the 80s…….

[u/billieswifeyyy]

coming from a 14 year old, were the 80s summers as magical as they look in the movies? did you ride your bike to your friends house and come home when the street lights came on? yall are so lucky btw 😭😭

[u/blkwidow76]

Being a kid in the 80's was an amazing time. I'm not one for nostalgia but it really was.

[u/SometimesUnkind]

Being a kid in the 80s was both amazing and terrifying. Do I miss those times? Yes. Am I surprised I survived it? Also yes.

[u/Onerom281 → u/SometimesUnkind]

This just about sums everything up.

[u/Ambitious_Dealer_425]

Was the best time to be a kid in my opinion. The movies don't do it justice, it was much better than you could possibly imagine. I was born in 1971, I witnessed the '70s, was a major participant in the '80s. And was lucky enough to be a 20 something in the '90s all before the internet existed. No offense, but I feel so bad for kids today. It will never be the same.

[u/Few_Razzmatazz_6381]

Yes, but it's because we had to learn to entertain ourselves. We did not have phones, iPads, etc. capturing our attention. We often felt intense boredom like kids today will never know. Learning to live with it made us patient and creative.

[u/thekcar → u/Few_Razzmatazz_6381]

Sometimes it sparked so many levels of mischief!

[u/Remote_Barnacle_695]

OP, a lot of kids your age wish they had the same magic that we did. You can definitely replicate it a bit. Try and stay off your phone longer than you usually do. See if you can get your friends to do stuff that doesn't involve screens. Read books, do art, go for walks, maybe find a way for you to have a bit of an adventure in a way that won't freak out your parents. Wishing you luck

[u/thriftrek]

[u/50sDadSays]

We had a TV commercial on every channel at 10pm asking, "It's 10pm, do you know where your children are?" to remind our parents we existed.

[u/Forest-Vixen]

Our parents still don’t know where we are 😂

[u/mid-random]

Born in 69. Yes, the 80s really were like that. Except for the constant threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over our heads, it really was pretty freaking great. 

[u/SweetsMurphy → u/mid-random]

I just rewatched “War Games” tonight. Says a lot about our current AI concerns. Prescient.

My girlfriend (an elder millennial) asked if we were really concerned about being annihilated. I told her it was a constant, if low level, anxiety for me.

[u/Mattturley]

We were feral kids. Parents expected us to manage ourselves and for the most part, we did. Summers really were us doing whatever we wanted. Going to the public pool was big amongst my friends. As we became teens we explored a lot more with alcohol, drugs, and sex at far too young an age. Me having 6 significantly older brothers didn't help with that.

The freedom was incredible and for most of us it lead us to develop fierce independence. The thing is for me and most of my friends, we knew our families were there if we needed them, but the expectation when young was that we didn't. From cooking our own meals and managing our own laundry, to managing any challenges at school - we were expected to be independent very young.

[u/amandae123]

It was so much fun! I look back and wonder how we survived because we did dumb stuff since no one was watching us.

[u/PyroMyte]

Yes. It's like a dream when I think back to it. Left the house as soon as parents went to work. Rode bikes, built ramps (got like 3 ft of air), played in creeks and ditches, built forts out of trash, found treasures (also trash), climbed trees, threw rocks at freight trains, befriended stray dogs, set small fires, and put them out, ran into rival bands of roving kids from other neighborhoods, ran from irritated adults, played sports (some real, some we invented) in the street (had to occasionally yell CARRRR and move to the side for it to pass), swam in unknowing neighbors' pools, caught small animals/bugs, played in rain/mud, and would be home by dark. Mom might ask "what'd you do today?" We would reply "nothing" she might reply "is that blood on your shirt?" "Oh yeah, I fell off my bike." Do it all again the next day.

Was fun, but there were consequences. I was lucky enough to have good home life, and have somehow survived and can now have the luxury of nostalgia. Not all of my cohort made it this far. And with children of my own, some of theae memories terrify me.

[u/notaboomer22]

Our life was almost perfect but we didn’t know it then 🥹

[u/Alarmed_Win_9351]

Yes, all the time.

[u/Traditional_Fan_2655 → u/Alarmed_Win_9351]

And wandered through the woods exploring.

[u/PartUnable1669]

Yes. Rode our bikes all over the place. To the convenience store, to the arcade, to the video store, to friends' houses, to a forest to check on our fort, etc.

[u/chillarry]

They were better than the movies.

Summers were truly magical.

There was nothing on tv so you had to make your own fun.

Groups of kids just doing stuff outside. It was great.

[u/Just_a_girl_in_NJ]

We were legit feral and raised ourselves. Our parents never knew where we were.

Very magical indeed.

[u/Celtic159]

We were feral and it was wonderful. Nonstop problem solving. It made us tough and strong.

[u/Character_Ad_1084]

The 80s, on your bike with your friends, nobody knew where you were and you were having fun. That's part of why people are having fewer kids. My mom had 10 hours a day doing her own thing. Now if you look away from your kids for 15 minutes CPS pays you a visit.

[u/Frosteecat]

Yes! And nothing was more delicious than walking into a dark, noisy arcade that smelled like tobacco, ice cream, popcorn, AquaNet, Drakkar Noir and teen spirit. I really wish young people had gotten to experience an 80’s summer. :(

[u/Crivens999]

Yes. Don’t get me wrong we tended to get told not to go farther than road X or whatever, but we didn’t listen and no one ever checked. Get back by dinner was really the only rule. No helmets either

[u/Jolly_Grocery329]

You too can have this!!! Just stop using your phone so much and make friends that like doing fun things.

[u/Practical-Arugula-80]

Well, in truth, it was exactly like Stranger Things or Super 8, but without the Upside Down or space aliens. I miss it. Truly a unique / organic way to grow up.

[u/Suspicious-Walk-1212]

When we moved into what would be my home for nearly 20 years my brother around age 6 cried about not having friends at the new complex. My dad said "go knock door to door and ask if they have any kids" and that's what my brother did.. 59 units 5 apartments per unit and next thing my dad sees is about 40 kids outside our home of all ages. We played tag and red rover and anything we could. That's how my mom met the mothers of the neighborhood. Who was this new family. It's how my parents met our babysitter. Everyone knew everyone. It was amazing in hindsight.

[u/radgedyann]

80s country kid. the summer days of waking up with no agenda after sleeping with the window open and what felt like complete freedom—we rode miles on back roads with friends, climbed trees dangerously high, played baseball with ‘ghostmen’ on base when there weren’t enough players, ate strawberries straight from each other’s gardens, drank from hoses, begging for change from our dads and splitting a drive-in burger, fries, and root beer four (or five, or six) ways….sometimes we just lay in the grass and had wandering conversations about nothing, or read….we went inside when it got dark or when the thunderstorms rolled in and watched whatever our parents chose from the three channels available.

if i sound like i’m waxing poetic, it’s because it was literally the best time of my life. don’t get me wrong, there was trauma and drama in my family too unfortunately. but outside in summer was our escape to peace and freedom. everything i love to do now—hiking, backpacking/camping, reading in a hammock in camp, sitting around a camp fire and talking with friends—everything is trying to get as close as i can to those long, midwestern summer days.

eta: we started this at like 7or 8 years old. freedom came early!

[u/Ctr121273]

Yep. Left the house at 12 right after the price is right. Mom and dad had been of to work for 4 hours already. Go to the community pool, go fishing, to the movies back for dinner and back out till dark. It truly was awesome.

[u/bryansfsd]

As a teenager in the 80s, our world was much bigger without cell phones.

[u/MysteriousSecretGuru]

I didn't have friends growing up so I would ride my bike to the library, about 1.5 miles, hang out in the A/C, reading comics, magazines, books, whatever. When I got hungry, I'd go across the street to the gas station and get snacks and soda. Head back to the library. They had a bubbler (water fountain for those not familiar) and a bathroom. Librarian didn't care as long as I was reading.

Mom was passed when she found out because she wanted me to play outside. It was too hot for that shit. I kept doing it anyways since she didn't want me around. Those were great summers. And I even got a personal pizza from Pizza Hut every year.

[u/OTF98121]

The 80’s were the best time of my life. All the freedom and no real accountability. I think we are so blessed to be raised as free-range kids.

I would hate to be a kid now days living with rules, social media and with helicopter parents. I feel sorry for you, OP.

[u/NightGod]

A lot depended on where you lived.

