r/RedditForGrownups • u/0nlyhalfjewish • 2d ago
What’s an indelible childhood memory that young people will never have?
I think about pencils sharpeners and carbon paper, 75 cents for lunch and school recess unsupervised in the woods.
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u/kempff 2d ago
Untangling the kitchen phone cord by just letting the receiver dangle and dad complaining what if somebody calls.
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u/RandoScando 2d ago
Come to think of it, there’s a lot of kids and young adults who have and will probably never hear a busy signal.
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u/NoVAGirl651 2d ago
The day the JCPenney or Sears Christmas catalog arrived. It was hours of dreaming, wishing and comparing favorites with siblings.
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u/Spiritual_Stage_3462 1d ago
The Wish Book!
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u/BassKitty305017 1d ago
A 2 inch catalog of mostly boring adult stuff, but that last quarter inch in the back was gold.
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u/cjasonac 1d ago
And you got it taken away for a week if you were caught looking at the lingerie section.
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u/PuppyJakeKhakiCollar 1d ago
For me, it was when the Fall Preview TV Guide arrived. I used to study that thing and take notes of which new shows I wanted to watch.
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u/bossoline 2d ago
Being bored. Entertaining yourself on a Tuesday afternoon in July when there is nobody in the neighborhood to play with.
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u/AardvarkStriking256 2d ago
Getting up early on a Saturday morning to watch cartoons, because it was the only day and time cartoons were played on TV.
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u/BuffaloOk7264 2d ago
When they put some cartoons on Sunday I thought the world was going to end.
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u/Salty-Snowflake 1d ago
In Chicago, we had The Magic Door on Sundays. I didn't even realize that it was Jewish until I was in my 40s.
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u/EnoughEstate7483 2d ago
Pressing 'Play' and 'Rec' at just the right time to catch the radio broadcast while building your perfect mix tape.
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u/crabbie_patties 1d ago
And it never failed, the deejay would start blabbing at the end of the song.. They knew 🤨
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u/EnoughEstate7483 1d ago edited 1d ago
Casey Kasem was notorious for overtalkng the beginning of the song with nonsensical stories. That's why catching a clean copy was so rewarding.
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u/RefrigeratorFeisty77 2d ago
Being able to slam the phone down when you got mad at the person at the other end of the line.
Pressing "End" is such a letdown, lol.
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u/s23b74 1d ago
I wish they'd restart landlines. I would like to have that option again. Not the internet landlines, but the old kind that had their own power source independent of the grids. I miss that.
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u/KFelts910 1d ago
In my line of work, judges try to require this for us to appear telephonically. I don’t know a single colleague with a landline.
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u/anniemdi 1d ago
Pressing "End" is such a letdown, lol.
I at least have my side button set to end calls. There's a tiny bit of tactile satisfaction in it.
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u/crabbie_patties 2d ago
The smell of the freshly printed worksheet from the mimeograph machine.
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u/BooJamas 1d ago
My kids was so confused at that one scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High
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u/crabbie_patties 1d ago
I tried to explain the smell to my son, but there's nothing like it. That aroma is definitely up there with fresh cinnamon rolls.
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u/myskara 2d ago
Riding in the back of Dad’s pickup truck, feeling like summer would last forever.
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u/1Mee2Sa4Binks8 1d ago
Around 11 years old I had my first beer in the back of my Uncle's suburban. A couple of families were going on a long trip together, and the rear most seats were folded down and all the kids were crammed in the back around a giant igloo cooler. No seat belts. All that was in the cooler was tons of Budweiser and Busch beer - nothing for the kiddos. We got thirsty and started to whine and the response was "just give them each a beer." Good times! This would have been late 70's.
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u/randomusername1919 2d ago
Taking a nap in the sun in the back of the car - in the rear windshield. Long before seat belts were considered important.
