Suggest How Old You Are Based On What You Remember From Elementary School

OJ Simpson trial. I didn't think he should've been found innocent.

Paul is dead.

The Pledge *COUGH idol worship COUGH* of Allegiance and the bicentennial.

Thread for puppies.

Viet Nam

The debut of the Alice sitcom! I remember watching the very first episode in the fall of 1976, when I started first grade.

Spuds McKenzie!

Kneeling for communion.

Air raid drills

I remember waiting in line at gas stations during the OPEC oil embargo; the day to fill up depended on the last number of the license plate, if I recall correctly. I also remember my mom watching the Watergate hearings and watching live when Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run.

We're being sent home from school because the President was assassinated.

R11 Lincoln?

N I X O N

R E S I G N S

Watching the space shuttle launch and then reporting back to the class that "it went ok this time."

John Lennon murdered!

Lockerbie disaster.

Trying to decipher the lyrics to ‘American Pie.’

First bombing of the World Trade Center. I was home sick with an ear infection and burst ear drum and missed an ice skating field trip. Watched all that unfold on local news(lived in CT but got NY news).

Dark Shadows, Bozo Circus, Donny and Marie show, Sonny and Cher show. The streaker on the Academy Awards.

Capn Kangaroo, Speed Racer, Banana Splits, HR Puff n Suff, Laffy Taffy, Marathon bars, Burger Chef, Earth shoes, Dashikis, afros

R17 when I was 4 my teenaged sister taught me the lyrics to American Pie and used to make me sing for her friends.

Calling my friend in shock about Kurt Cobain killing himself.

My 2nd grade teacher took a poll right before the presidential election to see who would win amongst our class: Nixon, Humphrey or Wallace.

The Challenger Explosion happened when I was in kindergarten.

The space shuttle with the teacher on it exploding We watched it live in class.

Mt. St. Helens erupting.

I was only a kid, but I regarded John Dean as a despicable person for being the worse kind of rat. I also looked unfavorably on anti-war protesters.

[quote]My 2nd grade teacher took a poll right before the presidential election to see who would win amongst our class: Nixon, Humphrey or Wallace.

My class did a poll between McGovern and Nixon. Nixon won in a landslide.

The War on Terror.

Challenger exploding when I was in first grade.

I don't really remember 9/11

The coloured mixing with whites

John. Wayne. Gacy.

Seeing Jesus being crucified.

Evil Kenievel jumping over snake river canyon.

JFK assassination. Sixth grade.

I remember Johnson being swore in as POTUS after the assassination. Then he was impeached.

Little JonBenet getting butchered on Christmas by Mrs. Patsy Ramsey, formerly of Boulder Colorado. I was very young but remember it playing on the news in our living room and being frightened by such a macabre story.

The Bicentennial

R1 beat me to it. They announced that shit on the inner comm 2nd grade.

Damn. I watched the verdict in my community college lunchroom lol.

Watching Apollo 1 explode live watching in our classroom.

I remember the principal assembling all the students to pray for Apollo 13.

Watching G lose her first Oscar nomination, the first of many, many loses.

I remember watching TV and seeing President Johnson making a speech saying "it is with a heavy heart" that he would not seek re-election.

My dad bought a Cadillac that had fins

Well, I certainly remember things BEFORE I went to elementary school but apparently that is a rare thing.

My brother was born on the weekend that RFK was assassinated in 1968 and I was 4 and 3/4 years old and I remember it very clearly.

I remember stuff from before then too because we lived in a specific house and move a couple months before my brother was born. I remember stuff from 66 and 67 so aproximately when I was 3 and 4.

I remember the presidential elections of 68 because Winnie the Pooh was running on some kids show. And, weirdly, I sort of remember Stonewall or at least something that happened just prior to Stonewall...the death of Judy Garland in June of 69. I heard it on the radio while I was playing in the back yard and felt sad because Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz had died.

After I started school in fall of 69 I remember lots of Vietnam shit on the news...and the Manson Trial was going on and creepy as fuck. And, some protesters took over Disneyland around that time, at least for a few hours.

But, most of all, I remember Pepperidge Farm....