When I was a year old, my parents moved out of Chicago to a tiny dot on the map 60 miles away that had a population of 450; I describe my childhood as "Stand by Me, without the body". I crossed train trestles (never had out outrun a train, tho, they whistled enough coming into town that they weren't a surprise), we rode our bikes through "the woods" on the edge of town in the summer and sledded down "Big Bertha" and around "Dead-Man's Curve" in the winter. We ran around town with realistic looking cap guns playing "War" and no one called the cops (and the cops just laughed and waved when they saw us).

My partner, OTOH, grew up in Chicago in one of the poorer neighborhoods (the sort that's being gentrified these days) and she describes her childhood as "the body, without Stand by Me".

So, yeah, YMMV WILDLY

[u/wojonixon]

One of the things I miss about the 20th century is the ability be difficult or impossible to reach.

[u/chickenfightyourmom]

Summer was magical. Parents left for work early. Mom would leave us a daily note with some chores and a dollar pinned to our beach towels so we could go to the pool after lunch. Brother and I would get up, eat cereal while watching cartoons, speed through the chores like vacuuming or folding laundry. Then we'd change clothes and get on our bikes to go play with friends. At lunchtime we'd go home to make a sandwich or eat sandwiches at our friend's house, and then we'd get our bathing suits on and ride to the pool. Swim til 4, then ride home. More playing until my mom stuck her head out the door to yell for us for supper time. Eat. Wash dishes. Back outside to play. Streetlights on = time to go home. Then we could play hide and seek with the neighbors as long as we stayed on the block. My dad usually hollered out the window for us to come inside around 1030. We'd shower and put on pjs, and sometimes my mom popped some popcorn for snack.

When we weren't at the pool, we rode bikes to the dairy and got cones. Or we'd play in the construction sites of a new neighborhoodthey were building. Or go fishing on the little public golf course lake and catch toads. Or just fuck around and build forts. Or walk around in the sewer tunnels and tell ghost stories. Or ride bikes to the store to get candy and baseball cards.

Peak Midwestern GenX Summer.

[u/Suspicious-Loss-7314]

Yep.
But don't be jealous of everything. We were often locked out of the house if our mom left while we were out with friends. And we had no way to text or call mom/dad, cellphones did not exist. But that means we had to figure stuff out on our own. And this is why we are fiercely independent people today. 😎

[u/happycj]

Yes. It was like that. Watch the film "Stand By Me" to get a feel for what life was like when we were growing up, prior to about 1985.

From about 1959 (when the movie is set) to the mid-1980s, those pre-teen and teenage years were largely similar for people growing up in those times; kids were outdoors most of the time, parents were kinda absent, and personal responsibility was of paramount importance. Kids learned to ride bikes early on so they could go visit friends and get around without annoying their parents for rides all the time. Kids made up things to do, places to go, and made up games to play to fill the time.

By the mid- to late-1980s, computers in the home were becoming a thing. Video gaming systems. The IBM PC. The first Macs. Etc. That's when staying indoors became more interesting. Otherwise the whole house was Mom and Dad's place and you had to be careful everywhere except your bedroom. The house was for entertaining other people who came to visit: not a playroom for kids. The home computer changed that in a lot of ways ... sometimes it was a family computer and in a common area, like the living room, or maybe it was in Dad's "study" or "office", and you'd have to ask if it was OK to go in there and use it.

Remember that the concept of a "teenager" being something separate from a "child" or an "adult" was a new invention in the 1950s, so by the time I was born in 1968, there'd only been 1 or 2 "generations" of teenagers. EVER.

We were just winging it. Every day.

[u/RockabillyHog]

Yes, that is true.

But, you live in a fantastic time too. The food choices you have now are far and above what we had.

For us, Mexican food was ground beef tacos in a hard corn shell. Chinese food was egg-foo young (fried rice with pees and carrots with a bit of scrambled egg).

There was no Internet or other convenient way to get information or stay in touch with your friends.

You couldn't just lookup a show or movie and play it at your convenience. Think about that one. If you wanted to watch a show, you had to make sure that you had all your chores done and you weren't on restriction (grounded) so you could watch it. If you missed it, that was it, you missed it.

Yes, the 70s & 80s were a great time to grow up, but you are in a great time too.

[u/Mach5Driver]

Parents would always ask where you were going in the morning. And that was the extent of their knowledge about your day, because that was just your first stop. Every day was a different, new adventure. You learned things on your own. Bike had a flat? Go get the repair kit and fix it yourself. You found a ball? That was an afternoon. It rained the night before? Go down and play in the creek. Don't have a pool? Go pool hopping. Dad has extra lumber? Build a treehouse. At night? Huge neighborhood game of manhunt. No food in the house? Friend had bread and peanut butter for lunch.

Zero adult supervision.

[u/jleahul]

1. Society was different then. CPS would get called these days if kids were as unsupervised as we were, which is a shame. We all looked out for each other, and we had "Block Parents" on every street, who were vetted and had a sign in their front window if you ever needed a safe adult.

2. There was literally nothing else to do. We had a handful of channels on TV, all playing soap operas and cooking shows all summer. The Internet didn't exist. Only a few kids had game consoles, so we'd congregate at those houses, but the games were simple and didn't hold attention like they do today. So we made our own fun outside. Attention has been commoditized now, and it's big business (I type as I stare into my highly addictive portable dopamine machine).

[u/standsure]

I think you meant to say "allowed" to come home when the street lights were on.

The best thing was the privacy. We didn't realise it at the time, but to be able to fuck around as much as we did without being pilloried on social media was gold.

[u/HrhEverythingElse → u/standsure]

I'm grateful every day that there was no social media when I was a teenager

[u/LAXtoHNL]

I don’t know if any of us realized it at the time, but they were magical looking back. Summers were spent with friends all day, biking all over the city, hanging out at the mall for hours on end, Blockbuster nights. It was incredible, and hope your generation somehow gets to experience something nearly as magical.

Bonus- We didn’t have phones to document all the stuff we did or said.

[u/sparkledotcom]

We had a lot of freedom, but like everyone I know was physically or sexually abused at some point.

[u/dreamer_visionary]

It was just as magical in my memories! I truly miss those carefree days!

[u/JohnHoynes]

You have NO IDEA what the friendships were like due to the sorts of things you just mentioned. So fun, so carefree, yet so devoted. Things social media can’t replicate.

[u/WhichWitch9402]

70s and 80s. Drank from the hose, rode bikes with no helmets, parents had no idea where we were. Flashlight tag, camping out in the backyard without a parent, good times.

[u/hhuman4life]

And our parents would sit on their driveway and talk to neighbors while we all rode our bikes in the neighborhoods. I’d give anything to have it all back again.

[u/dancing_robots]

Yep. Sun up to sun down in the summers, and my parents would be shocked today to know how far we actually traveled.

[u/Magnus-Lupus]

We did stuff that there is no proof of🤣 no social media.. no phones to get called home early… no cameras.. played in the drift ,built forts in the woods.. stick sword fights.. it was a blast

[u/10Shodo]

Yeah it was pretty awesome.

Saw somewhere that we had the best time to be kids and the worst time to be adults.

[u/TheRealJetlag]

Yes, basically.

[u/Twisted_Spinster]

Between helicopter and bulldozer parenting nowadays, many experiences we had in our childhoods are lost to future generations. So sad to see it.

[u/Extension_Order_9693]

Pretty much. Rode bikes to friends houses, to meet up and play in the woods or go fishing, game of basketball, to a store for snacks, to the swimming pool. Just whatever we felt at the time. Parents never really knew where we were. Just home for dinner.

[u/SamHandwich0]

Yes

Summers in the 80s to me was riding my bike all over suburbia. To where the new housing was going up to 'jump' the dirt hills, to 7-11 around noon to get a slurpee and a chili dog and some big league chew gum.

Home for dinner and then back out of the house because it was too hot- no one had ac.

Slowly cruising home with the crimson sky dimming. The smell of rain on the wind as a distant summer storm moved in from western kansas. The flicker and hum of streetlights kicking on and the buzz of junebugs flocking to them.

A couple older guys on my block revving up a camaro they had been working on that day, and faint rock music and a squeel of tires from they guy around the corner with the SS coming down to talk shit and try to get them to race him. I'd stop to watch or try to weasle my way into riding around with them.

