Jamie123

A few years ago, my stepdaughter was close friends with a girl (let's call her Heather) who was - not to put too fine a point on it - a little unstable. Prone to cutting her arms with knives. My stepdaughter (let's call her Branwen) was very kind and supportive of her and often invited her to our house after school. It was naturally up to me (the only member of the household with a drivers license) to take her home at the end of the evening.
The first time this happened I gladly took Heather home. I didn't think twice about it. I knew she would be safe with me. Well, as safe as anyone can be in a car on the public road with an adult at the wheel - which perhaps isn't saying very much; she was quite safe from me at any rate. There is no way I would ever rape anyone - no how.
And yet it occurred to me afterwards what a horrible risk I had taken. If she had accused me of anything inappropriate, what defence would I have had? My own "loss of reputation" wasn't even the dust on the crust: even if I'd been lucky enough to have had the charges dropped for "lack of evidence", or been acquitted by a jury, the accusation alone would have driven my family into ruin. I worked myself up into quite a state, imagining being jobless with no prospects and no ability to provide for my loved-ones, my hard-earned degrees and professional qualifications worthless, my family living on at the State's expense in some drug-infested inner-city estate.
When I told this to my wife, she told me she'd had exactly the same thoughts and has even talked about it with her parents. It's a mistake I never dared to repeat. Next time, either Branwen or my wife came with me whenever I got inside a car with Heather. 

A few years ago, my stepdaughter was close friends with a girl (let's call her Heather) who was - not to put too fine a point on it - a little unstable. Prone to cutting her arms with knives. My stepdaughter (let's call her Branwen) was very kind and supportive of her and often invited her to our house after school. It was naturally up to me (the only member of the household with a drivers license) to take her home at the end of the evening.
The first time this happened I gladly took Heather home. I didn't think twice about it. I knew she would be safe with me. Well, as safe as anyone can be in a car on the public road with an adult at the wheel - which perhaps isn't saying very much; she was quite safe from me at any rate. There is no way I would ever rape anyone - no how.
And yet it occurred to me afterwards what a horrible risk I had taken. If she had accused me of anything inappropriate, what defence would I have had? My own "loss of reputation" wasn't even the dust on the crust: even if I'd been lucky enough to have had the charges dropped for "lack of evidence", or been acquitted by a jury, the accusation alone would have driven my family into ruin. I worked myself up into quite a state, imagining being jobless with no prospects and no ability to provide for my loved-ones, my hard-earned degrees and professional qualifications worthless, my family living on at the State's expense in some drug-infested inner-city estate.
When I told this to my wife, she told me she'd had exactly the same thoughts and has even talked about it with her parents. It's a mistake I never dared to repeat. Next time, either Branwen or my wife came with me whenever I got inside a car with Heather. 

A few years ago, my stepdaughter was close friends with a girl (let's call her Heather) who was - not to put too fine a point on it - a little unstable. Prone to cutting her arms with knives. My stepdaughter (let's call her Branwen) was very kind and supportive of her and often invited her to our house after school. It was naturally up to me (the only member of the household with a drivers license) to take her home at the end of the evening.
The first time this happened I gladly took Heather home. I didn't think twice about it. I knew she would be safe with me. Well, as safe as anyone can be in a car on the public road with an adult at the wheel - which perhaps isn't saying very much; she was quite safe from me at any rate. There is no way I would ever rape anyone - no how.
And yet it occurred to me afterwards what a horrible risk I had taken. If she had accused me of anything inappropriate, what defence would I have had? My own "loss of reputation" wasn't even the dust on the crust: even if I'd been lucky enough to have had the charges dropped for "lack of evidence", or been acquitted by a jury, the accusation alone would have driven my family into ruin. I worked myself up into quite a state, imagining being jobless with no prospects and no ability to provide for my loved-ones, my hard-earned degrees and professional qualifications worthless, my family living on at the State's expense in some drug-infested inner-city estate.
When I told this to my wife, she told me she'd had exactly the same thoughts and has even talked about it with her parents. It's a mistake I never dared to repeat. Next time, either Branwen or my wife came with me whenever I got inside a car with Heather. 

A young boy and his father were in an argument about the weather. His father., Rudolph, was a leader in the communist party, and was a very smart man. The mother looked fondly on as they argued.
“Father, I do believe it will snow.”
“No, son, it will rain.”
“You're wrong, it will snow.”
“No, son, it will rain.”
This went for an hour until the mother stepped it.
“Son, listen to your father. Rudolph the Red, knows rain deer.”

Entertain yourself AND cheat death—all at the same time!

Gives new meaning to "stick in the memory", doesn't it?

It's the sort of joke that your kids, once they hit a certain age, cease to find funny. For example, this conversation with my 14-year-old daughter:
*Sigh*

For those that pay attention to current events (beyond Macbeth):
Corduroy pillows are making headlines!
and
if you are thinking about getting a yardstick you better get one now because they aren't going to make them any longer. 
 
The Traveler

It's the sort of joke that your kids, once they hit a certain age, cease to find funny. For example, this conversation with my 14-year-old daughter:
*Sigh*

I did the same. I loved playing with GI Joes. Like you, I would spend hours having them embark on clandestine operations and engage in heroic battles.
Don’t forget though, “Knowing is half the battle.”

