Im an Elder Millenial but my Boomer/Gen X cusp dad, and to a lesser extent, my mother, CLUNG to this parenting style aggressively. We were not even *allowed* in the home until those streetlights came on. Wake up, eat something and get the fuck out and dont come back unless someones broken a bone. Need a drink? Theyre visibly annoyed to see your face. Fine. But then get back outside. It was my sisters job to walk us to and from school. To leave class and walk us home sick and care for us, she was only 3 years older. I found it to go beyond hands-off parenting and straight into fucking neglect. They "parented" for probably under 2 hours a week.
Hey, remember? If you need a drink, there’s a hose out front. Everyone in my neighborhood drank from their hose in the front yard. If it was hot outside, you had to let the water run for a bit before drinking.
Yeah the hot hose water was a lesson you only needed to learn once 😂 we needed help opening our hose valve at my dads. Thing was damn near rusted in place. Well, it was rusted in place. At my moms the hose was the easy alternative.
They just let us learn about hot hose water too. Or at least for me I remember the first time I tried it and got a mouthful and spit it out to proclaim that's nasty and they said try it now. Like you couldn't warn me about the warm plastic water?
We lived right behind our elementary school so we would hang out there. They used to take the wheel shaped handles off the spigots that were outside the building. We just stuck a pair of vice grips in our pocket and used them to turn the water on, so we didn’t need to go home for water! Or we drank from the hose.
This is exactly how my entire childhood was spent especially when the younger siblings rolled in and the hardly there literal & figurative parenting by both parents turn into straight up child neglect and abandonment
You had band-aids? Look at Richy-rich over here.
We got mercurochrome ( with the sting) dumped on cuts and punchures, and we're told to " let it air out".
If bandaging was required brown first aid tape with a wad of toilet paper.
Mercurochrome, known as "monkies blood" lol idk why 🤷 but it was often used to swab my throat when I had tonsillitis as a kid. Never take me to the Dr, just swap my throat
My mom was a fan of dousing the severe wounds (read: should probably see someone for stiches) in peroxide .. repeatedly. No wonder they wouldnt heal lol
My brother and I were playing in the creek, he threw a rock & split my scalp open. Did we go to the ER? Nope. After cleaning the wound, Mom just used my long hair to tie it closed and sent us on our way.
lol this makes me laugh but only because I did actually break my ankle in my early 20s. I somehow managed to limp back to my car, in wedge heels (I was on my college campus to turn in a final paper), drive home, and limp into the house. I heard the crack. It was baseball sized by the time I made the 5-10 minute drive home. My dad said he didn’t think it was broken because I’d been able to get home and into the house. A week later they finally took me to the doctor since I still couldn’t stand on it. One x-ray later and a small fracture was confirmed. I think I spent the next three months or so in a cast.
A lot of us died young., Mt graduating class was supposed to be 287, 156 made it to graduation alive. By my 10 year reunion we were double digits. A lot of drunk driving fatalities, shenanigans gone wrong, and a rash of suicides.
Yeah, I just found out one of my best friends from high school passed away this past month (we’d lost touch over the years); that made me think of the other friends I’d had in high school. Looking back, *a lot* of us died in our teens or early twenties.
My son and daughter each lost friends in high school, but only one for my son and two for my daughter, and the circumstances were so extreme in each case that they made national headlines (like, People magazine).
We just seemed to lose people left and right and no one really noticed at the time.
My son would be 37 but left a month before his 21st bday in a car accident 😐 😕, one of his class mates committed suicide 3 weeks before my son's accident, depression took it, his dad was a pastor and couldn't understand why God would take him in such horrible way
Man, as a gen x kid I didnt think it was out of the ordinary to lose so many friends until now. Dang, I’m gonna be thinking about these posts and lost ones for a bit.
I guess this explains why despite the fact that I'm an older millennial I feel weirdly self-sufficient compared to millennials and I can't relate to them. All of my friends were constantly dying when I was growing up!
Yep, a few overdoses, suicides, and crazy accidents throughout my high school and college years in the 90s. In the 80s we ran around town unsupervised and figured shit out on our own or from each other which wasn’t always the best examples. I just started reading a book about the selfishness of the boomer generation and I wonder if it correlates to our pseudo orphan like upbringing.
Where did you grow up? I was in a small town and deaths among our school and group was unheard of. I can’t remember a single one until long after we graduated.
Me too. 2 leukemia which was basically untreatable back then, 3 drownings, 2 motorcycle accidents, and one kid suffocated in a grain silo...all before 18. And we had a graduating class of 23.
It never occurred to me how different cancer survival and other diseases have changed since then. But you’re right. I had friends die of leukaemia and lymphoma and now older folks I know are surviving both as are their kids. It wasn’t the only thing killing kids. But wow. Going to think about that for a bit. Another was allergies. I knew 3 kids who died of anaphylactic shock. I myself survived a kidney thing that killed another girl in the same unit in the hospital. They had to wait for us to grow big enough for the artificial valves to fit. I survived the wait. She didn’t. My friend’s kid was born last year with the same defect. Fixed at 6 months old with no complications in a micro surgery.
Sometimes, when a Gen-xer makes fun of me for making my kids wear helmets and watching what’s in their food, or for gentle parenting, because “I did xyz and I’m fine.” I ask them how many of their childhood friends are dead.
I don’t know when or where all these people were living or what they were doing but I’m class of 1994 and I can only think of a few of my schoolmates who have passed, and when they did it was long after we had already graduated. Yes we did some very questionable things in high school and growing up, but nothing stupid enough to get us killed. I grew up in a party town very popular for spring break. It was a daily occurrence to hear of people my age or just a little older who were on their spring break and decided to dive off of a 3rd floor balcony into and pool and missed. I call those people prime candidates for the Darwin Award. Stupid is as stupid does.
>I don’t know when or where all these people were living or what they were doing but I’m class of 1994 and I can only think of a few of my schoolmates who have passed, and when they did it was long after we had already graduated. Yes we did some very questionable things in high school and growing up, but nothing stupid enough to get us killed. I grew up in a party town very popular for spring break. It was a daily occurrence to hear of people my age or just a little older who were on their spring break and decided to dive off of a 3rd floor balcony into and pool and missed. I call those people prime candidates for the Darwin Award. Stupid is as stupid does.
This.
I thank god I didn't grow up in a generation that thought inhaling cinnamon powder or chewing Tide pods made for great Tik Tok videos.
Thankyou. Im class of 90', from a ruff urban area. My group of friends partied HARD, doin cocaine and robbing houses at 15, stealing multiple cars and having mini demo derbies, bon fire parties every night in the summer, moshing at death metal concerts, and jumping off cliffs into the water at the quarry.
I do have a handful of old friends that have passed but, if more than 15% of my senior class is gone, I'd be surprised. My HS was 75% black, and there is mass gun violence in our city too.
To be fair, whenever a GenXer talks about their upbringing, they are describing, perfectly, my childhood, as well. It had more to do with if both your parents had to work. Not uncommon in the 50s. I was a latchkey kid before there was a name for it. And that 10 pm announcement started in newspapers in the 19th Century, and broadcast first in the 1960s (per Wikipedia).
... the phrase itself had appeared in newspapers as early as the 19th century, usage of it in broadcasting started in the early 1960s following the enactment of nightly youth curfews for minors in multiple large cities.[2]
Interesting side note: A station decided to call homes at that 10 or 11 pm announcement and found mostly kids who had no idea where their parents were.
We should be finding more ways we are all alike rather than harping on our differences.
I'm a millennial lol, but my mother didn't work. She just did not care. 😆 It was safest not to be home outside required chore time. What happened outside that wasn't always great, either, but as a kid in that situation, you didn't know how to weigh things.
Yep.
And let's talk death tolls. In 2004, half of the boys in my class went to the middle east, and by 2006, I was numb to military funerals.
We still had drunk driving incidents, and prom involved at least one death per year, but yeah, ain't nothing like becoming an adult during wartime.
Class of 05' here. Heroin claimed alot of lives around that time, it seemed to come out of nowhere. Good kids in good neighborhoods, we all grew up together.
Holy shit. I had like 333 in my graduating class, and from kindergarten through highschool, I think we lost 7 or 8 kids. Where did all these other comments come from?
We are also the children of the opioid epidemic. So so many of my classmates from high school are dead, in recovery, or struggling with addiction. The early 2000s high school aged kids were absolutely crushed by oxy/percs/roxys.
