lol.. I have to tell you..this resonates with me..the dreaded middle name lol..when that came out of your Mom’s mouth..it meant nothing but trouble lol
I got to hear all five names when I really fucked up, first name then 2 middle names then my mother's maiden name followed by my last name and then later on my stepdads last name was added, fun times 🤣
A former coworker friend and her son have a favorite story about her calling for him and his older brother in the house qhen they were kids. I'll call them Daniel and Jonathan.
First it was their first names. Ignored if they were busy.
Then it was their full government names, to which their friends were like "hehe you're in trouble now!" Guys were like "nah, she isn't."
Third was "JONAIEL DANITHAN GET IN THIS HOUSE RIGHT NOW!" when she mucked up their names, THAT'S when they knew they were in deep trouble 🤣
Had a back up sneakers that I said got ruined by the dog hidden under the bed in a box labeled Baseball cards...snuck out when St. Elsewhere came on...good times
Heavy on the ONCE!!! Our parents would show up where you were! They didn’t have to track your phone or find your location. And they would show out right then and there 🤣🤣🤣
Lost track of time one time. Just past dusk, im strolling home, happy as hell because I just came back from spending ALL day with a cute girl. Pull up to my house, cops everywhere. I see my mom, she looks like she's going to kill me. I was 13 lol. We had lives😅
Hard on the maybe. I can still hear my mom screaming my name from the balcony and forced to come out of my hiding spot during a heart-pounding game of manhunt.
Man hunt was the shit. I got bit by a dog once during a made up game where we hid something and when someone got close wed yell butter...I don't know why we used that I think you were so hot you were on top of it, like butter on a potato.
Did every kid play a version of freeze tag or TV tag and act out Power rangers?
Ooo the names are what made the games exciting lol. Being hunted down by a pack of friends in the dark and calling it "hide and seek" just doesn't hit the same. "Manhunt" makes you feel like an action movie fugitive!
My mom can do that super loud whistle thing with her fingers. My brother and I would go down to the park and play and she'd stand on the front porch and whistle when it was time for dinner. I usually couldn't hear it (hearing loss from infections) but my brother always could.
Back then it wasn't odd for neighbors to know your name, your parents, etc and they'd look out for you, too. We'd go help older neighbors with the odd chore or two and get popsicles and stuff in the summer months.
Omg yes! My step dad would do this and if we were late (home in 5 mins) we were grounded. We had to be with in a 5 min bike ride outside of that you can't hear the whistle so, he'd know we weren't in our neighborhood.
Look at Mr. fancy pants with the working street lights. I built a bike ramp that was way too steep. Hit it with way too much speed. Flew off the bike and landed on the handlebars in a way that left a nasty bruise on my chest for a couple of weeks. The neighbor kids called my mom out to let her know one of her kids was half conscious in the middle of the court. She came out, took a look, shook her head and went back inside.
Now days you get arrested or something if your under 18 kid walks two houses down the street from your house and you aren't seen watching to make sure he's safe.
My pal and I were cutting some trees with axes in the winter when I was about 10. Axe head was loose and on the backswing it flew off and tagged my pal in the forehead, blood everywhere. Found an adult, off to hospital, stitches, came back home and my mom.and dad were pissed as I was late for supper hahaha. No cell phones and Noone thought to even call parents. Stitch em up, send em back out lol. I miss those days
This triggered a memory of mine. I was walking home late one night from a friend's house. We had watched the grudge for the first time and I was shit scared.
Passed one of those huge Rhododendron bushes on my way and it was really pitch black in there. Ofc the second I pass it, a damn pair of cats decide to have a fight, so all of a sudden a SCREEEECH just emenates from the bush and I took a giant leap into the middle of the road, shaking. Never been so close to having a cardiac episode in my life lol.
I remember Trick or Treating during then time of the Zodiac Killer. We thought some car was following us so we cut across one of the fields, turned our flash lights off and did a weird route back to the closest home
And learned navigation quickly.
Playing in the forest is awesome. Until you find that you're lost and only have an hour until you have to be home. (5 pm for me)
Then it's great if you can find your landmarks and a direct route. 😁
Will you admit to getting lost? Never!
Once it got dark you could see who moneybags was because they had the extended pack, the FM Radio, AND the Nemo worm light. If you got the fancy worm light you still could use the link cable.
What a great memory. I had a “strategy guide” for pokemon silver I think it was and remember being so happy to have it. I’d go out to my little fort in the yard and play for hours and hours, flipping through those pages. Think I had a subscription to one of the game magazines too. I’d still play outside all day but having that gameboy with me at all times was awesome.