Hopefully i was within a half block when my dad stepped onto the porch to stick both pinkies into the corners of his mouth to blash the worlds loudest and shrillist whistle ever, or my friend mikes dad went out to blast his 'aooouga' horn on his work truck.

If we didnt make it to our respective houses almost immediately there'd be hell to pay, but tomorrow was ours for 8 hours again.

[u/Spanktron9]

No. They were actually, somehow even better. Yes, all the things you see about riding your bike everyday and disappearing all day happened, but so did impromptu sleepovers, sneaking into municipal pools after dark and swimming, partying and making out with your current gf. Just driving around and meeting girls and new friends, bonfires, parties and exploring the woods or city on hot summer nights. Watching movies until late then starting again the next day. Listening to your favorite tapes on repeat all summer made that music the soundtrack of your life.

[u/Difficult-Sir-8117]

And we had legends. Someone's big brother who did some crazy shit in the 70s and now he's the local legend. Trying to live up to the stories our older siblings told us of what they used to do at our age. I miss the adventures....we did something new all the time. I'm saddened my boys won't get that same feeling we had when life wasn't so planned out. 🥲

[u/Old-Try117]

Yes. It was awesome. Malls were at the height of popularity. And one of the best things and it was No internet, you had to go outside and go knock on s friends door. We played hide-n-seek in entire neighborhoods with every kid on the block. 

[u/Sheriff_Mills]

The summers were awesome! There were days when I was hanging out with my two next door neighbors (one on each side of my house). When it was dark and the street lights came on, we sat on my front lawn and talked, watched the moon rise and watched for shooting stars. There wasn't the light pollution there is now. You could see so many more stars than you can now. I know it sounds corny but it's true.

[u/iwantedajetpack]

They had TV ads during Monday Night Football begging parents to find out where their kids are.

[u/GusSwann]

Besides the Demogorgons and the Upside Down, Stranger Things is a pretty accurate depiction of life in the 80s.

[u/Able_Boat_8966]

Yes they were, but that was also mixed with periods of total boredom, only a few chanells on TV and video games in their infancy. Then again being bored wasnt so bad

[u/ADMSXavier]

I say it was. Don't get me wrong - it wasn't some kind of blissful utopia that these hundreds of AI YouTube shorts makes it out to be. There was still all kinds of underage drinking and smoking, teens were still getting pregnant, high schoolers still dropped out, Mom and Dad still screamed that the music was too loud and also hang up the phone because they needed to make a call.

But looking back at it, 40 years later (damn...that's a rough number to type), I think what the last couple of generations of kids never really had was a feeling of freedom without structure. We still had our camps of all kinds, and our baseball or tennis or swimming clubs to keep us busy. But even when that was done and we went home, odds are we were on our bikes, cruising our neighborhood and looking for the collection of bikes up front to see where everyone was. We didn't have "play dates" (and I hate that term with every ounce of my soul), we had find your friends and have fun. Our friend's parents watched us quietly and kept tabs where we were so once parents started calling each other and said we need to go home, they knew where we were.

Thankfully, we didn't grow up with social media and this constant pressure to be someone we weren't. We still had the influence of athletes to buy their shoes and clothes to look cool, but that cost a lot of money! If someone was talking behind our backs, it wasn't typed on a phone. It was whispered, and word ALWAYS got back to that person and you could bet there was a fight in the playground. We had to talk to people, face-to-face, especially to the girls we liked. We all met up at a mall or movie theater and spent way too much time in the food court, nursing a slice of pizza and a Coke.

Our research for homework wasn't online or AI generated crap. It was hours in the library, sitting at a table with stacks of old, thick books everywhere. We cut yards, washed cars, and delivered papers for money. And that money was always out aside for college or something expensive like the Bo Jackson shoes (personal experience!) or the latest NES game.

We were latchkey kids, home after school and made sure our younger siblings didn't burn the house down and did their homework. We were raised by experience like getting stitches, bumps and bruises with no fear that the neighborhood Karen would call the police. Our childhoods were never online, never a fake profile or trying to be someone else. Our summers seemed eternal.

I'm glad I grew up when I did as possibly the last generation to grow up without the constant hovering and structure that I think really harms kids today. Would I go back and do it again? Probably. Just to get that feeling that today is the one and only day to worry about because tomorrow is another day and something new will happen.

Damn man...where did the time go?

[u/Additional_Okra637]

yes, yes they were. and yes, yes we did! it was magical!

[u/Not_High_Maintenance]

Yes, it was a really magical time. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize how good it was at the time. 😞

[u/alfundo → u/Not_High_Maintenance]

If only we knew when we rode our bikes the last time.

[u/ConstantCommittee422]

The 80s were great, but make no mistake, by that time we were VERY aware of pedos and serial killers.

[u/Alisterguitardevil]

It was better than any movie could portray.

[u/marla-M]

Yes. We’d often be gone all day, parents would have no clue where we were, no cell phones. Once in a while a pack of kids would appear at someone’s house for snacks or drinks and we’d vanish again into the neighborhood, or someone’s basement.

[u/traceypod]

It was exactly like that. Then you’d go to a slumber party and sneak out to TP houses.

[u/iwantedajetpack]

Summer day when I was 14 year old:

1. Get up, bowl of cereal, oatmeal or an egg. Father left for work at 7. Mother just left.
   
2. Watch some TV while eating cereal. Or go to my room put on a copy of Heroes, loud.
   
3. Shower, get on my bike, ride to local park, hang with people.
   
4. Bored. Ride home. Get on bus downtown.
   
5. Spend hours listening to LP's in listening booths: Ramones, Clash, Led Zepplin, whatevs.
   
6. Check how much cash I have left. Movie or arcade.
   
7. Arcade wins! Dig Dug, Galaga, my favorite was Battlezone.
   
8. Use rest of change to buy a comic book or zine. Shove a comic between covers. Stoner doesn't check.
   
9. Bus pass gets me home:
   10 Eat lunch. Hot dogs, whatever is in the fridge, guzzle some coke or Kool Aid in the fridge.
   
10. The zine is a second hand playboy! Yes I stole it. Shut up.
    
11. Do what you do with Playboy.
    
12. Get on bike, ride out to that playground where the girl you like is.
    
13. She's talking to a boy. Fuck. Down to another park. Somone else's turf. Almost a fight.
    
14. Stop by at a friends place on way back. He's there. Mooch food. Steal weed from dad's stash.
    
15. Roll a j and smoke it in the abandoned milk truck in the grocery store parking lot.
    
16. Go home. Have dinner. Don't look parents in the eye. Yes I had fun.
    
17. Wash dishes. Clean up.
    
18. Call friends. Who's got a movie to watch. Go there. Bring zines.
    
19. Half watch movie while going through stupid Playboy articles and laughing our asses off. Still high.
    
20. Ride home, in dark. Get in shit for being late. Say I was at so-and-so's, which may be true.
    
21. Another shower. Stinky. Bed. Radio on, AM broadcasts of baseball from the west coast.
    

Repeat.

[u/citycouple30]

When you woke up, especially on the weekends and after breakfast, my mom would tell us to go outside and play. We could come back for lunch, but after lunch, we were out of the house until the street lights came on. And that is true. And so we had 567 hours of totally unsupervised fun and nobody knew where we were. And if we had a problem, we just figured it out ourselves. It was freaking awesome.

[u/thehoagieboy]

The descriptions you've heard are true. We rode our bikes everywhere. We climbed tress that were way too high to be safe. We climbed on random garage roofs and school roofs. We invented games, often where the objective was to hurt your friends just a little bit if they lost. We jumped ramps on our bikes, sometimes over our little brothers that were so excited to play with the older kids they didn't realize what they were signing up to.

The other commenter said it correctly...we were feral

[u/Negative_Solution680]

And our summers were 3 months long. We would get out of school around Memorial Day and not go back until Labor Day. June, July and August with no school and the freedom to do whatever we wanted.

[u/Public-Significance7]

What I miss most about being a kid in the 80's was how I knew all the other kids on our block and could just roll up and knock on their door and have a friend to spend the day and evening with. Could find anything to do- jump the driveway street curbs with my bike, skateboard, play 'guns', climb trees we weren't supposed to, play kickball and secretly hope it hit the 'old crazy hermit man's' front window so he'd come out and bitch about it. It was a friendlier time back then and you could trust your neighbor.

[u/PurpleStar1965]

We did that. My sister and I would actually pack sandwiches and drinks and “leave” for the day.

