SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you're old enough to remember when phones had cords and the only thing that went viral was a cold, then you're in the right place. Welcome to the Big Six Toe with Kaylee Harris and Guy Rolliston. Because who better to discuss life's second act than two people who still think mature is a type of cheese?

SPEAKER_04 0:30

Welcome back to the Big Six O, the podcast where we prove that growing up in the 70s and 80s was basically a combination of freedom, questionable safety standards, and somehow surviving it all. And today's episode is called Things That Were Completely Normal in the 70s and 80s that would shock kids today. And joining me, as always, is my partner in nostalgia. A woman who grew up in the golden era of backyard adventure, dodgy sun tanning etiquette, and a single phone that probably stretched halfway down the hallway on a curly cord. Kaylee Harris, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

G'day, my friend, how you doing?

SPEAKER_04 1:10

I'm doing okay. How did you manage to survive the 70s and 80s? Probably some of the 90s too, I don't.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

How did we? And and when you think about the way that we lived and and and even some even our parents as well, you know, how they parented us back in the 70s and 80s, and just extraordinary, isn't it, when you think that uh with the helicopter parenting generation, and I'm one of those, you know. Um, yeah, let's go back to the things that we did as kids that would shock kids today.

SPEAKER_04 1:42

Well, if you were like me, and I'm pretty sure you were, whether it was after school, whether it was during school holidays, where mum, dad, whoever would say, go outside and play. And that was about the only rule that you had. You had to get out there, whether you got on your bike, whether you went down to a mate's place, and unlike today, where you know you had to check in every so often, you went out until it was virtually dark, or you thought, Oh, I need to run home now because the streetlights are on, sort of thing. The things we got up to that we didn't want anyone else to know, horribly spurious, let alone probably very dangerous. Um, yeah, scary stuff, wasn't it? R really, you had a free, free hand on what happened for the next X number of hours.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah, off you go on your bike with no helmet, and then or I'd go over to Jeffrey's next door and and because he was into matchbox cars, and I'd and we used to sit in the dirt and in the back and make little towns out of with m with dirt and mud and drive our matchbox cars through all these roads and everything. But we we did that for hours. We that would keep us occupied for hours.

SPEAKER_04 2:57

Wow, there's that that's that's that's pretty dangerous sort of stuff, playing matchbox cars in the dirt, and that's that's that's edgy estate stuff. I know, I could have caught anything. How many parents today, you know, if if Johnny or Mary, you know, sort of get a face full of dirt or whatever, yeah, it immediately comes out, you know, we we need to get you to the hospital because who knows what you've ingested, you know.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Whereas, you know, that was just part and part of what kids these days aren't a lot of kids aren't allowed to go outside without shoes on.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

Yep. Well, how about drinking out of the garden hose though?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Oh. But we all did. We all took turns at drinking out of the garden hose, and I think because it it meant we could stay outside and keep playing without having to stop what we were doing, go inside and get an actual glass. So we'd just have the hose and we'd pass it round to every everybody in the group and have a swig of water that tasted like rubber.

SPEAKER_04 3:47

Instead of mum giving you the water bottle, the probably the the $120 water bottle, you know, make sure you have a drink. Yeah, if you got thirsty, around to Kaylee's house, turn on the hose, and yeah, you're right, that your six mates would all drink out of the same garden hose, and you came home pretty normal, apart from the occasional twitch, I guess. But but that's just that was life, and there wasn't too many repercussions as far as your health was concerned that I remember.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Yeah, and our parents managed to survive not knowing where we were a lot of the time, even like moving forward to the eighties and when we were going out um with our friends and they had no idea where we were, couldn't see where we were, didn't know who we were with. None of this Find My Friends app where you can see where your kid is and who's with them and all that sort of stuff. None how did our parents sleep at night?

SPEAKER_04 4:37

Was the world any more dangerous to be like?

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Oh, I'm sure it was just as dangerous.

SPEAKER_04 4:42

I think the things that were sort of sort of befell us, because we're a lot more trusting as kids, but I think we're all out together doing those sort of things. But even our parents, and it's one thing to say, you know, uh that they they used the knowledge they had to, you know, to bring us up. But things like riding in the back of cars without seat belts, um, because seat belts weren't LAW then. And even, you know, you if you had a station wagon, I remember my grandfather had a a Ford station wagon, and there'd be five or six of us in the back. If we were going on a picnic somewhere, it would be great. You'd be rolling in the back with the, you know, your your cousins or your brothers or your sisters, and you know, you you go around the corners, and how funny was that that you'd slammed into the person next to you. That's right. Um, and if you had a baby, you you had them on mum's lap in the front seat.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Yeah, or if you got car sick, you got to sit in the front between mum and dad on the bench seat. That's no seat belts. How did we survive those trips to Queensland and were family holidays?