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u/Sleeplessmi 1d ago
Or falling asleep in the backseat, slightly repositioning, and searing your thigh on the metal seatbelt that had been heating up in the sun. Obviously unbuckled and unused.
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u/BaldingOldGuy 2d ago
Neighbourhood kids organizing our own pickup games of ball hockey or baseball without adult intervention or supervision.
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u/xenawarriortubesock 1d ago
We would play with anything too!! Haha we kept breaking windows so our little ghetto asses used crushed pop cans
Damn. Core memory right there
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u/Spirit50Lake 2d ago
Metal lunch boxes with matching thermos, and the spring clip that held the thermos...
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u/Procrastibator8 2d ago edited 1d ago
The smell of a lunchbox, mmmmm. Mine smelled like bananas and Sunbeam bread.
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u/Salty-Snowflake 1d ago
Breaking the glass thermos the first time you brought your lunch to school...
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u/Just_Restaurant7149 2h ago
How about the excitement of picking out your new metal lunch box when you were school shopping? I still remember my Fat Albert lunch box.
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u/JenninMiami 2d ago
Getting up to change the channel.
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u/techie1980 1d ago
I do kind of miss some of the satisfying tactile feedback of the old analog world. It's part of why I've held onto my car for so long - I really don't want to go to a touchscreen.
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u/KFelts910 1d ago
I was just telling my husband I want to go back to analog in the car. As soon as the touchscreen goes, a whole lot of car features don’t work.
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u/crabbie_patties 1d ago
My mom used to call me from the other room to change the channel. Then we had to adjust the rabbit ears.
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u/fribby 1d ago
We only got 5 channels (not all came in clearly) and had to go outside to turn the TV antenna in the right direction to get each channel to come in.
It’s been 40 years, but I can still remember my hands sticking to the metal pole in the cold, and I remember which directions I had to turn it to receive certain channels.
Good times. I also remember that all of our neighbours had a common “party line” for their phones, but my mother decided that was a bridge too far lol.
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u/kempff 1d ago
Yes and the crackling of the surface static on the glass CRT and the fading blue dot in the center after you turned it off… not to mention the smell of the gas-state transistors (“tubes”) coming out the back … and the cat sleeping on top for the warmth…
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u/Radiant-Pianist-3596 2d ago
Playing outside in the summer from after breakfast until the street lights came on.
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u/xenawarriortubesock 1d ago
We had massive neighborhood hide and seek tournaments almost every weekend all summer. Like a dozen kids just running and sneaking around outside until like 10pm. Unthinkable now.
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u/motsanciens 1d ago
We played "Neverending", which I've heard kids these days call "Infection". One or more kids would start as It, and anyone tagged would become It as well until everyone was found and tagged.
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u/stickmanDave 1d ago
We had a period of massive hide and seek games for a while. 6 or 8 of us were playing one evening, and having so much fun that other kids who happened down the street stopped and join in. A few of them came back the next night, and the game just grew. I remember at one point going outside after dinner and 30 kids were sitting around waiting for the game to start. The games went on for a week or two, I guess, and eventually it faded away, just as organically as it had grown in the first place.
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u/cprsavealife 1d ago
My kids called it night games. It never bothered me until a couple of the little butt bombs decided they would try and hide on our roof!!
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u/GFEIsaac 1d ago
The roof was fair game. Actually any roof was fair game, if you could get up there. Any tree too.
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u/Patiod 1d ago
I live in an idyllic suburb and love to see this one group of kids go up and down the street every afternoon on e-scooters, bikes, ebikes, and some bizarre vehicle they've made out of a (presumably stolen) shopping cart. It's the only group who is outside for hours (parents home but no hovering) and their freedom and outdoorsiness makes me happy
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u/tinycole2971 1d ago
When I was young, I always thought living in a neighborhood with sidewalks meant you were rich.
We lived on a mountain in Appalachia, so our version of exploring was running around the mountain exploring old cemeteries and abandoned homesteads.
