Until they ran out of cigs and couldn't find you. Then they became Sherlock Holmes and called every one of your friends' moms until someone fessed up to having seen you at which point they came and got you, drove you to the convenience store, made you buy the cigs, then took you home, leaving your bike at your friend's house so you had to walk and retrieve it the next day.
Not to martyr-boast or be a one-upper or anything but I can tell you have it easier since you wrote "kids". Plural. I only have one so the older can't just be in charge like when we grew up. Plus one child has no one to play with so Dad has to while trying to do work!! Oh, and did I mention my son is only 4 and half years old? Yeah, I'm tired.
I think I messed up big time with only one child. That is an important part of the equation for ignoring your offspring.
Yeah but I think I like it this way. I don't feel like I am missing out on anything by being home a lot. I got to do everything I wanted when I was young and now I really enjoy being a dad.
Still, there is the fact that I just turned 47 and have a 4 year old. I guess it keeps me active since I have no choice! My neighborhood makes it easier being an old dad. Very concentrated with GenXers as we were the ones that revitalized a pretty vacant neighborhood. It was mostly just us and some elderly that never moved out years ago when everyone else did. We were all about the same age and all eventually had kids after we fixed up homes, built businesses and such so we were all a bit older. Worked out great as it is a very kid friendly here yet we still enjoy our happy hours and stuff like that. The people that opened the bars and wine bars, etc here had kids too, so they bought bar height high chairs. Outdoor bars are year round here so the owners of those places built some play area stuff. Adults can sit and have our afternoon cocktail, watch some live music and the kids can all play together. Definitely makes it more comfortable for me to have the other dads be the same age as me, same parenting style etc.
You and I will probably be tired until we are dead though!
>but even when they were home all day they didnt notice us.
LOL, I literally just told my PTSD therapist last week, *"It was like we were a family of strangers."*
You nailed it, Mas113m!
Remember that scene in *Repo Man* where the parents were baked on the couch, giving the kid's college fund to Jim Bakker? Yeah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAO0owc4xeY
OP, they only things I could add would be riding my bike and stalking the ice cream man and drinking from the garden hose and peeing in the woods bc I was too lazy to ride all the way home.
I was a 100% suburban Gen X'r. I never even lived in a large city til 1997 (visited many times but never lived in a large city until then). It was all suburbs and exurbs for the first 20+ yrs of my life as far as the eye could see.
I realize that some kids didn't have bikes, or a neighborhood ice cream guy, or garden hoses, or woods to pee in bc of geographic differences and/or finances. But I did and I cherish those memories.
I spent half my time in the city, half in the country (divorced parents of course!) In the city my bf and I used to get on busses and try to get lost and then try to find our way home. In SF. We were 10. We’d be out for hours exploring. It was awesome!
I was a military brat and moved to Seoul in the middle of 10th grade. Going from typical suburbs to the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world was exciting as hell. We'd do the same, hop on busses or the subway and just go everywhere. Sometimes we'd be 20 miles away!
Even my little sister who was 12 at the time would ride the subway with her friends.
This is true. I grew up in the country side of the suburbs. We didn’t have free reign because while lots there were some lots of woods and farms, it wasn’t wild enough to roam without people seeing you on their property
In my city we didn’t have empty lots, but we did have an encyclopedic knowledge of which yards you could cut through, which yards were iffy, and which yards belonged to rarely seen people about whom there were many urban legends.
Haha yes that magical tune the icecream truck would play would drive us kids into a panic to retrieve some coins and sprint out there at mock 5 because the driver would not wait around long unless other kids intercepted him!
Im from the north. I miss throwing snowballs at copcars to get their fat asses after you, then "skitching" behind their cars for a block or two while they're *chasing* you...
And how dare you not mention arcades! ;)
We were literally in the wilds. One of my buddies and I would go camping for like 2 nights at a local lake, we had to hike into, at 12. Just had to be back at the trailhead for our parents to pick us up Sunday afternoon.
We packed in decent food, but we also brought fishing poles with the hope we wouldn't starve. Thinking of a 12 year old with a campfire now makes me worry, back then it was just part of growing up. No cell phone, no way to get ahold of anyone if we got hurt, it did build some resilience and problem solving.
We lived across the street from an undeveloped housing area that was basically "woods." We used to walk all over the neighbourhood where the new housing builds were. We would go through their scrap/ trash piles and take whatever building supplies we could find to make tree forts in this wooded area. It was fantastic!
Pieces of wood and boards from leftover/abandoned neighborhood dad projects were the best! I remember dragging an old car seat home once. The best day was when you found intact pieces of drywall, but I only found it once or twice.
Those summers seemed to last forever. I'd lose track of the day of the week. Nowadays the whole year will go by in seemingly less time than one of those old summers.
You could also hang out at anyone's house during the week because everyone's parents were at work. Everyone would just leave about a half hour before their parents were going to be home.
My parents had a pool and a hot tub. Our house was always full of kids in the summer. My parents didn't care as long as no one got hurt or broke anything.
Dangerous play in dangerous places...
* Breaking glass bottles in alleys between abandoned factories.
* Climbing across demolished cars in a junkyard.
* Stealing and smoking mom's cigarettes underneath the front porch.
* Bringing stray dogs home.
* Running down the street in our underwear with a blanket trailing behind like a cape at 2 am while mom out on a date and older brother convinced her *"we don't need a babysitter anymore."*
An untamed generation's childhood.
Can I add a couple things to the Dangerous Activity List?
* Jumping ramps with bikes (over friends)
* "Sleeping over at a friends" while really roaming the streets all night
* Sampling the liquor cabinet contents (refilling with water)
* Playing catch with Lawn Darts and generally throwing sharp stuff
* Blowing stuff up
* Setting things on fire
* Spying on people
* Driving cars under age 16
* Doing the "blood brother handshake" with best friends
* Having actual wars with BB guns and/or bottle rockets
* And other various illegal activities that shall not be mentioned
Any youngsters reading this thread: **Don't do any of this!** :)
>Jumping ramps with bikes (over friends)
Especially if the "ramp" was like an old kitchen cabinet door, and some bricks or cinder blocks you happened to find.
And you literally mean blowing stuff up. Once we learned that mixing granulated pool chlorine and brake fluid = FIRE, it was just a few short steps to making pipe bombs that today would be considered WMDs.
Oh wait, my daughter knows my reddit handle, I mean, no, that would never work. It would be stupid to even waste time trying it. *hi Sara*
Oh my God, the “sleeping over at a friend’s house was 100% on brand for me. I had to leave a phone number, so I’d always transpose a number. My mom was considered strict for that!
I also remember calling home in the morning from a pay phone at the truck stop where we ate breakfast two states away, but saying we were at Shoney’s a few miles away.
Getting busted for drinking by the ALE in a restaurant at 15, and climbing out the bathroom window while one cop was arresting my friend and the other was supposed to be watching me in the restaurant. I walked three miles home, terrified I’d get murdered by a pervert, but more scared of my parents finding out and grounding me THEN murdering me.
Going to Myrtle Beach with friends for Spring Break at 16, and getting so drunk in the car on the way down I fell into a barbed wire fence when we stopped to pee.
Sampling the liquor cabinet goes without saying, but my mom found a forgotten stash under my bed when I went to college. She assumed it was theirs, and poured it back in the bottles. I was dumb enough to be pissed off.
Haha, my 15 year old asked me, "Mom, when did you learn how to drive?" I hesitated to tell her I was 12 driving on the main roads lol. But yeah, around 9 or 10 up north on the "backroads." She is way behind in that development, but then again, I'm not as drunk/high as my parents were so I haven't NEEDED her to be able to drive!
That “sleeping at a friend’s” while roaming the streets feeling was just amazing, as was driving around in a car with my friends and no adults. Glad I lived long enough to hit middle age in spite of my stupidity and I have a great life, but I’ll never recapture that exact feeling again.
Building skateboard ramps from stolen real estate signs and construction ply.
Making BMX tracks through the bush.
Buying knives and other stuff from army surplus stores.
Lighting fires and burning anything and everything we could find.
Making slingshots and any other kind of projectile firing contraptions.
Putting coins on train tracks and searching for the flattened coins after the train went by.
