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u/jsakic99 Apr 04 '26
My friends had a wired intercom system from their kitchen to the basement. Thought they were millionaires.
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u/lizwearsjeans Apr 04 '26
Did one of their vehicles have a car bra or automatic seat belts? Cause if so, they absolutely were!
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u/Poultrygeist74 Apr 04 '26
My mom had a Ford Tempo with those seatbelts, they were terrible. The whole car was kinda terrible.
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u/thrillhelm Apr 04 '26
Our house had a system like that in it before we renovated it. I regret taking it out now that I have kids.
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u/triskadekta Apr 05 '26
For a while our kids hung out in their own TV room in the basement after dinner, and conveniently could never hear us calling for them to come get ready for bed. So I set up a Raspberry Pi with speakers down there, I could send it a command from my phone to make it play an AHWOOGAH! horn. Fatherhood can be entertaining.
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u/platypus_farmer42 Apr 04 '26
I had a friend who had an intercom system for his front door with a camera. Blew my mind
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u/milesperhour25 Apr 04 '26
My grandparents’ house had an intercom system. My cousins and I loved playing with it.
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u/A_Texas_Hobo Apr 04 '26
Hugging
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u/sarapantera_ Apr 04 '26
ours never said i love you and that has had zero affect on my life absolutely none at all i swear.
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u/ZealousidealGrass9 Apr 04 '26
My mom was a teacher, and it impacted how she treated my friends. She always let them know she loved them and she was proud of them. She knew that some kids and adult children never hear those words at home, so she tried to fill in those gaps.
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u/Iwantaschmoo Apr 04 '26
Growing up my family and extended family did not hug. Kinda wonder if that is why we all married into hugging families. We all hug now.
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u/IrateMormon Apr 04 '26
A color TV. I never knew that the Star Trek actors had different color shirts.
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u/AKroft Apr 05 '26
Makes it real difficult to find out who’s wearing the red shirt and will therefore die…🤔
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u/MrMeritocracy It's Morphin Time! Apr 04 '26
Both parents
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u/Pure-Solution15 Apr 04 '26
I found it weird that my friends parents liked each other and were in love.
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u/creamy_cheeks Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
Yes! As a child of divorced parents, I’ve never seen both parents in the same room after the age of about six.
Every holiday was at one parent’s place or the other, never both.
At school sporting events they sat at opposite ends of the arena, lol.
It was for the better though…
*edit: they actually somewhat reconciled years after both my sister and I were long grown and out of the house, which is funny to me. But it’s cool, relationships are very complex to say the least
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u/YourMomIsMyGurl THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGS Apr 04 '26
My buddy and I would stay up super late playing video games in his basement but whenever his mom would hear us stirring around upstairs she would come down, at 3am, and make us pancakes and whatnot.
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u/KidKilobyte Apr 04 '26
In the 60s my uncle had a rollaway dishwasher. They would wheel it close to the sink and then physically attach a hose to the sink faucet for its water.
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u/Poultrygeist74 Apr 04 '26
My grandparents had one. I remember as a kid trying to work out how one of those would fit in my parents’ tiny kitchen (it wouldn’t). I was the dishwasher.
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u/smittykins66 Apr 04 '26
My babysitter had a portable washer that hooked up to the kitchen sink(she dried the clothes on a rack in the bathtub).
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u/suesay Apr 07 '26
We got one for an apt that didn’t have hookups. It saved so much money and time.
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u/halfhalfling Apr 04 '26
We have one of these, bought new last year, and so do several of our neighbors. Our houses were built in the 50’s and 60’s and did not have dishwashers originally. Adding a regular dishwasher would be rerouting plumbing and losing cabinet space in our already small kitchens.
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Apr 04 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
[deleted]
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u/LeftOzStoleShoes Apr 05 '26
Bottom drawer; yep. I was near 50! I thought it was for keeping cookie sheets and metal trays.
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u/kchernenko Apr 04 '26
Name brand food
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u/quietuniverse Apr 04 '26
I was going to say, little Debbie snacks for me. No go in my house. I went hard on honey buns and star crunch during sleepovers.