It's the sort of joke that your kids, once they hit a certain age, cease to find funny. For example, this conversation with my 14-year-old daughter:
*Sigh*

It's the sort of joke that your kids, once they hit a certain age, cease to find funny. For example, this conversation with my 14-year-old daughter:
*Sigh*

This is the same for me.  I specifically wanted this exact game.

Some good memories there!
1. Water rockets (mikbone): good fun - we had one, but playing with it always made me think of - and hanker after - the more powerful model rockets you could get. I have a colleague who tells me that as a teenager he got kick out of applying differential equations to the problem of water rocket propulsion. It makes me wonder if it might be a great teaching aid in advanced calculus classes.
2. Balsa-wood gliders (mikbone). There used to be some great cheap flying models you could get - some of them foam, others balsa wood. Some were gliders and others rubber-bad powered. There are some still around, but none seem to be a patch on the ones you could buy cheaply at any toy shop in the 1970s.
3. D&D (mirkwood). I had a brief "fling" with that in my late teens - attracted partly (I now see) by the Tolkienesque elements in it. I was deeply under the spell of J.R.R. Tolkien - and still am - but if you go into D&D expecting the same kind of thrill you'll be disappointed. The other thing I liked about it was the idea of a "virtual world" - something that seemed real in the imagination but was really only dice and numbers - the same sort of thing that makes computer simulation such a thrill to me now. My wife by the way hates D&D and has an idea there is something "demonic" about it: when we moved into our current house, we discovered a huge (and I mean HUGE) stash of D&D books and magazines in the attic - which she set about the mammoth task of destroying. She had got through about a quarter of it when I happened to mention this to one of my research students. He was horrified: he said "Don't destroy it!!! It's valuable!!! Give it to me!!!" So I did, relieving Mrs. Jamie of the bother of doing any more ripping and tearing. (I'm sure the guy's partner was "thrilled" to have her living room filled with the stuff, but that wasn't my problem.)
4. Slot car racing (mores). In the UK we usually call it "Scalextric" as that is the name of by far the most well known brands (though we actually pronounced it "Scalectric" - without the "x" - and I believe most people still do). There was a time when my brother and I (and most of our friends) spent nearly all our money on track, cars and other accessories. At its height my family's Scalextric layout filled most of the living room. The thing about it was though, although the theoretical intention was to race the cars against each other, you spent relatively little time or effort doing that; most of your effort went into (i) tinkering with the cars, replacing worn pads/couplings etc. or trying to modify/"improve" them with working headlights etc., devising better and more imaginative track layouts, diagnosing electrical faults on the track, dismantling and attempting to reassemble the "lap counter" with a view to making it work properly (which it never did), and discussing the merits/demerits of all the new cars shown in the latest catalogue. On the rare occasions you actually got as far as racing, the cars would continually fly off the track, so it became not so much a "car race" as a "who can get their car picked up and put back on the track first" race - with attendant jumping, running around and (occasionally) wrestling with your opponents. These days I understand Scalextric cars have magnets underneath them to keep them on track, but they never did in my day.
Anyway, happy memories! Thanks guys.

The author of this little gem is supposed to be John Saxon, of Saxon Math fame.

Honestly, that describes almost all television, both in my childhood and today.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7059229/Mother-teenage-yob-smashed-model-railway-exhibition-says-mortified.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small
Oh yeah that's really going to teach them isn't it? They ought to be made to smash their own games consoles and mobile phones with a sledgehammer. Then they should be made to work night and day to buy mobile phones and games consoles - and then be forced to smash those as well. As for vodka, they should be force-fed an entire bottle - each.
(Yes I know - I'm not being very Christian. But I used to be a model train enthusiast myself, back before I was married.)

Anyone else a Dune fan?  (If you're not, it's a sci-fi series of books created by Frank Herbert, and expanded by his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.  Fremen are the sand-dwelling folk, who live in seitches, and if you don't care, you can probably stop reading.)
Anyway, I've been jumping so thoroughly into the fandom, that I am at risk of becoming known as "that one poster who can't shut up about Dune".  I know I'm not alone, so here's a thread for us.   Agree or disagree, argue or contribute, feel free to participate.  Expect lots of good-natured back-and-forthery, and lots of brilliantly zingy jabs at other groups.
I've been enthralled by the Dune universe since I read the first 3 books in elementary school so I could keep up with my smug buddy who thought he was a better reader.  Frank Herbert had definite opinions about what drives humans, planets, religion, and politics, and from where I'm standing, a full 66.67% of them are in harmony with the gospel.  And the rest are worth thinking about, in order to be able to clearly articulate why I disagree.  As I binge-read my big stack of Dune books in preparation for the new movie coming in 2020, I'm being reminded of how much of an impact those books had on me.
Plus, being a Dune fan keeps me on that "I'm cooler than you because I like something less popular" pedestal which I value so deeply.  I'm firmly convinced in the lost 116 pages of the BoM, it has a broader "tree of life" vision, in which the iron-rod holders look one way and see the great and spacious building, and look the other way and see me standing there on my smug pedestal, not deigning to notice you people.
 
Anyway, to kick the thread off proper:

Thanks Anatess that certainly looks like it! Cheers!

Ohhh... we Filipinos get British TV!  My favorite was CI5 and that's how I grew up with 3 dogs named Bodie, Doyle, and Cowley.
The TV series you're talking about sounds like The Changes.  It was about a girl named Nicki who tried to figure out why humans "killed" all the machines.