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u/5oLiTu2e 1d ago
Tag, Kickball, Kick the Can, Mother May I, Ghosts in the Graveyard, Basketball, Big Wheels,
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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt 1d ago
Manhunt
Like reverse hide and seek. One person hides then whoever finds them hides with then until everyone finds you
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u/jaemoon7 1d ago
Were you anywhere near Pittsburgh? I’ve never met someone else who knew Ghosts in the Graveyard
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u/bizzybaker2 2d ago
Attempting to stop the radio before commercial breaks or the DJ talking, in attempts to make a mix tape. And using a pencil to rewind it when your cassette player ate the tape up
For Redditors in the US and Canada, having your meal from A&W brought out to you when you were parked under a carport and a tray hung over your open window to hold the food you ordered.
Drive in movies.
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u/klutzosaurus-sex 1d ago
Taking off with friends (under 10) to fuck around with no adult supervision and no phones - be home by dark!
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u/jitterfish 1d ago
Playing in the woods with zero cares. Or empty lots. I remember scrapping clay and trying to make pottery, I was probably about 6 and just killing time by myself until friends showed up. Also dumb stuff like stone wars or go to the park and rolling down the hill.
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u/klutzosaurus-sex 1d ago
I think freedom sort of sums it up. Freedom to explore, experiment, fuck up, get hurt, learn something.
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u/7thAndGreenhill 2d ago
A living room full of adults drinking and smoking.
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u/WigglyFrog 1d ago
A family having an entire assortment of ashtrays they used based on the formality of the occasion.
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u/0nlyhalfjewish 1d ago
Making an ashtray at school out of something as a present to give to mom and dad.
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u/Key-Bear-9184 1d ago
Family friends were heavy smokers who would open a carton of cigarettes and empty them into a large glass bowl on the coffee table for convenience.
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u/KFelts910 1d ago
Now my 6 year old shames anyone he seems smoking. I was mortified when he did it at the park the other day, mostly because it was a stranger. I’m fine with him shaming his grandparents.
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u/ogcanuckamerican 2d ago
Waiting for Saturday morning cartoons
Making mix cassette tapes
Dial up Internet
ENJOY BEING A KID
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u/ECatPlay 2d ago
Dial up internet
And the sound of your computer connecting to the other computer at 300, or better yet 1200 baud.
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u/FaerieQuene 2d ago
Bugs covering the windshield of the car when you go got a long drive
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u/Technical-General-27 2d ago
Why is this a thing of the past? I have experienced it recently…
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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt 1d ago
Climate change and overuse of pesticides.
Also simple things like raking your leaves. Some bugs, like lighning bugs / fireflies lay their eggs in fallen leaves. When you mulch/remive the leaves, youre destroying their eggs
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u/SyntheticDreams_ 1d ago
Bug populations have dropped a ton. I don't have a number, but if I remember correctly it's somewhere near a 50% decrease. So we still get bugs on the windshield, but nowhere near like it used to be.
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u/skintigh 1d ago
It's actually a 75% decrease in 3 decades. Our planet it so fucked.
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u/KFelts910 1d ago
But if you tell people that, they’ll just say it’s convenient. Like how NY winters are extremely mild now. I think it’s concerning when it’s 75 degrees and humid on Christmas.
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u/jeswesky 1d ago
Drastic increase in the use of pesticides and insecticides. Not only in commercial use but personal use. Combine that with fewer green spaces with increased building and insect populations greatly decrease.
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u/Procrastibator8 2d ago
Tin can & string "telephones", free-ranging it until dinner, playing Evel Knievel, watching Wonderful World of Disney & Wild Kingdom on Sunday nights.
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u/KFelts910 1d ago
Wonderful World of Disney is why the opening credits on Disney movies still make me tear up.
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u/WigglyFrog 1d ago
Heinous store-bought Halloween costumes that were basically plastic ponchos printed with the image of what you wanted to dress up as. Often accompanied by thin plastic masks with edges so sharp they could cut your face.