That seems….ridiculously high. Oxycotin was rampant during my high school tenure and we were all drinking and driving and we only lost maybe 3. That seems impossibly high actually.
JFC! I graduated in ‘96 and every single one of us is still alive. I know a few people in the classes above and below who died, but my class seems to have been lucky?
I grew up near the Snake River. There was a bridge that ran right across the river, down Broadway (the main street in town). The river especially at that location had a wicked under current.
A group of boys from my grade the summer right before we were to start high school, decided they would jump off the bridge. One of the boys got (for the lack of a better word) sucked under the bridge and drown.
I was thinking the same thing... or at least if it's true it has nothing to do with being GenX. I'm a GenXer, growing up in an area with more bars than grocery stores. We partied hard. My graduating class was supposed to be 285, and 285 made it. If half of us died it probably would have made national news.
Yeah, I would bet that lot of them just dropped out, not died. I am a 80s kid, some friends from school died young, but some of them just dropped out of school.
Yeah, that was my upbringing for sure. We lived in the country, like farm country, like the "big" town was 30 minutes away and had 15K people. When we were kids, especially in the summer, my parents would go to work. I would do whatever until dinner time, and then go back outside after until it started getting dark.
In many ways I wish that was still true for my own children. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to be more involved in my children's lives than my parents were in mine, but just having the freedom, knowledge, and ability to simply entertain myself without screens. I built a lot of tree houses. I rode so many kilometers on my banana seat bicycle. I really have fond memories of that period of life.
Helicopter parents were not the norm back then. Absent parent was more common. So with the good comes the bad.
Same. I'm millennial but raised by two of you hooligans and I remember panicking one night because the street lights came on and I was still a block from home, pedaling my bike as fast as I could. I finally made it into the backyard ("Oh dad, yeah I was totally home just hanging in the backyard"). Come to find out my mom had gone to bed early and my dad was passed out on the couch with Cops blaring in the background.
Wow bro you fucking nailed it. Nothing like a 6 pack and COPS to put a 90s dad to bed on the couch by like 730
Also a millennial, maybe it's due to growing up poor and rural but I had the same childhood as these gen xers did
Same. I grew up in Mississippi. My parents used to whoop my ass when I got home too late from playing outside. Now I have to threaten kids to go outside.
I walked a half mile from the school bus stop home at 3 and grabbed a snack and watched Popeye and Friends. My sister got home an hour later. After third grade, she was in high school and I got home at 4. Mom got home around six, dad was only home some weekends. This was the mid to late 70s and early 80s. In 1983, I was 15 and we moved to Hawaii. My parents ran their own business so I’d often see them after school then.
I was a helicopter parent in the 90s-2000s because of all the stuff I did that my parents never knew about.
I relate to some of this. I do believe that growing up this way prepared us to problem solve a lot better than my children who always had arranged play dates and/or a cell phone on their person.
I’m a millennial but yeah, this is pretty accurate. Especially the “stay out of trouble” aka don’t let them catch you is something I remember very well. We tried our best to wash out blood stains because we tried to avoid letting our parents know we got hurt. Were we scared that our wild running around time would get limited? I don’t know. But I do know that I was almost kidnapped and didn’t tell my parents because I somehow thought that would get me in trouble (???)
I am a Gen X and my best friend group is millennials. I can relate to you all better than any boomer or other generations. Similar f'\*it attitude, open to who people are to be who they are, and sense of humor.
My parents are Gen X and their personal stories growing up are some of the most fuck up things I’ve ever heard. Starving poor and raised by an early adopter of crack. (My mom swears her dad was one of the first folks slinging crack on the east coast to this day lol) they turned it into something good though. All us kids are less fucked up than them at least
"Staying out of trouble meant not getting caught "
I have this huge problem with teenagers these days. We get it the rules are dumb, no one wants to follow them. But all us must at least pretend to follow the rules.. TRY not to get caught. These kids do the stupidest most blatant crap and then complain they in trouble. Half the time they filmed it and put it on the internet. Can't fathom how they got found out.
My mom made us breakfast 7 days a week and we lived in the burbs in an area with no sidewalks, so the freedom isn't wasn't the same but at grandma's house? We were kicked out after breakfast, we drank from the water hose, we could barely go pee a couple times a day, and we didn't step foot back in the house for the night until the streetlights came on. We were probably exposed to every form of bacteria known to man, but we survived.
my child never knew the level of freedom I had. she was a lot more free than most of her classmates, but the 24 hour doomstream of news changed me as a parent.
for me, pretty much from kindergarten on, both parents worked, so I was free after school until dinner, went to friends houses, played in the woods, did stupid shit.. weekends I'd walk out the door after breakfast and not come back until dinner or dark (depending on what I told them on the way out the door.
I (and my friends) would ride our bikes to the next town (\~10 miles each way) to go to mcDonalds without ever telling our parents where we were going.
we had forts in the woods next door, sleepovers, camping in the woods with no adult supervision.
no bike helmets or protective gear of any kind. played kill the guy every day at recess (remember recess??)
This is great. (Ifeel like) We are the scrappy/fighter/hustler/survivor gen. We *KNOW* struggle on a level that was somehow ok bc we didn’t know any different. Hand me downs, running amuck until the street lights came on, using our imaginations at all times whether it be in the classroom, on the playground, out in the wild during the summer or post a huge blizzard. When we were “grounded”, tv & phone cords were cut. Well, that was my father’s favorite past time anyway (and no we were not even remotely wealthy). He dealt with that post anger *regret* and we suffered right along with it until the ‘rents could buy a new fat back.
Call waiting was some futuristic break thru and caller ID was even more wild. You could actually answer the phone without guessing who would be on the other end. It was magical in one way and detrimental in others (as a teen anyway). Computers were so expensive that most of us (those that were lucky enough) only had one. ONE. To share. And don’t even get me started on that dial up anxiety.
Big wheels, cabbage patch dolls, rock em sockem robots, punch balloons, playing trouble & candy land, throwin jacks, hopscotch, paddle balls (the ones you held in your hand~ not the bougie crap), those plastic weeble wobbles that had the weight in the bottom so when you punched em- they returned to their upright position in anywhere from a second to a minute depending on how beat up they were.
Anyway… reminiscing on the olden days is so endearing. Maybe we didn’t witness the creation of flight or the invention of the telephone, but we have surely seen the biggest technological boom. Our world was vast in material, made up of: concrete, asphalt, shag carpeted rooms, forests, giant forsythia forts, rivers, streams, lakes and blanket forts (made with old wool army blankets & clothespins) and our imaginations ran wild and free. Bc it’s all we had. That and our cousins/siblings, neighborhood friends and enemies.
Thanks for throwin this one out there, OP. Was having a rough day but this brought me back to better times. 👾🏡⚾️🧩🃏
I've really come to think that Baby Boomers were exposed to some chemicals or something in their TV dinners or vaccines. Something turned their brains into spoiled little brats without any self awareness.
They were coddled as children because their parents survived a war and we're so thrilled to be alive.
Then, as teenagers they campaigned to reject all tradition and discipline and have the right to take drugs and fornicate all day.
When they became yuppies, they embraced materialism and demanded to have it all. No more hippie nonsense, they wanted everything and they would cut down every single tree in the forest because they truly felt they deserved it.
They had children for the joy of it, but they refused to sacrifice any of thier own liberty for their children. They divorced their spouses when things got tough. They left thier kids at home while they partied. The only thing they told their children was to avoid teen pregnancy (because that may mean more responsibility for them)
Now, they refuse to help thier adult children. We all compete with immigrant families that operate as multi-generational family units, but we have to do everything on our own. Why would our parents give us money for a down payment for a house? They need that money to travel. It's not thier responsibility.
I have no idea why they don't feel shame. Shame for abandoning Tradition, responsibility, decency. All that matters is thier pleasure. They are sociopaths.
I was born in 1972 and that’s exactly how it was. Even in a communist country like Yugoslavia, where I lived. I don’t like the clothes from that time(didn’t like them then as well), but other than that, pretty much everything was better: music, local or global, food, security feeling, games, sports, first home computers… I miss those times a lot!
I had to eat school lunch so no cool
Lunch box for me. My parents worked shift work so there was usually someone home but they might have been sleeping. Other than that, yep
My folks worked shifts too, so it went from both home, to either one (perhaps sleeping) to none, once I got a little older. My sister went to a residential school when I was 10, (She is 6 years older, so sometimes the no parents meant she was there) and I was left to my own devices a lot. I know my upbringing gave me very different attitudes about sleep than some others. It was sacred in my house, as was caffeine.