SPEAKER_04 5:42

Oh my gosh, I'd forgotten about it. If you if you're a little bit sarcastic, you just sat on the front at the front with mum and dad. Oh, good one. But bikes everywhere, no helmets, you know, whether it was climbing trees, um, and and catching cicadas. We used to catch cicadas, which meant you actually did have to climb a tree to catch those brown bakers, green grocers, all those sort of cicadas. You don't see kids catching cicadas today, probably because cicadas have worked out kids aren't allowed to sort of get up that high these days.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Yeah, well, I and I also think that kids these days, thanks to us, are more frightened of insects and lizards and bugs than than perhaps we were. You know, if you if you put a if a kid, I don't know if about your kids or grandkids, but if my kids see a spider, it's like absolutely the I'm gonna die. It's the worst thing ever. I guess just a spider. Or it's just a blue-tongue lizard, it's not gonna hurt you, but they seem more fearful of of of everything these days.

SPEAKER_04 6:38

Yeah. Did you have boundaries as far as the neighborhood was concerned? Uh like you knew you you couldn't go a certain distance away, no?

SPEAKER_01 6:47

No, I'd go probably one or two, maybe three suburbs away if I had enough time. I'd go from suburbs? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah, I'd I'd ride to the next suburb or um yeah, usually one or two suburbs away for the for the day, just on your bike, away you go.

SPEAKER_04 7:03

Did you ever end up somewhere you definitely shouldn't have been?

SPEAKER_01 7:07

No.

unknown 7:08

No.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

No, what about you?

SPEAKER_04 7:10

Um I was definitely places where I was told I probably shouldn't go. But that was maybe a bit later in life, I guess, you know, as a late teen. Where if we went into the city, where we'd go into the city, um, we were always told that where the cinema district was, which is down near that Chinatown end of Sydney, don't go up to the rocks because it's it's it's way too rough up the rocks end, and it's completely different these days. You go up the rocks, very gentrified. But I remember that we would go up to that rock's end of of the city, and because we were told you shouldn't, you you you sort of did. You did, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Well, we we were told to stay away from King's Cross, which we did, uh, because it was the cross in the eighties was very different, uh, as we know from many documentaries and stuff, but um, yeah, I didn't go up there.

SPEAKER_04 8:03

Yeah. But it's talking about being kids, um, I'll just hark back to, you know, being probably in it must have been the late 70s, there was still smoking in like in staff rooms, in offices, um, all those sort of things now where um I remember we had a teacher who routinely would walk around with his pipe um at school. Um you try and explain that to anyone today and say, well, yeah, that's that's yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Well, we had um ashtrays on our desks at work in the eighties, and we had our cigarettes there, our you know, our whinny blues or whatever, and and the whole workplace was full of smoke, and it was just what happened, and no one complained about it, and no one the people who didn't smoke didn't say anything. It was just what everyone did. And also when you talk about the workplace, you know, I was thinking about the things that were said to us as girls in the eighties by by other people at men at work, um, was just totally unacceptable on a lot of levels, on on all levels actually. And those things that happened, you know, I'd hate to think that they would happen to my daughter now in the workplace, but I can remember, you know, um, as you know, worked in a radio station being felt up by a very well-known Australian entertainer. Uh, and apparently so were a lot of other people. But you didn't say anything. We didn't you you didn't you couldn't do anything about it. Um, and I can remember being, you know, in the same workplace, I can remember being pushed up against a wall by a guy in the office who who then proceeded to try and kiss me.

SPEAKER_04 9:45

No.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

And I was just like, dude, get off me. No, I'm not, you know, and he would and and uh at the time I just walked away. I didn't think anything of it. But when I think about it now, I go, Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 9:58

What part of that is right anyway, it doesn't matter what era it is, what what any part of that is is you know is okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:07

I I remember getting uh at a at a place I worked in the uh in the early 80s, there was a memo that went around, but it went around to all the women and and it was uh during the height of summer and women were not allowed to wear slacks or pants in the office because uh you know it it or or the I remember the inverted commas or abbreviated sunsuits, which basically meant a short skirt in the boss's eyes. You actually had to wear like uh like it was almost something out of um leave it to beaver, it had to be that very, you know, 50s mother sort of look as far as and this was something that was in the early 80s from the CEO as a dress code for women in the office.