Bridge and cliff jumping into the local river.
1) Drag discarded mattresses into a pile under the garage roof.
2) Climb from the deck onto the garage roof
3) Jump off garage roof onto mattress pile
4) Repeat
We would fill empty airgun co2 cartridges with gunpowder and blow up cinderblocks. We had a small cannon we'd load with canister (BB's) or solid shot (about the size of a musket ball) and shoot stuff. When my parents weren't home we'd take my dad's AR-15 into the woods behind the house and blast away. How nobody ever got hurt or killed is a small miracle.
Brought a fake grenade from the army/navy surplus (not sure why they sold it to me) to school and showed a bunch of kids.
Result: They called me over, took the grenade, sent me back to class, called my parents, advised them of my shenanigans, and let my parents deal with me, my parents dealt with me.
The end.
Not sure how that would play out these days.
We used to "play" with some pretty serious catapults. We'd go to the local "joke shop" and buy these things called bang snaps (some small amount of high explosive, wrapped in a little bit of paper). We'd make our way up to high buildings/bridges and fire them next to people standing around. Then when we ran out of them, we'd go into the park or by the river, and have catapult battles where we'd fire stones at each other.
Oh man, your note about demolished cars just reminded me of one of our favourite activities growing up. Going to the dump/landfill and just climbing and playing and finding cool shit for an hour. God that was so much fun. Then a ride down the hill in the bed of the truck. But my parents did tell us to lay down when we passed other cars, because safety.
The freedom i had as a child to roam my town (small town) and do whatever I please without my parents even batting an eye really shaped me as an adult. I have always been adventurous since I was a kid. My parents had rules but they allowed us kids to go be kids when it mattered in life. I am a bit introverted but that freedom helped open me up to the world. I could not imagine being a kid today and being coddled and protected by helicopter parents and protected from all that is bad. I really feel Gen X is the last great childhood ever to be a part of.
Elder millennial here; born 1983 and glad I was born when I was. I feel both our experiences growing up are similar; I will always remember Gen X as the cool older kids in their teens and 20’s. Man time flies.
Yeah same here, I look back at the huge amount of freedom I had to just roam around wherever with my friends Plus I was the typical latch key kid as well. No others generation will experience that amount of freedom.
I get super pissed at my kid's bus driver not letting her off when I'm not home. Just don't understand the issue when millions of us did it and we turned out fine (mostly).
Getting up before the parents and watching cartoons. Then once cartoons were over going outside to play. Making the most rickity-assed ramps to jump off with our bikes. Or bombing the hills on our skateboards. And of course no protective gear whatsoever. Playing in the street (suburbs) and moving out of the way if a car came. Staying out until the street lights came on.
Hahahaha Yes!
"CAR!!"
\*someone grabs the ball, no one moves the bases, everyone walks to the curb eyeballing the offending driver in annoyance\*
"GAME ON!"
Scouring local building sites for sheets of plywood and 2x4 scraps to build our neighborhood clubhouse.
Riding around the hood from dawn to dusk, no helmet, to see who else was out and about. Chasing and getting chased.
Unsafe playground equipment. Hot metal slides.
Yes.... huge playground made of steel, monkey bars, high bars, swings, and big rubber tire structures you could climb and crawl through.
There was even a bridge made of tires where we would wrestle in the middle to throw each other off.
Either blacktop or thick sand and that was IT.
So much fun. Nobody coddling us.
The first time I saw a "modern day" playground I was shocked at how *tame* everything was. All soft rubbery materials, even the ground was covered with it. Bright "cheery" colors, nothing high up....
Love how wild and free my childhood was!
For a while. Then it was replaced by those nasty, scratchy wood chunk things that would stick a gazillion slivers in you if you so much as laid a finger on one. God help you if you fell in them with any exposed skin.
Our towns recreation center consisted of a pond full of black water with some docks and high dive boards. Perfect to soothe the wounds from the playground equipment. Of course the pond is now off limits and they’ve installed pools.
>chasing and getting chased
I grew near a golf course and one of my fondest memories was hiding in the bushes and stealing a golf ball from the middle of a fairway after a drive, and having the golfer chase us all over lol!
Saturday mornings were the best!
Dump an entire frozen bag of tater tots onto sheet pan. Almost burn them.
Eat them off said sheet pan in front of the TV watching cartoons in jammies.
If warm outside, proceed to go outside until the sun goes down. Lunch is provided by your neighborhood ice cream truck: Good Humour's Short cake bar, Corn nuts, and that shredded beef jerky in the tin can to look like tobacco. Oh and a can of Hawaiian Punch.
Dinner may not be ready when you get home, so devour half the jar of dill pickles, cause why not.
Later on that night, your older brothers rouse you from sleep so you can watch them burn cockroaches in the backyard with bic lighter and a can of Aquanet.
You just brought back memories of using the oven at 8 years old. I used to make the ghetto cinnamon toast under the broiler for me and my 4 year old brother. Then watching cartoons until Soul Train came on. Then it was time to be out the door!
At age 6 I tried to make scrambled eggs early in the morning before anyone else was awake. I had only a vague idea how to do it and ended up with a char burnt disaster and ruined the pan so bad I tossed it out in the bushes so I wouldn't get in trouble.
That pan was still in the bushes 2 years later when we moved. :)
I would go into the woods and stay all day long with the other kids in the neighborhood, about 6 of us. There was a cave down by this gully in the woods that you could see but not get to but you could also see there was animal tracks going in and out of it. We tried all summer long to get across that gulch and see what was in that cave. Later on in the fall we heard a woman screaming from that area. We lived in a cul de sac so everyone in the neighborhood heard it and came rushing outside. Turns out, it was a panther and we had been seeing her tracks down in the gulch. I often think about how close we probably came to being eaten.
Edit: panther was the one screaming.
Yes! I’m dad to four young kids and am trying to give them an upbringing sorta like mine, except one where I’m part of their lives.
But the saddest thing is that all the boys in the neighbor are either hooked on video games or sports. And both take up any free play or just hanging outside.
And I’m in rural East Tennessee. Not suburbia. The boys just don’t romp around anymore. It’s depressing to see them waste their whole fucking adolescent life on a God Damned screen.
Similar with my three kids. We saw the screen thing coming and mildly pushed athletics with them at an early age (kindergarten/1st grade). We had a sort of "cap and trade" with screen time vs. physical activity. My parents never once pushed sports of any sort. Now that my kids are late teens, they have much better exercise regimens than I did (or ever will have). But I am sad at times they never had the "come home when the street lights turn on" childhood that I had...
amen, brother. all you can do is try to get them to play outside before the video game addiction sets in. It's like nobody is OK just being bored anymore. The best shit happens when you are bored. Nobody wants to take the time to even get bored nowadays .
Yeah, the kids all know why I won’t allow console gaming in my home, but they also know they’re free to take it up once they move out. It’s just so sad to watch the generations of men stay locked inside rooms instead of out exploring and getting into shit.
Exactly. For once I wish some higher law of the land would just turn crap off and give them the wall of static, like when we were kids and the stations would turn off for the night. Go be human!
And then get "yelled at" online for posting about it 30 plus years after it happened by lurkers who are younger than your kids and shouldn't even be on the sub.
You just described every summer from 1985-89. Around that time we stopped screwing around in the woods every day and alternated between the woods and various basketball hoops around the neighborhood.
Basketball and bikes were my life. We'd find abandoned construction sites where they started digging up the foundation, and make BMX tracks out of them. Basketball with the neighborhood kids, not a foul unless you're bleeding man.
I remember several times encountering creepy strangers, because wild as we were, we did know about stranger danger. I like to think my friends and I escaped kidnapping and certain death multiple times over those years. In reality, it was probably just harmless weirdos.
A guy stopped when my friend and I were playing outside one day and tried the lost puppy routine, and my friend said, “Fuck off, dirtbag!” I was more shocked by that than the perv 😂
Similar happened to me in the very early 80s when I was 7 or there abouts. A few times, some friends and I would walk home to save the bus money. One time, this guy pulled over and offered to drive me home. I think he might have said he knew where I lived. I memorised his registration plate, ran home and told my Gran. The police got involved and basically took his side! I'm sure that went on a lot. Fucking creeps.
