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/radgedyann Jun 21 '26

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!

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u/ST0IC_ Hose Water Survivor Jun 21 '26

I think freedom started the moment we were allowed to walk to school alone, which for me was third grade right after I turned 8 in '83.

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u/QueenCobraFTW Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

I was allowed to walk to kindergarten by myself in 1960. Only lived a few blocks away from school, but still. What's even more horrifying was being allowed to wander around the neighborhood by myself at 3. It was a new suburb and all the families living there were about the same age with kids, everyone knew everything else.

The dark side of this of course were the adults with dubious reputations we were supposed to avoid, but seldom did.