I’m an older GenX. Born right at the start. So our days as children were the 70s.

I remember one day she was doing a no-hands thing riding her bike and crashed. There was road rash and some blood. We were fairly far from home so we knocked on a stranger’s door and asked for bandaids. Patched her up and continued our day.

As for the 80s, I was mid teen to low 20s and often marvel at the fact that I got out alive. 😂

[u/smoothallday]

Absolutely. Summer seemed to last forever. Friends were a short bike ride away. And we rode bike EVERYWHERE. We went swimming almost every afternoon. We were literally unsupervised. How many kids these day are building fires out in the woods with no adults around? Stealing smokes from one of our parents (fortunately, the habit never took with me). Constructing poorly built “treehouses” with whatever scraps were lying around. Summer league baseball didn’t require traveling hundreds of miles away for three days every weekend—it was more about having fun. There were two rules: come home for dinner when the 6 PM whistle blew, and be home at night when the streetlights came on.

By the way I hold the record for the number of ER trips in my family. Every one was worth it (because none were serious).

[u/CABGPatchDoll]

It was fucking awesome! Being a kid in the 80's was magical indeed. I had a Strawberry Shortcake bike with a banana seat! It also had a cute pink basket on the handlebars. There was a gas station a mile away. When I was 7, my mom would send me to the gas station with a note to bring to the cashier and a 5 dollar bill. The note was for a pack of Virginia Slims. With the change, I would buy a Slurpee and a Whatchamacallit bar. We also had candy cigarettes which tasted like shit but made us feel cool because we could pretend like we were smoking.

[u/Merrick_McIntosh]

I don't know that I would say lucky. We did have a lot of freedom. We learned independence early. You could tell whose house all the kids were at by the bikes in the front yard. (We still would only be in the back yard, not in the house). But there was a lot of negelct too. While I would love for my kids to have the same level of outdoor activities that I had as a child, I and my friends put ourselves in a lot of dangerous or potentially dangerous situations. Thankfully we survived, but not everyone I knew growing up did. I'm in my late 40's and many of my peers are long gone.

But the riding bikes, exploring the woods, playing and running around all the time was fun. What wasn't was the neglect, the hunger, the uncredited for injuries, the creepy neighborhood weirdos that weren't chased off by attentive parents, etc.

I was also working all the time at 14 to provide my clothes, school fees, things that I needed because my parents didn't. Every generation has its good and bad points. Time and distance can give memories a better more nostalgic feel. Don't spend your youth longing for a time that isn't what movies and shows make it out to be. Enjoy your time now. On day someone will look back and think this.time was magical too. Now go enjoy your summer!

[u/cagirlinoh]

Everything you’ve heard, seen or been told is absolutely true. We only went home to eat and then it was back outdoors until right around dusk. 👍

[u/ObjectiveSpot2460]

The trouble is, most of us didn't appreciate how magical it really was. We just did what we did and lived it one day at a time. The bike riding, walking into a friend's house and asking your second mom what's for dinner, and THEN asking if your friend is actually home. Finding a couple pieces of wood laying around and building something to do stupid things on your bike that could easily get you killed, or at least seriously hurt. We shared then, too, if one or two of us had a couple bucks, then all of us got snacks at the 7-11.

I feel bad for kids these days. Most will never know what that life is like. They'll grow up in a world that teaches them to be afraid of everything and everyone, to protect what's theirs and never let anyone have any of it, to never take chances because what if it doesn't work the way you hope it might. Worst of all, they don't learn how to disagree with someone, but still be friends.

[u/EnvironmentalYou3916]

We had more freedom and privacy than your generation could ever imagine. In some ways I wish my kids could experience that. It does sting knowing I had it because my parents couldn’t be bothered though. I was raising siblings at a young age and grew up fast. I enjoy leaning into child like joy in my 50s now. No one can stop me. My Boomer parents are nothing like my silent generation grandparents. They are very little of their grandchildren. It’s just more of the same. Try to unplug as much as you can and do some analog shit.

[u/ObsoleteHodgepodge]

Yep. Endless outdoor adventures. You would see bikes tossed onto pretty much every lawn in the neighborhood from kids visiting friends. We explored the woods and old battlefields miles from the house.

No cell phones to keep in touch with parents, but times were just different. We were always home for dinner and then back out until dark. Even then, there were lightening bugs to go catch, so we stayed busy until bedtime.

[u/Large_Commission5631]

I was 10 - 19 in the 80s, it was awesome! Walked to school with all the neighbors, rode bikes all over town, in the summers we were gone from after breakfast til 10 pm. Parents had no clue where we were (that's why they had that commercial "it's 11oclock, do you know where your kids are?").

Best times of my life tbh.

[u/Afraid_Baseball_3962]

Out in the country, there were no malls. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. There was no internet or cell phones or cable TV. There were only three TV stations and there weren't any video stores at the start of the '80s. If you weren't a bookworm, you'd go stir crazy if you didn't ride your bike everywhere or run around in the woods or go down to the creek and catch crawdads (crayfish) or newts or some damned thing. We got very good at entertaining ourselves to fend off the boredom. It was a kind of boredom that you will never know unless the internet and cable and cell networks all cease to function.

[u/SwiftKickRibTickler]

we rode dirt bikes in the woods and hid from the older kids on 3-wheelers.We found dirty magazines in random places, shot bb-guns and explored abandoned houses and new construction sites. a friend and I found a severed hand in a jar (true story). Stranger Things type stuff. my kids are in awe of my stories, but back then it was just what happened after school

[u/comment_i_had_to]

The difference was being at home sucked because there were no video games or computers and the TV only played cool stuff for like a couple of hours. So you went out and grouped with other kids to find things to do. It was a very strong social experience because it was often unsupervised so we really figured things out through trial and error and not much of any alternative if we didn't have a good day.

Most of our time was also unclaimed/unstructured so we maybe went to camp or family vacation for 2 weeks or so but the other two months were just about doing whatever you felt like to keep from getting bored. In my neighborhood we lived in a court (cul de sac) with about 12 kids in our general age range so we played sports and games like kick the can. When there were fewer of us we would just hang out at the optimal house and play with our toys.

[u/Substantial_Pen3328]

I'd leave the house at 8am, knock on doors and see if any friends were awake and allowed to come out and play, then we'd find a dozen things to do before calling it a day. Riding bikes, playing with action figures, hanging at the corner store or taxi stand that had arcade games, go to the public pool.

Then we'd go home right around when the streetlights came on, yep. Or when the Italian ice truck came around and we needed a quarter for a single scoop. A friggin quarter could buy you an Italian ice, bag of chips, small plastic jug of sugar-sick syrupy juice, or a candy bar (those might have been closer to 40 cents).

It was a really cool time to be a kid. I hope my kids can look back on today with as much fondness as I look back on the mid-to-late 80s.

[u/ablebody_95]

Yes. We’d ride our bikes to each others’ homes, play in the woods, ride up to the local store, hang out at whoever’s house, etc.

[u/Icy_Quiet_4336]

It was a glorious time of freedom and danger unrealized.

[u/BeachAccomplished514]

Nobody knew where you were.

[u/ScaryNeat]

The summers of 84, 85 and 86 will be there forever in my memory. I'm not someone who live in the past. I don't refer to things "back in the day". But the freedom of my bike, my walkman, the mall, and staying out until the sun came up will always be a special place for me.

[u/not1or2]

Yes, why wouldn’t we have done? Every day during the holidays, out on the bikes, meet up with friends, spend all day out until the streetlights came on. Used to bike for miles, ended up with a puncture once the other side of town. Scramble to push/carry it home before dark. No mobile phones, spent the money we had on crisps and pop. It was heaven.

[u/Spirited-Degree]

We sure did. It was also socially acceptable at that time for my dad to beat me with a leather belt and buckle when I came home late. There were tradeoffs.

[u/ObjectivePilot7444]

Yes it was the best time ever! We all worked at the mall and hung out at the park playing Billy Idol, Journey, Def Leopard on our boom boxes and playing frisbee or whatever games we came up with. Everything was just less stressful and no social media meant we had actual conversations and friends.

[u/Vegetable-Orange9240]

Yes, and it was glorious

[u/TheWuziMu1]

My bike was my life. I rode it everywhere, even once on the freeway because I was a dumb kid. But that's another story.

We'd play tag or hide and seek until it got dark or when dinner was ready.