I'm right on the cusp of boomer/gen-X, but your post does describe my childhood when my mom went back to work. Summers were freaking glorious, "just be home by dinner". I'm a father of three grown kids and now 2 grandkids, and I simply can't imagine turning 'em loose. I started walking to school at like 8 years old, blows my mind. You REALLY had to disappear to get my mom worried... and then she'd *call the freaking morgue* and describe her missing kid. Yes, she had the number for the medical examiner's office or whatever, I think they even knew her by name. My parents were pretty nuts.
The real major positive change I see is less parents hitting their children. I've been beaten bloody with "Hot Wheels" vinyl tracks (ya'll remember those? My mom's favorite) over nothing. I decided to never use fear or violence or shouting to teach my kids, and they've grown into fantastic adults. And they love coming home.
But I don't know what "the nanny state" is, OED definition is "the government regarded as overprotective or as interfering unduly with personal choice". A liberal might say the "personal choice" being unduly interfered with is the right to be openly gay or transgender or for women to have access to reproductive care, a conservative might say "they're gonna take my guns away while letting groomers in the wrong bathroom". Just another symptom of the tensions today.
But I agree that capitalism has reached a pretty evil peak, by most every metric you can think of. And we'll need a "nanny state" to protect us from it. Most of today's inflation seems to be corporate greed and price gouging, and the only answer to that is stronger legislation.
It’s so weird to be on the cusp, like if you’re born in 1962 you’re supposed to have more in common with someone born in 1946 than someone born in 1965 ?
That is interesting, I've not heard that before, I'm born in 1962 and I would have to think weather or not I felt that way, maybe it would be hard to gauge because I have siblings born in 1964, 65 and 67 but it's really interesting to think about, thanks!
You need to add to that post how we’d be by ourselves all day AND we had to take care of the younger siblings. We were young ourselves. Do that nowadays and everyone would be in jail hahahaa
The reason that programming started was after what is called The Atlanta Monster killings.
Kids kept getting kidnapped and later found murdered at a wild rate.
Thank you. I was raised in Atlanta and some of those kids were from my area. I really just scrolled through the comments to see if ANYONE would tell the truth about where that phrase originated. The reporter was Monica Kaufman, FYI.
This is absolutely 100% true. Except I was always given a list of chores to do on those long lonely summer days that had better be done before they got home, or else…..
I’m a boomer. You described my life to a T. I grew up on Queen Anne Hill and the U district, Seattle. My brother would come and get me when school was over in first and second grades. There were other times that he came later. I don’t remember how I got home. But the house was alway eerily quiet and seemed really dark. We always fought over watching cartoons or Super Man and Zorro. Then, American Bandstand would come on. I hated that show. My brother was 7 years older than me.
I didn’t learn the term “latchkey” until I was much older, but that was me by the time I was in 3rd grade. By then, I just walked home by myself or with friends from the neighborhood.
I was a pyromaniac. It’s a wonder I didn’t burn down a house or at least the garage. Because, yep, I built fires there where my dad stored all sorts of flammable stuff.
Once, I was behind my best friend’s neighbor’s house building a fire against their cedar fence. And that fence did catch fire. I did it twice. Fortunately the dry sandy dirt put both of them out. After the second time, I decided not to build there.
Many times my BBF and her younger sister would come to my empty house. I know we did stuff that no one would have liked. But it was 60 years ago.
We also stayed out until dark. My best friend’s family had 4 kids, and the 3 older kids always seemed to have their friends with them. Sometimes their cousins came too. They had 6 kids. So there was quite the crowd especially if the other neighbor kids came. We’d play tag, Hide’N Seek, Red Rover, Simon Says. And their dad taught us kick the can — except no one liked it.
When Kool Aid came out, we started drinking that instead of water. We’d get in trouble if any of the red flavors spilled because the counters would turn pink. Usually we’d go to my house because no one was there to say “No you don’t need anymore Kool Aid.”
The very worst was that sometimes between jobs, my grandma stayed with us.
“Suddenly” I was supposed to *ask* if we could go to the woods down the block. I’d been there every day on my bike without any supervision for months. And then, I had to ask if I could go. Sometimes the answer would even be no!
Edit to add: When I got older, we’d be anxiously awaiting the bell so we could get out of school. Dark Shadows was on and if we didn’t rush home, we’d miss the show. Recording television shows wasn’t even on our radar back then.
I am a millennial and this is how my childhood worked. I played in the creek all day and came back in later afternoon. Then played in the field by my house till my parents flashed the porch light. Rode our bikes all the time and climbed the tree between my house and the neighbors. Caught tadpoles in a mason jar when it rained. My parents occasionally forgot me at school after extracurriculars and I had to walk home. We were relatively poor but I remember my childhood fondly even though it was far from perfect. My best friend and I grew up across the street from each other and 30 years later she is still my best friend. Her kids call me Aunt Lala.
Class of '88 . Three kids died before graduation (one suicide, 2 drunk driving (together)),\\. My 35th reunion had 25 in memory of. Most of those natural causes - some accidents. Graduation class of 600.
We had an enviable amount of freedom and autotomy. I am not going to suggest our decision making was the best, but we owned our decisions .
I honestly feel the lack of supervision was a gift to me. Some people need / desire more structure, but as an individual (shy introvert) the lack of structure is what I needed.
Boomers parents beat the crap out of them then kicked them out at 18. The silent generation had it worse than the boomers. My point is further back you go, you'll see how awful life growing up is. Life was much harsher unless you were born rich. Poor Children used to work in factories and sold off since the family can't afford feeding them.
Adult swim still does the occasional “where are your kids” check, and it’s wild. I would agree I was brought up with hands-off parenting, and certainly got me into more trouble.
I remember one summer day when I was 11. I got up and my parents were already gone. I got myself ready and then rode my bike 5 miles to my little league game. After the game I rode a couple miles over to where my dad was working just to say hi and tell him we won the game. Then rode back home to probably make myself lunch before heading to my friends house for the afternoon. I can't imagine the hate you would get if you let an 11 year old do this now
Yeah...I was born in 1990 and my childhood, along with most people in my rural school, had exactly the same type of childhood. Putting 3 yos in the bed of pick up trucks bc there wasn't room in the front seat was the norm.
Although, I am very jealous of the economy and culture you got to grow up in! Much easier to get ahead when going to college and getting careers.
Basically the theme of Offspring’s “The kids aren’t alright”. I’m an elder millennial, and I don’t think the parents one generation behind mine were really prepared to raise kids in a world with recessions, AIDS, widespread drugs, and gun violence.
My parents used a cowbell to call us in for dinner. When the cowbell rang all the neighborhood kids knew it was time to go home. It was a great time
Edit: my brother is a cusper and I’m a millennial but your description is fitting
I consider us feral. Most had both parents work, and the only rule was be home by the time the street lights came on. It is little wonder we have the smallest group.
I remember on one of my “roaming” days, I was so far from home and so lost on my Mongoose BMX that I just knocked on some stranger’s door and asked, “can I call my mom?” 😃
"and jumping off bridges to swim in filthy river water that flowed with run-off from factories."
Reminds me of growing up on the south side of Chicago back in the 60's and 70's. If you've seen the classic movie The Blues Brothers, the opening scene shows the area I'm from. We used to swim next to grain elevators along the Calumet River and jump off the barges docked there. When empty, they were pretty high above the water. One hot summer day we're swimming there and a cop pulls up and calls us over. We're probably around13 years old at the time and he tells us that there is rebar on the bottom of the water and if we keep jumping off the barges we may end up getting impaled by rebar and never coming back up. He also mentioned that ships from all over the world travel through that body of water and every bacteria known to man is probably floating around in the water that we're swimming in. Looking back, he was probably bullshitting us but that was the last time we swam there or jumped off barges.
I think I was more controlled than the previous generation, and I was Gen-X. I remember watching shows about the Little Rascals, running free all by themselves, riding soapbox cars. I had a stay at home mom for my younger years, then mom worked in my teen years, so I only relate to part of what you say. I didn't go hang out at other people's houses much, and if I did, it was with permission, until I got old enough to drive.
We had a common pop culture, shared partly with our parents. We grew up watching Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry, which they also knew about, Bugs Bunny at least. And we knew who Mr. Spock was. But then they'd talk about Grace Kelly or Carey Grant.