SPEAKER_03 10:51

And I thought, even then, what what's going on here?

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yeah, yeah, it's frightening, isn't it, when you think about it. I mean, I know sexual harassment still happens in the workplace today, it's still, and I don't think we'll ever get rid of it, it'll always be around in some form or another. But um thank goodness we've moved on from those sorts of incidents back in the 80s.

SPEAKER_04 11:11

We talk about uh sort of uh and I'll I'll hark back again to school days, but even the punishments that used to be dealt out at school and at the corporal punishments, you know, the getting the cane. Um I mean, detention is one thing, you know, and I I remember getting detention, I think it was I was in year five, and we had to we had to stand against a brick wall. It was the middle of summer, and I think it was for the 45 minutes we had lunchtime, we had to stand there, brick wall, hide a summer, uh, and that that was it. Like I'm thinking, just that in itself, let alone the cane, which was still quite prevalent in high school. Can you imagine what what would be the repercussions with parents coming up to schools now saying you made young Kaylee stand in the sun for some of the things?

SPEAKER_01 12:02

And there was no such thing as a school hat. You just stood out in the sun. None of this no hat. Did you ever get the cane?

SPEAKER_04 12:09

Um no. Uh in a version, but not not not from the headmaster.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Okay, this is like something kinky you got up to in the 90s, or well, you know, you know what the story is.

SPEAKER_04 12:24

Uh it was uh it was a case of uh I think I was in year eight or something like that, and there was a a much, much older teacher who's probably younger than we are now, um, and uh she was convinced I'd said something in the classroom, and it was a kid behind me or just whatever, and she came up and she got the the ruler um which had a metal edge along the side, and she told me to put my hand down on the desk and then proceeded to make an example of me by continuing to hit the back of my hand with that ruler with the metal edge until my hand was bleeding. Um like just multiple sort of wounds across the back of the hands. And of course, I wasn't gonna dob the kid in behind me because you didn't want to be seen as a dauber. Um, but yeah, um all hell sort of cut loose when I got home, and mum says, How did you get that? And I had to say, Well, such and such did this, well, up we went to the hair. Well, you know, that's justifiable. Dad probably thought I deserved it, even if I didn't say what I said. Um, but yeah, but just the concept of getting the cane from the principal, um, and you know, for whatever, six across the hand, six the best, or the back of the leg.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Can you imagine that? Oh, I know. Or having the the blackboard duster thrown at you, that happened quite a lot. But and we had I was talking to Simone Fletcher in class one day, and the old Italian teacher that we had came up and grabbed me by the hair and her by the hair and banged our heads together so hard that she actually took a chunk of Simone's hair out. And Simone's father was up at the school the next day. And I thought, can you imagine that happening? But you were talking before about dabbing. That's another thing that it was you were considered a dauber if you told on any of your other kids for anything that they had done. Whereas even that's all changed now, and I think that's for the better. That you you know, we kids are encouraged to call out bad behaviour and to call out bullying. And I and that's such a great thing now. I think the whole idea of being of daubing being a negative, it's actually not. It's actually if you're being somehow victimized, or you know someone who is and you don't say anything, that's a positive that's changed for the for our kids.

SPEAKER_04 14:39

Oh yeah, sure. Um I don't know whether there would have been too many positives from uh teacher rapping you across the knuckles till it bled because someone may have said something. I don't know whether I would have got too much of a positive or that kid. It could have been your mate Jeff. I don't know. Could have been. But positives too is the awareness of sunsets today. I know mention you're standing next to a brick wall and in the sun because you're on detention, but you would have been one of those chicks that would have just lathered yourself in reef oil or baby oil and just put yourself on a towel at the beach somewhere, would you?

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Or I think I did it once and I got so badly burnt I never did it again. Because I've haven't got that kind of skin that can do that. I just go red and then go back to white. So I so I I think I tried to do it to be with the cool kids, but you're effectively putting reef oil on your skin and going out in the sun, you're cooking your skin.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

But how many times did we see it? You just see you know, uh kid after kid after kid, invariably girls, boys would be tough and never admit to the fact that they got so sunburnt it actually hurt. But you would see it, wouldn't you? Like the the bottles of Johnson baby oil or the reef tanning with no, you know, uh SBF in it whatsoever, and baking.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yeah, just no such thing as sunscreen till the whole slip slop slap thing came in. Just out you go and you just do your best.