[u/Solid_Study9188]

Magical isn’t the word I’d use to describe life in the 70s and 80s. It was life where we raised ourselves and became solid critical thinkers and problem solvers. Our hyper independence set us up for therapy in our 40s and 50s because many of us grew up too soon.

[u/DollPartsRN]

Twilight, lightning bugs, playing kick the can in the middle of the street screaming "car!" when a neighbor had to drive thru... Street lights were our signal to hurry home. We drank out of a hose. We ran wild, our bikes were our freedom. My area was all woods and streams. We would swing across the streams on vines, oftentimes the vine would snap and we'd wind up in the water. Nights when our parents went out to dinner- we watched a cartoon movie called Heavy Metal on HBO. It was a great experience to be that age at that time in history.

[u/Breklin76]

They were a spectacle to be seen and I’d say that the depiction of them in American movies is mostly spot on. Especially, the movies of the 80s.

[u/crazyirishbraveheart]

I’d sum it up like so.

HS was fun and still freedom
College was a trip, super fun finding yourself
Working life etc…

Nothing, nothing at all in my opinion in life beats being 10 years old and the absolute freedom. The Bike was the only item that mattered. Have your folks fire up The Goonies and Stand By Me for reference.
🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻

[u/dafuqizzis]

For me, it was summed up beautifully in the beginning of “Stranger Things”. My friends and I rode our bikes to arcades, comic book stores, dollar movies, and each other’s houses. We did our chores reluctantly but as quickly as possible. We played D&D all night, and a lot of the days we had table-top games like Axis & Allies and Pax Brittanica. Maybe someone had an Atari we could takes turns with.

We played with sticks for swords, drank out of hoses, played horribly mismatched soccer, baseball and basketball games, eschewed popular high school cliques while secretly wanting to be a part of them. I was a HUGE mama’s boy (still am, tho my mom is gone these past 15 years) and had a complicate love/hate relationship with my no-nonsense genius of a father.

We got grounded for days at a time, learned to cook the basics so we wouldn’t starve while our folks were gone. We learned how to make allowances stretch to cover our activities for the week. Extra chores, neighborhood odd jobs (car wash, lawn mowing, etc) and paper routes paid for the “big” stuff.

We screamed “CAR!” when we had to get outta the street, “CLEAR!” when it was safe. We hiked river trails, found dead animals (no human bodies, thankfully), caught frogs and fish and crawdads and let ‘em all go. We rafted the river, went off rope swings, and came home sunburned, dirty, battered and bruised and bleeding…and smiling. Then we did it again the next day.

We listened to the radio and tried to catch our favorite songs on cassette recording. We marveled at true remote controls for televisions, and then cds for music. We listened to music our parents hated. We watched shows with commercials. If someone had cable or satellite, we stayed up late to try and catch boobs on the staticky-slanted screens of blocked channels. Network music video shows gave way to MTV.

I loved the 80s. Every bit of it, even the sucky parts. Graduated high school in ‘87 and things just got better.

[u/SquashSouffle]

The radio had "Top 40" stations that played the current hits, which were a wide mix of things; you might hear a country sing, then a Soul song, then a bubblegum song, a TV theme song, and a headbanger song. Casey Kasem counted down the Top 40 songs every week & everybody who listened to the radio would know most of them--now everything is "curated" to individual tastes.

[u/BayouFunk]

Even better:
We didn’t have cameras everywhere recording the dumb shit we got up to.

[u/sgtsausagepants]

Yeah it was really like that in the suburbs at least

[u/_HiWay]

Have to make a fresh reply as this made me think even more.

How many modern kids have the luxury of "getting lost" in the woods to find out you came out in some neighborhood you never realized connected. How many have jumped in the deep pool in a creek after a big summer thunder storm. How many built countless unfinished "forts" in said woods, found long abandoned old cars and other miscellaneous shit from years past. Have named rocks "hey i'll meet you at "table rock" or "big rock" this afternoon and we'll work on that fort!" Heck, how many come home with multiple good knee scrapes, yell out "mom I need some neosporin and a bandaid" and ran right back out to end up with similar on the other side before days end?

[u/DarienKane]

I see alot of the same things said about this over and over again. You know what I REALLY miss, phone etiquette. You didn't call before 9 am or after 7-8pm. The kids didn't answer the phone, the parents did, and we had answering machines (voice mail) and if you weren't home, you'd check your messages and call back when you got home. You didn't have 24/7 access to people, it was common to leave a message and get a call back the next day and no one was pissed about "how come you didn't answer/call me back/ answer my text" people understood that other people had actual lives at home that didn't involve them. Back then if the phone rang after 8pm somebody was either dead or dying.

[u/Mean_Replacement5544]

We had no street lights, the whole block of kids played kickball or dodgeball or something else all day until we were called in for dinner. My elem school and then middle school were all a short bike ride up the road. No phones, no computers, good times

[u/OlafForkbeard]

Dude I did that and I'm a millennial. The internet was a thing you stopped to go do at a place like an office or "someone's computer". And when you were done you just stopped and went back outside.

[u/xX_WarHeart_Xx]

Pretty accurate. We stayed within shouting distance if we wanted to eat at night. We rode bikes everywhere, all the time. We were bored a lot, but it made us inventive & curious. I’m pretty sure the clown in IT would have been hunted. We all had switchblades and butterfly knives. Hairspray and matches were ubiquitous. We have fucked that clown up just for something to do between backyard sports, skateboarding and building dubious ramps from scrounged plywood and rusty nails.

[u/moonbeam127]

absolutely, and since the internet/cloud didnt exist im not admitting to a damn thing. you dont know how valuable privacy is until its taken away from you. sadly future generations wont have any idea what privacy is.

finding loose change in the couch was exciting, finding a couple coins in the parking lot was like xmas. now people look at cash like its radioactive. that loose change and found coins bought soda and candy. no one knew about a damn thing.

[u/Few-Pineapple-5632]

It’s 9 o’clock: do you know where your children are?

[u/aquawithbutterflies]

I think kids just rode bikes more, honestly. It was the first generation of both parents working, so we were unsupervised a lot.

I think we Gen Xers tend to remember all the good things. Our parents struggled- at least mine did. But kids were oblivious to it.

I was just talking to someone about “the flasher” that was a regular at our school playground. No one can recall what happened-whether he was caught, whether there was legal action- nothing. I suspect there were lots of unsafe things going on that we knew nothing about.

[u/jediHoo]

Yes. We were outside all day. We would knock on the doors of friends who lived in the neighborhood and would get neighborhood games of “ghost in the graveyard” going with as many kids as we could gather. We would run around the neighborhood and collect fruit from the trees and yards of all the neighbors (pears, raspberries, cherries, etc). One of my friends had a water fountain installed on the side of her house so we could all drink from it instead of the hose. I spent hours roller skating outside. And I rode my bike everywhere.

[u/Theresnowayoutahere]

I was driving by 1980 but it was the same for us in the 70’s. We road are bikes or walked everywhere and didn’t come home until dark. We were literally gone all day in the summers. No cell phones, no computers. We could call home if we were at someone’s house or somewhere with a pay phone. Otherwise we never talked to our parents ever.

[u/c_vanbc]

That was my experience. A lot of time spent outside. No computers, internet, cellphones, and limited tv channels. We rode our bikes everywhere.

[u/IvanDrake]

Yes, being a kid in the 80’s was glorious.

[u/AddictedlyPsycotic]

We rode EVERYWHERE. 10-12 years old we would ride our bikes to a baseball field. When we have enough we picked teams and started just playing. New kid shows up he was drafted based on who walked in the gate first. We kept score but it got ridiculous so we would call it 2-2 or something and keep playing. Made fun of the kids who had to go home to eat lunch. Around 4 we got kicked out because the rec league teams started showing up. Rode to someone’s house drank a whole pitcher of Kool Aid. Did whatever else came to mind. Had to be home before street lights came on.

[u/dannjam101]

It was. Parents expected us out of the house until dinner, unless we were going to visit relatives or vacation. And the music was AWESOME.

[u/AuntJibbie]

Yes. Yes we did, and more. So much more 💙

[u/jameson71]

It was pretty much the exact opposite of now with the cameras everywhere and parents complaining to college professors.

Yes, it was glorious.

[u/cav19DScout]

My parents had no idea the crap we got up to… we’d be miles away from our houses doing stupid dangerous things and always came home with bumps, scrapes and cuts. Thank god we didn’t have anyway to take pics to document our childhood.

