• Metal ice cube trays. They never cracked or leaked and you never had to tip the water down the tray to fill up all of the little cubes. The water also froze a lot faster in the metal trays.
  

• Sunday morning with my friends watching the Sunday Monster Movie Matinee. There was nothing better than watching Abbott and Costello meet the Mummy, or the original Frankenstein with Boris Karloff. Every once in a while, there'd be a Shirley Temple movie. My favourite was The Bluebird. Do girls even watch Shirley Temple movies now, or are they all hooked on Hannah Montana?

• Dangerous kids' toys, like my Thingmaker. Kids burned themselves on the hot plate, so it was taken off the market, sold, and re-issued. How about kids learning how not to touch the hot plate? Or how about parents supervising its use? Another great toy was my Easy Bake Oven. I'm glad that Hasbro still makes that.

• Phone conversations. Remember calling your friends and chatting for ages on the phone? I can remember my mother yelling "get off the phone! I need to make a call." Nowadays, few people use the phone just to chat. Now, it's text messaging and email, or VOIP if you have it. Every time my phone rings, I know someone's trying to get me to donate to a charity. That's when it does ring - which is hardly ever.

• Nice clothes. Nowadays, in order to get clothes cut for a woman's shape, you have to go high end designer brand. My mother used to take my sister and me to Sears or JC Penney. They had clothes for every kind of figure. Now, it's not profitable enough for manufacturers to offer so many sizing options. The sizes have all been made generic, which usually means that if it fits me in one place, it doesn't fit me in another. I'm going to go back to sewing my own things.

• Time. I used to have more time. I could put my hair in rollers and not have to worry about catching the train into work at 6:30 am. Now, I don't do anything with my hair. No woman I know does, other than the basics. If it can't be styled with a certain cut, it gets pulled back into a pony tail. I could also spend over an hour making dinner if I wanted to. Now, if I can't make it in half that time, then we grab fast food.

• Decent music. OK, now I know I sound like a real fuddy duddy, and I do like some new music, but most of it seems to be a complete rehash of the things I listened to in the '70's and '80's. Has the planet run out of talent? Maybe it has and I just missed the memo.

• Pastels. I recall little Mid-century Modern homes with turquoise trims and wall colour, or peach and lemon. Cars came in pastel shades like coral, lemon, cream and turquoise. The world just looks so much more harsh without pastels.

• Men in suits and a hat. I rarely see a man in a suit. In a button up shirt - sure. But a suit? Rarely. In a hat? Almost never. And pipes? Do men smoke pipes any more? I mean, beautiful burled wooden and clay ones that don't use water and burn flavoured tobacco and not that green stuff. I miss the smell of brandied tobacco burning slowly in a pipe.
  

• Going out to see a movie. Last time Dan and I went to see a movie, all we bought at the concession stand was a bottle of water, and it cost us a total of $38. No wonder we rarely go.

Labels: nostalgia, vintage