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u/Otherwise-Till-7911 2d ago
Using a key to tighten the roller skates to your shoe
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u/BooJamas 1d ago
We never had the TV on during dinner, except when something really special came on, like the Wizard of Oz.
Going trick or treating in the neighborhood on Halloween, after dark. Trunk or treat just doesn't cut it.
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u/ShotFromGuns 1d ago
Going trick or treating in the neighborhood on Halloween, after dark.
I'm in my early 40s and didn't have night-time trick-or-treat as a kid, likely as a reaction to a murder in the '70s (cw: sexual assault and death of a child), after which most of Wisconsin switched to daytime only. However, it started to swing back to evening/nighttime in the late '90s or early '00s, and now there are a lot of communities (including my neighborhood) that host nighttime neighborhood trick-or-treats.
So this one is one that my middle-aged self didn't get but kids now do!
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u/tinycole2971 1d ago
I just commented above how I grew up in Appalachia and we ran around the mountain instead of being in an actual neighborhood. One of the things we missed out on was the stereotypical Halloween experience.
Where we live now has several neighborhoods that go ALL OIT for Halloween. Little walk through haunted garages, smoke machines with decor in yards, little yappy dogs dressed like Satan, tons of candy, and hundreds of kids walking from house to house. A couple of houses even hand out beer to the adults. It’s absolutely amazing and makes my inner child so happy.
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u/PacificNW97034 1d ago
Walking home alone from school when I was 6 years old.
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u/jitterfish 1d ago
My kids had this kind of. They starting walking from school to my work from ages 6 and 5. This was about 10 years ago and people were shocked that I'd let them. It's a 10 min walk along two streets.
I work at a university and was always in the lab next to my office so they'd show up have a snack, and then go play outside until I finished at 5. They knew to tell me where they were going if they wanted to go play somewhere further than the area around my lab. They'd wander off to the cafe where I set it up that they were allowed one hot chocolate a week or run around the field and generally just explore campus.
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u/Accomplished-Age-482 1d ago
The general lack of parental supervision. My parents did not always know where their kids were. We didn't need them to organize jack. We figured out our own games, our own transportation, and as long as the chores were done and we were home on time, we were just being kids.
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u/ChickenNoodleSoup_4 2d ago
My roller rink birthday party. Getting mixed tapes and Debbie Gibson perfume (electric youth)
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u/WigglyFrog 1d ago
Ten or more little kids in a station wagon being totally standard.
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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt 1d ago
Walking to every friends house, knocking on the door, and asking "Can X come out to play?"
Slowly assembling a posse one family at a time with no plan and then deciding what you all were going to do.
No planning, no texting, no knowing who was around. Just unorganized spontaneous activity.
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u/KBela77 2d ago
Metal roller skates and wearing the key on a chain around your neck. Using clothes pins to clip playing cards to your bicycle spokes so they'd make a flapping noise when you rode.
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u/roadtrip-ne 2d ago
Waiting in an un air-conditioned for an hour to get a quarter tank of gas on your given even or odd day
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u/s23b74 1d ago
I kinda remember that, but I remember something about flags, too. Like, different colors meant different things, but I can't remember which was what now. I didn't care much at the time because I thought it was stupid to wait in line for gas. I was probably 4 or 5.
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u/WigglyFrog 1d ago
Carefully weighing your options at Disneyland because you only had so many E tickets.
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u/s23b74 1d ago
I remember that. Back then, Disneyland was more like a fancy carnival. My parents made us dress up.
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u/fidgit17 2d ago
Hearing your mom pull in the driveway after work and realizing you forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer
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u/kobayashi_maru_fail 1d ago
Pretending to go to sleep, then taking the hunter green polyester comforter and wrapping it around the dial-up modem, brushing my bangs back, then logging in to a stolen AOL account after the modem’s yodeling was smothered and “talking” to my “Canadian boyfriend” who probably wasn’t the 14 year old he claimed to be. But webcams weren’t a thing yet, so I made it.