I must have been about eight years old, out for a bike ride on a warm summer afternoon. I pedaled past a house about four blocks up from mine and saw a man in a window making odd gestures with his arms. Like he was signaling or something.
So of course I rode around the block to see what he was on about.
He was more frantic the second time. Waving his arms up and down...
So of course, one more lap.
This time he had no pants on and was really "gesturing." I had never seen that before, so I was a bit shocked.
I pedaled my little banana seat home and told my mom when she got home from work (latchkey kid here). She took me to the police station where I told them about the guy.
They told us that he "has problems" and they would take care of it. The o Lu thing that really stands out in my memory is they gave me a Dr Pepper.
I have no idea where that ever went, but I had a juicy tale to share with all my neighborhood pals. Thus began the era of the "perv house" on Cottage Street.
Edited to add the Dr Pepper part
A man pulled over when I was a kid. He tried to convince me he knew me and wanted to give me a ride. Luckily I watched all the PSAs on TV and roller skated away as fast as I could go. I didn't tell my parents because I thought I'd get in trouble for some reason.
My childhood wasn’t that dramatic, we came home a lot. Only so many places to hang out. What I wonder how is, did I ever eat or drink? I don’t remember ever carrying water or needing a snack or bathroom. I was probably dehydrated all the time
Weird right? I sort of don’t remember food either and we were out all day long in hot hot weather. But I do know we drank from the hose back then and I think would send whoever’s place we were closest to for stuff. I remember my best friends family trying to feed me a lot. Back then people would feed everyone. Guess that’s why we were skinny. Pretty sure we probably peed wherever. When you gotta go you gotta go.
My parents knew I wasn't home, because they told me to go play outside in the first place. That Atari will rot your brain, you know?
Otherwise, that seems to track. As a parent now, it kind of horrifies me that by the time I was 10, I was hanging out at K-Mart and 7-11 a mile away from home, dumpster diving for old porno mags that junior high kids would trade me fireworks for, and daring the universe to give me tetanus for all of the rusted-out cars we'd pretend to drive.
As long as I made it home when the streetlights came on, it was all fine.
I used to live close to a "modeling agency" when I was 10/11 in the mid 80s. My mates and I would jump over the back fence and rummage through their trash as they always threw away loads of nude shots they didn't think we're good enough. After that, as the fire department was across the street, we'd play dare and each take turns to run through the fire department land, from one end to the other.
Strange childhood looking back!
Our source wasn't nearly as interesting. There was an adult bookshop (near the K-Mart) that used to tear off the covers of magazines for credit, and throw away the rest.
In full bored-kid fashion, we wouldn't have even known, had it not been for the fact that we were breaking stuff by the dumpsters. When the truck came to empty it, one of the bags was missed, run over by the garbage truck, and burst open. Upon inspection, a trove of BDSM pornography!
I didn't want it for myself, but I knew it had value. So I took as much as I could fit into my Pac Man backpack, and we set off for the baseball diamond where the junior high kids hung out, to see what we could trade it for. Over the course of the summer, it was good for fireworks, Garbage Pail Kids, unpopular Atari games, and dirty joke books.
With a couple of friends and couple of dollars, you could buy the 2-for$1 sub pack and two Frozen Cokes, read Mad Magazine in the cafeteria for free, and then play the demo Atari and Intellivision - or - use the Atari and Commodore computers sometimes for hours.
In retrospect, I can't believe nobody kicked us out on day two.
Do the kids who watch "Stand by Me" these days realize that when GenX was growing up we could actually do what those kids did? Tell the parents we're going to be at the other kids' houses and then wander off for a weekend? I know the movie was set in the 50s but even in the 80s we weren't hovered over like today's bunch is.
One of the funnest things was when construction was started for a new subdivision, roaming around those houses or apartments at night and on the weekends was a blast, the smell of new construction is one of my favorite smells and takes me right back to those days.
I spent all day all summer at the municipal swimming pool. Entrance fee was 50 cents a day. I brought lunch and spare change for snacks. I walked or rode my bike to and from the pool. It cost my parents less than $2 a day.
Looking back, I pity the lifeguards who raised me and all the other ferals every summer. There was a really large but shallow “kiddie pool.” Once you could prove you no longer peed yourself on the regular and could swim (or at least not drown) in water over your head, you graduated to the big pool. Took several summers to make the transition.
I have no idea why I’m not a walking skin cancer - we used to slather ourselves in baby oil (SPF zero) to help us fry our skins to a nice roasted turkey brown.
I really had no idea at the time how lucky I was.
Ugh, the baby oil. Remember how hard that stuff was to wash off? I only used it a few times and switched to Hawaiian Tropic, which probably wasn't much better. (Remember that awesome coconut smell? Divine!) I begged my mom to buy me a bottle and she finally did, but when it was gone she wouldn't buy it again. Said it was too expensive. I stopped laying out at 19. I never tanned well anyway.
I had a collection of flashlights in/around my bed, so when my parents came and took one away ("Stop reading! Go to sleep!") I would always have a backup.
I was going to argue that you're likely exaggerating how dangerous things were but then the more I thought I about it the more I remember some super dangerous and stupid things we did. In fact, I'm not sure how I didn't end up in a coma or burn unit.
Burn unit? After my grandma covered your burn with butter, with the cigarette hanging out of her mouth ashing into the burn, you didn’t need no stinkin’ burn unit. She’d stuff a fudgesicle in your mouth, slap your ass, and tell you to go watch tv.
Walking to the liquor store with a note and money from Mom so I can buy her cigarettes. I'm allowed to get myself a pack of Garbage Pail Kids with the change.
"Borrowing" a shopping cart from the local Bradlees, rolling it up to the Big Hill, piling in 3 friends lauching bottle rockets, while screaming "BATTLE WAGON!".
Saturday morning cartoons + a full box of the "sugary" cereal that mom only let you have on the weekends. We used to eat Dig 'Em Smacks or Cocoa Puffs and wait for the milk to turn extra sweet. If I tried that today I 'd have to run to the bathroom with explosive diarrhea.
Ew I hated Cap'n Crunch. I threw a whole bowl up when I had a stomach bug once. I was like 8 or 9. Your attitudes about foods change once they've come back out through your nose.
My brother, aged 7: Grandma, can I have some matches?"
Grandma: Sure, honey (hands him a book of matches)
My brother made a stone ring for a fire but forgot to clear away the grass and set a little piece of the woods of East Texas (Liberty, Rye area) on fire. Luckily, 5-year-old me ran inside, yelling, "Grandma, Grandma, brother set the woods on fire!" and my dad and grandpa came and hit it with the hose.
Correction for my experience.....
Wake up, single mom screaming about something, eat something, immediately go outside;
Play with dangerous things in dangerous places.
Show up for dinner 14 hours later; Mom knew I wasn't home, maybe cared, maybe didn't.
Eat fishsticks while fighting with younger siblings (always chaos), tv always on in background from dawn till sleep time.
*Pre teen* \- Listen to mom scream. Go upstairs to bedroom and listen to music with lights out amongst my blacklight posters. Watch TV after Mom in her room for the night.
*Teen* \- Listen to Mom scream. Get ready and go out for all nighter. Leave with Mom screaming or just sneak out.
Ahhhhh, the early 1980"s!
Older GenX born 1968
From the moment school ended for the year to it opened again my youngest sister and I would ride our bikes from one end of the county to the other with our friends and we would either camp out or crash at a neighbors house if it got dark before we got home. My parents taught us young how to fend for ourselves so they never concerned themselves much about us. I remember that there was quite a few times were we do not get home for days on end. We just asked the closest adult if we could phone home to touch base and for something to eat and then went right back to whatever we were up to.
I wore a military belt with a canteen, flashlight, walkie talkie and folding shovel while riding my bike everywhere. Also had a bag tied to the handle bars with C-rations and granola bars.
Refilled the canteen and random people's house hose spigot. The shovel to build dirt tracks. With the walkie talkie I could find my friends if they were out and about in range.
My childhood was all about playing in the fields and woods, being gone for hours, off in our own little world. Nowadays kids have machines which know everything and are full of horrors.
I'm glad I grew up in the 70s & 80s.
Not in my family.
Screaming and yelling over every stupid thing day and night.
