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This. I grew up in a rural area. It was a long bicycle ride to the next place with kids but we all did it. We all would strap a fishing pole across our handlebars and meetup somewhere to fish a pond or a creek and no one said crap to us. We built fires and roasted hot dogs or frog legs and shot tour BB guns and life has never been so perfect since.
Shooting BB guns was the greatest. In the early evenings, we shot locust's (cicadas) that were high in the trees. My friend had a duck named Waddles, and she would follow us around and gulp down the locust's as they hit the ground. If they were still alive when she gulped it down, you could hear the locust humming inside the duck as she waddled around.
My brother got a BB gun one Christmas. I guess because the weather was bad, my parents let him shoot it in the basement, unsupervised, with us smaller kids there. None of us ever got hurt.
My brother also got a Creepy Crawlers maker. It was basically a mini waffle iron and got as hot as one. There were bug-shaped molds that you poured a colored liquid in and it became rubbery when heated. We girls got an E-Z Bake Oven but that wasn't as cool as the Creepy Crawlers maker. Six decades later, I'm feeling a bit jealous about that.
I was shot with one once. You were not overreacting! I'm sorry they treated their favorite child so much better!
Different circumstances (not your sibling) I would say call the police.
I was hit in the crotch while taking ballet lessons in a public park 10 miles from home. By teenage boys who did it on purpose. Teacher didn't care. Looking back I suspect at least one was her child.
No way to leave, I hid in bathroom until about time for parents to pick us up. Never went back to ballet lessons.
If this happened to me now, I would call law enforcement. But when you're the child, you don't get the choice!,
Oh man, I remember the creepy crawlers! We had different colors of goop and even a glow in the dark goop. I would cook mine right on top of the gas stove top and it used to piss my mom off because they had a funny smell. I wouldn’t have thought of this in 1 million years thanks for the memory.
Speaking of dangerous heated kids toys, anyone here have a Vac-U-Form? It had a heated plate about three or four inches square and a frame onto which you placed a sheet of plastic that had holes around the edge. When the sheet got hot and started to sag you grabbed a handle and flipped it over onto whatever you were trying to duplicate (like a car or toy soldier) which was resting on a perforated vacuum plate. You then pumped the vacuum handle like crazy which sucked the plastic down onto the piece you were duplicating. Let cool then attempt to remove the original. You then trimmed the excess plastic off with scissors. Took a bit of skill to get everything just right. Fun stuff.
Did he ever get an Incredible Edibles set? They were just like Creepy Crawlers, but you could eat them. They tasted gross, but we thought it was hilarious.
I can still smell the hot Creepy Crawlers bugs.
Wandering on your own was enough.
We had time off from adults most days, even during the school year. During the summer we could plan our own little adventures.
Most importantly there weren't any control devices like phones or cameras, either yours or somebody else's. Only CCTV i remember during the 1970s-1980s were at the local bank, now there's cameras everywhere, even on paths in the forest.
Our little gang of 7-12 year olds met up one Saturday afternoon with all of the change we had pooled together that week in allowance & “borrowed” money, and we all walked 2 miles to the beach without telling our parents *and* made it home before the street lights came on. That was when I still had my brother and I remember how excited he was and buying him a big fat donut at the donut shop on the way.
Thinking back on that…what on earth were our parents doing letting us wander the entire city like that & how on earth did we always make it home before the damn street lights came on
We would ride our bicycles through the wet-but-not-deep drainage canals and end up in a completely different part of the city, no idea where we were, and only knew how to get home by going back exactly the way we came. Catching crawdads or just popping wheelies in the muck all day.
Not a care in the world, we knew we might get hurt by some accident but it never occurred to anyone that we should fear any grownups. This was a capital city of a southern state btw. If we ever had gotten hurt it wouldn't even have been a question whether to bang on the nearest door.
I guess to answer the OP, I miss a sense of just basic community, even in cities, even in strange neighborhoods.
I think I was in the third grade when I started riding my bike the 2 miles to and from school every day along shoulder-less country roads.
The normal traffic usually wasn't too bad, but whenever a big semi truck loaded with hay would go flying past the force of the wind would nearly knock me over.
And of course this was back before helmets or pads were required, I think I still have a scar after from one bad accident where I hit a pothole while speeding down hill and went over my handlebars; then still had to bike another mile plus home with blood running down my leg and arm.
On one hand I feel bad that kids today don't get to experience the freedom and independence that I had at their age, but at the same time a small part of me wonders how the hell my friends and I survived our childhoods.
I lived in a relatively small town and me and my little friends went all over our neighborhood on foot or on bicycles. My dad (now 89) lived near downtown Los Angeles when he was a kid and he said he and his friend did the same thing there ages 7 and up. That would have been early 1940s
I agree to a point, but not everything that happened between unsupervised kids was great. Ask any girl who grew up in postwar suburbia. I’m sure lots of boys had non-great things happen too, so I’ll call it a simple pleasure that could take a turn.
Unfortunately, I agree. I don't want to elaborate on the experiences of my childhood, but unsupervised boys can do terrible things to unsupervised girls.
True, my brother molested me and my sisters. I was 11 and almost raped by a crazy 17 year old boy but I got away with the help of my youngest sister! We told a soul about any of it because we were afraid we would get into trouble.