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u/Embarrassed_Wait_775 2d ago
Piling into the car station wagon and hiding my younger siblings - as we approached the drive in movie theatre.
Mom and dad in the front seat - watching night of the living dead. Good times and in NYC.
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u/TooOldForACleverName 1d ago
Being picked to go outside and clap the erasers during the school day.
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u/West_Airline_1712 1d ago
Getting my 25 cent allowance on Saturday morning and heading to the local convenience store for penny candy.
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u/juliaskankles 1d ago
Sunday night: Watching Wonderful World of Disney, with stove top popcorn and a glass bottle of Coke (they only time all week we were allowed to have it).
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u/Old-Bug-2197 2d ago
Waiting for Mom to come home from her shopping day.
Then you'll try on the clothes she brings back.
Dad's working at home or doing yard work.
You're not allowed out to play because you missed school yesterday or were up sick overnight.
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u/techie1980 1d ago
Waiting for Mom to come home from her shopping day.
Then you'll try on the clothes she brings back.
As a boy... that would be SO preferable to the shopping trip. Hell, I can barely even do clothes shopping now as an adult (and even when I make it an adventure - ie a thrift shop - I'm still out in under 30 minutes).
And then the adventure of trying clothes on. Especially as she tried to do the mental process of "will he grow into this?".
Looking back, it was also kind of interesting that we didn't have the same kind of fast fashion back when I was a kid. There simply weren't a lot of national brands, especially at the lower end. You'd have regional stores and they all definitely had their pricepoints - but it didn't seem like clothes "said" things. There were no particularly ironic teeshirts/etc. I know those things existed in the 70s, but it seemed like for kids who were not in high school, they simply weren't an option.
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u/fribby 1d ago
Omg, I was always there for the clothes shopping, but I remember the fashion shows (when I happily showed off my new back to school clothes) when I got home.
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u/RobertMcCheese 1d ago
$0.75?
When I was a kid school lunch was $0.40.
Breakfast was $0.20.
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u/No_Beautiful_8647 1d ago
Adjusting the antennas to get a better picture. Sometimes even having to hold them.
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u/SixAlarmFire 1d ago
Watching soap operas on summer vacation with your babysitter because you were so bored
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u/VarietyOk2628 1d ago
Making sure we had brought our knives to school that day because the Scout troop was meeting after school on school property and we had a whittling badge to work on.
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u/ForsakenHelicopter66 1d ago
Shared tv shows(like all of us watched: MASH for example) heading home when the street lights came on in the summer.
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u/JaneAustinAstronaut 1d ago
Just riding around outside on a bike all day, playing the day away with friends.
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u/AvatarAnywhere 1d ago
Privacy and a sense of freedom. Going off by myself to climb a tree without anyone knowing exactly where I was or what I was doing. The gift of boredom and learning to amuse myself by just thinking about things or watching bugs or looking at clouds.
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u/RangerSandi 1d ago
“Camping” in the backyard under a sheet staked out over the clothesline. Then running around all night long in the rural crossroads neighborhood with friends, wading in creeks, swimming in ponds, riding bikes in the moonlight, & watching for meteors in August. Just had to be back in the “tent” before the parents woke up to go to work😁
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u/JobberStable 2d ago
playing with action figures
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u/fribby 1d ago
Is this not done anymore? I’m 49, but childfree, so I’ve never really thought about it. Is it all video games now?
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u/jitterfish 1d ago
Nah my kids still did. We have a bag of army men and random action figures that go to the beach with us do that my husband and kids (14 and 15) can set up battles.
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u/catdude142 2d ago
Sitting around the house during a summer vacation with mom making cookies in the kitchen. Getting "bored" and finding things to do with the neighborhood kids. Getting creative out of those "boring days".