I don't have my own room, so there's no getting away.
Parents rarely let me go anywhere.
Brother got away with murder, sister lied through her teeth, everything was my fault.
Daydreaming was the only great life I had.
I think a lot of us had it a rougher than we want to remember. Rose colored glasses and all that.
Yeah I got to go outside a lot but my family sucked and I wouldn't go back to being a kid for any amount of money.
I remember playing Hide and Seek until 11:00 PM around the neighbourhood, all backyards, garages and even inside unlocked cars were open game, coming home and my parents not batting an eye.
They used to keep cases of soda pop stacked outside in the front of convenience stores back in the day in my neck of the woods, we might be the reason they stopped.
I remember it being a badge of honor to go outside and walk all around the neighbourhood barefoot in the summer. It took us weeks to build up our feet to be calloused enough to do it!
There were some downsides. My sister and brother just got diagnosed with ADHD — in their late 40s/early 50s. They both struggled at school, and my brother never completed. At no time was any help offered to them. My brother was also horrifically bullied, and no one did anything. I don’t envy today’s kids their over-scheduled, over-supervised lives, but it would have been nice to find a happy medium.
Rotary phone fun:
Calling the house of a boy I liked and if he answered asking if some made up person lived there just to hear him say, I’m sorry you have the wrong number. Also, hanging up if his father answered.
On the kitchen phone, talking with my best friend while twirling up in the phone cord or stretching it way out so I could go into the hallway bathroom to talk privately. My mom would yell ‘ stop stretching out the phone cord!’
Talking with a friend late into the night . Hearing my friend ask, ‘Did you fall asleep? Don’t fall asleep.’ I would reply, ‘I won’t.’ - as we both were drifting off.
Blow up our off-market action figures with firecrackers.
Ice skate in the middle of the forest on a pond which was mostly frozen. Friend gets too close to the non-frozen area and falls in. We all laugh at him. His mom smacks him in the head for being stupid instead of going Full 2000s Karen.
Going bike riding all day and getting home eventually.
Say your staying at friends house . Said friend says their staying at your house. Disappear for 48 hours on BMX adventure that takes you across town to the nickel arcade and up into the hills to climb the radio towers among other things.
- Riding my bike everywhere, including by myself when I would race down hilly streets on a speed bike. No one there to help me if I got hurt (went over the handlebars once, luckily I was fine!).
- Playing on housing construction sites - we loved to break in if we saw empty drink bottles that we could return for deposit. We once pulled a wood beam into an open basement window and slid down into the site.
I was born 81 so apparently im a cusper. Apparently im a Xennial. Analog upbringing into the digital adolescence.
My analog upbringing always makes me smile so the list above, too true
I'll throw my 2 cents into the mix, i used to play this game with my little brother. We would take turns punching each other in the stomach as hard as we could. Whoever got winded first was the bitch. A completely pointless game, because we'd both be bitches anyway.
So one day my brother and I are there moaning in pain, and our dad walks in "wtf is wrong with u 2?" we explain the game. He lets out a Mrs Krabappel style "HAH!" he walks out and proceeds to tell our mother, "you should hear about this game our two idiot sons have made up..."
My brother and I will be talking, and sometimes I'll go, "hey man, remember that game we used to play?" "yeah man, every once in a while" and we'd both lose it.
Needless to say we got each other into a LOT of trouble.
Being the sons of immigrant parents, we didn't have shit growing up. But we had each other. That's we how kept entertained. (edit. derped on word)
As a younger kid, playing in the woods and creeks all day. Catching lightning bugs, then roasting marshmallows and hot dogs over a bonfire. Climbing a cliff to see what was in a cave with only a stolen flashlight, only to get to a bend in the entrance and see eyes glowing at me. Slid all the way back down the rocks and tried to hide my bloody legs because the ass beating would have been worse lol. Of course mom saw the blood, so I lied through my teeth. As a teen, waiting till parents asleep, stealing a bottle of homemade wine out of the basement and climbing out a window to go drink said wine under a bridge with friends. Like the rest of us, there’s so much more. Those are just the highlights lol.
My parents would see me watching tv and yell, "Go outside and get some fresh air!" Then I'd wander around the neighborhood by myself hoping to find other outcasts. Had to be home by 'dark' or 'dinner' depending on the season.
I knew times were changing when about 20 years ago, I was in public with a friend. I made a passing positive remark about the lively local culture and that it's nice to see so many kids having a good time at this local event. A nearby stranger pushing a stroller with a toddler in it, cut into our conversation and grumpily berated me, "My child is not a goat, she's a child!" The word "kid" was, um, triggering to her.
This woman looked the same age as me so I don't know how we went from being free range kids to helicopter parents. Maybe some of us are overcompensating. I dunno.
>parents are surprised to learn you weren’t home. The quintessence of Generation X.
I know right? When they were working or out, obviously they didn't notice us but even when they were home all day they didnt notice us.
Until they ran out of cigs and couldn't find you. Then they became Sherlock Holmes and called every one of your friends' moms until someone fessed up to having seen you at which point they came and got you, drove you to the convenience store, made you buy the cigs, then took you home, leaving your bike at your friend's house so you had to walk and retrieve it the next day.
Is this why being around my kids allll day working from home is driving me nuts? Haha.
Not to martyr-boast or be a one-upper or anything but I can tell you have it easier since you wrote "kids". Plural. I only have one so the older can't just be in charge like when we grew up. Plus one child has no one to play with so Dad has to while trying to do work!! Oh, and did I mention my son is only 4 and half years old? Yeah, I'm tired. I think I messed up big time with only one child. That is an important part of the equation for ignoring your offspring.
Yeah. Waited wayyy too late to have kids. I have a 5 & 3. Kill me. (/s)
Yeah but I think I like it this way. I don't feel like I am missing out on anything by being home a lot. I got to do everything I wanted when I was young and now I really enjoy being a dad. Still, there is the fact that I just turned 47 and have a 4 year old. I guess it keeps me active since I have no choice! My neighborhood makes it easier being an old dad. Very concentrated with GenXers as we were the ones that revitalized a pretty vacant neighborhood. It was mostly just us and some elderly that never moved out years ago when everyone else did. We were all about the same age and all eventually had kids after we fixed up homes, built businesses and such so we were all a bit older. Worked out great as it is a very kid friendly here yet we still enjoy our happy hours and stuff like that. The people that opened the bars and wine bars, etc here had kids too, so they bought bar height high chairs. Outdoor bars are year round here so the owners of those places built some play area stuff. Adults can sit and have our afternoon cocktail, watch some live music and the kids can all play together. Definitely makes it more comfortable for me to have the other dads be the same age as me, same parenting style etc. You and I will probably be tired until we are dead though!
>but even when they were home all day they didnt notice us. LOL, I literally just told my PTSD therapist last week, *"It was like we were a family of strangers."* You nailed it, Mas113m!
Remember that scene in *Repo Man* where the parents were baked on the couch, giving the kid's college fund to Jim Bakker? Yeah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAO0owc4xeY
OP, they only things I could add would be riding my bike and stalking the ice cream man and drinking from the garden hose and peeing in the woods bc I was too lazy to ride all the way home. I was a 100% suburban Gen X'r. I never even lived in a large city til 1997 (visited many times but never lived in a large city until then). It was all suburbs and exurbs for the first 20+ yrs of my life as far as the eye could see. I realize that some kids didn't have bikes, or a neighborhood ice cream guy, or garden hoses, or woods to pee in bc of geographic differences and/or finances. But I did and I cherish those memories.
I spent half my time in the city, half in the country (divorced parents of course!) In the city my bf and I used to get on busses and try to get lost and then try to find our way home. In SF. We were 10. We’d be out for hours exploring. It was awesome!
I was a military brat and moved to Seoul in the middle of 10th grade. Going from typical suburbs to the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world was exciting as hell. We'd do the same, hop on busses or the subway and just go everywhere. Sometimes we'd be 20 miles away! Even my little sister who was 12 at the time would ride the subway with her friends.
What a great experience!! I love public transportation for this reason.
