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Best old school perk is doing all your stupid kid shit at a time where cameras weren’t ubiquitous.
Or at least not permanent.
I grew up in the early 2000s and while starting somewhere around 2005 cameras and the first social sites became a thing, nothing of that exists today. Myspace and SchülerVZ (German Facebook clone) were super popular, but don’t exist anymore. Camera phones didn’t have an easy way to export photos and most hard drives from back then just died at some point. There’s hardly anything left. And that’s a good thing.
I do feel bad about the younger generations of today. It seems like every part of their life is recorded or streamed now. I’m not sure how comfortable I would have been with that, when I was their age.
This is one thing I will always appreciate of growing up Gen-X. Our moms would kick us out of the house after breakfast and expected us to be gone until the street lights started to buzz. A pack of us on BMX bikes, adventuring, exploring abandoned buildings, jumping off cliffs and into rivers or the ocean, etc. It genuinely ruled ams and I fully appreciate that it did.
I’m on the cusp (xennial) and it’s kinda crazy in hindsight. I had the exact same experience you described, but when it got dark, I’d go home and play with the Commodore 64 or Atari.
Same for me, but I guess I’m a little younger since my console was NES and, later, a Gateway 2000 computer.
I’m so glad that I had those experiences and so sad that my son won’t. I hope that I can give him enough of a similar experience that he can at least identify with Calvin and Hobbes.
Us xennials are a special mini generation. Analog childhood, digital adulthood. The average xennial is quite proficient with computers and other tech, compared to those who were born before AND after. You see we had the childhood curiosity when the internet was starting to catch on. We learned how to navigate in DOS or early Windows. We had to figure shit out because these things were not easy to use.
I thought, when I was a teen, I can’t imagine how good with this stuff the kids being born today will be. But I was very wrong.
This is so accurate!
Atari! Yars’ Revenge, Asteroids, Frogger and Space Invaders were my jam.
I was born in the mid-90’s and I was also more or less raised that way (until a certain age). I remember being able to get home in time for dinner after a whole day of playing outside just because it “felt” like it was almost dinner time. We would go to the nearby “forest” where we built huts, climbed into trees, made wooden swords out of sticks, and sometimes had “battles” with rivaling groups about certain areas in the forest. We’d be there for hours even in the pouring rain. There was a whole economy around these wooden swords and other services like building a hut. It was better than any video game ever could be
The bikes are non negotiable. Also there’s some sort of bully involved.
And a golden retriever
Bully becomes a friend at the end though
That’s absolute bullshit. I’ve never met anyone who turned their bully into a friend while they were still in school together.
I did. Okay, not so much a friend, as a guy who would talk to me regularly and treat me and my friends with respect, occasionally tagging along with us. He’s still in my Facebook friends list to this day.
Back in elementary school there was a kid who was easily twice as big as everyone else. He’d push his way around and demand he get whatever he wanted. He finally crossed me one day, and I punched him as hard as I could right in the stomach. When he stood back up, I did it again. He never crossed me or my friends again, and became generally friendly with us. Bullies don’t concede without force.
I had a bully chill the fuck out once we made it to high school, but it turns out that was because of all the drugs.
I turned an eighth grade (Catholic elementary school) bully into a ninth grade (public jr high) “we’re pretty cool now,” likely because he was scared as fuck to be in this rough public middle school, and I’d been getting bullied my whole life so it was nothing different for me.
It’s more realistic to realize a friend is actually a bully.
You’ve obviously not lived inside an American high school movie
Mine tried, I was too nice to tell him to fuck off. He was a conservative shitheel by my high schools standards, and that’s a place I took some shit for voting for Obama (class of '13). I ditched all those fuckers when I went to college and came out though so idk. I hope he got better, I didn’t say hi when I ran into him between my fwb’s place and my classes in college though.
I managed to turn every fist fight I had into a highschool friendship. Granted, my graduating class was about 40 people and most of my bullies were also athletic teammates so it was pretty easy to turn that tension into something positive.
I did. Bully - > rival - > friend. Pipeline is common.
Not Henry Bowers
Only after you kick his ass.