SPEAKER_04 16:01

Yeah. I mean, we're we're we're more aware of it, but um surely after you've got sunburnt that badly, you'd have to think, well, is this a good thing? But but uh as a kid I remember um my grandmother used to put olive oil and vinegar on me if I'd got sunburnt down at the beach as a like a five-year-old or a six-year-old, you'd smell like fish and chips for the next day or so. But the olive oil was supposed to take out the um the oh to moisturize your skin, and the vinegar was supposed to take the sting out of it. Now, why you sort of got that sort of much sunburn on you in the first place, I don't know. But the the the home remedy was probably almost as bad as the the sting.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Yeah, well, there's a whole nother podcast in home remedies. We'll do that at another time.

SPEAKER_04 16:45

I know, I know, but uh it's one of those things, isn't it? They they they equip themselves with the information, and kids today probably would even be as acutely as aware as anyone that if it's starting to get a little bit hot, then you probably need to do something. Whereas we just kept playing.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yeah, exactly. And going back to school for a second, you talked we're talking about lunch boxes and how some kids didn't even have lunch to bring to school for whatever reason. Their parents couldn't afford didn't make them lunch or couldn't afford to give them lunch money, so they just came to school, would ask other kids for food. And there was no such thing as being anaphylactic aware we just whatever you chucked in or whatever your parents chucked in there, you ate. And there was no I was never asked what I wanted. It was like whatever mum put in there, we had to eat it. It was a vegemite sandwich or whatever. Whereas these days, you know, kids get offered things to go into their lunchbox, like what would you like? Do you want ham? Do you want cheese? Do you want blah blah blah? I was we were never asked.

SPEAKER_04 17:44

Yeah, and they're a little bit gourmet too, you know. You might have your Greek feta that might be sitting in a little this sort of thing, and I'm thinking, yeah, you'd get the tomato sandwich, and by the time, you know, lunchtime came around, it you know, you could have wrung it out and used it as a chamois and just it it was you might have an apple and not cut up, you'd have a whole apple or mandarin and a sandwich, and that was it. Yep, yep. Hey, did you did you have just we all just had one phone at home, didn't we?

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yeah, well, yes, yeah, one phone and it wasn't cordless. This is before cordless, it was uh it was on a long it was on a cord.

unknown 18:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Um, no answering machine, so you didn't know who was ringing you, you had to answer it to find out.

SPEAKER_04 18:25

Uh-huh. There are things that like if you were to say today to anyone, oh here, go and answer the phone. Oh, and you'd have to get up and probably walk to the other end of the house, not knowing who was ringing, and then you know, uh yeah, uh Kaylee, it's for you, and then Kaylee would have to trout up the other end of the house and answer the phone. And if it was a boyfriend or a girlfriend, yeah, those private conversations, not so much. No such thing as call screening or and uh did you ever get I know look, I I used to go around to a friend's house and uh if he played up, it was always from his mum, wait till your father gets home.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:07

There was that threat.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Yes, yeah. It's a lot of pressure for dads, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 19:12

A lot of or or that stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Cry about.

SPEAKER_04 19:18

There's a generation of us that know what that means, but can you imagine, you know, uh uh community services or whatever would be onto you like a flash if there was any evidence that that sort of language was being thrown around the city.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

That's going on, yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. And what about things like um we didn't have streaming services or anything like that? So kids could, you know, we we had four channels, we had the three commercials and ABC, and that was it. And the you'd look forward every week to a particular episode of whatever your favorite TV show was, and if you missed it, it's gone. There's no replaying it. There's no, you know, you'd you'd and then the next day you'd go to school and talk to your friends about, oh, what about the episode last night? Can't wait for next week. There was none of this being able to have on-demand content whenever you want it. It was just whenever the TV networks decided to serve it up to us.

SPEAKER_04 20:12

Yep. I I remember we actually only had three channels. Dad did not believe that the ABC was a real television option. So we'd have seven, ten, and nine here in Sydney, and that was our view. And you're right, you'd you'd go up and you'd go to school and say, Oh, did you see Happy Days yesterday? Or uh oh, you know, you did you see Saturday night or Sunday night at the movies? You'd wait all week for that movie to come on, and then dad'd blow you out of the water because he'd say, Oh look, I want to watch, you know, it's a knockout. Uh and and they'd that have and once again, there's an there's a situation where let's have something on television where people get physically harmed and and it's pretty funny. Um and TV execs will think, yeah, no, that that's good. We'll uh we'll go with that. Yeah, we'll go with that.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Yeah, well what could possibly go wrong? And there was only uh over like one TV in the house, and you all crowded around it. There was there wasn't more than one, and none of this TV in your bedroom stuff, that was only what super rich people did. Um but yeah, if you and and the same with movies, if you're waiting for a movie to come out at the cinema and it would come, and if you missed that six-week window when it was screening, you missed it. Then you'd have to wait 12 months for the video to come out, so you could go and buy the video or the DVD. None of this on-demand stuff now. You can watch whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want.