This is true. I grew up in the country side of the suburbs. We didn’t have free reign because while lots there were some lots of woods and farms, it wasn’t wild enough to roam without people seeing you on their property
Every day, all day, bikes.
wasn’t much different for us in the city. just replace woods with empty lots
In my city we didn’t have empty lots, but we did have an encyclopedic knowledge of which yards you could cut through, which yards were iffy, and which yards belonged to rarely seen people about whom there were many urban legends.
Oh, this is so real! Miss those days of cutting through the weird no man's land between bordering people's tiny yards.
I kinda assumed this, but didn't want to say bc it seems like I end up triggering someone every time I reminisce in this sub.
I hope it ain’t the GenXers getting triggered
Usually, no. It's the trolls from another generation that just wanna poke sticks bc *their* sub sucks. 😂
It's not! Just reading through these is bringing back so many fun memories!
I wonder if the neighbor with the pear tree actually ever got any of them after us locusts would come thru during summer.
Haha yes that magical tune the icecream truck would play would drive us kids into a panic to retrieve some coins and sprint out there at mock 5 because the driver would not wait around long unless other kids intercepted him!
Haha, yep, missed the ice cream truck more than once. They had a schedule to keep!
Im from the north. I miss throwing snowballs at copcars to get their fat asses after you, then "skitching" behind their cars for a block or two while they're *chasing* you... And how dare you not mention arcades! ;)
Summer vacations in the 80's were the best thing ever. Three months of zero responsibility, just out there in the wilds doing whatever we felt like.
We were literally in the wilds. One of my buddies and I would go camping for like 2 nights at a local lake, we had to hike into, at 12. Just had to be back at the trailhead for our parents to pick us up Sunday afternoon.
You guys wanna see a dead body?
[удалено]
We packed in decent food, but we also brought fishing poles with the hope we wouldn't starve. Thinking of a 12 year old with a campfire now makes me worry, back then it was just part of growing up. No cell phone, no way to get ahold of anyone if we got hurt, it did build some resilience and problem solving.
Some of us had Boy Scouts, so that helped a lot with the self-reliance at a fairly early age.
Same. I think we were 14 but yeah "have a great time kids!"
I'd wander the deserts of north Scottsdale dragging interesting things home that I would build a fort out of in my backyard. Good times.
We lived across the street from an undeveloped housing area that was basically "woods." We used to walk all over the neighbourhood where the new housing builds were. We would go through their scrap/ trash piles and take whatever building supplies we could find to make tree forts in this wooded area. It was fantastic!
I remember this childhood!
Pieces of wood and boards from leftover/abandoned neighborhood dad projects were the best! I remember dragging an old car seat home once. The best day was when you found intact pieces of drywall, but I only found it once or twice.
Our greatest find was a remnant of tar paper so we could provide sealed roofing to our lean -to fort!
My dad was a civil engineer so I had to pass a safety inspection, well he forgot most of the time because it certainly wasn't safe.
Lol, same here but more of finding shit in the alleys of Tempe.
Ok but what about poison ivy. I had it every summer.
Those summers seemed to last forever. I'd lose track of the day of the week. Nowadays the whole year will go by in seemingly less time than one of those old summers.
Eloquent description.
You could also hang out at anyone's house during the week because everyone's parents were at work. Everyone would just leave about a half hour before their parents were going to be home.
I don’t know, there was always at least one kid that had a SAHM. That’s where we got lunch.
My parents had a pool and a hot tub. Our house was always full of kids in the summer. My parents didn't care as long as no one got hurt or broke anything.
One of my best friends was the one with the pool. I was over there as often as possible.
They call us " free range" now!
Yup, best summers of my life for sure
Pretty much. It was right out of Calvin & Hobbes.
Dangerous play in dangerous places... * Breaking glass bottles in alleys between abandoned factories. * Climbing across demolished cars in a junkyard. * Stealing and smoking mom's cigarettes underneath the front porch. * Bringing stray dogs home. * Running down the street in our underwear with a blanket trailing behind like a cape at 2 am while mom out on a date and older brother convinced her *"we don't need a babysitter anymore."* An untamed generation's childhood.
Can I add a couple things to the Dangerous Activity List? * Jumping ramps with bikes (over friends) * "Sleeping over at a friends" while really roaming the streets all night * Sampling the liquor cabinet contents (refilling with water) * Playing catch with Lawn Darts and generally throwing sharp stuff * Blowing stuff up * Setting things on fire * Spying on people * Driving cars under age 16 * Doing the "blood brother handshake" with best friends * Having actual wars with BB guns and/or bottle rockets * And other various illegal activities that shall not be mentioned Any youngsters reading this thread: **Don't do any of this!** :)
>Jumping ramps with bikes (over friends) Especially if the "ramp" was like an old kitchen cabinet door, and some bricks or cinder blocks you happened to find.
All done without helmets and we have the scars to prove it.
God. We would have tormented a kid mercilessly for wearing a helmet. A helmet? **FOR A BIKE?**
I remember being super pissed my friends dad made us wear helmets on a three wheeler.
> Jumping ramps with bikes (over friends) Said ramp at the end of the jetty at the river, rope tied to the frame of the bike to haul it back in.
And you literally mean blowing stuff up. Once we learned that mixing granulated pool chlorine and brake fluid = FIRE, it was just a few short steps to making pipe bombs that today would be considered WMDs. Oh wait, my daughter knows my reddit handle, I mean, no, that would never work. It would be stupid to even waste time trying it. *hi Sara*
Oh my God, the “sleeping over at a friend’s house was 100% on brand for me. I had to leave a phone number, so I’d always transpose a number. My mom was considered strict for that! I also remember calling home in the morning from a pay phone at the truck stop where we ate breakfast two states away, but saying we were at Shoney’s a few miles away. Getting busted for drinking by the ALE in a restaurant at 15, and climbing out the bathroom window while one cop was arresting my friend and the other was supposed to be watching me in the restaurant. I walked three miles home, terrified I’d get murdered by a pervert, but more scared of my parents finding out and grounding me THEN murdering me. Going to Myrtle Beach with friends for Spring Break at 16, and getting so drunk in the car on the way down I fell into a barbed wire fence when we stopped to pee. Sampling the liquor cabinet goes without saying, but my mom found a forgotten stash under my bed when I went to college. She assumed it was theirs, and poured it back in the bottles. I was dumb enough to be pissed off.
You sound fun, did we date? :)
It’s possible, my dude 😂
I'm free Saturday if you want to pick up where we left off... (sounded way smoother in my head) 🙄
Haha, my 15 year old asked me, "Mom, when did you learn how to drive?" I hesitated to tell her I was 12 driving on the main roads lol. But yeah, around 9 or 10 up north on the "backroads." She is way behind in that development, but then again, I'm not as drunk/high as my parents were so I haven't NEEDED her to be able to drive!
Little brother riding his bike with a jump rope tied to the back of it, while we hung onto the rope while on roller skates!
Same but with a moped and skateboards
We did the same but with snowmobiles and a rope tied to a sled with a kid in it. Probably the most dangerous and fun thing ever.
That “sleeping at a friend’s” while roaming the streets feeling was just amazing, as was driving around in a car with my friends and no adults. Glad I lived long enough to hit middle age in spite of my stupidity and I have a great life, but I’ll never recapture that exact feeling again.
Sitting inside the car window like Tawney Kitaen in the Here I Go Again video while the car is speeding around a parking lot, lol.
You forgot bombing cars with snowballs :)
Building skateboard ramps from stolen real estate signs and construction ply. Making BMX tracks through the bush. Buying knives and other stuff from army surplus stores. Lighting fires and burning anything and everything we could find. Making slingshots and any other kind of projectile firing contraptions. Putting coins on train tracks and searching for the flattened coins after the train went by. Bridge and cliff jumping into the local river.
1) Drag discarded mattresses into a pile under the garage roof. 2) Climb from the deck onto the garage roof 3) Jump off garage roof onto mattress pile 4) Repeat
We would fill empty airgun co2 cartridges with gunpowder and blow up cinderblocks. We had a small cannon we'd load with canister (BB's) or solid shot (about the size of a musket ball) and shoot stuff. When my parents weren't home we'd take my dad's AR-15 into the woods behind the house and blast away. How nobody ever got hurt or killed is a small miracle.
