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Best old school perk is doing all your stupid kid shit at a time where cameras weren’t ubiquitous.
Or at least not permanent.
I grew up in the early 2000s and while starting somewhere around 2005 cameras and the first social sites became a thing, nothing of that exists today. Myspace and SchülerVZ (German Facebook clone) were super popular, but don’t exist anymore. Camera phones didn’t have an easy way to export photos and most hard drives from back then just died at some point. There’s hardly anything left. And that’s a good thing.
This is one thing I will always appreciate of growing up Gen-X. Our moms would kick us out of the house after breakfast and expected us to be gone until the street lights started to buzz. A pack of us on BMX bikes, adventuring, exploring abandoned buildings, jumping off cliffs and into rivers or the ocean, etc. It genuinely ruled ams and I fully appreciate that it did.
I was born in the mid-90’s and I was also more or less raised that way (until a certain age). I remember being able to get home in time for dinner after a whole day of playing outside just because it “felt” like it was almost dinner time. We would go to the nearby “forest” where we built huts, climbed into trees, made wooden swords out of sticks, and sometimes had “battles” with rivaling groups about certain areas in the forest. We’d be there for hours even in the pouring rain. There was a whole economy around these wooden swords and other services like building a hut. It was better than any video game ever could be
The bikes are non negotiable. Also there’s some sort of bully involved.
And a golden retriever
Bully becomes a friend at the end though
That’s absolute bullshit. I’ve never met anyone who turned their bully into a friend while they were still in school together.
I did. Okay, not so much a friend, as a guy who would talk to me regularly and treat me and my friends with respect, occasionally tagging along with us. He’s still in my Facebook friends list to this day.
Back in elementary school there was a kid who was easily twice as big as everyone else. He’d push his way around and demand he get whatever he wanted. He finally crossed me one day, and I punched him as hard as I could right in the stomach. When he stood back up, I did it again. He never crossed me or my friends again, and became generally friendly with us. Bullies don’t concede without force.
I had a bully chill the fuck out once we made it to high school, but it turns out that was because of all the drugs.
I turned an eighth grade (Catholic elementary school) bully into a ninth grade (public jr high) “we’re pretty cool now,” likely because he was scared as fuck to be in this rough public middle school, and I’d been getting bullied my whole life so it was nothing different for me.
Mine tried, I was too nice to tell him to fuck off. He was a conservative shitheel by my high schools standards, and that’s a place I took some shit for voting for Obama (class of '13). I ditched all those fuckers when I went to college and came out though so idk. I hope he got better, I didn’t say hi when I ran into him between my fwb’s place and my classes in college though.
I managed to turn every fist fight I had into a highschool friendship. Granted, my graduating class was about 40 people and most of my bullies were also athletic teammates so it was pretty easy to turn that tension into something positive.
You’ve obviously not lived inside an American high school movie
It’s more realistic to realize a friend is actually a bully.
Only after you kick his ass.
Nostalgia is bittersweet & I love it as much as anyone but the bigger picture is this: capitalism grows like a weed or a vampire & every generation had freedom without cameras like that until gen-Xers, who were the last, which is why it feels like such magic now even tho then it was just life & being outside
I agree for the most part, but as an early millennial, we had that freedom too. Society didn’t truly go crazy until some time after 2000 in my opinion. I turned 16 that year.
I have repeatedly felt like taking some emery cloth to my neighbors ring door bell camera, which records me when ever I am in my front yard. There is an expense to replacing cameras and they seem like easy targets, if you go about it right.
Or on skateboards, running from rent-a-cops.
Hell yeah. Running from real cops too. This leads directly to the beginning of me becoming radicalized.
A cop came up while we were skating on an unused building’s loading dock. He had his hands kinda up like hey I just want to talk to you guys.
He did. He threatened us. He said he was the boss and if we crossed him he’d take our boards, beat us up, and take us to jail. He brought out a paper pad and a pen, and I quote to the best of my memory- “This is my magic pen. Why is it magic? Because whatever I write with it is what happened.”
Maybe I’m just well adjusted but at 30 years old I can’t imagine deciding to lord my power over teenagers
You’ll never be a middle-aged accountant in the 80s either, just fyi.
My grandfather was, but it does seem rather unlikely he’ll be able to do it again now that you mention it.
Fine. I won’t be that boy again.
True I was sitting inside by myself without friends before it was cool.
Just play Kids On Bikes, bout the closest you’ll get.
Tales From The Loop too.
Knights on Bikes?
I don’t get it
Stand by Me was set in the 1950s though
Good point. Well, it is an 80’s movie
Get out of my headcanon.
Take your facts with you!
How old are you? Makes perfect sense to me but I think that’s because of my age.
Bikes were, and still are involved. Revo-Lution
No… But I’ve been a 13 year old boy in the 1990’s and had the same experience.
When you’re sold a version of nostalgia for something you never experienced.
Some words cut deeper and hurt more than others
Why is the chubby McDonald’s window worker telling me this?
Suspected incel detected. What is it about this image that makes you think she’s poor and overweight?