SPEAKER_04 21:36

Another thing again isn't if you want to go and watch a movie, okay, you don't have to go to the cinema. But yeah, you did have to go to the video store to get your beta, well, or your VHS tape, and that's another thing altogether. But just just the fact that you had to wait all week for your favourite TV show. Um did that did that teach us patience and sort of what? I I don't know. I don't No, like and we couldn't binge watch, you know, uh Punch and whatever he was from chips or or whatever. Yeah we couldn't binge watch.

SPEAKER_03 22:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:09

Yeah. Imagine saying that. I often wonder I had the situation years ago where the nieces and nephews in our world were all in the same room. Okay. They were all in this in at our place in a in a room. And there were probably five or six of them, and they were all sort of laying across each other's legs. They were probably, I don't know, 12, 13, I can't remember how old they were. And they're all on their phones. And we thought, what's going on? They're very quiet. They were all texting each other while they were laying there in the same room, sending each other messages.

SPEAKER_03 22:41

I thought, aren't you all in the same room together here?

SPEAKER_04 22:48

I mean, it's it's it's incomprehensible that we actually made friends because we didn't have that ability to have multiple sources of communication at the same time. If I'm ringing Kaylee, or were still, I knock on Kaylee's door. Hi, can you come out and play today?

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Yeah. Um all that awkwardness that came with that that kids these days don't have to worry about because they can send a text.

SPEAKER_04 23:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Like even now, my daughter will message me from her bedroom in the morning, hi mum, what's for breakfast? Because I'm in the kitchen. I'm like l I'm literally ten feet from you.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

Yeah. Um Imagine writing someone like a pen pal.

SPEAKER_04 23:30

I remember we got given pen pals when we were in year four, and and and it was some some address in New Zealand or America or whatever. I don't know where teachers or these people got these names from. They they could have been they could have been easy.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

You know, like serial killer.

SPEAKER_04 23:49

Some penitentiary somewhere where they're getting, you know, letters. And and but we blindly just wrote to people and letters would sometimes come back. Um tell people today that you just blindly write to someone at a random address where I don't know where they got it from, and you're going to get a letter back to an address, which leads me to your phone book and saying to people, yeah, you worry about internet security and this and that. Well, if I wanted to find where someone lived, I'd go to the white pages and go flick, flick, flick. Oh, look it up. There's there's their phone number, there's their address. Bingo.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

So true, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 24:25

Security issue? I don't think so. As for people just showing up on your doorstep unannounced, um, yeah, that's another thing. There was a lot going on, wasn't there?

SPEAKER_01 24:38

I know, and even just calling your calling your friends' parents Mr. and Mrs. That was a thing, you know. They did these days kids don't do that. That's everyone's first names, which is not a I'm not against that. It's not a bad thing. Um, but it's yeah, they just they they would never call their parents' friends Mr. and Mrs.

SPEAKER_04 24:55

No, I I actually I was of that generation as you are, and it wasn't until I was probably in my 30s I actually waited until the man across the road from where my folks live invited me to call him Ken.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:12

But up until that time, yeah, I kept it was Mr. and Mrs.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Yeah, it's a good it's a lovely sign of respect, isn't it? And I think that that I there's something nice about that. I mean I'd yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:23

Yeah. Were you you allowed were you I can't remember, were you you you walked to school?

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Um to primary school, yes. High school was a bit far away. We used to catch a bus. Uh but yeah, we walk we would walk to school, um, in primary school for sure.

SPEAKER_04 25:38

Yeah, I I well there was a a a couple of kids in our year who and it would have been uh easy, probably a two, three, four kilometer walk. They were a long way away, but they would walk to school. Yeah. Um yeah, I don't know how many kids do that, or do it just go in the SUV and get dropped off early. Um and with some members of the family who are teachers, who will say kids will be waiting at the front of the school before the gates actually open because mum and dad have dropped them off to go to work. Um, and but they need to be dropped off because that's safe, and yet they're waiting at the front of the gates which aren't open. Um I'm not sure which is safer.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

So the kids are safely handed over to the school. But that, yeah, we would just mosey on, take our time, getting to school and walking. And I can remember, and I was in high school here in Sydney, and I remember um there was I would have been 15, I think, and there was a bloke that a a guy who was like 17 and he liked me. I I he met me through some of my friends.