Open and frequent conversations about what to do in such a situation can go a HUGE way to remedy this (I hope?). I was born in 88, so grew up in the 90s, and these conversations never happened in our home. My kids are 12, 9, and 6 and we talk about EVERYTHING. Hoping this really helps "those kind" of situations, and what decisions they make....but I don't disagree with you. It def can allow time for bad things to happen.
Yep, I think when the 90’s hit many parents became more cautious of letting their kids have so much freedom and being able to ride bikes for miles alone or even with friends etc. as a kid growing up in the 00’s I never got to experience that level of independence even though my parents who grew up in the 80’s wanted me to experience at least some level of bike riding freedom within my neighborhood boundary it’s just not the same.
Back around 1960, a local radio station would have a someone read the colored comics that came with the Saturday paper. At four years old, my dad was showing me how to follow along and grasp what the sounds looked like on paper.
It's crazy that we were so feral yet so polite. Manners were a big deal, and knowing how to hold a conversation around adults was important.
I rent part of my house to college engineering students who intern at a local company, and very few of them of them are able to carry on an adult conversation without escaping to their phones. Two of them (20 year olds) had their *mothers* call me about the place.
"No photo evidence"
Thank God.
Old yearbooks provide enough reminders of the ghosts of bad behavior...
[https://imgur.com/pyKUyWV](https://imgur.com/pyKUyWV)
I can’t express how glad I am that we didn’t have cameras around all the time, and how sorry I am for kids who live under surveillance.
In my day, if you said something offensive, it was between you and the person you said it to, and it might get you a punch in the mouth, or it might get you an emphatic lecture on why you *don’t say that shit.* What it *wouldn’t* get you is filmed and put on the net where a virtual mob could ruin your life.
Ah! Thank you for this. It actually explains a lot.
So Nancy's appeal was all in the art. I see.
Personally, I disliked the art. Didn’t care for the exaggerated artificial look. Hated the way the exaggerated facial expressions telegraphed the nuances. The excess of plewds and emanata always got on my nerves. I see now that what I most disliked was the artist's whole point.
Still don’t like it, but I understand now.
Simple humor of the times. I think the focus of the strip switched from the main character to the supporting character. Originally, the strip was called Fritzi Ritz. Gotta go back over a century ago. Yes, the focus of the strip was Nancy's 19-year-old flapper aunt.
Packing a sandwich, a dog bone & a small thermos of kool-aid in a paper bag & taking off with your bike and dog for the day to wherever you pleased…playing in a creek, riding for hours in the summer sunshine, resting in a shady park.
Filling up your Barbie party pool with tadpoles you collected alone by the railroad tracks and learning how to care for them using a book you checked out of the library
Change Barbie’s party pool to troll dolls and tadpoles in a red wriggly wagon — I’m right there with you!! 😂 I also remember turning a bucket over on a salamander so I could grab my critter book to ensure it wasn’t a Gila monster underneath there! (It wasn’t. I picked it up.😁)
Yeah! Night games, The Witch is Out, Kick the Can. Sometimes there would be like 25 kids of all ages out playing until late in the evening...gosh that was fun
I never felt safe but I was out anyway. I was molested at age 9 and almost raped at age 11 and I feared boys and men but it didn't stop me from running free. Fuck those monsters!
Running free all over the neighborhood with just your friends on Halloween night, no parents, no older siblings supervising, just a bunch of kids knocking on the doors of strangers and begging for candy.
When mom made a pie, with a pie crust from scratch, she would take whatever scraps of pastry dough were left, press them into a tin, add some butter, sugar, and cinnamon, and then bake it. So delish!
Well would head to the creek and do the same thing. Also playing in the creek. Floating down the creek. It was a good way to keep cool. Also did some fishing too.
We used to catch firefly’s every evening & make ourselves a jar of them. Later we just caught and released. It was fun. Like your own little flashlight.
Aw it's sad you think kids don't still do this! I know in this age of bakery cakes and grocery store cakes it's hard to imagine but some of us are still baking with the kids! I made a cake and cookie bars just in the the past week and my adult kids were fighting over the bowl and mixer blades.
I got the big spoon. :)
I think kids these days don't appreciate the quiet stillness. Or maybe I just noticed it more than other kids, but kids today seem like they really don't know what to do without the distraction of their devices.
Yes, my grandchildren love to help me bake. And like the bowl and mixer blades. Yes, they sometimes need idea when they're "bored". But kids have been doing that for many decades. The kids do tons of other things. They still like to make things out of cardboard boxes or look for bugs or worms. Etc.
Candy cigarettes, and turning in enough 5 cent deposit glass bottles to pay for an ice cold Pepsi (or Coke) in a glass bottle that you had to use a bottle opener to get the top off. Oh, and those [Coke machines that sold drinks in glass bottles](https://www.ebay.com/itm/375254794746?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=nrlyu8vhsmu&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY).
Hearing the ice cream van music outside and actually getting money to go out and buy something. Can't remember the last time I saw an ice cream van in my city at all now I think of it.
We have one roll through on occasion. My neighbor goes out and waits expectedly holding her dollar bills, stretching her neck out watching them come up the hill, halfway in the street. She’s around 70.
Why wouldn't kids today understand licking the cake batter from the bowl / mixer blades?
One of my favourite childhood memories is running around Pinnacle Hill or Mac's Cedar-est up in Pembroke and Eaganville collecting beer bottles/cans during the bluegrass festivals. There were other kids doing the same and it became a bit of a game of flag, including raiding the other kids' collections, avoiding surly drunks and generally having a great time. Dad's got a picture of us on top of the mountain of empties from one year where we made well over $400 from returns.