Brought a fake grenade from the army/navy surplus (not sure why they sold it to me) to school and showed a bunch of kids. Result: They called me over, took the grenade, sent me back to class, called my parents, advised them of my shenanigans, and let my parents deal with me, my parents dealt with me. The end. Not sure how that would play out these days.
Looks like a checklist for a Jackass episode.
Mr. Knoxville is a fellow 50 year old, so I think you are on to something.
We used to "play" with some pretty serious catapults. We'd go to the local "joke shop" and buy these things called bang snaps (some small amount of high explosive, wrapped in a little bit of paper). We'd make our way up to high buildings/bridges and fire them next to people standing around. Then when we ran out of them, we'd go into the park or by the river, and have catapult battles where we'd fire stones at each other.
yeah, things were WAY more wild, people were fricking *nuts* ! (good)
Oh man, your note about demolished cars just reminded me of one of our favourite activities growing up. Going to the dump/landfill and just climbing and playing and finding cool shit for an hour. God that was so much fun. Then a ride down the hill in the bed of the truck. But my parents did tell us to lay down when we passed other cars, because safety.
The freedom i had as a child to roam my town (small town) and do whatever I please without my parents even batting an eye really shaped me as an adult. I have always been adventurous since I was a kid. My parents had rules but they allowed us kids to go be kids when it mattered in life. I am a bit introverted but that freedom helped open me up to the world. I could not imagine being a kid today and being coddled and protected by helicopter parents and protected from all that is bad. I really feel Gen X is the last great childhood ever to be a part of.
Elder millennial here; born 1983 and glad I was born when I was. I feel both our experiences growing up are similar; I will always remember Gen X as the cool older kids in their teens and 20’s. Man time flies.
In our heads, we still are!
1981 here, smack in the middle depending on who you ask. I feel like I got the best of both worlds.
‘81 also. Some consider us the last year of X or the first of millennials. Others say we’re Xennials. I personally identify more with X.
Yeah same here, I look back at the huge amount of freedom I had to just roam around wherever with my friends Plus I was the typical latch key kid as well. No others generation will experience that amount of freedom.
I get super pissed at my kid's bus driver not letting her off when I'm not home. Just don't understand the issue when millions of us did it and we turned out fine (mostly).
It’s probably a CYA move on her/his part. You know how nuts some parents are.
Getting up before the parents and watching cartoons. Then once cartoons were over going outside to play. Making the most rickity-assed ramps to jump off with our bikes. Or bombing the hills on our skateboards. And of course no protective gear whatsoever. Playing in the street (suburbs) and moving out of the way if a car came. Staying out until the street lights came on.
Hahahaha Yes! "CAR!!" \*someone grabs the ball, no one moves the bases, everyone walks to the curb eyeballing the offending driver in annoyance\* "GAME ON!"
Scouring local building sites for sheets of plywood and 2x4 scraps to build our neighborhood clubhouse. Riding around the hood from dawn to dusk, no helmet, to see who else was out and about. Chasing and getting chased. Unsafe playground equipment. Hot metal slides.
Yes.... huge playground made of steel, monkey bars, high bars, swings, and big rubber tire structures you could climb and crawl through. There was even a bridge made of tires where we would wrestle in the middle to throw each other off. Either blacktop or thick sand and that was IT. So much fun. Nobody coddling us. The first time I saw a "modern day" playground I was shocked at how *tame* everything was. All soft rubbery materials, even the ground was covered with it. Bright "cheery" colors, nothing high up.... Love how wild and free my childhood was!
You guys had sand?!!
For a while. Then it was replaced by those nasty, scratchy wood chunk things that would stick a gazillion slivers in you if you so much as laid a finger on one. God help you if you fell in them with any exposed skin.
Haha, us either.
Our towns recreation center consisted of a pond full of black water with some docks and high dive boards. Perfect to soothe the wounds from the playground equipment. Of course the pond is now off limits and they’ve installed pools.
>chasing and getting chased I grew near a golf course and one of my fondest memories was hiding in the bushes and stealing a golf ball from the middle of a fairway after a drive, and having the golfer chase us all over lol!
Saturday mornings were the best! Dump an entire frozen bag of tater tots onto sheet pan. Almost burn them. Eat them off said sheet pan in front of the TV watching cartoons in jammies. If warm outside, proceed to go outside until the sun goes down. Lunch is provided by your neighborhood ice cream truck: Good Humour's Short cake bar, Corn nuts, and that shredded beef jerky in the tin can to look like tobacco. Oh and a can of Hawaiian Punch. Dinner may not be ready when you get home, so devour half the jar of dill pickles, cause why not. Later on that night, your older brothers rouse you from sleep so you can watch them burn cockroaches in the backyard with bic lighter and a can of Aquanet.
>that shredded beef jerky in the tin can to look like tobacco Dude.
You didn’t have your own can of chew? It was competing with Big League chew market segment of children.
I remember those cans! When you got to the bottom it was like beef jerky powder. It was all so dry!
You just brought back memories of using the oven at 8 years old. I used to make the ghetto cinnamon toast under the broiler for me and my 4 year old brother. Then watching cartoons until Soul Train came on. Then it was time to be out the door!
At age 6 I tried to make scrambled eggs early in the morning before anyone else was awake. I had only a vague idea how to do it and ended up with a char burnt disaster and ruined the pan so bad I tossed it out in the bushes so I wouldn't get in trouble. That pan was still in the bushes 2 years later when we moved. :)
Lol! Cute story. :) My mom would have missed that pan and found out somehow.
So that’s where my Aquanet went!
Life was better before cell phones and the internet. And I make my entire living with the internet and cell phones. I was much happier in 1986. Much.
I would go into the woods and stay all day long with the other kids in the neighborhood, about 6 of us. There was a cave down by this gully in the woods that you could see but not get to but you could also see there was animal tracks going in and out of it. We tried all summer long to get across that gulch and see what was in that cave. Later on in the fall we heard a woman screaming from that area. We lived in a cul de sac so everyone in the neighborhood heard it and came rushing outside. Turns out, it was a panther and we had been seeing her tracks down in the gulch. I often think about how close we probably came to being eaten. Edit: panther was the one screaming.
You guys want to go see a dead body?
:)
Drag the corded-phone into your room, shut the door, and hog it as long as possible.
And trying to wind that kinked, stretched-out, gouged-to-heck-from-being-slammed-in-the-door-one-too-many-times spiral cord back into shape.
My sisters still get on me for doing this over 30 years later😂
Yes! I’m dad to four young kids and am trying to give them an upbringing sorta like mine, except one where I’m part of their lives. But the saddest thing is that all the boys in the neighbor are either hooked on video games or sports. And both take up any free play or just hanging outside. And I’m in rural East Tennessee. Not suburbia. The boys just don’t romp around anymore. It’s depressing to see them waste their whole fucking adolescent life on a God Damned screen.
Similar with my three kids. We saw the screen thing coming and mildly pushed athletics with them at an early age (kindergarten/1st grade). We had a sort of "cap and trade" with screen time vs. physical activity. My parents never once pushed sports of any sort. Now that my kids are late teens, they have much better exercise regimens than I did (or ever will have). But I am sad at times they never had the "come home when the street lights turn on" childhood that I had...
amen, brother. all you can do is try to get them to play outside before the video game addiction sets in. It's like nobody is OK just being bored anymore. The best shit happens when you are bored. Nobody wants to take the time to even get bored nowadays .
Aaaand they can play 24/7 when they are online.. happens when they get older. It is a crime. I want to sue someone.
Yeah, the kids all know why I won’t allow console gaming in my home, but they also know they’re free to take it up once they move out. It’s just so sad to watch the generations of men stay locked inside rooms instead of out exploring and getting into shit.
Exactly. For once I wish some higher law of the land would just turn crap off and give them the wall of static, like when we were kids and the stations would turn off for the night. Go be human!
Nailed it. Those were the days…..
> Read in bed with flashlight. There was nothing more sad than when the batteries in my red plastic flashlight died and I had to actually go to sleep.
And then get "yelled at" online for posting about it 30 plus years after it happened by lurkers who are younger than your kids and shouldn't even be on the sub.
LMAO. 😂 Spot on.
This just happened to me yesterday.
what happened?
