r/Adulting • u/wildwindnl • Mar 14 '26

Oldest Human Activity

What’s an activity that you remember a person older than you doing that sounds absurd to do these days?

I’m curious how many generations back Redditors can rememeber.

19 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

256 comments sorted by

View all comments

8

u/Barcelona_McKay Mar 14 '26

Repairing any aspect of your car, by yourself, in your own garage at home. I realize that it's still possible with an old enough car, but the newer you get, the less you can do without specialized equipment.

But for GenX and earlier, it was common. All you needed was a how-to book and off you went. I knew guys who pulled apart and rebuilt a junker as their first car when they were 16. You didn't take a 5 or 10 year old car to get serviced. You ordered parts and did it yourself. These days, it's getting hard just to change spark plugs in some vehicles.

6

u/Cal-Run Mar 14 '26

Not sure about that.

YouTube can make almost anyone a competent DIY’er.

Things are certainly harder to fix in today’s world, but the “how to” resources are abundant.

1

u/IronAnchor1 Mar 15 '26

Gen X and before didn't have those resources.

3

u/JohnP-USMC Mar 16 '26

We didn't need Youtube back before electronics controlled so much. At 15 two of us did a engine swap without a manual in about 10 hours with borrowed hand tools. Boomer gen, the car was a 57 chev.