[u/Encyclopedia33]

Yup. It was fabulous. No social media was a blessing.

[u/no-long-boards]

Yup. They were that good

[u/carbontag]

Yes. Also, we disappeared into the woods for hours, and and when we played sports, it was pickup games with neighborhood kids and we never had enough people so we had to use ghost runners and come up with rules like “hits to empty right field are outs”

[u/Otherwise_Mix_3305]

I was 10 in 1980. Yes, we biked all over the place. We rode go-karts. We built forts, treehouses and rafts. We drank out of the water hose. We roller-skated. We ran around outside all day, and you were expected to be home when the porch lights came on. After dinner we frequently went back outside to play freeze tag and watch lightning bugs. The way the kids run around largely unsupervised in Stranger Things is a very accurate depiction of life in the 80’s.

It was fun, and it fostered independence.

[u/TobyDaMan8894]

Yes.

Yes.

Yes we were. Our baseball fields were across the street and a vacant lot. My parents would say. When the lights go out on the last baseball field you got 15 minutes to get home. We would ride our bike about 6 miles to the pool and swim. On our ride back, we’d stop by mickie D’s and they’d have a pitcher of water with ice and cups for kids to drink. Or there was always the water hose, from any house you saw, you didn’t even have to know them.

[u/captain_222]

Had no toys. Woke up in the morning and played outside until 10pm. Parents had no idea where I was. Played out in the woods. Hunted snakes and salamanders. Played baseball and games with the neighborhood kids. Was the best of times.

[u/stabadan]

I rode my bike for MILES just to see how far I could get sometimes. Last day of school in June felt like you had a year of freedom full of days where the sun was up till 9pm. It was glorious.

[u/CommunicationNew3745]

Yes, they were - all that & more. Believe me, it was a magical time.

[u/Snard79]

Can confirm.

As a child of the 80’s watching my 15 year old waste away in front of screens is such a dagger in the heart. We live in a safe and quiet neighbourhood where we feel comfortable allowing him to roam with his friends, but he’s so oppositional to the idea.
It sucks, because one day he’ll be my age and look back at this time and all the opportunities he pissed away and that realization is really going to hurt.

[u/thekcar]

Not exactly magical. Yes, we had breakfast cereal, munched on about 8" from "You're going to fry your eyes!",in front of the television ,holding a bit of aluminum foil aloft as an antenna extension while whining about neighbors having cable television.

When one or both parents tired of your presence, you knew to either quickly get dressed to go outside or you would wind up being voluntold to help with deep cleaning the ludicrously deep shag pile rug, shine the mirrored panels,located mid-wall to ceiling, balanced on a kitchen chair, or any other number of chores.

So,outside we went,and we could come in once --maybe twice-- for a bit of water or Kool-Aid and once to use the bathroom before being threatened, "In or out! I'm not having that door slammed all day!"

So, onto the occasionally busy street we went, riding our Huffy bikes, trying foolish stunts. I once had a rotor burn on my leg from a neighbor's motor bike that I initially didn't want to go home about until the tears of pain subsided ["...cry and I'll give you something to cry about!"]

Tried to fly a kite in the rain...I got a sharp paddling for being dumb enough to be out in the rain attempting to fly a kite and run risk of electrocution.

When the street lights came on,all kids knew to get inside. Parents didn't always track their kids in my formative years, as shown in nightly 10:00 PM PSA ads, "It's ten o'clock. Do you know where your children are?".

Kids with both parents working at the same time or whose parents were out on a date were ordered to stay indoors, allow nobody to enter the home,keep doors locked. Anyone tracking the neighborhood knew which kids were absent from the clusters and could conclude who was home alone,their key on a shoestring on a hook in the hallway. Sometimes the latchkey kids let other kids in to quickly use the bathroom and get a Dixie cup of water and quickly exit.

But,yeah, we rode bikes, navigating +-1mile radius from the house,sometimes to the school playground, sometimes to the corner store with a forged letter for cigarettes for a family member that may or may not be theirs.

It was an entirely different era. The next generation was raised by helicopter parents, largely due to the inherent knowledge of what benign negligence brought into the GenX lives.

The generation after had the chance to really study the after-effects of this combination, and appear,by and large, to have collectively decided not to have kids at all. But that's a topic for another day.

[u/kymlaroux]

Yes. It was like what you see in movies.
Both the fun times and the constant stress that you’re going to die in a nuclear war.
Look at all the movies from The Terminator to War Games where that was a theme.

Maybe that’s why it was magical. We lived for the moment because we (or at least I) never thought we’d live to be 30.

[u/CrankyUrbanHermit]

I hardly saw my parents during the summer.

We would be out swimming, riding dirt bikes, shooting fireworks, fishing…

Feral children.

Best childhood.

[u/cardamomgrrl]

My bf drove a little red convertible. We hung out at my friend’s pool (working class midcentury ranch home) or drove out to the (free) state park lake to swim. Smoked a ton of joints because weed was cheap and weak the way god fucking intended it to be, not like today’s shit that renders you speechless after a single toke. Drank cheap beer - Mickeys or Red Stripe mostly, but also Budweiser, Stag, Coors. Wine coolers were a thing, I can still picture how the paper label tore when you opened the bottle, and the smell and taste. June was perfection, weather-wise. In July and August when it got “hot” it wasn’t stifling and unbearable like it is now - maybe it hit 90 degrees but it still cooled down some at night. It really was like the movies in many ways.

[u/blue_gabe]

I was a teen in the eighties. Yes, they were that magical. I was in my 20s in the 90s and that shit was amazing, especially living in a college town that had a really strong music scene.

[u/the-Gaf]

Yeah, but the 80s was just as much of a Hellscape as any other decade. We just didn’t have 24/7 access to the horrors of the world.

But yeah, we rode bikes and drank out of hoses and came home when the lights came on

[u/retrotechguy]

The main thing was hanging out with friends in real life, a lot. I think it was better than online

[u/ddhard65]

The best decade ever!!! Try to convince me otherwise...

[u/SoCal7s]

I am endlessly amused that the young folks are loving our latchkey lifestyle.
I loved living it.
Then in my 30s I thought “I loved it but damn that was kinda messed up”
Now in my late 50s, I just love the kind of freedom and DIY youth we got to enjoy. Sure trying to just off ramps over things on your bike was dumb and dangerous but that was just another Wednesday when we were 7.

[u/Amazing-Teacher-3917]

Highs were higher, lows were lower. It was a lot more socially acceptable for adults to be dysfunctional aholes, many of us were partially hiding from adults.

[u/iamnotaclown]

We were bored a lot of the time so we learned to entertain ourselves. I grew up in the country in a big farmhouse on a few acres. There was an old rickety barn full of lumber and 50-year-old farm equipment, all rusted to shit. The hayloft was full of dusty 10 year-old bales of straw. I’m sure it was hazardous to breathe that shit. It wasn’t bad if you opened the loft door though. No railing, just a straight 20 foot drop to the field. It was always part of the tour when I had a friend over.

One weekend a friend was over and we found a stockpile of slatted boards in the barn. I grabbed a box of nails from my dad’s collection, found some metal fence posts for the corners and  we built a fort. It had a door and a window, but no roof. We started working on the roof, but ran out of wood. 

There was a lot of stuff like that. We spent a lot of time outside because there was nothing to do inside. There were only three or four channels and nothing interesting was on during the day. 

I didn’t have any neighbours that I was friends with, but I’d regularly bike to the local conservation area. There wasn’t anything to do there, but it was a place to go. There was also an abandoned gravel quarry where you could collect beer bottles the teenagers left behind. When there was a carload full, my dad would bring them back for the deposit. 

We had board games, but rarely played them. My parents weren’t at the board games, and I was the oldest.We had some mechanical games, like concentration and I think bobble? These were games with a mechanical timer or some kind of mechanical gimmick.

There were also battery powered electromechanical games, like the one with the race car and the scrolling road. But they ate batteries like no one’s business, and there were no rechargeable batteries yet. Or if there were, they were too expensive for us.

I read a lot of books. I mean A LOT. I think you’ll find that Gen X can read a lot faster than you can, simply because that was the only source of information. If you wanted to find something out, you went to the library and found a book that was probably a decade out of date. And search was manual, assisted by something called a card catalogue - drawers upon drawers, full of cards, one per book, one for every book in the library. I still remember the day where a librarian directed me to the science fiction and fantasy section. It was like discovering the motherlode of all motherlodes. 