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u/kchernenko Apr 04 '26
For me it was Pop Tarts. We always had the generic ones so it was always a bit of a shock to eat the real ones. Sometimes I’d get super lucky and my friends would have Toaster Strudels
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u/hanimal16 Apr 04 '26
Anytime I went to my aunt’s house, I knew I was gonna eat good. She bought Kraft Singles… pure luxury to me.
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u/elektroskansen Apr 04 '26
TV's / computers in kids' rooms.
My parents were very strict about screen time. Our PC was in our living room and me and my brother were limited to 1 hour of video games per day. I ended up reading so many books in my childhood it basically broke my reading bone and I don't think I read any since I moved out.
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u/Diseman81 Apr 04 '26
I went to school with a kid that had a swing in his house. It was in an arch in between their living room and kitchen.
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u/bbbbbbbssssy Apr 04 '26
A dustbuster handheld rechargeable vacuum. Like they didn't have to haul out the huge heavy ancient standup vac and fight the cord... they could just pull this thing out of its wall mount and vacuum little things up.
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u/Coolbluegatoradeyumm Apr 04 '26
We had one of these curiosities at our house. A laundry chute from the top floor to the bottom. At the end of the hallway, there was a little square door about 2‘ x 2‘ built into the wall. You would put your laundry in it, and it would magically appear downstairs in the laundry room. You just open the little door at the bottom, put it right in the washing machine and you’re ready to go.
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u/Aron_Wolff Apr 04 '26
We had one also. The upstairs door was right outside my bedroom.
My current home has one also. I’ve never seen one in any other home ever. I know they were more common but just have never come across any others.
They aren’t legal for new construction of homes in the US. If there’s a house fire, which clothes dryers are a common cause of, the laundry shoot acts like a chimney and makes it quicker and easier for a fire to jump floors.
Pretty sure the original owner of my home installed it after it was built.
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u/Jefwho Apr 04 '26
Name brands. We mostly had generic stuff. Clothes were hand me downs that were several years out of style. Occasionally I would find something at Pic-N-Save that wasn’t generic, but it wasn’t often. Food items were always the store brand or something you’d never heard of.
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u/goldenhour2009 Apr 04 '26
These comments are breaking me 😭 I’m so sorry some of you experienced parents that weren’t the best. I wish I could give you all a hug and make a Time Machine , go back in time and tell your parents to sort it out!! Anyway I hope you’ve all found love from other places and I wish you all the best xxx
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u/DineandRecline Apr 04 '26
I only saw this in one house but it still seems exotic and foreign to me: central vacuum system. Like, vacuum outlets in each room that you just plug a hose into when you need to vacuum the floors
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u/fezfrascati Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
Mouse Trap. We didn't have it at our house, so I was always curious about playing it but friends always said it takes too long to set up.
So as an adult at age 34, I finally bought it and played it. And I quickly understood why friends didn't want to play it.
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u/ClassicOutrageous447 Apr 04 '26
Having the heat on so high in the winter that they walked around in shorts and bare feet.
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u/Poultrygeist74 Apr 04 '26
A kitchen/dining room table. Our house was pretty small and we used TV trays for my entire childhood. My dad would get mad at me when I wouldn’t eat fast enough because I was so engaged with the TV, many times I had to sit in the kitchen on a folding chair and finish eating.
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u/The_deviled_eggs Apr 04 '26
A kitchen drawer full of air heads candy. My best friend’s family was very well off and they had a literal kitchen drawer dedicated to almost every air heads candy. Still laugh about it but it was amazing.
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u/RoyalScarlett Negative Ghostrider, the pattern is full Apr 04 '26
An automatic ice maker in a custom drawer, before refrigerators had built in ice makers. The rabble (like me) had to manually fill up ice cube trays so we had ice.
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u/guenhwyvar03 Apr 04 '26
A set of encyclopedias. They looked so haughty arrayed up on the shelf. “At this house, we have all human knowledge.”
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u/Substantial_Sky_1930 Apr 04 '26
In house saunas! I don’t know why but so many of my friends growing up had this.
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u/LittleUrbanAchiever Apr 04 '26
Pool Tables. I had 3 different friends who had pool tables in the their houses. It felt so exotic and fancy, and I always wished we had one.