The Manson family killings. I was five, and too young to comprehend what was going on. However, since we lived in a somewhat isolated part of the Hollywood Hills, neither my parents nor our neighbors felt comfortable letting us kids play outside.

Marilyn Monroe is dead. John Kennedy is dead. Barry Goldwater will get us into nuclear war. Cleopatra is a big bomb. Hussy homewrecker.

Collecting money to adopt pagan babies in Africa for $5.00.

My biggest early memory was my dad pulling up in a brand new '59 Chevy and all the excitement that caused. I've been a car buff ever since

My mother let me stay home from morning Kindergarten to watch Charles and Diana's wedding.

Some dude named Charlie Manson.

He was a real Svenghoulie.

The assassination of JFK, RFK, and MLK.

Gun Violence & Conspiracy Theories.

Go Ask Alice, 1st Earth Day, Dark Shadows,

UK in the 70s.

The Yorkshire Ripper.

Myra Hindley’s repeated attempts to get parole.

Three day weeks and nationwide power cuts.

Lord Lucan’s disappearance.

The kidnap and murder of Lesley Whittle by The Black Panther.

a Phyllis Diller Dictionary.

or maybe post elementary, looking at the publication date for the only version I could find. though, it wasn't the same version either.If i recall she seemed to be on quite a few in the 70s.

The death of Angela Lansbury!

No, I kid, I kid. An easy one - Australia's bicentenary. Went to see the tall ships at the wharf. We all got a commemorative coin/medal and had to go to school dressed in olden days fashion. Andrew J showed the girls his penis and had to go sit in the corner.

(we called it Infant school here though.)

The Iran Hostage Crisis

When I was little President JFK came to Chicago to meet Mayor Daley in 1962. We lived along the route Kennedy would take from O'hare to downtown Chicago. My mother took my sister and me to go see him. We were standing next to some nuns singing as the motorcade past. President Kennedy was so impressed with the sight that he stopped his motorcade to get out and great the nuns and well-wishers. My mother freaked and ran over to him snapping pictures with me and my sister in tow. I still have the pictures of the meeting.

My mother is 93 and until this day I never saw her so excited to see a man in her life 😉

"Duck and cover" drills....seemingly every week, as if the tiled walls of the hallways would protect us. They actually made us sing that awful song as we huddled there with the tops of our heads touching the wall.

R50, my brother excitedly ran home from school and told my hugely entertained parents that we were adopting an African baby.

My hand slammed in the suicide doors of a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible.

Watching the first human foot step on the moon (if it indeed really happened).

Waking up to news that RFK was assassinated and hearing what sounded like a strange name - Sirhan Sirhan.

Watching The Banana Splits on Saturday morning TV and thinking the guy featured in the live action serial Danger Island (Jan-Michel Vincent) looked really cute.

OJ trial verdict announced over the PA system in my elementary school.

The Beatles

I can't believe r23 didn't tell us who won!

@r68, "The Beatles "

On the Ed Sullivan Show 😉

Watergate, televised on daytime television in the summer between 4th and 5th grade. It was so boring! I wanted my game shows!!!

I started buying their records a couple of months before the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, r70. My father bought me "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in December of 1963.

And why quotation marks around the Beatles?

^ I was quoting you 🙄

I was a city boy but we would spend parts of the summer with deep-Ozark cousins. It was a three mile walk on their lane to the county road and post office, and then another half mile to their school. Their school would start before ours did, and we would walk to school with them and attend classes, even though we (my twin and I) hadn't been in first grade yet - our cousins are older than we are).

It was a one-room school house. Recess was running around the neighboring fields. My memory is the young female teacher, who was very nice. But she loved Elvis, who was just about to enter the army. She sat on her desk with crossed legs and swung them back and forth as she talked about liking Elvis, and even then I knew something was a bit off with that.

There was a feud (this is true) going on at the time and one day we were shot at on the gravel road - the bullets were ricocheting off the gravel and the dog was hit and ran into the woods. We ran like hell.

I listened to President Nixon's resignation on an O radio at summer camp

I had insomnia as I wanted to be alert and on guard in the early morning for when the night stalker would target us.

OIC, r73.

To quote someone on DL, type this: [quote]

Then insert what you want to quote. It only works on one paragraph at a time, and you don't end with [/quote]. Just let it end at the end of the text you're quoting.