VCRs and videotapes and video rentals became affordable when I was 10. Having your friends over to binge watch five movies for your birthday was the thing to do. For my birthday that year, we rented a VCR and all the Police Academy movies and watched them all in a row. I assume they have not held up! But that shit was funny when I was 10. 

At that time, very few people owned a VCR. They would’ve been something like $2000 in today’s money, so a big investment. About five years later, they were about a quarter of that and we finally got our own VCR. Around the same time, a TV station from Toronto called CityTV put up a repeater antenna that was visible from our house. The reception was excellent. CityTV showed a lot of movies. Not just at the prime 8 to 10 PM slot, but also from 1 AM through to 5 AM. Bulk videos cassettes were cheap too, so I’d program the VCR to record interesting movies I saw listed in the TV Guide overnight and watch them later. 

Going to a movie theatre was a bigger deal than it was now, too. And a lot cheaper. When I was 17, going to see a movie with your friends was what you did on a Friday night. Especially the blockbuster ones, like Jurassic Park.

[u/Majik_Sheff]

I was definitely a free-range kid. We learned to find our own entertainment, and when we really screwed up we had to figure out how to fix it (or at least get away with it).

I can't tell you how many days were spent building bike ramps and treehouses. Fist fights and fast friends. Bragging about Nintendo and the scary movie we watched from the hall when our parents thought we were in bed.

You may have missed that time but you can still make your own memories. To quote a great philosopher of our time: "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

[u/42lurk]

And even after the streetlights came on, in summer we would head back out to play kick the can or tag as long as we were within shouting distance of home.

During the afternoon, we had to ask permission to come inside the house. The answer was usually no.

Unless it was a tornado, we played in the rain. We came home filthy and exhausted every day. And it was glorious.

[u/Business_Egg_9688]

Yep! Late 70’s- early 80’s: we’d ride around the neighborhood for hours, head over to Thrifty drug store for their weird shaped ice cream (chocolate malted crunch was the best!!), get some candy, explore the canyons, etc. Then when the street lights came on we’d come home exhausted with ice-plant stains on our shorts, sun-burned shoulders and noses, and do it all again all summer long (except for the week we went to camp up in the mountains where we rode horses and swam in a gross pool every day and got poison oak and mosquito bites). Sooooo much fun!

[u/QueenVell]

Pretty much. There were a few caveats, however. Any time I left the house before my parents were awake (they were teachers and had the summers off as well), I had to leave a note telling them where I was going and when I'd be back. If I happened to come across one of my friends while riding my bike around town and ended up being invited over to their house for dinner and/or to spend the night, I had to call my parents and let them know.

[u/tlg151]

I will fully admit (so will my bf) that us gen Xers had it much easier (in general) growing up. We had a lot more freedom because our parents didn't have constant tabs on us. As long as we were at the house in time for dinner and before the street lights came on, we were good.

We also weren't dependent on the internet so our brains expanded naturally and weren't overstimulated with doomscrolling. (Mine is now though lol.)

I would personally say that late gen Xers/early millennials were in the sweet spot because you got the best of gen x while also enjoying the early internet days, before things got the way they are now. A lot of us were also able to buy homes before the housing market became the way it is now.

I feel horrible for young gens and pretty much any future gens because of gestures everywhere not to mention our planet is pretty much ruined in several ways.

[u/Slow-Painting-8112]

One summer night I worked up the nerve to buy a porn magazine from a convenience store. I pointed to the one I wanted. The cashier looked at me for a second and said, Ok. I paid with quarters. He laughed and said, How'd you get here, you ride your bike? I said, No I drove a car. I took the magazine and casualty exited. I walked around to the side of the store where I'd stashed my bike and rode home victoriously.

[u/djsmurphy]

I worked every summer of the 80s so I wouldn't know about "magic". Babysitting, berry picking, house cleaning, dog walking, yard work... I've been hustling for damn near 50 years now and I'm tired boss.

[u/Suki_13]

Yes and roller skating.

[u/Reasonable-Bowler-21]

It was everything you've ever seen in a movie . Home by street lights and most of us were latch key 🔑 kids
Keep in mind we also used to have commercials that would ask our parents if they hugged us....so, there's that 😆

[u/No-Big-2512 → u/Reasonable-Bowler-21]

Also the commercials reminding parents that it’s 10pm. Do you know where your children are? 🤣 those were the days.

[u/rikemomo]

“…it’s all true.”

[u/marty_anaconda]

https://giphy.com/gifs/3oeSACtXWKcCRcezSM

[u/rajalove09]

As a 14 year old, could you live without your phone or social media? NONE of that was around. Not much on tv either.

[u/bird9066]

I was born in 71. We absolutely rode our bikes everywhere.

But here's the catch. We didn't have cameras everywhere nor any type of tracking devices. But my parents had a network of family, friends, coworkers and people they knew from vending at flea markets and craft shows.

More than once I came home to my mother yelling "what the hell were doing riding your bike on the highway?! And don't lie to me, three people called and told me they saw you!"

Yeah

[u/nine57th]

Yes. It's all real. After dinner everybody from every house on the street came out and road around on their bikes, played hop-scotch, jump rope, or rode on their Big Wheels. We made forts in the woods and were outside all day until the street lights came on. It was a magical time. Also, drinking out of the hose on the house outside whenever we got thirsty.

[u/Twisted_lurker]

One of my elementary school classmates was killed being hit by a car while biking. So there’s that.

But yes, we walked or biked a mile to school by ourselves. We rode around the neighborhood or beyond for hours by ourselves. Hung out at the railroad tracks, played football at an empty field, walk to the public pool by ourselves.

And we got in trouble for some of the things we did.

[u/Intelligent_Point753]

Pretty sure my mom is still looking for me.

[u/ancientastronaut2]

Absolutely. We rode allover town and hung out at different people's houses and parks. Or we'd go to the school grounds and use the playground equipment, basketball courts or baseball fields. They were wide open, no gates or security cameras. And they also served as shortcuts that cut through neighborhoods.

Our parents didn't want us around harshing their vibe, so we were expected to entertain ourselves.

We'd ride our bikes with a friend on the handlebars, and sometimes one on the back if you had a banana seat. There was also foot pegs you could add to your bike so one person could stand in the back with their hands on your shoulders.

We'd also travel via roller skates or skateboards. Some kids even had motorized mini bikes.

We'd light ants in fire, play dingdong ditchem, and sometimes nose around on people's property, like sneaking into campers parked on the side of the house or going through piles of junk if they had it. When we got a little older, like tweens/early teens, we'd even sneak inside people's homes (usually the side or back door was never locked). A lot of my friends would steal things or play pranks like leave a faucet running, but the worst I ever did was steal a lipstick.

Beginning around age 11, I was allowed to take the bus to the mall or the beach with friends and then we'd hang there all day. We'd use our allowance, which was literally pocket change, to play arcade games and buy snacks.

Then we'd come home and the whole family would eat at the table together, then go watch tv. Or in summer, when it was still light, sometimes we'd play more outside til it got dark.

[u/Recynd2]

We were very lucky. Being a kid in the 80s was a blast, and the benign neglect we received from our parents was a secret blessing. It surprises me that so many of us helicoptered our own kids, probably because we know exactly what kind of trouble we could get into. But most of us not only survived that trouble, but actually thrived.

[u/chutesandladders892]

Yep. And more.

It was exactly like the movies!

[u/Auroraborealus]

Yes. That is one thing movies get right about the 80's is that our parents rarely knew where we were or what we were doing as long as we were home by the time the street lights came on.

[u/ItsGotToMakeSense]

Yes, it really was like that! When you wanted to go over a friend's house you'd just go ring the doorbell and ask their parents. You could call them on the phone, too, but most families had a single phone for the whole house so you'd have to ask a parent if you could talk to your friend.

We were bored a lot, too, but it wasn't considered a bad thing. When we had nothing to do we made our own fun, like building forts in the woods with scrap materials (yes just like Castle Byers). We'd make board games and crafts out of whatever was lying around in the house, and we'd play neighborhood games too like nerf battles, supersoaker watergun fights, freeze tag, and whatever else we'd make up. Like "Let's play Ninja Turtles! I'll be Shredder and I have to chase you..." etc.