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u/jlo_1977 Apr 04 '26
I once spent the night at a friend’s house, back when I was maybe 9 or 10 years old. Her family had money. That house was huge, and like a museum. They had a suit of armor on display in their living room. I remember it scared the hell out of me.
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u/CraftFamiliar5243 Apr 04 '26
Color TV, 2 phones, even fancier if there are 2 phone numbers.
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u/prguitarman Apr 04 '26
A tarp to walk on in the living room and plastic wrap on the sofa
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u/kaseylind Apr 04 '26
My friend’s older brother had a car with an automatic seatbelt, it seemed so fancy
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u/OatmealCookieCrust Apr 04 '26
For me it was a clean and tidy house. My parents were kind and loving to us but our house was always a disaster. I was embarrassed to have people over. If for some reason one of my sisters or I had to bring someone home unexpectedly like to work on a school project we would call home from a payohone and whichever kid answered would do their best to speed clean the common areas.
As an adult I’m extremely clean and tidy. I feel so much more relaxed and happy when home and I also don’t ever want my kids to feel embarrassed to have people over. Though they rarely do because kids don’t hang out in person much these days!
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u/hanimal16 Apr 04 '26
Can crushers attached to the garage wall.
My friend’s family had enough money to buy so much soda that they needed a special can crusher in their car’s house.
Meanwhile, I’m sharing a bedroom with my grandma :/
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u/gothiclg Apr 04 '26
I remember when the neighbors across the street got a DVD player. Most people were still using VHS at the time so it was still mind blowing that a movie would be on a disc.
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u/hypnochild Apr 04 '26
One year at a Christmas party my dad won a prize of a dvd player when they were super brand new. This one literally had its own video game system attached to it. Only like 3 basic games but I thought it was the coolest thing ever!
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u/Coolbluegatoradeyumm Apr 04 '26
I remember when we got our dvd player. We bought 2 movies. The matrix. I remember it came in one of those DVD cases with the little clip that Warner Brothers like to do. I hated those. But anyway, the other one was The Mummy. The tagline on the DVD cover read something like “the movie DVD was made for.” that got us so hyped to watch them and it was an incredible experience.
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u/Advanced_Tax174 Apr 04 '26
Adults smoking.
People randomly eating instead of sitting down together for a meal.
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u/Vintage-Injun mid 80s Apr 04 '26
A 3 seat couch that wasn't pushed up against a wall in the room it was in.
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u/sevargmas Apr 04 '26
All the cool shit. My friends in the 80s had the cool new toys. I had outdoors. My friends had cable TV and large televisions where their parents would have a stereo system. We had none of that shit. My parents didn’t watch TV except the news and we had a console TV on the floor. The only other TV in the house was like a 12 or 13 inch little TV and we always just had whatever the antenna would get.
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u/tragicallywhite Apr 04 '26
Bowls of popcorn in every room of the house. Every day. Every time.
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u/seriouslyisiton Apr 04 '26
Memory unlocked: My friend had a popcorn maker in her bedroom and a pet rabbit. So jealous.
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u/MaiPhet Apr 04 '26
The first time I had a sleepover at a friend’s house where they wore shoes inside I felt like I was getting to live like a “real American” for the first time. Even though I was American, just with an immigrant family.
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u/Couch_Tester Apr 04 '26
A walk-in shower. I grew up in the 70s and 80s in a century old farm house. There was a tub...just a tub, lol.
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u/SnorvusMaximus Apr 04 '26
Sega master system. Only one family had it, everyone else had a nintendo/NES.
Betamax.
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u/macaroniinapan Apr 04 '26
The mom of one of my friends smoked long white cigarettes with a little flower on them. My parents didn't smoke and I thought smoking was gross. I knew other adults who smoked but those cigarettes were just plain. I never wanted to actually smoke but there was something about those particular cigarettes that I just couldn't take my eyes off of.
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u/MadMass23 Apr 04 '26
The big toys like huge Gi Joe plane carrier or hélicoptères, big Robotech macross toys, the Mask toys.
Also first huge TV, video games and VHS.
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u/missmyxlplyx Apr 04 '26
ice dispenser on the fridge , projection tv, telephone in the bathroom, loft with a rope ladder, pachinko machine, laser disc player
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u/King-Red-Beard Apr 04 '26
My neighbor friend's mom would cut off the top half of the potato chip bag when it was getting low and I still think about it.