Blue dress, white stains.

Judy Garland dying

The assassination of JFK.

U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy hearings. My mom pointed at the TV and said remember that. You will hear about this again. He is nutz.

I remember my mother telling me that they interrupted her class with an announcement that the King of England had abdicated. And this was in a San Francisco public school.

Duck and cover drills that consisted of hiding under one’s school desk. Evidently, that would have saved us had the missiles been launched.

Being told we would absolutely, positively need to learn the metric system because that would be the only system we would be using by the time we were adults. I don’t think they knew how upsetting and traumatizing it was and how hard they hammered that into us that feet, yards, miles, inches, pints and gallons were no longer go to exist. And it was all lies, it NEVER even happened. The only thing that caught on was the 2 liter bottle. New Math was a big lie and terrible thing too.

Sea-Monkeys.

R79 My very gay brother, five years older than me and of age to remember Garland dying, would tell everyone that he was asked as a child to sing at her funeral.

One day Crying because my school bus driver announced he would no longer be our bus driver because he got drafted and was being sent to Vietnam

I remember the bicentennial celebration, only being able to get gas on odd days and a war happening in Angola.

R88 Ugh, we had to make god damn corn husk dolls because of the Bicentennial, and they would soak the corn husks in a water bleach solution and it would burn your hands, but I have always loved the smell of bleach so there’s that!

The nuclear war drills where they told us if we crawled under our desks and put our hands over our head we would be ok. What bullshit but we followed their directions like little sheep.

The Simpsons premiering and it becoming a literal overnight sensation.

I remember Sister Nicole breaking down in tears she ran out of the classroom. Father Van had to come in and tell us Kennedy was dead. We all prayed. Then they called our parents to come get us. Bad day for third graders in Parochial Schools.

My mom crying as she watched TV coverage of the JFK assassination. I had never seen that before and never saw it again, but we got the day of from school, which was great.

@r77, YOU can follow the DL OPTIONS, I chose to follow the correct form of writing "quotes"

@r92, They told us to, "hurry home quietly"

Huh? In case of WWIII can nukes hear a bunch of 3rd graders running home? 😳

Bill Clinton got a beej and the country lost its mind. And 10 year old me was outraged that an elected official could possibly lie about such a thing!

Like a lot of other people around my age on here it seems, the OJ trial is the first real news event I can remember, although I don't have memories of any specific days/moments. Just that it was something that was going on. The earliest distinct news event I can recall is Clinton's reelection and voting for Ross Perot in our mock election in 3rd grade.

I was in 5th grade, so a little out of elementary school, but I remember my mom asking me during the Lewinsky scandal if I knew what oral sex was. I said yes, although apparently I didn't, since I had gotten oral and aural confused and thought it meant phone sex. I had heard some allegation that Clinton got oral sex from Lewsinky while on the phone with the Joint Chiefs, and I thought that he was going back and forth between multiple calls. I mean, I probably did know what a BJ was; I just didn't connect it with "oral."

The Brady Bunch on ABC Friday night at 8:00 p.m.

I remember being so disappointed when they didn't update the opening credit photos for Season 3 and re-used the Season 2 tic tac toe photos.

Robert Reed was his handsomest in Season 4, in my opinion.

I remember the Challenger exploding though I was in Kindergarden...also baby Jessica a little later.

I remember Sister Mary Margaret telling us we would not get to see the Hindenburg fly over our school after all.

William Howard Taft has a special bathtub built for his obesity in the White House.

Miss Grassie’s (first grade teacher) new fire engine red Thunderbird with “portholes” in the roof.

I was in the 5th grade. All the teachers in my school were called out of class to a meeting. We all just sat there waiting & wondering. The teacher came back to class crying, telling us to gather our things as we were all going home for the day because Pres. Kennedy had just been assassinated.

Sister Mary Principal got on the intercom and ordered our nuns to "process the children immediately across the street to the church to pray for our Catholic President John F. Kennedy, who was shot in Dallas TX this afternoon. We do not know if he is still alive, so pray, don't play." "Process" meant "leave the building in specific grade order."