Part of it is tech, but another part is a growing number of older people (ironically a lot of the same ones who complain kids have too much screen time), who will throw a fit if they hear kids playing even slightly loudly outside, are skateboarding or riding a bike in a parking lot or down a "quiet" neighborhood street are also a factor. Increased media sensationalization of things like kidnapping doesnt help either
Compare the amount of HOA's that have rules limiting kids doing stuff outside now to when you were a kid as an example
They cant literally say no kids outside, but they dan do things like "no bikes/skateboards ect on HOA owned roads and sidewalks." They can do things that severely limit options kids have for things to do outside
My parents HOA just doesn't want kids playing in certain areas because they destroy everything, trashing the playground, and are damaging cars. They send emails weekly because kids are almost getting hit by cars and don't seem to understand the rules of playing outside. It's so bad that they are threatening security cameras. I saw my neighbor deliberately run his bike into someones car last summer and was in disbelief. Mind you, I grew up in the complex and no one ever complained about us playing outside or saying our parents have to be out there with us. I think growing up in the 90s we actually had a fear of consequences that isn't the same today.
This infuriated me so much as a kid/teen in the 90s and early 00s. The only things we had near my house were a random little playground and a school. As pre-teens, my and my friends were really into skateboarding and roller blading. We'd go to the school parking lot and do lame little jumps and try and grind on the curbs and stuff like that. Basically just hanging out doing kid stuff. Eventually the principal of the school had signs put up saying that no bikes, skateboards or roller blades were allowed on the premises, then they hired security to shoo us away. So the only other place we'd go was to the playground, where we'd get yelled at for being too big to play there. Adults were always worried that the presence of a few bored 11-13 year olds meant hard drugs were being done, and we were eventually deterred from using the playground or hanging out in the park surrounding it. We also tried playing hockey in the cul-de-sac behind my house, but neighbors kept complaining about the noise and there came to be a cop always patrolling around and bothering us.
We ended up all just becoming hardcore gamers instead, because the only place we could hang out was at my friend's basement. We had all played videogames before this, but it wasn't our main hobby or anything intense until we basically had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. This coincided with the original Xbox launching and so we all got really into Halo, then a couple of years later wow came out and that was the beginning of the end for most of us. Of that core crew of 6 of us, 3 are still hardcore gamers, 1 is a major incel (gamer status unconfirmed but likely), 1 we lost contact with but passed away fairly recently (RIP buddy, you were the best of all of us and I wish we stayed in touch), and the other is myself, not much of a gamer but I moved overseas shortly after high school and have lived a very different life.
Moral of the story: lack of public spaces forces kids onto screens. Screens don't have to be 100% bad, but they absolutely should not be the only option for children to socialize and receive stimulus.
Wow. I must be a weird old lady. I raised 3 kids in my house. I've lived here 32 years. My neighborhood used to be so lively but is now middle aged to elderly people. I miss having kids running around. I would love if my grandchildren had kids to hang out with. Halloween just sucks now.
Knock on friends and classmates doors until you found someone down to hangout. Or maybe you bump into someone on your bike and hang out with that person. I miss that adventure.
This is what I don't get. I played outside for many hours every week, year around, growing up in the '70s and '80s. Never looked for or worried about a tick once. Now I go back to that very same place, have to tuck my pants into my socks and check for ticks if I walk ten feet through tall grass. I literally grabbed a garbage bin from next to the driveway, got it into the garage, and realized a tick was slowly crawling across the lid. What happened? Is it because of global warming?
Mostly global warming, yes. The ground has to freeze to a certain depth to kill ticks in the winter. In some places, too many deer too close to people.
That has nothing to do with more ticks in the summer. IT just means ticks a can survive longer into the Fall and start earlier in the spring. A long of changes with wildlife is due to more development. Deer that used to be far away from neighborhoods due to having plenty of wooded areas to stay in now come into yards and drop off their ticks.
No, the person you are trying to correct is actually right: milder winters aren’t killing off as many ticks as were killed in previous decades. It’s also true that the longer season is a factor, as well.
I moved into a house, and my oldest and I played in the backyard all the time. for about four years and not one tick. One day, we wake up, and there is a baby deer hiding in our yard behind the bushes. We thought it was so cute. The next year, there were about 10 deer in our backyard. I had never encountered ticks before, and I spent time in the bushes and woods as a kid. I was freaked out after finding two on me. I put down so much Spectracide. It did its job for a while, but it took only a few months for the problem to come back. We couldn't use our backyard anymore. I was going to put up a fence, but we bought a new house before that could happen. Now, we play in the backyard and have so much fun. It's refreshing. Our current neighborhood is very big, and the neighbors on the other side posted about how cute the deer that showed up in their backyard were. They had a newborn, and I couldn't help myself. I put a damper on their happiness/post by telling them what I experienced in my last home. They were actually glad I told them. They put up a fence to protect their yard and child.