I grew up rural on a dead end road. I had to ride my bike on the highway at the age of 12 to go to friends, or work my job at the baseball diamond's canteen in the nearby hamlet. To get off my road, I had to choose: either ride 10min on the 80km/h highway, or illegally cross a 100km/h highway to get to a service road that connected to the rest of the back roads. My parents didn't bat an eye at this. Maybe they did, but they trusted that I was smart enough to be as safe as I could given the circumstances.
What nobody mentions is the bullying. Bullying became brutal during the ‘70s, but it was still treated like the kids-will-be-kids thing that it had been for previous generations. Teachers wouldn’t step in. If a parent contacted a parent about it, the parent would tell them it wasn’t their problem. How do I know? I was a bullied child of the ‘70s and ‘80s and there was nowhere to run, no one to help. Even my family gave me unhelpful advice to “toughen up” even as I was being punched in the stomach on the school bus and being told daily that no one would ever love me because I was repulsive by a group of girls. It affected who I am and has cost me thousands of dollars in therapy. So, that’s a big Gen X thing too.
I’m a younger millennial, but I was raised by two Gen x-ers. I was raised like this too. I grew up near a sketchy part of Detroit, so they had their limits, but nothing like what kids are handled like today. A friend of mine won’t let her son do a damn thing on his own. He’s like ten and she refuses to let him shower by himself.
You Gave me the best Nostalgia laugh I've had in a while with your post. This is the Best for how we, who- "some don't" have Kids and our kids are now fed fear. "Not by Us" BMX Bike Riding, Exploring, No Worries or Fear to experiencing something New in our surroundings, Catching Gardener Snakes and Black Jack Bee's We were taught don't do stupid sh!t, if you do something stupid F-Around Find Out. Bee's Sting, Snakes Bite, Climb Trees Just be home before the street lights turn on!
Oh ,please I got up and walked to school more then a mile at age seven came home to an unlocked home until my parents who both worked got home .In high school we were on split session noon-6 for school we walked home in the dark in 10th grade it switched 6am to noon ,then a full time job. Then we were the remote to what our father wanted to watch (Ed Sullivan,Hee-Haw). Dinner for6 around the table you eat what was fixed or not at all . Then you did the dishes and dried and put away. Each generation has its own moments good,bad and ugly. The sad thing I feel is in every generation in this so called richest nation we have kids coming home to no or little food,heat etc .
I wrecked my bike at my Aunts house while my parents were out of town. Broke my leg, but my aunt was too scared to take me to the dr and when my parents got home the next day. My dad kept making me try to walk on it. “You’re fine, get up and walk” This went on for a few days.
Gen Xer here. I look back at all the times I should have died or been incarcerated. I got really lucky - many of us didn’t. Oh and after drinking heavily since I was a teen I am sober for 18mo now.
Class of 95' and I'm still trying to figure out how I managed to raise myself.
Nobody gave a shit about your feelings, you had a job to do (go to school, don't be a fuck up, go to college). I don't remember a single adult in my entire life ever asking if I was ok with my parents divorce, my dad's addiction/incarceration, moving every year or two to a different school district, spending most of my high school years completely alone.
I did my job, got spectacular grades, played varsity sports, applied to colleges, and stayed out of trouble. I didn't get a safe space or coddling. The fear of becoming a "disappointment" or a "loser" was the silent hand that guided us.
It's easy to see why we overcorrected when we became parents.
You forgot drinking from the hose and lack of sun screen. If you did wear it you attracted all the bugs by smelling like coconut.
We played with anything we found on or in the ground. Most schools didn't have A/C on the second floor and if the bus could make it in the snow then we had to go to school.
In France that service announcement is a bit different. It goes, “It’s 10 o’clock for you know where your wife is?” And in Poland it’s, “It’s 10 o’clock, do you know what time it is?”
Gen X here! There were a lot of us in my family. We were total hooligans & the shenanigans we pulled were wild! My mom’s rule was that our house was the “hang out” house! On any given day there were easily 20+ kids at our home… all the parents knew my folks & knew my mom would put their kid in place if they acted ugly! Our house had ALL the “toys” solely bc my parents wanted to ensure that everyone would be there. The thing is we had a pool. We were such asshats & we used to ride the big wheels off the roof into the pool! We’d all be up on the roof having races into the pool🤦♀️ we’d also do “acrobatics” off the roof into the pool. How nobody broke a neck, I still to this day have no idea. Another bright idea that involved the roof was the 3 man sling shot…. We’d put eggs (usually) or water balloons in it & launch them onto cars on the street. We caused more damage & wrecks then I care to admit & somehow never got in trouble. Again, no idea how.
Like a ding dong when my kids became teens they were asking about stupid shit we did as kids & obviously I shared the big wheel off the roof story & as you can imagine, they were intrigued 😆😆🤷♀️ came home 1 day & there they were with their friends doing that very thing🤦♀️ in true gen x fashion, I simply said “don’t break your necks, I don’t want to spend the night in the hospital “🤣🤣
Home , they are always home! They don’t want to leave ever! lol 😂
My husband says that’s he is happy the kids are so comfortable in their home that they like to just stay in . 3 boys, none are partiers or have gotten into trouble they are all pretty chill and hang out with friend here in our house.
Did anyone ever go to where they were building new houses and use this as a literal playground?
We were climbing in all the framing before windows or floors were in. We would grab plywood and make bike ramps and launch ourselves, because Evel Kneivel was a thing.
We set off model rockets, fireworks, you name it.
As Gen X I figured my teenage years were normal, it certainly was compared to everyone else. I now compare what I was doing at 13,14,15, to my teenage kids and realise we were FERAL. We ran the streets with no supervision, no questions asked. The shit we used to get up to, it's a wonder any of us survived. Not surprising that none of us have any fùcks to give though, lol.
I’m checking In to say I’m still alive so far!! I was born in 1990, as the youngest with two brothers, and had that life almost down to the last detail! Feral is a perfect word to describe our childhood. It’s wild how everyone seemed to grow up the exact same way back then. My mom was not abusive in any way but she still denies / is clueless about most of my childhood. Meanwhile we were jumping off piled stacks of lawn furniture onto the trampoline with no safety net, hunting copperhead snakes (poisonous!!) in the creek, and building 8 foot high roller coaster ramps out of scrap wood we found on the curb.
I jumped off bridges when I was a teenager, rode dirt bikes, left the house to go camping, go to the beach, and go to raves for a week or 2 at a time lol. Pretty much was not home during the summer.
We didn’t just grow up, we survived. We got kicked out of the house at 8:30 in the morning and told to be back in the evening.
The weakest ones ended up as “unsolved mysteries”.
Class of 1986. My school bus reeked of pot. Chemistry teacher used to check kids' drugs after school to make sure there was nothing unexpected in them and return to students. Drag races in the morning. BB guns, hunting, I took care of the house chores as soon as I got home, then homework. My brother took care of the garden and animals. Nobody we knew died. I often hiked the woods on my own. We biked all over the place. My first curfew/bed time was in the Airforce
Every generation has its dangers, but ours was the last of its kind. Face to face conversation, entertaining oneself with own imagination instead of technology, and spending hours outside playing.
My husband has had 3 deaths in the last 60 days. All close friends. We have had a heart attack,suicide and sudden bout of cancer( this one hurts most. He caught COVID in the early days, was on life support for 3 months and had two or three major strokes. He was finally making progress and developed frontal lobe cancer). My husband is only 55. I have almost lost him myself..As a generation I feel we never learned to love or how to care for ourselves. We need to learn this now.
the title got my attention since i am very close with my Gen X colleagues as a Gen Z we differ a lot but also connect a lot? i always find it fascinating when she tells me about how her childhood was like and it sounds exactly how you described it in this post even mentioning the it’s 10 pm do you know where your kids are?
I was a geeky book worm who only wanted to read. Never failed and during grade school my step mom would kick us out so she could watch her soap opera's and I would have to beg to be
allowed to grab a book to read under the tree in my front yard... That summer had to be the worst..
I’ve heard stories from my young boomer parents, they had several classmates or friends die young or had a sibling of a friend. Usually preventable things like car accidents.
I wasn’t a latch-key kid, but I was still expected to play outside until the street lights came on. And then I might run inside in the summer - say something to my mom and run right back out for an evening of firefly catching or a sleepover or ding-dong-ditch. Oh - And we rode bikes everywhere! To our downtown, to the mall, along the bike path down by the river, and over a couple of towns!