SPEAKER_04 26:44

It wasn't a pen pal, was it?

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Oh god. Oh, I think you wished. Um, and I came down to catch the bus from school, got on the bus, and he was parked in his little green mini there, and he followed the bus home. And I was sitting like three seats from the back, because I wasn't cool enough to be in the backseat, and I kept looking out the back window, and he was following the bus, waiting for me to get off. And I and I remember when I finally came to my stop, I didn't feel confident enough to say something to the bus driver, because he would have just said, get off my bus, you know, I've got somewhere to be. Um, there was another girl from my school who who was older who got off, and I said, Can I walk with you? Because I'm scared. And she said, What are you scared of? I said, That guy's following me. And she walked me halfway home, and then she went to her house, and she goes, Well, this is my house, you know, you could you can just go walk by yourself from here. And luckily nothing happened. And I guess a similar things could happen these days. That's not unique to our generation, but the fact that I think kids are a lot more aware now of that sort of thing, that it's not okay, and that they could turn to an adult and say, I'm frightened, whereas I didn't feel I could do that, I felt I'd be laughed at and yeah, frightening.

SPEAKER_04 28:03

It is frightening. The the and this will this will sound flippant, and I know we've got places to be very shortly, but the do you remember sex education when you were a kid? And it was like there was all there'd be films about ducks or chooks, and and I I remember going, there was a church hall with all the kids, and it was all very hush-hush, and like it was all very funny and whatever. And you'd learn about sex education. I'm sure it's got a different name these, I'm sure it's called something that's very Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

I didn't I didn't do did didn't get sex ed until high school.

unknown 28:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

I didn't get definitely didn't get it. Uh well, not that I remember in primary, but in high school at going to an all-girls school, we got the the talk.

SPEAKER_04 28:46

Um well, being an all-girls school too, there was being a lot of talk, not just probably that was organized and structured.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:53

But I remember in in the end of primary school we had a um we had a sex education thing, and it was after hours, like it was you had to go along with your parents who were probably horribly embarrassed by it all. But it was pictures of chickens and ducks, and like we came out more confused than we probably went in, not knowing why we were there and why there were pictures of ducks.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

They probably couldn't show you pictures of vaginas and penises, could they? Yeah, that wouldn't be appropriate either.

SPEAKER_04 29:21

No, you're right, but all very inappropriate.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

I was just gonna say, I don't know that that's changed that much when I took went to school with my kids for sex ed, and they all up the front sitting on the mat, you know, giggling and laughing behind their hands, and all the parents are up the back, and and we're all doing the same thing. We're all laughing as well. So I don't know that sex education has changed that much between us and our kids.

SPEAKER_04 29:45

The only thing that hasn't changed, I think, and I was watching Play School with one of my grandkids not so long ago, and uh that covert sort of double entendre sort of meanings that go along with Big Ted and Jemima and everything, that hasn't changed for years. But if you could if you could drop if you could drop, say, a 12 or a 15-year-old from you know today back into the 70s, what do you think would shock them the most?

SPEAKER_01 30:17

The most? Um probably the freedom. The freedom that we had as kids. And and and also the shock of not having a digital device in their hand. Of you know, what what do you mean I can't it there'd be no phone and the the fact that your parents didn't know where you were most of the time.

SPEAKER_04 30:35

Yeah, I'd agree with that. I'd agree with anyway. Hey, guess what?

SPEAKER_01 30:39

What we're out of time.

SPEAKER_04 30:40

Well, I've got to be home before the street lights come on, so I'm gonna go. I'll catch up at you another day.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

All right, cheers.

SPEAKER_04 30:47

Alright, see you later. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

The views and opinions expressed on the Big 6-0 are personal and reflect those of the hosts and guests. They do not represent the views or positions of any affiliated organizations or companies. This podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice. Please consult with a qualified professional for guidance on any personal matters.

SPEAKER_04 31:14

Oh, and before we go, let's give credit where credit is due. Kayleigh Harris and I came up with all the genius content for this week's episode. Our producer, Nick Abud. Well, he keeps the lights on and makes sure we don't accidentally upload a cat video instead of a podcast. So thanks for keeping us on track, Nick. Nick. Nick!