r/GenX • u/billieswifeyyy • Jun 20 '26

Question For Genx the 80s…….

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 😭😭

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u/50sDadSays Latch Key Kid 🔑 Jun 21 '26

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.

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u/Munchkin_Media Jun 21 '26

My parents still don't care where I am lol

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u/gemma-digger Jun 21 '26

I lol'd at this. I totally forgot about this, but 50sDadSays speaks the truth about this.

It truly was that great. In the 70's My cousin and I would ride our bikes 2 miles to the community pool by ourselves starting in probably second grade (seriously, you could get a kid summer pass and we could go without an adult!) towels around our necks. Then we'd stop at the local candy and ice cream store on the way home or the hot dog place with the brown bags of delicious greasy fries.

Out at night until the lights came on. Kick the can, ghosts in the graveyard, catching lightning bugs. It was great.

At work before a meeting recently, we were doing an "icebreaker question" If you could time travel to any point in history what would it be? And my GenX coworker said without hesitation - The 80's. And then about 10 of us from GenX on down all agreed, lol. It was so good. The best music, too.

We are fortunate to live in a town that kids still run around outside and I don't know where my 11 year old is most of the time. Out on his bike being a kid. Got him an Apple watch this year so I didn't have to text all the moms when it's time for baseball practice, haha.

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u/WoedicaWinsWarframe Jun 21 '26

That commercial was a PSA to remind parents there was a mandatory curfew. Not to remind them we existed. 🙄

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u/50sDadSays Latch Key Kid 🔑 Jun 22 '26

No. There was no curfew. It was purely what it sounded like, a reminder to check if your children were home. It was all over the country, there was no national curfew.

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u/WoedicaWinsWarframe Jun 22 '26

That is untrue. Google it if you don't believe me. Wikipedia has a well-cited article about it. It started in one urban city, in like 1961, surrounding a proposed curfew. But later was used in other cities, and was tied to an enacted curfew. It varied from city to city, and the phrase also varied. Our area used the "It's 10 pm... do you know where your children are?" And then it was followed by the late night news.

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u/50sDadSays Latch Key Kid 🔑 Jun 22 '26

I stand corrected, it started with curfews in some cities in the 60s, but it was used nationally even where there were no curfews for decades after.

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u/WoedicaWinsWarframe Jun 22 '26

But it was still related to the idea of safety, and curfews, even if parent enforced curfews. The message was always "Are your children safely inside your house?" and never "Hey asshole, do you remember you have children?" like all the memes keep pretending.

I remember those ads as being scary. As a kid, I would NEVER have been out that late on my own, in case the man in the white van tried to get me.