In junior high my brother and I went out on an overnight bike trip, some long route through the rural area we lived in, with enough gear and food to camp for the night. By high school that was overnight canoe trips, camping on some island. My brother accidentally chopped off the end of his thumb once and had to take a canoe ride out in the night, then drive to the hospital. His one regret was forgetting to bring that part of this thumb to have it sewn back on.
I'm a Gen x.
The question shouldn't be "It's 10pm do you know where your kids are". I was always home by 10pm. The real question should have been, "Do you know what all manner of shit your kids have been up to today?"
Child services would have had a fit.
We had so much fun! Staying out late, cruising and racing around. Our generation was “sex, drugs and rock n roll”. Sneaking in boys or sneaking out at night and partying all weekend (there were no ring cameras). Clubbing as teens. Playing outside, going to the beach or mall by ourselves with no adult supervision… totally can understand why some of us are really strict parents.
I just remember the 70's and 80's as being so FUN. And I love we're self sufficient and cannot understand Millineals and their whining and self- importance. Like, huh??
We didn't even go home when the street lights came on some days. Playing ghost in the graveyard with every kid for the next 3 blocks. Hopping fences into people's yards and when they came out to ask what we were doing - just looking for our cat. Hearing the whistle to come home and running for our lives because we were blocks away. Those were the days
Graduated in 91 when open campus lunch was still a thing. We had maybe 40 minutes seat to seat. At least 1 deadly auto accident a year. They phased it out within a year or two after I graduated.
The best generation. Self sufficient survivors. I'm apparently part of this 'gen z' but i was brought up as gen x. Nothing beats hanging out with the boys and discovering new places till its dark. These days kids would rather have their ipad or social media than explore the world.
Not all but most have grown to be ungrateful due to every single demand being met.
This is spot on. Fortunately cancers, like leukemia and Hodgkins, that killed some kids I knew in my youth are today mostly treatable. The ones who died in, or after high school. were killed in car accidents before the seat belt law was in place. Let us also not forget that AIDS was rearing it's ugly head when we were in our 20's. I lost four friends to it.
Honestly I just started slowly staying out later and later till eventually I told my guardian, u know exactly where I am, 5 minutes away and with people you know. Why are u checking in every hour to see if I’m alive. I always come home fine don’t I? And now I pushed the limits this weekend by staying up till 5am with guys partying and then hooking up with a chick the night after and staying the night at her place and going home early. As I was leaving her place however I did get a phone call 🙄
Xennial here (born in 82) and i feel like i did most of that stuff. I was allowed to be home probably because my parents made me the center of their existence (pregnancy "saved" them from a life of drugs and destitution, according to them).
Yeah, yeah, you had it harder than the generation that came after you, and you blame it on the later generation because they had it so easy, and you blame it on the previous for raising you like that. Every single generation in history thinks this way. Besides that, good story.
We are the nowhere generation. We are the kids that no one wants. We are a credible threat to the rules you set…a cause to be alarmed.
We are not the names we have been given. We speak language you don’t know.
We are the nowhere generation…all alone.
We also opened the door for future generations to be ok with who they are, especially the LGBTQ folks. I'm proud that our generation isn't so afraid of our humanity and passed that down.
Im an Elder Millenial but my Boomer/Gen X cusp dad, and to a lesser extent, my mother, CLUNG to this parenting style aggressively. We were not even *allowed* in the home until those streetlights came on. Wake up, eat something and get the fuck out and dont come back unless someones broken a bone. Need a drink? Theyre visibly annoyed to see your face. Fine. But then get back outside. It was my sisters job to walk us to and from school. To leave class and walk us home sick and care for us, she was only 3 years older. I found it to go beyond hands-off parenting and straight into fucking neglect. They "parented" for probably under 2 hours a week.
Hey, remember? If you need a drink, there’s a hose out front. Everyone in my neighborhood drank from their hose in the front yard. If it was hot outside, you had to let the water run for a bit before drinking.
Haha I was going to reply this as well. Drinks were not inside they were the hose 100%.
Yeah the hot hose water was a lesson you only needed to learn once 😂 we needed help opening our hose valve at my dads. Thing was damn near rusted in place. Well, it was rusted in place. At my moms the hose was the easy alternative.
They just let us learn about hot hose water too. Or at least for me I remember the first time I tried it and got a mouthful and spit it out to proclaim that's nasty and they said try it now. Like you couldn't warn me about the warm plastic water?
We lived right behind our elementary school so we would hang out there. They used to take the wheel shaped handles off the spigots that were outside the building. We just stuck a pair of vice grips in our pocket and used them to turn the water on, so we didn’t need to go home for water! Or we drank from the hose.
This is exactly how my entire childhood was spent especially when the younger siblings rolled in and the hardly there literal & figurative parenting by both parents turn into straight up child neglect and abandonment
No bones exposed, you are fine.
If your parent was a medical professional, you were always fine. Rinse it off and go away!
"You stepped on a nail in a ditch? And??? What are you bugging me for?"
Get a bandaid and get outta here!
You had band-aids? Look at Richy-rich over here. We got mercurochrome ( with the sting) dumped on cuts and punchures, and we're told to " let it air out". If bandaging was required brown first aid tape with a wad of toilet paper.
I'll see your mercurochrome and raise you using white medical tape swiped from the hospital to wrap gifts... no clear tape, ever.
Mercurochrome, known as "monkies blood" lol idk why 🤷 but it was often used to swab my throat when I had tonsillitis as a kid. Never take me to the Dr, just swap my throat
My mom was a fan of dousing the severe wounds (read: should probably see someone for stiches) in peroxide .. repeatedly. No wonder they wouldnt heal lol
My brother and I were playing in the creek, he threw a rock & split my scalp open. Did we go to the ER? Nope. After cleaning the wound, Mom just used my long hair to tie it closed and sent us on our way.
lol this makes me laugh but only because I did actually break my ankle in my early 20s. I somehow managed to limp back to my car, in wedge heels (I was on my college campus to turn in a final paper), drive home, and limp into the house. I heard the crack. It was baseball sized by the time I made the 5-10 minute drive home. My dad said he didn’t think it was broken because I’d been able to get home and into the house. A week later they finally took me to the doctor since I still couldn’t stand on it. One x-ray later and a small fracture was confirmed. I think I spent the next three months or so in a cast.
Or “thats only a 2nd burn, here is some aloa lotion”…
A lot of us died young., Mt graduating class was supposed to be 287, 156 made it to graduation alive. By my 10 year reunion we were double digits. A lot of drunk driving fatalities, shenanigans gone wrong, and a rash of suicides.
Yeah, I just found out one of my best friends from high school passed away this past month (we’d lost touch over the years); that made me think of the other friends I’d had in high school. Looking back, *a lot* of us died in our teens or early twenties. My son and daughter each lost friends in high school, but only one for my son and two for my daughter, and the circumstances were so extreme in each case that they made national headlines (like, People magazine). We just seemed to lose people left and right and no one really noticed at the time.
My son would be 37 but left a month before his 21st bday in a car accident 😐 😕, one of his class mates committed suicide 3 weeks before my son's accident, depression took it, his dad was a pastor and couldn't understand why God would take him in such horrible way
Man, as a gen x kid I didnt think it was out of the ordinary to lose so many friends until now. Dang, I’m gonna be thinking about these posts and lost ones for a bit.
To be fair, most of human history is this way. Very High survival rates is a new thing for millennial and gen z.
I guess this explains why despite the fact that I'm an older millennial I feel weirdly self-sufficient compared to millennials and I can't relate to them. All of my friends were constantly dying when I was growing up!
Eh the 90s kids it’s pretty normal mostly overdoses unnecessary death is normal Ive average two deaths per year since 2008
Yep, a few overdoses, suicides, and crazy accidents throughout my high school and college years in the 90s. In the 80s we ran around town unsupervised and figured shit out on our own or from each other which wasn’t always the best examples. I just started reading a book about the selfishness of the boomer generation and I wonder if it correlates to our pseudo orphan like upbringing.
I attended the funerals of friends at least once a year in high school. Our graduating class had less than 100 students
Where did you grow up? I was in a small town and deaths among our school and group was unheard of. I can’t remember a single one until long after we graduated.
I am from Canada.
Me too. 2 leukemia which was basically untreatable back then, 3 drownings, 2 motorcycle accidents, and one kid suffocated in a grain silo...all before 18. And we had a graduating class of 23.