And that was that. We were whooshed across the street, where our pastor was holding forth, and we prayed, prayed, prayed.

Someone tripped Barbara S., who had stumped for Nixon in our "Kennedy v. Nixon" debate in 1960. I laughed out loud, and was poked in the shoulder by Sister Therese for "playing rather than praying."

^ God you Catholic kids were weird. Always prayin' and singin'. Us public kids used to point and laugh our asses off at you... Until High School when we found out that Catholic girls were easy and ready 😜

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand. It really set into motion so many problems!

Why in the name of god would I have cared, r105, whether Catholic girls were easy or ready?

Read the room, bitch

^ Well, not ALL of us are Gold Star bottoms 🙄

A crazy cartoon I watched but did not understand called Colonel Bleep.

I remember our first grade "mock election" in 2008- McCain won by a landslide. My sister and I asked who had won the "real election" the next morning, mom replied "Obama," rolled over and went back to sleep. I also remember my dad coming home from work one day and showing us all a video of this crazy new up-and-coming pop star everyone was talking about- "Lady Gaga." She wore lightning bolts on her face and disco bras. I thought she was tacky and unimpressive.

I remember when our teacher told us class was canceled because Demi Lovato had been forced to walk by frozen yogurt dispensers that said "fat-free" and they found it triggering. We all cried for them and their travails.

MTV is launched.

Mock election between Ford and Carter

Gas lines - you had to go on your day, it made my parents very upset, no one liked going home from school that day

The Night Stalker & everyone afraid to leave their windows open at night

The kid who danced with Michael Jackson in the Pepsi commercial broke his neck breakdancing and died today.

More middle school (7th grade) but we also had a mock election in '92 where inexplicably Perot won...I still think someone tampered with the results just to fuck around ( I obviously voted Clinton)

What dates me is that I remember nothing from elementary school.

Because I went to a grade school.

I got out of school at 3:00 and RAN home to catch the last 15 minutes of Another World which was only 30 minutes long at the time. Robin Strasser played Rachel.

Mass in Latin.

John Kennedy being assassinated.

I learned to write in Cursive. The Palmer Method was across top of blackboard.

Assassination of RFK (near the end of 3rd grade)

This!

Challenger

Chicken Fat!

"Kelly !!!! she's DEAD !!! Sabrina is DEAD !!!"

I would pretend to have a stomach ache so I could watch Jack LaLanne in the morning on TV.

and this...

Alaska and Hawaii became states.

Love American Style, Here Come the Brides, Birthday House

Sitting in the way back of the carpool station wagon, with “Strawberry Letter 23” by Brothers Johnson playing on the radio.

Believing Russia was going to drop the bomb on us and it terrified me.

And no, I did not go to elementary school last week.

My family's covered wagon.

I don't recall the trial of Patty Hearst, but I do remember Walter Cronkite saying every night how long she'd been in captivity. I remember the energy crisis, our house being very cold and my dad saying "you can blame Jimmy Carter!"

I will always remember Sister Immaculata Concepcion sobbing when telling our third grade class Burt and Lonnie had divorced. The sky was so blue that day.

A lot of y’all went to Catholic school or hung out with a lot of nuns!

Black kids weren't allowed in all white schools.

Lincoln's assassination.

The Mets winning the 1969 World Series (the nuns let us bring in a portable TV and watch the day games).

I remember all the drama around busing in Boston and being kind of confused (I lived in rural Ohio) about where they found all those black people to bus in (yes, I was a stupid kid).

Watching the Cincinnati Reds Opening Day on a color TV every April in our classroom. We'd finished our work in the mornings; the teachers had it all choreographed every year. The kids in all three homerooms of each grade would sit on the floor together,

Jessica McClure

It had frauen clutching their pearls

The space shuttle disaster. We watched it happen live on TV.

I remember when Miss Wheaton caused a scandal by flashing us schoolkids her bare ankle as she boarded her Phaeton carriage.

^ How did a schoolmarm like Miss Wheaton afford a Phaeton carriage? Flashing those ankles for any man who would pay the price

We had a mock presidential election in the primary season in fifth grade.

I voted for Shirley Chisholm.

In the sixth grade I had switched to a suburban school where they also had a mock general election.