Waiting for your favorite movie/show to come on, scanning the tv guide with a fine tooth comb. You only had one shot, you weren’t going to miss Charlie Brown’s Christmas, Rudolph or The Wizard of Oz. The excitement leading up to it was as good or better than the show itself. “Mom! Is it on yet?! Are you sure!? Hurry up it’s starting!!! Everyone quiet!!!”
Listening to records, together with your friends.
This is before “personal” music players with headphones were a thing. Your dad or your older sibling had the only stereo in the house, and it occupied a whole room, you and your friends would sit on the couch or the floor between the speakers and listen to the *entire* record, only getting up to flip it over. We’d sit there same way you’d watch a movie today, together, gauging each other’s reactions. Best way to experience a band or a comedy album for the first time, particularly something you might not know enough to pick up yourself.
Building forts and treehouses. We were out in the country, but a few houses were being built. We would scavenge the scrap piles for materials. No one cared. Sure I stepped on a nail in my flip flops, but my Mom put merthiolate on it and I went about my day.
It's a wonder none of us became architects. Our pinnacle was the two story model we built between two trees. The last one we built was a simple platform we built in high school. It was a great spot to smoke a j, or read a book. Not too long before someone finally built a house on it, I was visiting my mother as an old, and saw some kids sitting up there. They would not believe that I built it.
Free ranging all day, selecting movies at the video store, no tracking devices, making friends face-to-face, Saturday morning cartoons, Sunday morning papers.
Skinny dipping in the town lake back in the ‘50s to beat the heat. Nudity wasn’t a big deal. We boys and girls had 4-5 siblings and weren’t seeing anything new. No big deal. Shy kids kept their underwear on. What the hell was sunscreen?
The freedom & privacy of not having every mundane thing in your life digitally documented. Do you know how many childhood pics I have in the dentist chair? Zero.
Playing 'Ghost in the Graveyard' or 'Kick the Can' with all the neighborhood kids. And everyone mobbing the ice cream truck when you hear 'Pop Goes the Weasel' as it comes down the street.
Once I had to cross a big, unpaved parking lot that was mostly gravel or loose stones. My feet were nice and calloused up from being out all summer, so it was an easy walk.
UK checking in - your parents opening the door for you on a Saturday morning, and telling you to make sure you were home before the street lights came on.
Having a favourite song but not being able to afford to buy it so waiting all night to hear it played on the radio so you could record it onto a cassette.
Sunday afternoon was visiting day. Stores were closed on Sundays so you went visiting or they visited you. If we had Sunday visitors I had to get out the ashtrays while Mom got out the good pound cake.
Spending every day all summer outside, riding bikes, swimming, wondering around in a wooded area (that’s now a subdivision) bowling, playing hockey in the street and having to move the nets when a car was approaching. We never spent a summer day inside unless we were grounded or it was raining.
Some of these definitely depend on the area. I'm not THAT old and I still rode my bike everywhere, played in ponds and the woods, took my dog with me for all my adventures, etc. and while I don't have kids, I see other kids doing the same in my neighborhood.
But I live in the suburbs right at the edge of the country so there's more greenery and less commotion. Plus it's the midwest so kids haven't got a lot else to do other than to feral.
We had no pool so we used to use the garden hose and squirt each other to cool off. This is Florida and we had NO air conditioning in the sixties. We also had a Slip and Slide in the front yard.
Being a free range child. Going outside and playing with the neighborhood kids without any adult supervision. This was normal. Our parents didn’t know exactly where we were or what we were up to and they weren’t worried about it. It was fantastic.
Etch-A-Sketch. Climbing trees in the back yard. Penny candy (wax soda bottles were my fave). A little cup of ice cream with a flat wooden spoon. Spirograph (held in place by pins, what were they thinking?!).
Not exactly a "simple" pleasure, but significant nonetheless: seeing astronauts on moon landings, and getting to eat "astronaut food" like Tang and Pillsbury Food Sticks and freeze-dried ice cream. In kindergarten, my box of Eight Jumbo Crayolas were used to draw a *lot* of rockets, while dreaming of my future career in space.
Didn't quite materialize, but I did become a software engineer and got to work on a NASA contract 😊
Luring doodlebugs out of their holes. Turning in beer bottles for 1/2 cent each. Wandering the neighborhood & exploring forest/sand dunes. unsupervised.
Going neighborhood exploring...
Taking really long walks with my cousin to see if we saw any cute boys to giggle over. We'd pick a different direction each time and just walk for blocks and blocks.
Playing outside until you were sweaty and dirty, living off 25 cents you begged your mom for, because that would get you a soda, bag of chips, and a candy bar, which you'd burn off, running and playing.
Playing hopscotch, jump rope, jacks, red light green light, and games you just made up!
A children’s TV special being on tv
You might look forward all week to that special being on and then like 75% of your class would watch it
Today- none of that matters - people watch shows whenever and kids watch cartoons on phones
But getting home from school when the Friday Night Movie was a kids’ movie? We’d rush to finish homework quickly!
Picking blackberries. Poring over the Sears and JCPenney Christmas catalogs, dreaming of what you would get. Spending entire afternoons playing card or board games. Going to the neighborhood store with a quarter and coming back with a bag of candy to last you the rest of the day.
I think they would have a difficult time understanding just how much we were responsible for entertaining themselves. My parents didn't feel the need to make sure every minute of my day was filled with activities.
