Remember when gran warmed the dinner plates in the oven so the meal stayed warm? It was a simple thing that was thoughtful.
My friend Benny visited his grandma and reminded me of this little slow act that has been largely lost in our fast world.
It sent me down a rabbit hole of deep nostalgia about the little things we used to do before we were sucked into mobile phones and the internet.
Remember that we would use talcum powder after every shower – just because it felt great? Remember when you would be allowed one bottle of sarsaparilla at Christmas or your birthday?
What about how we would all send postcards to people we loved to show them how great the holiday destination was? I still remember sending a postcard of The Big Banana to my bestie in Year 8. Imagine the cringey cries that would lead to these days!
Remember we collected stamps, and $5 for your birthday was stuck inside the card from your gramps with sticky tape? Remember we had burn-offs in incinerators in the backyard? We read the paper from front to back and that included the announcements such as who had died and who was now engaged.
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We had sprinklers that made us laugh for hours in summer. We sat on back steps and ate cold watermelon. Milk in a glass bottle was delivered to our door. We drank straight from drink taps and troughs at school and didn’t need water bottles that cost a quarter of your pay packet.
We ate white bread covered in sliced banana and sugar sprinkles. We hitched a lift in the back of dad’s ute. We only had TV with ads in every show and had to wait a whole week for the next episode of our favourite series. We collected ice-cream sticks in the hope of winning a prize and then used those sticks to make Christmas tree decorations.
We had so much less, yet so much more effort went into everyday things that seemed to punctuate the act of living with importance.
Today, it feels like we are just surviving. My favourite thing in the world to do was to sit in front of my tape deck and record each song from the Top 40 countdown so I could make my own playlists of music. No wonder I went into radio for my job.
Sami Muirhead is a radio announcer, blogger and commentator, wife and mum of three.