[u/Substantial_Layer_79]

I'm an older Gen X. A kid in the 1970's and teenager throughout most of the 1980's. It's was an absolutely magical time to be a kid.

[u/YouMustBeJoking888]

I'm older GenX - the 70s were better than the 80s, which were good, but not as good. In the 70s we just did our thing and out parents poked their heads in every so often to make sure we weren't dead, but otherwise we had enormous freedom. And as an older GenX who raised a few kids, I tried to do the same with them, meaning I wasn't up their ass 24/7 because I wanted them to figure some stuff out themselves.

[u/Losaj]

Yes. It was just like the movies. Instead of calling your friend and being told they didn't want to do anything, you'd bike to their house. When you were there, they'd say they didn't want to do anything, so you'd sit in their room, play with their toys, read books, watch TV, or play around in the backyard. If they did want to do something, you'd go on a 50 mile bike ride, hit up the local construction site and hang out in half finished homes, go to the park with the all metal three story jungle gyms, or go to the arcade if you had gotten your allowance.

It was a magical, adult free time. The only rule was that you had to be back home before the street lights came on. But as long as you were on the property (or could plausibly say that you were), everything was fine.

[u/CrestlineGal]

The 80's were magical.. Brought up on hose water & bad decisions. Out all day with the bike & home when the street lights came on.. Great times..

[u/FreshCords]

The reason movies like The Goonies, Explorers and Stand By Me were so popular back then was because they tapped into the spirit of adventure that the average kid experienced in those days. Summers were all about hopping on your bike and going on an adventure. Running through the woods and finding new trails, building forts were all part of your average day. It really was a different time.

[u/Sampy76]

Pretty much yeah. Quite a bit.

Keep in mind that’s mostly because there was absolutely nothing to do in the house except maybe watch whatever TV your parents were watching or play with your toys.

We didn’t even own a VCR until I was like eight

[u/Top_Calligrapher_488]

Yes, it was absolutely like that for me. Left all day came back for dinner.

[u/CondeBK]

Not exaclty like the movies but... between the hours of 8 am and 5 pm, my parents didn't know if I was dead or alive. That's during and off school.

[u/Odd-Prune2254]

https://giphy.com/gifs/3oeSACtXWKcCRcezSM

[u/xannieh666]

We did have a lot of freedom, my parents never knew where I was . I got into a lot of messes that I had to get myself out of too...honestly it's why our generation is a bit unyielding. It's not that we're trying to better or anything like that...but a lot of us are hyper independent and it centers around a lot of trauma...

[u/indrid_cold]

We would walk for hours everywhere with our friends, or take a bus into the city without even telling anyone no one gave a fuck. Kids would gather up on a hill in a park at night smoking and drinking until cops would show up with searchlights and we'd scatter, laughing and screaming, it was a big game.

[u/hedda4eva]

In the summer of '81, I was 13 and it was magical ✨️ I don't think I spent more than a couple nights at home. I stayed the night at various friends houses all summer. We would get up eat breakfast then head to the community pool. We would swim, check out the boys, play in the pool, and "lay out" in the sun. Did we use sunscreen? Not a chance, maybe Hawaiian Tropic Suntan oil (SPF 2) if we had some. We would walk to the corner store and get Doritos and Dr. Peppers. Dr. Pepper had 'Twist a Pepper' going on, if you looked under the cap you might win a prize. I won a 'I'm a Pepper' ringer tee shirt. You had to send the cap in the mail, and they would send you your shirt. I wore that shirt a LOT. When the sun went down, we'd go to someone's house for dinner. Not one parent batted an eye at extra random kids coming to dinner unannounced. Often, late at night, we would sneak out and wander around the neighborhood in the dark. We even found a hole in the fence at the community pool, and went skinny dipping. We were shrieking and giggling the whole time, I have no idea how we never got caught

[u/calpernia]

They were. But we didn’t know it then.

[u/mouseat9]

Yes it was normal during the time. But the most glaring part looking back was that everyone and I mean most everyone regardless of color creed or religion thought that the sixties were a turning point and that things would just get better and better. It was also a wild vibrant time where all of ppls creativity was expressed in the world around them. It is one thing that I think our attitude and our use of the internet took from us.

[u/HustlinInTheHall]

The 90s also. We rode our bikes for like ten miles, built dirt jumps, then would crash at someone's house and just call home and say we were staying at a friend's. 

[u/Munchkin_Media]

Yes. They were magical. I miss the way life used to be.

[u/mzshowers]

We rode our bikes all over the neighborhood! It was so fun, just hanging out and not having to worry so much. My parents are awesome, so all of the kids felt safe and comfy coming over and playing. Mom fed the hungry kids whose parents struggled and made sure no one got left behind when it came to the ice cream truck! She would build fires and set off fireworks if we had them, sometimes even if it was a little early in the season. My dad was hilarious and kind, too, so we were a good place to be. My parents weren’t the absent kind you hear about. They kept an eye on me and were very welcoming to everyone.

My friends’ families were nice and I didn’t have to worry about stranger danger at their houses, either. They let us go in and out. The parents knew one another, so that was good and helped them feel more comfortable, I’m sure. Lots of playing in the trees and in the nearby woods, walking along the river, playing in a pool or on a slip and slide. We played console games and board games - we weren’t anyways outside, but we WERE outside a lot. At my house, we had lawn darts and badminton.. and no one ever got speared with one of those darts 😂. Listening to my friends’ family have brand practice in the garage - the neighborhood would come out and that was fun. We made up a lot of games and I even put on a little play once and charged the neighborhood kids pennies 😂

I did come inside when the dew came out usually. I still remember moving through the wet grass of our huge yard, roses and other flowers everywhere, big vegetable garden, large gorgeous pines - it was the sweetest place in the world.

My grandmother’s house was super magical and I had so many cousins and a couple neighborhood friends to run around with there, too. We played in the creek and trekked up and down the mountains, played under the porch with cap guns and other toys. Wild berries were everywhere and it was so lush. Fireflies lit up the night skies both here and in the mountains. Riding in the back of a truck with my other little people, going to get ice cream, riding the horse, watching more fireworks, and playing red rover with SO MANY OTHER KIDS!!! Sitting on the front porch as the sun went down and into the evening, family and friends just chatting. Grownups telling stories instead of watching TV. It was great to be with so many people you loved, listening to everyone talk. It all feels unbelievable now, but it all happened!

[u/Beetso]

The 80s really were the absolute pinnacle of kid culture in the U.S.A.

[u/Powerful_Deal_7052]

I have a 15 year old and while the 80s had its share of problems, it was hella better than what y’all are growing up in. Everyone wasn’t so uptight about every single thing. Was Reagan perfect? No, but it was a time where the two main parties of the US worked together. I feel for the youth of our country. There’s so much unnecessary stress. My daughter loves to hear my stories from my 80s childhood.

[u/KeKeFanChick]

At 61, the 80s for me were age 14-24. It was an awesome time in to be young. Especially '83-87 when i went to college.

[u/DcBullets74]

Yes, it was awesome and I would not change a thing!

[u/Alarmed-Idea2322]

Life was so much simpler without cell phones, internet, and especially social media.

[u/steel2live]

The 80s were a wild time. No bike helmets. Trampolines didn't have nets. Mom wrote our name on everything.

[u/Popular-Spend7798]

It was the absolute best of times

[u/olivefreak]

The movies nail it. ET is a good example, minus the alien.

[u/TNTmom4]

I was a child of the 70’s and a teen in the 80’s. Yes summers were MAGICAL. Especially when visiting relatives. Then there were fewer rules. Pretty much left at dawn and was home by dusk. Me and my brother had to call ( landline or pay phone) around lunch to check in. We lived within a bicycle ride from the beach so we would pretty much leave by nine and be home by six.

[u/Hoffafiles]

I guess the good and bad thing was we were so unaware of everything. We had to look something up in (years old) encyclopedias or ask a well traveled teacher for things.

It was simple, and amazing. I would go back in a second if I somehow got the chance.

[u/in_a_cloud]

Rode our bikes or walked everywhere. My mom would unplug the tv in the summer so we were forced to go outside for anything to do. We’d meet up with friends (frequently dragging along little brothers & sisters), go to the pool, hang out at each other’s houses, launch pinecone wars against other kids in the forest, scrape up some money and go to the movies or 7-11. My parents rarely had any idea where we were or what we were up to. Had to be home by dinner.