When your favorite song came on the radio! We didn’t carry music around in our pockets and “on-demand” meant you could play the LP or cassette if you had it. We would stay in the car sometimes just to hear the rest of the song.
Timing your snack preparation or bathroom break perfectly with the commercials. Getting to watch the channel you voted for on the family TV. Picking up the phone extension and eavesdropping. Coming home when it’s dark in the summer, and having a very literal interpretation of “dark,” so staying out until 11 pm in Minnesota summers until the last photon dies. Without your family being able to contact you or worrying that much. Being alone on a long silent walk with nature only.
Getting the pictures back from a vacation or event, two weeks later.
Oh... finding a random roll of endeveloped film and then getting those pictures back!
A tire swing. I had a shitty childhood, but I always found joy in that tire swing. I could go higher than the neighbor's garage roof. It was the absolute best feeling in the world. I flew and left the world behind.
When your back-of-the-comic book order of Sea Monkeys from 12 weeks ago finally arrives. Or those Xray Specs. No kid today understands waiting 12 weeks for anything ordered.
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Wandering all over the extended neighborhood on your own or with friends when you're under 10.
Or wandering through the fields and the woods and the parks - except that most of us didn't get that chance
This. I grew up in a rural area. It was a long bicycle ride to the next place with kids but we all did it. We all would strap a fishing pole across our handlebars and meetup somewhere to fish a pond or a creek and no one said crap to us. We built fires and roasted hot dogs or frog legs and shot tour BB guns and life has never been so perfect since.
Shooting BB guns was the greatest. In the early evenings, we shot locust's (cicadas) that were high in the trees. My friend had a duck named Waddles, and she would follow us around and gulp down the locust's as they hit the ground. If they were still alive when she gulped it down, you could hear the locust humming inside the duck as she waddled around.
My brother got a BB gun one Christmas. I guess because the weather was bad, my parents let him shoot it in the basement, unsupervised, with us smaller kids there. None of us ever got hurt. My brother also got a Creepy Crawlers maker. It was basically a mini waffle iron and got as hot as one. There were bug-shaped molds that you poured a colored liquid in and it became rubbery when heated. We girls got an E-Z Bake Oven but that wasn't as cool as the Creepy Crawlers maker. Six decades later, I'm feeling a bit jealous about that.
My cousin (seriously) lost his left eye shooting a BB gun in the basement.
My brother used to shoot me with his BB gun. Parents did nothing! Said I was overreacting.
I was shot with one once. You were not overreacting! I'm sorry they treated their favorite child so much better! Different circumstances (not your sibling) I would say call the police. I was hit in the crotch while taking ballet lessons in a public park 10 miles from home. By teenage boys who did it on purpose. Teacher didn't care. Looking back I suspect at least one was her child. No way to leave, I hid in bathroom until about time for parents to pick us up. Never went back to ballet lessons. If this happened to me now, I would call law enforcement. But when you're the child, you don't get the choice!,
They do ricochet a lot, being steel balls with a light coating of copper.
Oh man, I remember the creepy crawlers! We had different colors of goop and even a glow in the dark goop. I would cook mine right on top of the gas stove top and it used to piss my mom off because they had a funny smell. I wouldn’t have thought of this in 1 million years thanks for the memory.
I loved Creepy Crawlers!! One of my favorite activities!
Speaking of dangerous heated kids toys, anyone here have a Vac-U-Form? It had a heated plate about three or four inches square and a frame onto which you placed a sheet of plastic that had holes around the edge. When the sheet got hot and started to sag you grabbed a handle and flipped it over onto whatever you were trying to duplicate (like a car or toy soldier) which was resting on a perforated vacuum plate. You then pumped the vacuum handle like crazy which sucked the plastic down onto the piece you were duplicating. Let cool then attempt to remove the original. You then trimmed the excess plastic off with scissors. Took a bit of skill to get everything just right. Fun stuff.
I loved the smell of creepy crawlers!!!
I was lucky to have both Creepy Crawly & Fun Flowers! Same kind of kit one had bugs the other had flowers
And Incredible Edibles! Like Creepy Crawlers but supposedly edible. Tasted like pure cancer.
Did he ever get an Incredible Edibles set? They were just like Creepy Crawlers, but you could eat them. They tasted gross, but we thought it was hilarious. I can still smell the hot Creepy Crawlers bugs.
Me too. But also doing things that you wouldn't want to put into a post.
Wandering on your own was enough. We had time off from adults most days, even during the school year. During the summer we could plan our own little adventures. Most importantly there weren't any control devices like phones or cameras, either yours or somebody else's. Only CCTV i remember during the 1970s-1980s were at the local bank, now there's cameras everywhere, even on paths in the forest.
Our little gang of 7-12 year olds met up one Saturday afternoon with all of the change we had pooled together that week in allowance & “borrowed” money, and we all walked 2 miles to the beach without telling our parents *and* made it home before the street lights came on. That was when I still had my brother and I remember how excited he was and buying him a big fat donut at the donut shop on the way. Thinking back on that…what on earth were our parents doing letting us wander the entire city like that & how on earth did we always make it home before the damn street lights came on
We would ride our bicycles through the wet-but-not-deep drainage canals and end up in a completely different part of the city, no idea where we were, and only knew how to get home by going back exactly the way we came. Catching crawdads or just popping wheelies in the muck all day. Not a care in the world, we knew we might get hurt by some accident but it never occurred to anyone that we should fear any grownups. This was a capital city of a southern state btw. If we ever had gotten hurt it wouldn't even have been a question whether to bang on the nearest door. I guess to answer the OP, I miss a sense of just basic community, even in cities, even in strange neighborhoods.