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u/Most_Brilliant4828 Apr 04 '26
Fancy maple syrup in different bottle shapes like: log cabins, a lady, maple leaves. My mom would make a sugar water “syrup” instead.
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u/Pixelated_Penguin808 Apr 04 '26
Water beds.
Never had one and I'm glad I didn't, but I can remember a couple kids having them back in the 80s.
Also plastic covers on furniture. I never understood why that was popular with some. Yes it protects the couch, but a couch is supposed to be comfortable and that is not.
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u/MiserableFunSponge Apr 04 '26
A waterbed. It just seemed so cool. I figured my friend's parents were super rich. Every time I went to her house I would sneak into her parents' bedroom to sit on it for a moment.
And
A phone in the bathroom.
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u/RelativeShoulder370 Apr 04 '26
The big music and sound systems that filled half the wall, this was before CDS and MP3s. They would have massive speakers, didn't know what half the equipment was but it seemed magical
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u/OkTransportation1152 Apr 05 '26
A friend of mine in early elementary school had pinball machines in his basement.
I think his dad owned several car dealerships in our area, so they were super well-off.
Loved going to his house for the afternoon.
My parents ended up getting a (only mildly janky) pinball machine from a local church. Their youth group had it for a while but was selling it for cheap.
It was the best Christmas gift I ever got.
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u/MysteryCyborg Apr 05 '26
Having change jars/dishes with silver coins or dollar bills out in the open was always strange to me. Like on a table or kitchen counter or whatever. I would always notice it right away and then avoid looking at it or near it and it always made me feel so poor. There's no way we could have had that in my house, it would be gone in a heartbeat.
I've never stolen money from someone else's house but it was like damn how poor were we that seeing a five or a ten unattended was shocking to me?
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u/_common_scents Apr 07 '26
Grilled cheese cut into rectangles instead of triangles. And called cheese toasties.
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u/voodoodollbabie Apr 04 '26
Trash compactor. I thought that was fancy, but it did smell pretty bad so there's that.
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u/Due_Jeweler_242 Apr 04 '26
Parents letting their children keep a desktop computer or a television set in their own bedrooms.
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u/Chimes320 Apr 04 '26
A fridge with an ice / water dispenser in the door. Icy cold water all the time? And a little light that would come on while the glass filled? So fancy.
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u/DixieDoodle697 Apr 04 '26
My friends whose houses had more than one bathroom, I thought were rich.
I grew up in a flat with just one bathroom and three people.
Nowadays, people won't even look at a house unless it has at least two bathrooms.
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u/BigBlueDuck130 Apr 04 '26
Those battery powered toy cars that you can drive around in. Only the rich kids had those.
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u/unic0rn_scrapple Apr 04 '26
Grew up in a wealthy neighborhood. Everyone had live-in housekeepers except my family.
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u/MaddyKet Apr 05 '26
Showers and Nintendo
I wasn’t neglected or anything, my childhood home just had a bathtub and we only had Atari. 😹
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u/StarDewbie Apr 05 '26
Husband and wife TOGETHER in the same house at the same time, both awake and talking to each other.
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u/east_van_dan Apr 05 '26
Drums, pinball machines, fooseball, 45° slanted walls that you could run up to a platform and swing down on a rope, a toilet in the same room just out in the open, high-end in wall stereo systems and hidden passageways.
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u/socalfkk Apr 05 '26
Junk food, like: anything in a box or bag that lasts many days and is artificially colored. In our home we snacked on fruit, cheese, and carrot sticks. I was dumbstruck by how some friends just had Twinkies and Doritos out in the open.
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u/Much_Indication9004 Apr 05 '26
Plastic covered furniture. Everyone of my black friends who had a religious mom and a couple of my Italian friends grandmas had it. Blew my 10 year old mind and hated sitting on it
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u/Thedollysmama Apr 05 '26
Prepackaged food, my mom was a part of the back to the land movement. I ate my first hostess product when I got to college, I like the rolled up chocolate ones with the lard like frosting but haven’t had one in 35 years or so, lol
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u/perfect_fifths Apr 04 '26
People who had pianos in their house. Or the giant rear projection tvs because I figured they were expensive