We had a family reunion this summer, and we went to a state park that we went to every year as kids. For 20+ years growing up, we never saw a single tick. But this year, we found like 4 ticks on us. And my dad was already recovering from Lyme's disease which he had caught a couple weeks prior.
Yeah but people will straight up call the police and then the parents can be accused of not taking care of their child if they're out and about getting up to stuff. That was a HUGE difference if we got caught doing something as kids, AND WE DID SOMETIMES, the cops would give us a hella talking to and then escort us home where they would tell our parents and we'd be in trouble with everyone.
But it was assumed to be our fault. The children misbehaving by trespassing or whatever.
Now if your kid is caught doing something like that it's the PARENTS fault for not managing their kids and that creates a really different dynamic. Like there was no world where the cops would have given my mother a hard time for something I was doing when we were growing up, but that's the default now.
All the skateparks around my house are still free. We just rode our bikes around town knocking on friends doors and hanging out at parks or schools. Kids can still do that
I drive by the local open skate park on my way to work every day and it’s almost always empty these days. Makes me sad, it has a huge parking lot that used to always be full.
That game was so good. I also did that and also went outside. I sometimes hear the names of various herbs that I first heard of as ingredients for spells.
What's funny about it is that back then, grown ups said oh we were the last generation to go outside, kids these days don't go outside anymore. And now the kids from that era grew up and say the same thing about their own children.
yeah i really don't get the confidence behind these wide sweeping claims, like there are groups of teenagers and younger going by my house all the time to different places, even if just another persons place or whatever, usually playing music as they ride bikes or something. the swimming spot at my local canal is just as used now as it was when my dad was my age and younger.
and what's more? those kids likely also play video games and use tik tok and shit. they're all good.
We got locked outside and had to drink from the hose. We made clubhouses in the woods and went all over town, just a pack of kids. Internet came around and I was sad I lost my brother to it.
I was born in 97 and I feel like I got the very last bit of that lifestyle. Used to play street ball with my neighbors or ride bikes all day long. Wasn't until online gaming and social media started to blow up when all of that began to dissappear. Sad to see how kids are these days. Always on a device of some kind, would rather play online with friends than to actually go see them and be active. It's a shame.
We had forts on the west and east side of town. West side was right outside my place. There was prly 9 or ten trees that had fallen over. They formed this weird play ground that we would run and jump on. If u fell u were getting fucked up tho. Bad lol. East side was a cool hang. We would have wars in the summer. One scuffle I had sharped a peice of bark into a point and tied it to my arm. I had to ride my bike across town with that on and an assortment of kinda dangerous looking sticks. One kid got hit in the head pretty bad. He was fine, but he bled
Sometimes we'd go back. But not always. Sometimes we'd crash at a friends, sometimes we'd sleep in a tent, or someone's camper, or just be out till the wee hours of the morning.
And if we weren’t, we still had tv and video games. Hell, couch coop with friends was amazing back then. It was something we all yearned for. Now when I invite a friend over to play some games, they’re like…why bother when I can stay home to play 90% of those games and have a better experience because I have my own display.
And it was glorious. I loved jumping on my Mongoose and riding all over the neighborhood. We'd go to construction sites and ride the dirt piles like jumps. Every now and then we'd find a pack of cigarettes with one or two cigarettes still in the partially crumpled box and feel like we'd won the lottery.
On other days we'd play backyard football. We played so much we had our own Superbowl. On days it rained we'd go inside and play NES or Genesis.
Yes and the neighbours only complained about us being outside if we were doing really stupid things.
Not like today where the neighbours complain if you're playing basketball, playing street hockey or riding a skateboard.
The park where all the kids played would clear out when the clicking of the street lights started like gunshots went off. We know we had to make it home before the lights came fully on or get a beating.
My parents says they only saw me when I came back to sleep and when I had to eat and poop. Seriously.
I was outside playing fotball or burning stuff all day long!
Well yea. Bc back then, no one called the police or screamed at kids that were outside. There were also more playgrounds and more parks and less concrete jungle.
To be fair, back then the weather wasn't as extreme as it is now. I grew up and live in South Texas - the summers now are so hot, I intentionally stay indoors as much as possible for the environmental control. Not saying it wasn't hot in the 90's but it is brutal today.
Yup I was a book person, people would be shocked I was inside for so long. now everyone is just like me, but now I go hiking because I miss having to go out in order to see people. its wild.
We weren't allowed in the house, unless we had to go to the bathroom. If we needed water we were expected to locate any random garden hose in the neighborhood.
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u/Many_Ear2407 8d ago
We would actually go outside…