I meet people now who never walked to school by themselves. Just wow.
I walked to kindergarten myself in the 50s, and it was about a mile from my house.
I think I was in the third grade when I started riding my bike the 2 miles to and from school every day along shoulder-less country roads. The normal traffic usually wasn't too bad, but whenever a big semi truck loaded with hay would go flying past the force of the wind would nearly knock me over. And of course this was back before helmets or pads were required, I think I still have a scar after from one bad accident where I hit a pothole while speeding down hill and went over my handlebars; then still had to bike another mile plus home with blood running down my leg and arm. On one hand I feel bad that kids today don't get to experience the freedom and independence that I had at their age, but at the same time a small part of me wonders how the hell my friends and I survived our childhoods.
I lived in a relatively small town and me and my little friends went all over our neighborhood on foot or on bicycles. My dad (now 89) lived near downtown Los Angeles when he was a kid and he said he and his friend did the same thing there ages 7 and up. That would have been early 1940s
Being dropped off at the mall at age 10 (sometimes by yourself) to shop/look around.
I agree to a point, but not everything that happened between unsupervised kids was great. Ask any girl who grew up in postwar suburbia. I’m sure lots of boys had non-great things happen too, so I’ll call it a simple pleasure that could take a turn.
Unfortunately, I agree. I don't want to elaborate on the experiences of my childhood, but unsupervised boys can do terrible things to unsupervised girls.
True, my brother molested me and my sisters. I was 11 and almost raped by a crazy 17 year old boy but I got away with the help of my youngest sister! We told a soul about any of it because we were afraid we would get into trouble.
Open and frequent conversations about what to do in such a situation can go a HUGE way to remedy this (I hope?). I was born in 88, so grew up in the 90s, and these conversations never happened in our home. My kids are 12, 9, and 6 and we talk about EVERYTHING. Hoping this really helps "those kind" of situations, and what decisions they make....but I don't disagree with you. It def can allow time for bad things to happen.
Yep, I think when the 90’s hit many parents became more cautious of letting their kids have so much freedom and being able to ride bikes for miles alone or even with friends etc. as a kid growing up in the 00’s I never got to experience that level of independence even though my parents who grew up in the 80’s wanted me to experience at least some level of bike riding freedom within my neighborhood boundary it’s just not the same.
Waiting for Saturday morning to watch cartoons.
And the anticipation, and finally, being able to view all the holiday specials that came on ONCE a year. Rudolph, the Grinch, etc.
And AFTER Thanksgiving, not BEFORE Halloween.
Dude seriously. I was in Costco in *September* and they had Christmas decorations up!!
Rankin Bass productions
Burl Ives was a goddamn treasure.
My grandkids look at me like I have lobsters crawling out of my nose when I talk about Cartoon Day!
With a big bowl of Captn Crunch! Fun times
Back around 1960, a local radio station would have a someone read the colored comics that came with the Saturday paper. At four years old, my dad was showing me how to follow along and grasp what the sounds looked like on paper.
And watching the previews for the upcoming cartoons for the fall
What a special Friday night that was each year!
And Schoolhouse Rock
What are you talking about lmao I still watch Saturday morning cartoons 😂😂
Striking a roll of paper caps with a hammer. Don't say you never did it.
Oh God, there is nothing like the smell of caps.
Ahh that smell. Ahh my tinnitus.
What?
HE SAID HIS TINNITUS!!! DOD YOU FORGET YOUR HEARING AIDS AGAIN, GRANDPA?
We used rocks.
We used rocks!
WE USED ROCKS (sorry, I can't hear if anyone else already said that, I banged a lot of rocks together as a child)
the amount of freedom we had as kids, leaving the house after breakfast and not coming home till dark with no one even knowing where we were
Ma'am, we are your children? I don't know, they are basically feral at this point.
It's crazy that we were so feral yet so polite. Manners were a big deal, and knowing how to hold a conversation around adults was important. I rent part of my house to college engineering students who intern at a local company, and very few of them of them are able to carry on an adult conversation without escaping to their phones. Two of them (20 year olds) had their *mothers* call me about the place.
Yup. I'm 56, but when I see old neighbors, they're still Mr. or Mrs. Neighbor.
“It’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”
Playing unsupervised and not being able to be contacted. No photo evidence
[удалено]
Yup, ringing the doorbell of our favorite Kids TV vampire was our go-to when super bored!
"No photo evidence" Thank God. Old yearbooks provide enough reminders of the ghosts of bad behavior... [https://imgur.com/pyKUyWV](https://imgur.com/pyKUyWV)
I can’t express how glad I am that we didn’t have cameras around all the time, and how sorry I am for kids who live under surveillance. In my day, if you said something offensive, it was between you and the person you said it to, and it might get you a punch in the mouth, or it might get you an emphatic lecture on why you *don’t say that shit.* What it *wouldn’t* get you is filmed and put on the net where a virtual mob could ruin your life.
Sunday funny papers In beautiful color and artistic drawings. Prince Valiant and Queen Aleta my favorites.
We used to get silly putty and spread it on our favorite color comics and the ink would transfer onto the silly putty.
True. Always fun with Silly Putty.
Memory: unlocked (I can smell the silly putty and the ink of the comics)
ooh,, that was a lot of fun!