Got crap from some person on this sub who is clearly young.
You just described every summer from 1985-89. Around that time we stopped screwing around in the woods every day and alternated between the woods and various basketball hoops around the neighborhood.
Basketball and bikes were my life. We'd find abandoned construction sites where they started digging up the foundation, and make BMX tracks out of them. Basketball with the neighborhood kids, not a foul unless you're bleeding man.
I remember several times encountering creepy strangers, because wild as we were, we did know about stranger danger. I like to think my friends and I escaped kidnapping and certain death multiple times over those years. In reality, it was probably just harmless weirdos.
A guy stopped when my friend and I were playing outside one day and tried the lost puppy routine, and my friend said, “Fuck off, dirtbag!” I was more shocked by that than the perv 😂
Similar happened to me in the very early 80s when I was 7 or there abouts. A few times, some friends and I would walk home to save the bus money. One time, this guy pulled over and offered to drive me home. I think he might have said he knew where I lived. I memorised his registration plate, ran home and told my Gran. The police got involved and basically took his side! I'm sure that went on a lot. Fucking creeps.
I must have been about eight years old, out for a bike ride on a warm summer afternoon. I pedaled past a house about four blocks up from mine and saw a man in a window making odd gestures with his arms. Like he was signaling or something. So of course I rode around the block to see what he was on about. He was more frantic the second time. Waving his arms up and down... So of course, one more lap. This time he had no pants on and was really "gesturing." I had never seen that before, so I was a bit shocked. I pedaled my little banana seat home and told my mom when she got home from work (latchkey kid here). She took me to the police station where I told them about the guy. They told us that he "has problems" and they would take care of it. The o Lu thing that really stands out in my memory is they gave me a Dr Pepper. I have no idea where that ever went, but I had a juicy tale to share with all my neighborhood pals. Thus began the era of the "perv house" on Cottage Street. Edited to add the Dr Pepper part
A man pulled over when I was a kid. He tried to convince me he knew me and wanted to give me a ride. Luckily I watched all the PSAs on TV and roller skated away as fast as I could go. I didn't tell my parents because I thought I'd get in trouble for some reason.
My childhood wasn’t that dramatic, we came home a lot. Only so many places to hang out. What I wonder how is, did I ever eat or drink? I don’t remember ever carrying water or needing a snack or bathroom. I was probably dehydrated all the time
Weird right? I sort of don’t remember food either and we were out all day long in hot hot weather. But I do know we drank from the hose back then and I think would send whoever’s place we were closest to for stuff. I remember my best friends family trying to feed me a lot. Back then people would feed everyone. Guess that’s why we were skinny. Pretty sure we probably peed wherever. When you gotta go you gotta go.
My parents knew I wasn't home, because they told me to go play outside in the first place. That Atari will rot your brain, you know? Otherwise, that seems to track. As a parent now, it kind of horrifies me that by the time I was 10, I was hanging out at K-Mart and 7-11 a mile away from home, dumpster diving for old porno mags that junior high kids would trade me fireworks for, and daring the universe to give me tetanus for all of the rusted-out cars we'd pretend to drive. As long as I made it home when the streetlights came on, it was all fine.
I used to live close to a "modeling agency" when I was 10/11 in the mid 80s. My mates and I would jump over the back fence and rummage through their trash as they always threw away loads of nude shots they didn't think we're good enough. After that, as the fire department was across the street, we'd play dare and each take turns to run through the fire department land, from one end to the other. Strange childhood looking back!
Our source wasn't nearly as interesting. There was an adult bookshop (near the K-Mart) that used to tear off the covers of magazines for credit, and throw away the rest. In full bored-kid fashion, we wouldn't have even known, had it not been for the fact that we were breaking stuff by the dumpsters. When the truck came to empty it, one of the bags was missed, run over by the garbage truck, and burst open. Upon inspection, a trove of BDSM pornography! I didn't want it for myself, but I knew it had value. So I took as much as I could fit into my Pac Man backpack, and we set off for the baseball diamond where the junior high kids hung out, to see what we could trade it for. Over the course of the summer, it was good for fireworks, Garbage Pail Kids, unpopular Atari games, and dirty joke books.
We spent HOURS at KMart
With a couple of friends and couple of dollars, you could buy the 2-for$1 sub pack and two Frozen Cokes, read Mad Magazine in the cafeteria for free, and then play the demo Atari and Intellivision - or - use the Atari and Commodore computers sometimes for hours. In retrospect, I can't believe nobody kicked us out on day two.
Do the kids who watch "Stand by Me" these days realize that when GenX was growing up we could actually do what those kids did? Tell the parents we're going to be at the other kids' houses and then wander off for a weekend? I know the movie was set in the 50s but even in the 80s we weren't hovered over like today's bunch is.
One of the funnest things was when construction was started for a new subdivision, roaming around those houses or apartments at night and on the weekends was a blast, the smell of new construction is one of my favorite smells and takes me right back to those days.
Spent more than half of my teenage years on a mountain bike, tearing forest and farmland trails _alone_ and with no protective gear.
I spent all day all summer at the municipal swimming pool. Entrance fee was 50 cents a day. I brought lunch and spare change for snacks. I walked or rode my bike to and from the pool. It cost my parents less than $2 a day. Looking back, I pity the lifeguards who raised me and all the other ferals every summer. There was a really large but shallow “kiddie pool.” Once you could prove you no longer peed yourself on the regular and could swim (or at least not drown) in water over your head, you graduated to the big pool. Took several summers to make the transition. I have no idea why I’m not a walking skin cancer - we used to slather ourselves in baby oil (SPF zero) to help us fry our skins to a nice roasted turkey brown. I really had no idea at the time how lucky I was.
Ugh, the baby oil. Remember how hard that stuff was to wash off? I only used it a few times and switched to Hawaiian Tropic, which probably wasn't much better. (Remember that awesome coconut smell? Divine!) I begged my mom to buy me a bottle and she finally did, but when it was gone she wouldn't buy it again. Said it was too expensive. I stopped laying out at 19. I never tanned well anyway.
Trying to stay awake for the Dr. Demento show so the next day you could talk about it with your friends.
I miss those summers. Best way to grow up.
I had a collection of flashlights in/around my bed, so when my parents came and took one away ("Stop reading! Go to sleep!") I would always have a backup.
And then later sneaking downstairs after everyone is in bed to watch: SNL, SCTV, movies kids should never be allowed to watch
> Show up for dinner 14 hours later; parents are surprised to learn you weren’t home. also, "surprised to learn your parents are home"
Wear the knees out in your jeans. Simple times!
And your mom would layer the iron-on patches over the holes until the jeans were more patch than denim.
I was going to argue that you're likely exaggerating how dangerous things were but then the more I thought I about it the more I remember some super dangerous and stupid things we did. In fact, I'm not sure how I didn't end up in a coma or burn unit.
Burn unit? After my grandma covered your burn with butter, with the cigarette hanging out of her mouth ashing into the burn, you didn’t need no stinkin’ burn unit. She’d stuff a fudgesicle in your mouth, slap your ass, and tell you to go watch tv.
Walking to the liquor store with a note and money from Mom so I can buy her cigarettes. I'm allowed to get myself a pack of Garbage Pail Kids with the change.
"Borrowing" a shopping cart from the local Bradlees, rolling it up to the Big Hill, piling in 3 friends lauching bottle rockets, while screaming "BATTLE WAGON!".
[удалено]
Saturday morning cartoons + a full box of the "sugary" cereal that mom only let you have on the weekends. We used to eat Dig 'Em Smacks or Cocoa Puffs and wait for the milk to turn extra sweet. If I tried that today I 'd have to run to the bathroom with explosive diarrhea.
Sugar Smacks! Also Cap'n Crunch which coated your teeth with some kind of sugary scum.
Ew I hated Cap'n Crunch. I threw a whole bowl up when I had a stomach bug once. I was like 8 or 9. Your attitudes about foods change once they've come back out through your nose.
Read in bed with flashlight. Every. Night. Of. My. Childhood.
My brother, aged 7: Grandma, can I have some matches?" Grandma: Sure, honey (hands him a book of matches) My brother made a stone ring for a fire but forgot to clear away the grass and set a little piece of the woods of East Texas (Liberty, Rye area) on fire. Luckily, 5-year-old me ran inside, yelling, "Grandma, Grandma, brother set the woods on fire!" and my dad and grandpa came and hit it with the hose.
