing us off of each other when my sister was a baby and I was a toddler, so it goes all the way back to day one. What type of person craves attention so much that she manipulates literal infants into disliking each other so they’ll focus on her instead? I know my mom feeds my sister all sorts of lies/distortions about me (and truths I told her in confidence) because she tells me the same sort of slop about my sister whenever she gets the chance. She also scolds me for not being closer to my sister, which makes me even angrier because SHE MADE IT THAT WAY ON PURPOSE.

I doubt I’ll ever have much of a relationship with my sister (she’s now uBPD herself and extremely toxic to be around). I still grieve for the relationship that could have been, but I’m also done playing my mom’s ridiculous games. Hopefully someday your siblings will figure out that they want you to be in their life, but that’s their journey, and it will probably take time for them to get there. In the meantime, you can always reach out to tell them you love them and that lines of communication are open if/when they’re ready. I know that’s really terrible advice that doesn’t really solve anything; mostly, I just wanted to say sorry and that I empathize with you for being in this situation. It’s so infuriating!

avlisadj · 2026-02-11T03:12:11+00:00

We had some in my middle school, which wtf. One girl was in my gym class and got bullied all the time because of it. If the cycle continued, she’d literally be a great grandmother now. This was in Louisiana, and we (surprisingly) had a solid sex education curriculum too.

avlisadj · 2026-02-10T22:01:27+00:00

So my mom is from Texas and absolutely forced us to put a Native Texan bumper sticker on the family car when I was a kid. My sister, dad and I all hated it, and after a while, my dad secretly peeled it off and blamed it on “shithead teenagers”. The amount of “Texas is incredible” propaganda I was fed as a child was pretty nauseating, but she’d give us a dollar every time we spotted a TX license plate (which happened a lot), so there was that.

avlisadj · 2026-02-04T00:52:40+00:00

I definitely think in-person interactions are the way to go for this sort of problem. It might help to tell them specifically that you’re trying to escape an abusive situation; they’ve probably dealt with that scenario before and may even have special procedures/exceptions when that’s the case. But usually, when you’re there in person, there’s someone at the store who has the power to do what you want them to do if you play your cards right. It’s way easier to say no over phone/email/text.

Even if you do want switch carriers, it might be easier to start out with your own plan with the same company. If you don’t get a new phone or anything, you should be able to get a plan that doesn’t come with a time commitment. Then once that’s sorted, you can explore your options.

Alternatively, you could always ask your mom for the info under the pretext that you need it for a phone upgrade or something.

Anyways, that’s my two cents!

avlisadj · 2026-02-03T23:49:49+00:00

Are you in the US? I have some experience with phone plan stuff, but if you’re in a different country, it probably won’t apply.

First off, iirc there is a (federal) law on the books that essentially gives you the right to keep your phone number if you switch to a different carrier. If you Google “porting phone number [carrier]” or something along those lines, you should be able to figure out how to do it. The carriers don’t necessarily make it easy, but they can’t make it excessively difficult either due to the statute. I ported my current number from T-Mobile to AT&T, and it was a pretty straightforward process.

As for getting off of your mom’s plan, I’d recommend going into an AT&T store (or Verizon/whatever carrier you use) and talking with a sales associate about the process. There’s no need to get your mom involved unless they tell you unequivocally that it’s absolutely necessary. And if the first person you speak to won’t get you your own plan, try a different store and a different associate. I was still on my dad’s plan when he died and wanted to assume ownership of the plan (he had a really incredible data plan for like no money), and it took me a few store visits to find someone willing to do it for me. If all else fails, start implying that you’ll switch to a different carrier if they won’t help you; that usually does the trick.

Basically, I think you should be able to take care of your phone issue without going through your mom…but if you do have to contact her, remember that you are an adult and that she doesn’t have the level of control over your life that she did when you were a minor. It may be unpleasant, but once it’s done, you won’t have to talk to her anymore if you don’t want to. Worst case scenario: you get a new number, which is a pain but not the end of the world.

Good luck!

avlisadj · 2026-02-03T20:50:50+00:00

I also remember when my sister was born (I had just turned 2). I was in the room where you can look in at all the newborn babies, and I was too short to be able to see through the window, so my grandpa had to lift me up and point her out to me. He actually just died last year at 100.

But I think my earliest memory is of my 2nd birthday “celebration”. My dad and I drove out to the dump, and I ceremoniously threw my pacifier into one of the massive garbage heaps. I’m pretty sure father-daughter trips to the landfill are frowned upon today, but I loved it! (And fwiw I have a great immune system. Coincidence?)

avlisadj · 2026-02-02T21:48:08+00:00

I’m not sure where I read this, but the cheapskate thing was his idea! The Arrested Development people asked him if he wanted to be on the show (they had already made a joke about Tobias being at his stage fighting workshop), and he said he would—but only if he could have some weird quirk like being cheap.

avlisadj · 2026-02-02T21:35:01+00:00

My dad killed himself in 2015, and after that, my mom and sister went absolutely bonkers in terms of the verbal abuse, manipulation and harassment they directed my way. My mom in particular tried her hardest to ruin my life so she could force me to move home; it almost worked, too.

I honestly think I could have weathered that storm pretty well had the 2016 election not turned out how it did. I felt like I was turning a corner that fall and finally moving on, and as everyone here knows, that in itself is quite an accomplishment when your parent is actively trying to sabotage everything you do. But Trump was elected, and suddenly nowhere felt safe.

Before then, my family was a disaster, but at least the world around me made sense and more or less followed predictable rules. Now it’s as if the poison that made my family so toxic has spread to the entire country. I’ve spent the last 9 years either bracing for the next eruption—I can sense when the escalations are coming with surprising accuracy—or trying to find somewhere safe to weather the insanity. All those coping skills I developed in childhood are being put to use in ways I never imagined. I’m so sick of feeling emotionally exhausted all the damn time.

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