Or finding a dead body
Or kissing Wendy Peffercorn
Nostalgia is bittersweet & I love it as much as anyone but the bigger picture is this: capitalism grows like a weed or a vampire & every generation had freedom without cameras like that until gen-Xers, who were the last, which is why it feels like such magic now even tho then it was just life & being outside
I’m a millennial. I remember a time without cameras everywhere. I also grew up in the poorest part of WV and I’ve seen my own childhood home in like 10 documentaries on poverty so…
were you the good example of poverty or the bad one?
I really don’t know what you mean haha.
“Wow, look how the peasants endure, so brave ♥️❣️❣️♥️❣️ now let’s get some Starbucks” vs “Goddamn there’s a lot of rats in this meth lab.”
Both of these make my stomach turn.
the fact you have to ask tells me you’re the good example of poverty.
not some rich asshole that makes assumptions.
I’m still poor. I don’t care though. I’m rich where it counts.
I have a gorgeous wife that loves me and kids who love me and can’t stand to be away from me.
I have 50 bucks in my bank account and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.
we all make it our own way. IMO if you can do it without shitting on peoples livelihoods(including your own) then you’re leading a righteous life that’s deserving successes and praise.
good on you for focusing on what you have.
I agree for the most part, but as an early millennial, we had that freedom too. Society didn’t truly go crazy until some time after 2000 in my opinion. I turned 16 that year.
Early to mid mollenial here with the same experience. It all went downhill when Facebook and flip phones with cameras came out ie. around 2006.
I have repeatedly felt like taking some emery cloth to my neighbors ring door bell camera, which records me when ever I am in my front yard. There is an expense to replacing cameras and they seem like easy targets, if you go about it right.
When you’re sold a version of nostalgia for something you never experienced.
anemoia
No… But I’ve been a 13 year old boy in the 1990’s and had the same experience.
Same but 2000’s
Same but 80s and only discovered cannabis and motorbikes
You’ll never be a middle-aged accountant in the 80s either, just fyi.
My grandfather was, but it does seem rather unlikely he’ll be able to do it again now that you mention it.
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like banana.
Or on skateboards, running from rent-a-cops.
Hell yeah. Running from real cops too. This leads directly to the beginning of me becoming radicalized.
A cop came up while we were skating on an unused building’s loading dock. He had his hands kinda up like hey I just want to talk to you guys.
He did. He threatened us. He said he was the boss and if we crossed him he’d take our boards, beat us up, and take us to jail. He brought out a paper pad and a pen, and I quote to the best of my memory- “This is my magic pen. Why is it magic? Because whatever I write with it is what happened.”
One of my most memorable experiences skating on “no skateboarding allowed” property in Jr. High, where a RAC came up and one of my friends said “Um, excuse me, suck my dick sir.” I thought “omg we are fucked” and just ran.
Another time in HS I wasn’t even skating, I just had my skateboard with me, and had climbed up onto a wall outside a mall loading dock. I saw the RAC’s coming and got worried they’d be dicks like always and ran into a Walgreens in the mall. I thought they weren’t following me and I’d kill time, so I stopped to do my blood pressure check at the machine, then went to piss. On my way out an undercover RAC slammed me up against the wall and said into his radio “we got him!” Another RAC came and started patting me down, and when he got to the back of my Alternative Tentacles record company shirt, right where the words “Stop Skate Harassment” were printed, I looked back at him, and he said “yeah I see your shirt.” They then said I was a cocaine dealer who had just gone and flushed my stash down the toilet. I was like 16, had never done drugs, and was like “whaaaat? Are you crazy?” They let me go but told me not to come back for 3 months. I worked in that mall though so I ignored them.
Good for you. I forgot about Alternative Tentacles!
Maybe I’m just well adjusted but at 30 years old I can’t imagine deciding to lord my power over teenagers
Fine. I won’t be that boy again.
True I was sitting inside by myself without friends before it was cool.
That’s all I did during summer breaks as a kid. My friends and I practically lived on our bikes.
Just play Kids On Bikes, bout the closest you’ll get.
Tales From The Loop too.
Knights on Bikes?
It was fun and I feel sorry for anyone who didn’t get to have that kind of childhood. But we almost died so many times. I still have flashbacks to times I was trapping in mud or climbing a huge cliff. I was so lucky I made it past 20
Bikes were, and still are involved. Revo-Lution