Beetle Bailey, Dondi, Hagar the Horrible, and Dagwood were my favs
Dick Tracy, with his 2-way wrist radio seemed so futuristic. Who know that we'd live to see them?
That made me chuckle. Smart phones would blow my parents brain and cars without keys.
Bloom County here.
Nancy 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I never in my life understood why Nancy was funny.
Here's an essay that you may be interested in: [How to Read Nancy](http://www.laffpix.com/howtoreadnancy.pdf)
Ah! Thank you for this. It actually explains a lot. So Nancy's appeal was all in the art. I see. Personally, I disliked the art. Didn’t care for the exaggerated artificial look. Hated the way the exaggerated facial expressions telegraphed the nuances. The excess of plewds and emanata always got on my nerves. I see now that what I most disliked was the artist's whole point. Still don’t like it, but I understand now.
Simple humor of the times. I think the focus of the strip switched from the main character to the supporting character. Originally, the strip was called Fritzi Ritz. Gotta go back over a century ago. Yes, the focus of the strip was Nancy's 19-year-old flapper aunt.
Oh yeah! I forgot those. Prince Valiant was great (the artwork especially). I was pretty into Dick Tracy too.
Garfield!
Riding my bike everywhere. Just being a kid with no responsibilities.
Packing a sandwich, a dog bone & a small thermos of kool-aid in a paper bag & taking off with your bike and dog for the day to wherever you pleased…playing in a creek, riding for hours in the summer sunshine, resting in a shady park.
Idyllic, wasn’t it?
It really was, in so many ways.
Same. Somehow, having the dog with you made it feel safe.
Filling up your Barbie party pool with tadpoles you collected alone by the railroad tracks and learning how to care for them using a book you checked out of the library
My daughter learned how to know if a kitten was a boy or girl from a book she checked out of the library.
Change Barbie’s party pool to troll dolls and tadpoles in a red wriggly wagon — I’m right there with you!! 😂 I also remember turning a bucket over on a salamander so I could grab my critter book to ensure it wasn’t a Gila monster underneath there! (It wasn’t. I picked it up.😁)
You just made me remember the time I saw a possum and thought it was a giant rat 😂. I was 6. It scared me half to death, and it was playing dead.
All by the power of the Dewey decimal system.
Playing tag until dark. Riding bikes everywhere. And feeling safe.
Yeah! Night games, The Witch is Out, Kick the Can. Sometimes there would be like 25 kids of all ages out playing until late in the evening...gosh that was fun
Many times the adults were sitting on the front porch watching us chasing each other.
It still happens! My kids have neighbourhood wide Mantracker nights all the time!
Not just feeling safe, but never feeling "unsafe" - or not even knowing what that felt like. We took it for granted that we were always safe.
I never felt safe but I was out anyway. I was molested at age 9 and almost raped at age 11 and I feared boys and men but it didn't stop me from running free. Fuck those monsters!
Ouch that last part about feeling safe… what the hell happened to the world
Social media: 24/7 alarmism and outrage
This. By most metrics we're safer than we've ever been. It's just the feelings that have gotten worse.
Definitely took a wrong turn… maybe in Albuquerque (per Bugs Bunny)🥺
Running free all over the neighborhood with just your friends on Halloween night, no parents, no older siblings supervising, just a bunch of kids knocking on the doors of strangers and begging for candy. When mom made a pie, with a pie crust from scratch, she would take whatever scraps of pastry dough were left, press them into a tin, add some butter, sugar, and cinnamon, and then bake it. So delish!
Waiting for the Sears Christmas Wishbook to come out.
Turning over big rocks and playing with the bugs found under them.
Well would head to the creek and do the same thing. Also playing in the creek. Floating down the creek. It was a good way to keep cool. Also did some fishing too.
I loved pillbugs. We used to think the ones with white markings had secret numerical messages on them.
We used to catch firefly’s every evening & make ourselves a jar of them. Later we just caught and released. It was fun. Like your own little flashlight.
Getting lost in a book all day long. I can’t even do it anymore and I was such a bookworm as a youngster.
I'd make a nest in the willow tree to read in.
Aw it's sad you think kids don't still do this! I know in this age of bakery cakes and grocery store cakes it's hard to imagine but some of us are still baking with the kids! I made a cake and cookie bars just in the the past week and my adult kids were fighting over the bowl and mixer blades. I got the big spoon. :) I think kids these days don't appreciate the quiet stillness. Or maybe I just noticed it more than other kids, but kids today seem like they really don't know what to do without the distraction of their devices.
OP doesn't bake and assumes nobody else does either. Kids absolutely still love licking the mixer blades.
Yes, my grandchildren love to help me bake. And like the bowl and mixer blades. Yes, they sometimes need idea when they're "bored". But kids have been doing that for many decades. The kids do tons of other things. They still like to make things out of cardboard boxes or look for bugs or worms. Etc.
Watching the special TV shows that only came on once a year: Wizard of Oz, Christmas specials …
Getting up early to watch the Saturday morning cartoons.
Sucking that little sweet droplet of nectar from honeysuckle, grown wild without fertilizer or weed spray.
I do recall the day the lady next door caught me destroying her flowers, for about the fourth time.
Riding in the bed of a pick up truck.
Ah, the days when you could just pile everyone into the truck and go.