Nixon won by a bigger landslide at our new school than he did in the country.

Culture shock ensued for little me.

I have such fond memories ...

Roots

The Seoul summer Olympics and the bicentenary of the French Revolution (I'm french).

Iran hostages released on the day of Reagan's inauguration.

On Election Day 1972, my mom sent me to school in a sweatshirt with a US flag peace sign logo and dozens of McGovern stickers on it. My third grade teacher sent me to the office. It did not end well for the principal or my teacher.

Cafeteria monitors telling you to finish your lunch because there were starving children in Biafra.

Yeh R151, for us it was "children starving in India". (so slightly older maybe ...)

This thread is giving me Billy Joel We Didn’t Start the Fire vibes.

DY-NO-MITE! and Kermie, baby…

This glorious moment. Even as a kid, I knew she was wrong, and deserved that pie smacked in her face.

Playing dodgeball and tetherball in the playground. My parents having to buy a wooden recorder for me so I could participate with the rest of my class playing some shit like "Greensleeves".

R156 Have you kept up with the recorder?

No I haven't but I just saw an episode of The Office when Dwight Shrute played his recorder at a funeral. Made me melancholy. .

Walking into my house and finding my mother very upset. Elvis has just died.

Seeing that Queen ventriloquist and "Madame" on TV. And her friend "Crazy Mary." One time Crazy Mary flipped up her dress to show and Madame commented "that's a crazy place for a Stick Up air freshener" motioning to her doll cunt.

I remember Waylon!

The Jonestown Massacre, when Kool-Aid became uncool.

Duck and cover. I like IKE.

"Judy Garland has been found dead in her London home"

Seeing this image (repeatedly) on the news and then having nightmares for weeks.

This...

At the close of the school day, someone in middle school drew a mustache on George Washington in the picture hanging beside the offices door. The principal gathered every single student in the gym and told us no one was leaving until someone admitted to doing it. We were there for over an hour and a half, well past the time the buses picked us up and drove us home. Parents arrived at the school. None of them raised any objection. They saw how valuable this lesson was, it put the fear of God in us. Someone finally confessed, and we were allowed to go.

My Mom basically said to me when we got home, "If I ever hear about you doing something like that, you will be grounded until your reach the age of 18, and don't think I'll bend to make you feel better."

Consider how modern parents would handle this situation....

R167 I’m glad I didn’t go to you school. In middle school art class we were warned not to washout the brushes with tons of paint on them as it would stop up the sink and clog the drain. It happened and the sink overflowed. The teacher told us we weren’t allowed to leave until someone confessed to doing it. It was only about ten minutes, but I put up my hand to confess because I couldn’t stand the tension anymore, I was a complete wreck. The art teacher told me curtly to put down my hand, she knew I didn’t do it, I was that good of a kid. The kind who reminds the teacher about the extra homework for the long weekend, or put in charge of the class when the teacher steps out.

This moment

Our class room was on the second floor.

The Freedom Train.

Diane Downs shot her kids.

King Tut Exhibit.

Wasn't in school yet, but watched The Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

In school - Richard Speck killed eight student nurses in Chicago.

I come from a plethora of 1980s Art Historian who were inspired to study it after seeing the King Tut exhibit touring the country in the 70s.

AIDS crisis, Challenger, Chernobyl, Iran-Contra, Tiananmen Square

R168 was always a huge cunt. Blech.

The Johnstown Flood was a terrible tragedy. If only they hadn’t used child labor to build the dam.

Being only five at the time, mother wouldn’t let me work on the dam. Too dangerous! She insisted I keep my night job in the coal mine.

The damn wasn’t flawed by child labor, it was an old earthen damn which was widened to accommodate the wealthy people’s carriages and the sluice drains at the bottom were removed, which caused it to sag and be compromised. They also put screens across the water runoff pipes to keep the fish from escaping, which became clogged and blocked. Add all the extra rain and the rising water pressing against the fragile damn and you have a recipe for disaster.

Pish posh!! Were you there R117??

I’m telling you it was child labor. My schoolmates Cecil and Millard poured the cement. They were paid 7 cents a day, and never let me forget it.

Phyllis George Sylmar earthquake

That day we got TWO flies for lunch.