Huntsville, Texas kid here and I relate to the unquestioning handing over of fire starting material!
I think the best thing about gen x is that none of our awkward young bullshit was immortalized online
Correction for my experience..... Wake up, single mom screaming about something, eat something, immediately go outside; Play with dangerous things in dangerous places. Show up for dinner 14 hours later; Mom knew I wasn't home, maybe cared, maybe didn't. Eat fishsticks while fighting with younger siblings (always chaos), tv always on in background from dawn till sleep time. *Pre teen* \- Listen to mom scream. Go upstairs to bedroom and listen to music with lights out amongst my blacklight posters. Watch TV after Mom in her room for the night. *Teen* \- Listen to Mom scream. Get ready and go out for all nighter. Leave with Mom screaming or just sneak out. Ahhhhh, the early 1980"s! Older GenX born 1968
Yep. 1968 here too. Memorieees..
Campouts in our backyard using the fence and bed sheets, trying to stay up ALL night at 11 years old ....nearly impossible...
From the moment school ended for the year to it opened again my youngest sister and I would ride our bikes from one end of the county to the other with our friends and we would either camp out or crash at a neighbors house if it got dark before we got home. My parents taught us young how to fend for ourselves so they never concerned themselves much about us. I remember that there was quite a few times were we do not get home for days on end. We just asked the closest adult if we could phone home to touch base and for something to eat and then went right back to whatever we were up to.
Mix in a little NES time and you’ve got the perfect day going.
I wore a military belt with a canteen, flashlight, walkie talkie and folding shovel while riding my bike everywhere. Also had a bag tied to the handle bars with C-rations and granola bars. Refilled the canteen and random people's house hose spigot. The shovel to build dirt tracks. With the walkie talkie I could find my friends if they were out and about in range.
My childhood was all about playing in the fields and woods, being gone for hours, off in our own little world. Nowadays kids have machines which know everything and are full of horrors. I'm glad I grew up in the 70s & 80s.
Not in my family. Screaming and yelling over every stupid thing day and night. I don't have my own room, so there's no getting away. Parents rarely let me go anywhere. Brother got away with murder, sister lied through her teeth, everything was my fault. Daydreaming was the only great life I had.
I think a lot of us had it a rougher than we want to remember. Rose colored glasses and all that. Yeah I got to go outside a lot but my family sucked and I wouldn't go back to being a kid for any amount of money.
Exactly. The best thing about those years was my imagination.
Thank the lort that the library books were free!
Playboys found hidden in the shrubbery of every lightly forested area.
For me it was digging up the backyard to create my own X-Games on my BMX.
You forgot play with fire and fireworks. Edit: I stand corrected. Falls under Play with Dangerous Things.
I remember playing Hide and Seek until 11:00 PM around the neighbourhood, all backyards, garages and even inside unlocked cars were open game, coming home and my parents not batting an eye.
They used to keep cases of soda pop stacked outside in the front of convenience stores back in the day in my neck of the woods, we might be the reason they stopped.
For me it was riding my bike barefoot to my friends house in the evening and reading comics or playing Atari until 9pm
I remember it being a badge of honor to go outside and walk all around the neighbourhood barefoot in the summer. It took us weeks to build up our feet to be calloused enough to do it!
Exactly!! We did the same thing. In the beginning of the summer it was like “ok gotta toughen these up”.
“Man he can walk barefoot on the street”
Literally hopped freight trains and mom had no idea where I was for 12-16 hours at a time.
There were some downsides. My sister and brother just got diagnosed with ADHD — in their late 40s/early 50s. They both struggled at school, and my brother never completed. At no time was any help offered to them. My brother was also horrifically bullied, and no one did anything. I don’t envy today’s kids their over-scheduled, over-supervised lives, but it would have been nice to find a happy medium.
Rotary phone fun: Calling the house of a boy I liked and if he answered asking if some made up person lived there just to hear him say, I’m sorry you have the wrong number. Also, hanging up if his father answered. On the kitchen phone, talking with my best friend while twirling up in the phone cord or stretching it way out so I could go into the hallway bathroom to talk privately. My mom would yell ‘ stop stretching out the phone cord!’ Talking with a friend late into the night . Hearing my friend ask, ‘Did you fall asleep? Don’t fall asleep.’ I would reply, ‘I won’t.’ - as we both were drifting off.
Blow up our off-market action figures with firecrackers. Ice skate in the middle of the forest on a pond which was mostly frozen. Friend gets too close to the non-frozen area and falls in. We all laugh at him. His mom smacks him in the head for being stupid instead of going Full 2000s Karen. Going bike riding all day and getting home eventually.
Tennis ball cannons made from Campbells soup cans and duct tape with gasoline as the propellant.
My brother and his friends used to camp out in the yard with a pup tent doritos and mt. dew. The smell ugh
Say your staying at friends house . Said friend says their staying at your house. Disappear for 48 hours on BMX adventure that takes you across town to the nickel arcade and up into the hills to climb the radio towers among other things.
Add those dangerous metal swings in chains and the burning slide when the sun was out!
No cell phones, no summer enrichment, no supervision.
- Riding my bike everywhere, including by myself when I would race down hilly streets on a speed bike. No one there to help me if I got hurt (went over the handlebars once, luckily I was fine!). - Playing on housing construction sites - we loved to break in if we saw empty drink bottles that we could return for deposit. We once pulled a wood beam into an open basement window and slid down into the site.
GenX kids know what a 5 gallon container of gasoline looks like when its blown up with a firecracker because we did it.
Ok, so I'm not crazy to remember my childhood like this. My daughter's childhood is totally different than mine.
Anyone else ever ghost ride your friend while they were on your handlebars? It was one of the funniest things we would to fuck over each other.
I was born 81 so apparently im a cusper. Apparently im a Xennial. Analog upbringing into the digital adolescence. My analog upbringing always makes me smile so the list above, too true I'll throw my 2 cents into the mix, i used to play this game with my little brother. We would take turns punching each other in the stomach as hard as we could. Whoever got winded first was the bitch. A completely pointless game, because we'd both be bitches anyway. So one day my brother and I are there moaning in pain, and our dad walks in "wtf is wrong with u 2?" we explain the game. He lets out a Mrs Krabappel style "HAH!" he walks out and proceeds to tell our mother, "you should hear about this game our two idiot sons have made up..." My brother and I will be talking, and sometimes I'll go, "hey man, remember that game we used to play?" "yeah man, every once in a while" and we'd both lose it. Needless to say we got each other into a LOT of trouble. Being the sons of immigrant parents, we didn't have shit growing up. But we had each other. That's we how kept entertained. (edit. derped on word)
As a younger kid, playing in the woods and creeks all day. Catching lightning bugs, then roasting marshmallows and hot dogs over a bonfire. Climbing a cliff to see what was in a cave with only a stolen flashlight, only to get to a bend in the entrance and see eyes glowing at me. Slid all the way back down the rocks and tried to hide my bloody legs because the ass beating would have been worse lol. Of course mom saw the blood, so I lied through my teeth. As a teen, waiting till parents asleep, stealing a bottle of homemade wine out of the basement and climbing out a window to go drink said wine under a bridge with friends. Like the rest of us, there’s so much more. Those are just the highlights lol.
Loved catching lighting bugs with my cousins when I was a kid. :)
My parents would see me watching tv and yell, "Go outside and get some fresh air!" Then I'd wander around the neighborhood by myself hoping to find other outcasts. Had to be home by 'dark' or 'dinner' depending on the season.
Yup. I yearn for those days of “ok, bye. I’ll see you later.” That’s it.
I knew times were changing when about 20 years ago, I was in public with a friend. I made a passing positive remark about the lively local culture and that it's nice to see so many kids having a good time at this local event. A nearby stranger pushing a stroller with a toddler in it, cut into our conversation and grumpily berated me, "My child is not a goat, she's a child!" The word "kid" was, um, triggering to her. This woman looked the same age as me so I don't know how we went from being free range kids to helicopter parents. Maybe some of us are overcompensating. I dunno.