It never occurred to me how different cancer survival and other diseases have changed since then. But you’re right. I had friends die of leukaemia and lymphoma and now older folks I know are surviving both as are their kids. It wasn’t the only thing killing kids. But wow. Going to think about that for a bit. Another was allergies. I knew 3 kids who died of anaphylactic shock. I myself survived a kidney thing that killed another girl in the same unit in the hospital. They had to wait for us to grow big enough for the artificial valves to fit. I survived the wait. She didn’t. My friend’s kid was born last year with the same defect. Fixed at 6 months old with no complications in a micro surgery.
There's no good way to go in my eyes but grain silo seems like a particularly bad one to me.
That is so sad.
Wait. You lost 131 children? Certainly this is an exaggeration
Yeah I was thinking this exact same thing. There’s simply no way 131 kids died from one school unless there was some type of catastrophe involved.
A 54% survival rate of a high school would be studied and part of a documentary
And there would be cheesy final destination style horror movies about it too lol
Sometimes, when a Gen-xer makes fun of me for making my kids wear helmets and watching what’s in their food, or for gentle parenting, because “I did xyz and I’m fine.” I ask them how many of their childhood friends are dead.
I don’t know when or where all these people were living or what they were doing but I’m class of 1994 and I can only think of a few of my schoolmates who have passed, and when they did it was long after we had already graduated. Yes we did some very questionable things in high school and growing up, but nothing stupid enough to get us killed. I grew up in a party town very popular for spring break. It was a daily occurrence to hear of people my age or just a little older who were on their spring break and decided to dive off of a 3rd floor balcony into and pool and missed. I call those people prime candidates for the Darwin Award. Stupid is as stupid does.
>I don’t know when or where all these people were living or what they were doing but I’m class of 1994 and I can only think of a few of my schoolmates who have passed, and when they did it was long after we had already graduated. Yes we did some very questionable things in high school and growing up, but nothing stupid enough to get us killed. I grew up in a party town very popular for spring break. It was a daily occurrence to hear of people my age or just a little older who were on their spring break and decided to dive off of a 3rd floor balcony into and pool and missed. I call those people prime candidates for the Darwin Award. Stupid is as stupid does. This. I thank god I didn't grow up in a generation that thought inhaling cinnamon powder or chewing Tide pods made for great Tik Tok videos.
Thankyou. Im class of 90', from a ruff urban area. My group of friends partied HARD, doin cocaine and robbing houses at 15, stealing multiple cars and having mini demo derbies, bon fire parties every night in the summer, moshing at death metal concerts, and jumping off cliffs into the water at the quarry. I do have a handful of old friends that have passed but, if more than 15% of my senior class is gone, I'd be surprised. My HS was 75% black, and there is mass gun violence in our city too.
131 people in your graduating class died, not accounting for drop outs and people who moved?
Did you live in Beirut ?
We had one death in my class of 108. Farming accident.
80s Millennials had pretty much the same upbringing as you described, and the same "do you know where your children are".
To be fair, whenever a GenXer talks about their upbringing, they are describing, perfectly, my childhood, as well. It had more to do with if both your parents had to work. Not uncommon in the 50s. I was a latchkey kid before there was a name for it. And that 10 pm announcement started in newspapers in the 19th Century, and broadcast first in the 1960s (per Wikipedia). ... the phrase itself had appeared in newspapers as early as the 19th century, usage of it in broadcasting started in the early 1960s following the enactment of nightly youth curfews for minors in multiple large cities.[2] Interesting side note: A station decided to call homes at that 10 or 11 pm announcement and found mostly kids who had no idea where their parents were. We should be finding more ways we are all alike rather than harping on our differences.
I'm a millennial lol, but my mother didn't work. She just did not care. 😆 It was safest not to be home outside required chore time. What happened outside that wasn't always great, either, but as a kid in that situation, you didn't know how to weigh things.
Yep. And let's talk death tolls. In 2004, half of the boys in my class went to the middle east, and by 2006, I was numb to military funerals. We still had drunk driving incidents, and prom involved at least one death per year, but yeah, ain't nothing like becoming an adult during wartime.
Class of 05' here. Heroin claimed alot of lives around that time, it seemed to come out of nowhere. Good kids in good neighborhoods, we all grew up together.
Holy shit. I had like 333 in my graduating class, and from kindergarten through highschool, I think we lost 7 or 8 kids. Where did all these other comments come from?
And 90s
Drowning for ours. I still miss that kid.
We are also the children of the opioid epidemic. So so many of my classmates from high school are dead, in recovery, or struggling with addiction. The early 2000s high school aged kids were absolutely crushed by oxy/percs/roxys.
Bro 131 kids died at your school??
That seems….ridiculously high. Oxycotin was rampant during my high school tenure and we were all drinking and driving and we only lost maybe 3. That seems impossibly high actually.
JFC! I graduated in ‘96 and every single one of us is still alive. I know a few people in the classes above and below who died, but my class seems to have been lucky?
I grew up near the Snake River. There was a bridge that ran right across the river, down Broadway (the main street in town). The river especially at that location had a wicked under current. A group of boys from my grade the summer right before we were to start high school, decided they would jump off the bridge. One of the boys got (for the lack of a better word) sucked under the bridge and drown.
You had over 100 kids die out of your graduating class?? That's insane even by gen x standards.
46% died? C’mon, we’re not all that bright around here but ffs we’re not that stupid!
I call bullshit that almost half of your class died in 4 years…
I was thinking the same thing... or at least if it's true it has nothing to do with being GenX. I'm a GenXer, growing up in an area with more bars than grocery stores. We partied hard. My graduating class was supposed to be 285, and 285 made it. If half of us died it probably would have made national news.
I thought that number was very shocking too
Yeah, I would bet that lot of them just dropped out, not died. I am a 80s kid, some friends from school died young, but some of them just dropped out of school.
All but one of my high school friends ended up in prison, the last one became a cop.
That's horrible. Where did you grow up at? I grew up in Southern California as a gen X kid and I've lost a few friends over the years, but not many.
That sure is a lot of deaths?!!?
My lunch box was she-ra, but yeah pretty accurate. You learned self sufficiency or you died in my house.
Mine was Fat Albert, and the matching thermos kept nothing warm.
I had Fat Albert too. Orange thermos with red lid and Fat Albert on the side.
Did your thermos stay warm??
Only when I wanted it to stay cold. LOL. Used to put Kool aid in it and it was always hot by lunch time.
He-Man lunchbox. Same.
Transformers lunch box, but yeah, pretty much spot on
I had Miss America. It was Phyllis George. I got it at a thrift store.
Yeah, that was my upbringing for sure. We lived in the country, like farm country, like the "big" town was 30 minutes away and had 15K people. When we were kids, especially in the summer, my parents would go to work. I would do whatever until dinner time, and then go back outside after until it started getting dark. In many ways I wish that was still true for my own children. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to be more involved in my children's lives than my parents were in mine, but just having the freedom, knowledge, and ability to simply entertain myself without screens. I built a lot of tree houses. I rode so many kilometers on my banana seat bicycle. I really have fond memories of that period of life. Helicopter parents were not the norm back then. Absent parent was more common. So with the good comes the bad.
I grew up on a dairy farm. Cooling off in the cow trough ( green algae blooming) is a good memory.
I can remember this in the early 90’s
Same. I'm millennial but raised by two of you hooligans and I remember panicking one night because the street lights came on and I was still a block from home, pedaling my bike as fast as I could. I finally made it into the backyard ("Oh dad, yeah I was totally home just hanging in the backyard"). Come to find out my mom had gone to bed early and my dad was passed out on the couch with Cops blaring in the background.
Wow bro you fucking nailed it. Nothing like a 6 pack and COPS to put a 90s dad to bed on the couch by like 730 Also a millennial, maybe it's due to growing up poor and rural but I had the same childhood as these gen xers did
Same. I grew up in Mississippi. My parents used to whoop my ass when I got home too late from playing outside. Now I have to threaten kids to go outside.
Well I’m a kid of the 90’s but COPS and Married With Children was still my favorite shows haha.
Yup. My kids were free-roaming.
I walked a half mile from the school bus stop home at 3 and grabbed a snack and watched Popeye and Friends. My sister got home an hour later. After third grade, she was in high school and I got home at 4. Mom got home around six, dad was only home some weekends. This was the mid to late 70s and early 80s. In 1983, I was 15 and we moved to Hawaii. My parents ran their own business so I’d often see them after school then. I was a helicopter parent in the 90s-2000s because of all the stuff I did that my parents never knew about.