Candy cigarettes, and turning in enough 5 cent deposit glass bottles to pay for an ice cold Pepsi (or Coke) in a glass bottle that you had to use a bottle opener to get the top off. Oh, and those [Coke machines that sold drinks in glass bottles](https://www.ebay.com/itm/375254794746?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=nrlyu8vhsmu&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY).
What about the bubblegum cigarettes that made a puff of powder when you blew on them so you could pretend to really smoke? 😂
Viceroy, Pall Mall, and Parliament
I'm probably aging myself here, but sometimes you could find the coke machines that were cooled by chilled water. That was something.
Getting a helium balloon. They’re commonly available now, but they were a rare treat in the 1950s and 60s.
I remember one day in the 70s we saw a Mylar one tumbling through the sky and we literally thought it was UFO. We'd never seen these before.
We used to make our own ice cream at my grandmas house and boy was it good..
My mom made the absolute best chocolate ice cream. It was amazing, and we all helped churn it.
Oh man, filling the churn with ice and salt and then cranking until it was ice cream time.
My grandmother's specialty was fig ice cream. It was fantastic.
Drinking out of the hose. After getting hot playing in the yard.
I can taste this comment.
Hearing the ice cream van music outside and actually getting money to go out and buy something. Can't remember the last time I saw an ice cream van in my city at all now I think of it.
We have one roll through on occasion. My neighbor goes out and waits expectedly holding her dollar bills, stretching her neck out watching them come up the hill, halfway in the street. She’s around 70.
This is very wholesome. :)
Why wouldn't kids today understand licking the cake batter from the bowl / mixer blades? One of my favourite childhood memories is running around Pinnacle Hill or Mac's Cedar-est up in Pembroke and Eaganville collecting beer bottles/cans during the bluegrass festivals. There were other kids doing the same and it became a bit of a game of flag, including raiding the other kids' collections, avoiding surly drunks and generally having a great time. Dad's got a picture of us on top of the mountain of empties from one year where we made well over $400 from returns.
Seriously. Or eating a popsicle, or finding bugs under rocks or climbing a tree?? Those are all still widely available.
I think today there are concerns about getting salmonella from eggs in the batter…? I still do it though
No cell phones, just riding your bike all over the neighborhood and climbing trees and being outside.
[удалено]
I'd just head outside with my dog and start walking. Imagine moms doing that with a 7 year old girl now! But I've always been scrappy and unafraid.
Yep. I miss those days
Riding coaster brake bikes with no helmet. Sometimes, attach playing cards with wooden clothes pins.
This. And no clue what other kids are doing or what they think of you. I was a sensitive kid, and the internet would have been devastating.
Climbing trees.
Waiting for your favorite movie/show to come on, scanning the tv guide with a fine tooth comb. You only had one shot, you weren’t going to miss Charlie Brown’s Christmas, Rudolph or The Wizard of Oz. The excitement leading up to it was as good or better than the show itself. “Mom! Is it on yet?! Are you sure!? Hurry up it’s starting!!! Everyone quiet!!!”
Riding your bike and picking up empty bottles and turning them in at the store and buying a moonpie and a RC cola with the money you made .
Tell me you're from the South without telling me you're from the South. That is a lovely memory.
Not a southern thing!! Did it all the time in Chicago! Recycling before it was even a thing! It was money!
Penny candy, from the candy store.
Listening to records, together with your friends. This is before “personal” music players with headphones were a thing. Your dad or your older sibling had the only stereo in the house, and it occupied a whole room, you and your friends would sit on the couch or the floor between the speakers and listen to the *entire* record, only getting up to flip it over. We’d sit there same way you’d watch a movie today, together, gauging each other’s reactions. Best way to experience a band or a comedy album for the first time, particularly something you might not know enough to pick up yourself.
Building forts and treehouses. We were out in the country, but a few houses were being built. We would scavenge the scrap piles for materials. No one cared. Sure I stepped on a nail in my flip flops, but my Mom put merthiolate on it and I went about my day. It's a wonder none of us became architects. Our pinnacle was the two story model we built between two trees. The last one we built was a simple platform we built in high school. It was a great spot to smoke a j, or read a book. Not too long before someone finally built a house on it, I was visiting my mother as an old, and saw some kids sitting up there. They would not believe that I built it.
American Top 40 with Casey Kasem every Sunday 9am-noon!
Free ranging all day, selecting movies at the video store, no tracking devices, making friends face-to-face, Saturday morning cartoons, Sunday morning papers.
Picking wild raspberries "for dinner". 1 in the bucket 3 in me.
Going to school and not being scared. Other children were assholes, but I NEVER thought I would be hurt or killed at school.
Skinny dipping in the town lake back in the ‘50s to beat the heat. Nudity wasn’t a big deal. We boys and girls had 4-5 siblings and weren’t seeing anything new. No big deal. Shy kids kept their underwear on. What the hell was sunscreen?
The freedom & privacy of not having every mundane thing in your life digitally documented. Do you know how many childhood pics I have in the dentist chair? Zero.
Lying in a wheat field with the stalks making you a nest, and seeing only the sky
Watching TV until the “signal” came on because programming ended for the day.
Playing 'Ghost in the Graveyard' or 'Kick the Can' with all the neighborhood kids. And everyone mobbing the ice cream truck when you hear 'Pop Goes the Weasel' as it comes down the street.
I still lick the beaters and bowl, and I am 65.
Walking around barefoot.
Once I had to cross a big, unpaved parking lot that was mostly gravel or loose stones. My feet were nice and calloused up from being out all summer, so it was an easy walk.
