Recently I was telling my kids about these ashtrays that my parents had when I was a kid. They were totally inappropriate. One in particular was painfully over-the-top-bad.
I’m currently helping my parents move and we opened a box to determine what was in it and found these very ashtrays at the top of the box.
Here is the worst of them: A child, still in the womb, and the caption, “OH, OH… THE OLD LADY SNEAKED ANOTHER MARTINI!”
- It’s an ashtray depicting a child in a womb.
- It is about a pregnant mom drinking enough alcohol to affect the baby.
Could you imagine this item being sold today?
It was a different time, with different norms. Pregnant women smoked and drank. Kids would sit in smoke filled cars, 4-6 of them in the back of a station wagon with no seatbelts. It was unheard of for a kid on a bicycle to wear a helmet.
We are talking about 50 years ago.
It’s fascinating to see how social norms change… mostly for the better. It’s also interesting to see how some of the old norms fade away while others (deservingly) are highlighted for being appalling. All transgressions of today, some causing upheaval, some (sadly) resurfacing, others just snapshots of a time long ago.
Ashtrays in general are relics. This one probably won’t ever leave the box, but I can’t see my mom throwing it away.