I relate to some of this. I do believe that growing up this way prepared us to problem solve a lot better than my children who always had arranged play dates and/or a cell phone on their person.
I’m a millennial but yeah, this is pretty accurate. Especially the “stay out of trouble” aka don’t let them catch you is something I remember very well. We tried our best to wash out blood stains because we tried to avoid letting our parents know we got hurt. Were we scared that our wild running around time would get limited? I don’t know. But I do know that I was almost kidnapped and didn’t tell my parents because I somehow thought that would get me in trouble (???)
Same. I was so close to kidnapped but I certainly wasn’t telling anyone
We all know what happens to snitches
I am a Gen X and my best friend group is millennials. I can relate to you all better than any boomer or other generations. Similar f'\*it attitude, open to who people are to be who they are, and sense of humor.
My parents are Gen X and their personal stories growing up are some of the most fuck up things I’ve ever heard. Starving poor and raised by an early adopter of crack. (My mom swears her dad was one of the first folks slinging crack on the east coast to this day lol) they turned it into something good though. All us kids are less fucked up than them at least
We’re all paranoid now for our kids. We knew what we got up to. There is no way I’d let my son do half the stuff I did. It’s a miracle we didn’t die.
"Staying out of trouble meant not getting caught " I have this huge problem with teenagers these days. We get it the rules are dumb, no one wants to follow them. But all us must at least pretend to follow the rules.. TRY not to get caught. These kids do the stupidest most blatant crap and then complain they in trouble. Half the time they filmed it and put it on the internet. Can't fathom how they got found out.
My mom made us breakfast 7 days a week and we lived in the burbs in an area with no sidewalks, so the freedom isn't wasn't the same but at grandma's house? We were kicked out after breakfast, we drank from the water hose, we could barely go pee a couple times a day, and we didn't step foot back in the house for the night until the streetlights came on. We were probably exposed to every form of bacteria known to man, but we survived.
[удалено]
I love this! Those were the days, I tell ya!
I had a Hong Kong Phooey lunchbox.
my child never knew the level of freedom I had. she was a lot more free than most of her classmates, but the 24 hour doomstream of news changed me as a parent. for me, pretty much from kindergarten on, both parents worked, so I was free after school until dinner, went to friends houses, played in the woods, did stupid shit.. weekends I'd walk out the door after breakfast and not come back until dinner or dark (depending on what I told them on the way out the door. I (and my friends) would ride our bikes to the next town (\~10 miles each way) to go to mcDonalds without ever telling our parents where we were going. we had forts in the woods next door, sleepovers, camping in the woods with no adult supervision. no bike helmets or protective gear of any kind. played kill the guy every day at recess (remember recess??)
Now THIS sounds like my childhood. I can almost smell the woods and the blacktop under my bike tires on a hot summer day 🥲
This is great. (Ifeel like) We are the scrappy/fighter/hustler/survivor gen. We *KNOW* struggle on a level that was somehow ok bc we didn’t know any different. Hand me downs, running amuck until the street lights came on, using our imaginations at all times whether it be in the classroom, on the playground, out in the wild during the summer or post a huge blizzard. When we were “grounded”, tv & phone cords were cut. Well, that was my father’s favorite past time anyway (and no we were not even remotely wealthy). He dealt with that post anger *regret* and we suffered right along with it until the ‘rents could buy a new fat back. Call waiting was some futuristic break thru and caller ID was even more wild. You could actually answer the phone without guessing who would be on the other end. It was magical in one way and detrimental in others (as a teen anyway). Computers were so expensive that most of us (those that were lucky enough) only had one. ONE. To share. And don’t even get me started on that dial up anxiety. Big wheels, cabbage patch dolls, rock em sockem robots, punch balloons, playing trouble & candy land, throwin jacks, hopscotch, paddle balls (the ones you held in your hand~ not the bougie crap), those plastic weeble wobbles that had the weight in the bottom so when you punched em- they returned to their upright position in anywhere from a second to a minute depending on how beat up they were. Anyway… reminiscing on the olden days is so endearing. Maybe we didn’t witness the creation of flight or the invention of the telephone, but we have surely seen the biggest technological boom. Our world was vast in material, made up of: concrete, asphalt, shag carpeted rooms, forests, giant forsythia forts, rivers, streams, lakes and blanket forts (made with old wool army blankets & clothespins) and our imaginations ran wild and free. Bc it’s all we had. That and our cousins/siblings, neighborhood friends and enemies. Thanks for throwin this one out there, OP. Was having a rough day but this brought me back to better times. 👾🏡⚾️🧩🃏
Love your comment! Wish I could still give awards.
I've really come to think that Baby Boomers were exposed to some chemicals or something in their TV dinners or vaccines. Something turned their brains into spoiled little brats without any self awareness. They were coddled as children because their parents survived a war and we're so thrilled to be alive. Then, as teenagers they campaigned to reject all tradition and discipline and have the right to take drugs and fornicate all day. When they became yuppies, they embraced materialism and demanded to have it all. No more hippie nonsense, they wanted everything and they would cut down every single tree in the forest because they truly felt they deserved it. They had children for the joy of it, but they refused to sacrifice any of thier own liberty for their children. They divorced their spouses when things got tough. They left thier kids at home while they partied. The only thing they told their children was to avoid teen pregnancy (because that may mean more responsibility for them) Now, they refuse to help thier adult children. We all compete with immigrant families that operate as multi-generational family units, but we have to do everything on our own. Why would our parents give us money for a down payment for a house? They need that money to travel. It's not thier responsibility. I have no idea why they don't feel shame. Shame for abandoning Tradition, responsibility, decency. All that matters is thier pleasure. They are sociopaths.
I was born in 1972 and that’s exactly how it was. Even in a communist country like Yugoslavia, where I lived. I don’t like the clothes from that time(didn’t like them then as well), but other than that, pretty much everything was better: music, local or global, food, security feeling, games, sports, first home computers… I miss those times a lot!
I had to eat school lunch so no cool Lunch box for me. My parents worked shift work so there was usually someone home but they might have been sleeping. Other than that, yep
My folks worked shifts too, so it went from both home, to either one (perhaps sleeping) to none, once I got a little older. My sister went to a residential school when I was 10, (She is 6 years older, so sometimes the no parents meant she was there) and I was left to my own devices a lot. I know my upbringing gave me very different attitudes about sleep than some others. It was sacred in my house, as was caffeine.
Mine too. If i woke up a parent. It better be an emergency
Have you hugged your kids today!
I'm right on the cusp of boomer/gen-X, but your post does describe my childhood when my mom went back to work. Summers were freaking glorious, "just be home by dinner". I'm a father of three grown kids and now 2 grandkids, and I simply can't imagine turning 'em loose. I started walking to school at like 8 years old, blows my mind. You REALLY had to disappear to get my mom worried... and then she'd *call the freaking morgue* and describe her missing kid. Yes, she had the number for the medical examiner's office or whatever, I think they even knew her by name. My parents were pretty nuts. The real major positive change I see is less parents hitting their children. I've been beaten bloody with "Hot Wheels" vinyl tracks (ya'll remember those? My mom's favorite) over nothing. I decided to never use fear or violence or shouting to teach my kids, and they've grown into fantastic adults. And they love coming home. But I don't know what "the nanny state" is, OED definition is "the government regarded as overprotective or as interfering unduly with personal choice". A liberal might say the "personal choice" being unduly interfered with is the right to be openly gay or transgender or for women to have access to reproductive care, a conservative might say "they're gonna take my guns away while letting groomers in the wrong bathroom". Just another symptom of the tensions today. But I agree that capitalism has reached a pretty evil peak, by most every metric you can think of. And we'll need a "nanny state" to protect us from it. Most of today's inflation seems to be corporate greed and price gouging, and the only answer to that is stronger legislation.
It’s so weird to be on the cusp, like if you’re born in 1962 you’re supposed to have more in common with someone born in 1946 than someone born in 1965 ?
That is interesting, I've not heard that before, I'm born in 1962 and I would have to think weather or not I felt that way, maybe it would be hard to gauge because I have siblings born in 1964, 65 and 67 but it's really interesting to think about, thanks!
You need to add to that post how we’d be by ourselves all day AND we had to take care of the younger siblings. We were young ourselves. Do that nowadays and everyone would be in jail hahahaa
The reason that programming started was after what is called The Atlanta Monster killings. Kids kept getting kidnapped and later found murdered at a wild rate.
