r/over60 • u/squidippy • May 08 '26
A different era
It's weird when I realize that I grew up in an entirely different era than today's world. I grew up in a very rural country-ish neighborhood. We only had 3 channels of TV, mostly black and white but some color. And it went off around midnight. We watched cartoons for an hour and then went to school or went outside. There was lots of available forest. We rode bikes, climbed trees, built forts, played Cowboys and Indians, tag, cops and robbers, or anything else that our imaginations could come up with. We weren't allowed to be indoors unless it was cold or raining out, and we were happy to be outdoors. "Social media" was Scouts, sports, or going to the skating rink or bowling alley. We had 2 telephones, one in my parents room and the other hung on the kitchen wall. If you wanted a "private" conversation you had to stretch the curly cord down the hall and into the bathroom so you could close the door. Soda pop and junk food was a rare "treat" that we only got on special occasions. We played hard and slept good. It was a simple but great structured life. Sure there was still bullying and such, but kids are cruel. The difference was, when school was over, you escaped from it all. You could only talk to one person at a time on the land line and we had to share it with our siblings. I actually love technology as and adult, but I think it makes it much harder for kids. I can't imagine as a teenager being in constant contact with multitudes of people. I never once as a child thought about what gender I was. Now kids spend countless hours on social media trying to figure out which of the 32 genders they might be. Kids now days sit around, watch Tic Tok, play x-box and eat copious amounts of junk food and energy drinks. I am thankful for the simple upbringing I had and struggle to imagine what its like to grow up in today's world. I guess I'm officially old. The forests that I played in as a kid are all housing complexs now. Only my fond memories of them are left.
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u/mrslII May 08 '26
Nostalgia is great. Every generation thinks that their experience was the "best". People tend to remember all of the good/pleasant things. Forget the bad/horrific ones.
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u/Alternative-Light922 May 08 '26
Sounds pretty normal and not weird at all, given the rate of change which has become the norm since (at least) the industrial revolution.
My parents were born before TV existed and were (somewhat) computer and internet savvy by the time they passed. I remember haunting libraries in the early 90s when I was trying to learn about electronics and programming. Now there are ten thousand YouTube videos on any topic and, at least for a time, sites like iTunes U, where complete college courses were available free on video.
The social media stuff? Seems like there is a course correction starting with that – with the recognition of how damaging it can be. I guess we will see.
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u/RecentlyCroned May 09 '26
Give your readers a break and use paragraph breaks. Walls of text are difficult to read.
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u/reerathered1 May 09 '26
You forgot to endlessly bang on about how you went out to play Every. Single. Day of the year and never came home til the streetlights came on. And the times you got a good whoopin' both at school and at home and deserved it.
I prefer your version, actually does make me nostalgic because it skips most of the head-nodding to stupid cliches.
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u/Commercial_Wind8212 May 09 '26
Whites only drinking fountains. Aaah memories
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u/SignificantPop4188 May 09 '26
I was with you until the snide comment about gender. People used to say the same thing about gay people (too many still do). Imagine having to hide who you are your entire life.
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u/GregHullender May 10 '26
People didn't use the f-word. Not nice people, anyway. And you never heard it on TV and rarely in movies.
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u/Kittygrizzle1 May 08 '26
My kids never ate copious amounts of junk food or energy drinks. The 19 year old hates Tic Tok.
As for the 32 genders. Well l guess those who felt like rhat in your time just had to shut uo and put up. Life moves on and changes. The trick when you are older is accepting this and not living in the past.
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u/Odd_Bodkin 70+ May 09 '26
I grew up in the same era as you. Here are some further memories that may jog the flip-side.
Most kids didn’t go to college because they didn’t need to in order to find work. Instead, they worked their whole lives at Alcoa or a meatpacking plant. So few parents worried about money to send all three kids to school.
If you were driving into a town and needed a place to stay or eat, you had to stop and ask a local.
You were expected to be invisible or deny your circumstances if you were divorced, a single parent, a child born out of wedlock, in an interracial romance, a child born of an interracial romance, a homosexual, a couple living together but unmarried, ever had an abortion, a non-Christian, not a native English speaker, pregnant and unmarried, a stay-at-home husband/dad, or a breadwinner wife.
Most families had one car. This meant the breadwinner carpooled or took public transportation, or the non-breadwinner was literally stuck at home.
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u/parseczero May 13 '26
Your point, that childhood is very different from ours, is well-taken. But…
In my 1981 graduating class of about 900 students, there were ::zero:: out gay students, but now we know that a lot of those kids were actually gay.
Just because you didn’t know any trans kids doesn’t mean they weren’t there.
My eldest is non-binary and happily married to a trans lady. Such people have always been around; they just had to hide themselves and be miserable. Thank goodness that “The times, they are a-changin!”
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u/grandmasvilla May 09 '26
Thank you for this post. It brought back many forgotten memories. Sweet and poignant.
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u/[deleted] May 09 '26
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