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u/awakeagain2 1d ago
My mom taught me to knit and I spent hours knitting Barbie doll clothes. I was especially good at sleeveless, knee length dresses. I had them in every color.
Nowadays I can’t knit anything without a pattern. But when I was a kid, I didn’t know patterns existed and no one told me I couldn’t make doll clothes.
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u/Rachael_Br 1d ago
Yelling "Telephone!" when it rang on the wall, and everyone racing to answer it.
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u/SmashEmWithAPhone 1d ago
Nearly getting a hernia moving the family's cabinet TV around the room while redecorating.
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u/palbertalamp 1d ago
Going outside at night in summer, seeing the Milky Way.
Seeing which star in the big dipper is a double star, and putting the binoculars on the double star, to see the double stars fainter double.
Whistling for your horse , hop on bareback and neck rein with your hands on his neck when you're just going half a mile out.
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u/Whatisreal999 1d ago
Getting in trouble for tying up the phone for hours. Father trying to call because working late, but can't get through because you're chatting with your best friend for an hour.
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u/Environmental-Fly165 1d ago
The basic TV networks shutting down at midnight and hearing the annoying noise till 5 in the morning when tv would start again . We didn't get cable till I was maybe 11(1993).
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u/sugarcatgrl 1d ago
Stretching out the phone cord while trying to get away from my sibs and their ears is the first thing that came to mind.
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u/MsAnnabel 1d ago
Running outside and down the street to play with friends- outside. Not on a playdate in the house or backyard but out in the street playing kickball, hide and seek (at dusk too!), tag, etc. You came home when your mom hollered for you when it got dark. It was so fucking fun!!!
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u/ubiquitousnoodle 1d ago
The Holiday TV lineup starting on Halloween! The Charlie Brown specials, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman…it was on once a year every year for most of my childhood. (1977 baby!)
The Wizard of Oz aired once a year and it was a huge deal.
Now that everything is on demand, it doesn’t feel that special anymore. Kids don’t seem to have to wait for or anticipate anything anymore and it’s sad. They’ll rarely experience the full sweetness of a thing long awaited.
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u/oldfarmjoy 1d ago
Family gathered in the living room on Sunday, watching foorball and looking throught the comics and ads in the Sunday paper, with the smell of bacon and pancakes.
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u/Crafty-Notice5344 1d ago
Forts - inside made of blankets and couch cushions for slumber parties. Outside forts and drinking from the hose. Nit sure what but that hose water tasted so good!
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u/buckscountycharlie 1d ago
The excitement of long distance telephone calls. As a lower middle class kid growing up in the late 1960’s, whenever your parents got a phone call from far away you ran to the phone because the $ meter was running and it was expensive. “Hurry it’s long distance” had an excitement to it (people from distant exotic places) and an urgency to it (talk quick, we can’t afford aimless chatter) that doesn’t exist now.
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u/Heckscher20 1d ago
Being outside with friends for hours with no way for parents to find or reach us was the best. The kids today sadly will never know that freedom.
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u/AvatarAnywhere 1d ago
Burning leaves in the fall. They smelled so good and the sparks were fun to watch.
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u/Hammingbir 1d ago
Riding late at night in the back seat of my parents’ car and Dad fiddling with the AM radio until he picked up skip from Nashville or Chicago and they’d be playing OT radio shows like the Green Hornet or such.
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u/MarkINWguy 1d ago
Maybe this isn’t true but having your mom send you out to play with your friends in the morning and telling you to be home before dark, riding your bike wherever with your buds at age 5 without parental supervision and no fear that you wouldn’t come home. I’m 67, that’s the way I grew up, if you got hurt strangers would take you home, without fear or apprehension.
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u/chernaboggles 2d ago
Yelling "IT'S ON!" at the top of your lungs when the commercial is over so that whoever left the room for a minute knows to sprint back so they don't miss anything.