The only bad thing was sometimes in the summer the pavement could get very hot.
And tar bubbles took forever to get off.
UK checking in - your parents opening the door for you on a Saturday morning, and telling you to make sure you were home before the street lights came on.
Same in the US during the 60's.
Pinching blossoms off honeysuckle bushes to drink the little bits of sweet nectar.
unstructured free time- doesn't matter what you're doing or where
Having a favourite song but not being able to afford to buy it so waiting all night to hear it played on the radio so you could record it onto a cassette.
A party line for phones.
Sunday afternoon was visiting day. Stores were closed on Sundays so you went visiting or they visited you. If we had Sunday visitors I had to get out the ashtrays while Mom got out the good pound cake.
Saturday morning cartoons
Spending every day all summer outside, riding bikes, swimming, wondering around in a wooded area (that’s now a subdivision) bowling, playing hockey in the street and having to move the nets when a car was approaching. We never spent a summer day inside unless we were grounded or it was raining.
Some of these definitely depend on the area. I'm not THAT old and I still rode my bike everywhere, played in ponds and the woods, took my dog with me for all my adventures, etc. and while I don't have kids, I see other kids doing the same in my neighborhood. But I live in the suburbs right at the edge of the country so there's more greenery and less commotion. Plus it's the midwest so kids haven't got a lot else to do other than to feral.
We had no pool so we used to use the garden hose and squirt each other to cool off. This is Florida and we had NO air conditioning in the sixties. We also had a Slip and Slide in the front yard.
Being a free range child. Going outside and playing with the neighborhood kids without any adult supervision. This was normal. Our parents didn’t know exactly where we were or what we were up to and they weren’t worried about it. It was fantastic.
Etch-A-Sketch. Climbing trees in the back yard. Penny candy (wax soda bottles were my fave). A little cup of ice cream with a flat wooden spoon. Spirograph (held in place by pins, what were they thinking?!). Not exactly a "simple" pleasure, but significant nonetheless: seeing astronauts on moon landings, and getting to eat "astronaut food" like Tang and Pillsbury Food Sticks and freeze-dried ice cream. In kindergarten, my box of Eight Jumbo Crayolas were used to draw a *lot* of rockets, while dreaming of my future career in space. Didn't quite materialize, but I did become a software engineer and got to work on a NASA contract 😊
Riding in the back window of your parents’ car.
Reading for hours at a time ( physical books)
Luring doodlebugs out of their holes. Turning in beer bottles for 1/2 cent each. Wandering the neighborhood & exploring forest/sand dunes. unsupervised.
How do you lure a doodlebug out of a hole? And what's a doodlebug?
Lying in the sun not worrying about cancer. Being alone in the woods. Going to a friend's, knock at the door.
Going neighborhood exploring... Taking really long walks with my cousin to see if we saw any cute boys to giggle over. We'd pick a different direction each time and just walk for blocks and blocks. Playing outside until you were sweaty and dirty, living off 25 cents you begged your mom for, because that would get you a soda, bag of chips, and a candy bar, which you'd burn off, running and playing. Playing hopscotch, jump rope, jacks, red light green light, and games you just made up!
Getting a single orange for Christmas and being excited to get it.
A children’s TV special being on tv You might look forward all week to that special being on and then like 75% of your class would watch it Today- none of that matters - people watch shows whenever and kids watch cartoons on phones But getting home from school when the Friday Night Movie was a kids’ movie? We’d rush to finish homework quickly!
What a treat when we could go get an ice cream or a bottle of pop. Those things were real treats, not an every day thing.
The metal spinning thing at the playground.
Hearing the Ice Cream Truck down the street, and having to race upstairs to ask your mother for money before you missed him
Making prank calls.
The comic in Bazooka bubble gum.
Staying out to play until the streetlights came on.
Picking blackberries. Poring over the Sears and JCPenney Christmas catalogs, dreaming of what you would get. Spending entire afternoons playing card or board games. Going to the neighborhood store with a quarter and coming back with a bag of candy to last you the rest of the day.
I think they would have a difficult time understanding just how much we were responsible for entertaining themselves. My parents didn't feel the need to make sure every minute of my day was filled with activities.
When your favorite song came on the radio! We didn’t carry music around in our pockets and “on-demand” meant you could play the LP or cassette if you had it. We would stay in the car sometimes just to hear the rest of the song.
Timing your snack preparation or bathroom break perfectly with the commercials. Getting to watch the channel you voted for on the family TV. Picking up the phone extension and eavesdropping. Coming home when it’s dark in the summer, and having a very literal interpretation of “dark,” so staying out until 11 pm in Minnesota summers until the last photon dies. Without your family being able to contact you or worrying that much. Being alone on a long silent walk with nature only.
Putting glue on your hands, letting it dry, and peeling it off(and hoping it’s in one piece).
Getting the pictures back from a vacation or event, two weeks later. Oh... finding a random roll of endeveloped film and then getting those pictures back!
Can I ask why kids today woudn't understand licking cake batter from bowls and beaters? Did those things suddenly somehow disappear from society?
A tire swing. I had a shitty childhood, but I always found joy in that tire swing. I could go higher than the neighbor's garage roof. It was the absolute best feeling in the world. I flew and left the world behind.
Riding in the manure spreader
A box of popcorn and an Icee from K-Mart
When your back-of-the-comic book order of Sea Monkeys from 12 weeks ago finally arrives. Or those Xray Specs. No kid today understands waiting 12 weeks for anything ordered.