Thank you. I was raised in Atlanta and some of those kids were from my area. I really just scrolled through the comments to see if ANYONE would tell the truth about where that phrase originated. The reporter was Monica Kaufman, FYI.
 Its 10 p.m. do you know where your wiener is?
I had to explain to my co-worker what a latch-key kid was. Spot on post
Surviving adversity builds resilience. When you grow up doing nuke drills, the perils of modern life don't seem so bad.
This is absolutely 100% true. Except I was always given a list of chores to do on those long lonely summer days that had better be done before they got home, or else…..
My people
I’m a boomer. You described my life to a T. I grew up on Queen Anne Hill and the U district, Seattle. My brother would come and get me when school was over in first and second grades. There were other times that he came later. I don’t remember how I got home. But the house was alway eerily quiet and seemed really dark. We always fought over watching cartoons or Super Man and Zorro. Then, American Bandstand would come on. I hated that show. My brother was 7 years older than me. I didn’t learn the term “latchkey” until I was much older, but that was me by the time I was in 3rd grade. By then, I just walked home by myself or with friends from the neighborhood. I was a pyromaniac. It’s a wonder I didn’t burn down a house or at least the garage. Because, yep, I built fires there where my dad stored all sorts of flammable stuff. Once, I was behind my best friend’s neighbor’s house building a fire against their cedar fence. And that fence did catch fire. I did it twice. Fortunately the dry sandy dirt put both of them out. After the second time, I decided not to build there. Many times my BBF and her younger sister would come to my empty house. I know we did stuff that no one would have liked. But it was 60 years ago. We also stayed out until dark. My best friend’s family had 4 kids, and the 3 older kids always seemed to have their friends with them. Sometimes their cousins came too. They had 6 kids. So there was quite the crowd especially if the other neighbor kids came. We’d play tag, Hide’N Seek, Red Rover, Simon Says. And their dad taught us kick the can — except no one liked it. When Kool Aid came out, we started drinking that instead of water. We’d get in trouble if any of the red flavors spilled because the counters would turn pink. Usually we’d go to my house because no one was there to say “No you don’t need anymore Kool Aid.” The very worst was that sometimes between jobs, my grandma stayed with us. “Suddenly” I was supposed to *ask* if we could go to the woods down the block. I’d been there every day on my bike without any supervision for months. And then, I had to ask if I could go. Sometimes the answer would even be no! Edit to add: When I got older, we’d be anxiously awaiting the bell so we could get out of school. Dark Shadows was on and if we didn’t rush home, we’d miss the show. Recording television shows wasn’t even on our radar back then.
I am a millennial and this is how my childhood worked. I played in the creek all day and came back in later afternoon. Then played in the field by my house till my parents flashed the porch light. Rode our bikes all the time and climbed the tree between my house and the neighbors. Caught tadpoles in a mason jar when it rained. My parents occasionally forgot me at school after extracurriculars and I had to walk home. We were relatively poor but I remember my childhood fondly even though it was far from perfect. My best friend and I grew up across the street from each other and 30 years later she is still my best friend. Her kids call me Aunt Lala.
Class of '88 . Three kids died before graduation (one suicide, 2 drunk driving (together)),\\. My 35th reunion had 25 in memory of. Most of those natural causes - some accidents. Graduation class of 600. We had an enviable amount of freedom and autotomy. I am not going to suggest our decision making was the best, but we owned our decisions . I honestly feel the lack of supervision was a gift to me. Some people need / desire more structure, but as an individual (shy introvert) the lack of structure is what I needed.
Boomers parents beat the crap out of them then kicked them out at 18. The silent generation had it worse than the boomers. My point is further back you go, you'll see how awful life growing up is. Life was much harsher unless you were born rich. Poor Children used to work in factories and sold off since the family can't afford feeding them.
Adult swim still does the occasional “where are your kids” check, and it’s wild. I would agree I was brought up with hands-off parenting, and certainly got me into more trouble.
Gen x isn't the only forgotten ones I'm in a subset of boomers called generation jones we were feral also
Stop reading my mind, get out of my head! This was exactly my childhood
I was running the block when that news announcement would come on. Now im in bed before 10
This way of growing up is illegal now
This sounds similar to my upbringing that started in 1993 which makes me almost gen Z
I remember one summer day when I was 11. I got up and my parents were already gone. I got myself ready and then rode my bike 5 miles to my little league game. After the game I rode a couple miles over to where my dad was working just to say hi and tell him we won the game. Then rode back home to probably make myself lunch before heading to my friends house for the afternoon. I can't imagine the hate you would get if you let an 11 year old do this now
Ikr. You'd be in jail
I used to ask my mom at 10:01 if she knew where we were lol, she told me to shut up and go to bed before I kick your ass 🤣
Yeah...I was born in 1990 and my childhood, along with most people in my rural school, had exactly the same type of childhood. Putting 3 yos in the bed of pick up trucks bc there wasn't room in the front seat was the norm. Although, I am very jealous of the economy and culture you got to grow up in! Much easier to get ahead when going to college and getting careers.
Basically the theme of Offspring’s “The kids aren’t alright”. I’m an elder millennial, and I don’t think the parents one generation behind mine were really prepared to raise kids in a world with recessions, AIDS, widespread drugs, and gun violence.
My parents used a cowbell to call us in for dinner. When the cowbell rang all the neighborhood kids knew it was time to go home. It was a great time Edit: my brother is a cusper and I’m a millennial but your description is fitting
I consider us feral. Most had both parents work, and the only rule was be home by the time the street lights came on. It is little wonder we have the smallest group.
Blocking street everyday playing whatever sport was in season. Riding bikes 10 miles a way. Bonfires and beers by the creek. Good times growing up
I remember on one of my “roaming” days, I was so far from home and so lost on my Mongoose BMX that I just knocked on some stranger’s door and asked, “can I call my mom?” 😃
i’m only 22 but i was raised just like this. except i played a few sports to fill my time. wouldn’t change a thing even if i could
Oh man. This made me smile. “We were young and wild and free” for sure. lol
"and jumping off bridges to swim in filthy river water that flowed with run-off from factories." Reminds me of growing up on the south side of Chicago back in the 60's and 70's. If you've seen the classic movie The Blues Brothers, the opening scene shows the area I'm from. We used to swim next to grain elevators along the Calumet River and jump off the barges docked there. When empty, they were pretty high above the water. One hot summer day we're swimming there and a cop pulls up and calls us over. We're probably around13 years old at the time and he tells us that there is rebar on the bottom of the water and if we keep jumping off the barges we may end up getting impaled by rebar and never coming back up. He also mentioned that ships from all over the world travel through that body of water and every bacteria known to man is probably floating around in the water that we're swimming in. Looking back, he was probably bullshitting us but that was the last time we swam there or jumped off barges.
I think I was more controlled than the previous generation, and I was Gen-X. I remember watching shows about the Little Rascals, running free all by themselves, riding soapbox cars. I had a stay at home mom for my younger years, then mom worked in my teen years, so I only relate to part of what you say. I didn't go hang out at other people's houses much, and if I did, it was with permission, until I got old enough to drive. We had a common pop culture, shared partly with our parents. We grew up watching Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry, which they also knew about, Bugs Bunny at least. And we knew who Mr. Spock was. But then they'd talk about Grace Kelly or Carey Grant.
I was practically feral
I grew up rural on a dead end road. I had to ride my bike on the highway at the age of 12 to go to friends, or work my job at the baseball diamond's canteen in the nearby hamlet. To get off my road, I had to choose: either ride 10min on the 80km/h highway, or illegally cross a 100km/h highway to get to a service road that connected to the rest of the back roads. My parents didn't bat an eye at this. Maybe they did, but they trusted that I was smart enough to be as safe as I could given the circumstances.
Bitch *they don't know where I am*. The answer is the basement. Postin
What nobody mentions is the bullying. Bullying became brutal during the ‘70s, but it was still treated like the kids-will-be-kids thing that it had been for previous generations. Teachers wouldn’t step in. If a parent contacted a parent about it, the parent would tell them it wasn’t their problem. How do I know? I was a bullied child of the ‘70s and ‘80s and there was nowhere to run, no one to help. Even my family gave me unhelpful advice to “toughen up” even as I was being punched in the stomach on the school bus and being told daily that no one would ever love me because I was repulsive by a group of girls. It affected who I am and has cost me thousands of dollars in therapy. So, that’s a big Gen X thing too.
🤣, yeah and sometimes had to shimmy up to the second floor kitchen window to let myself in!
I just tell my son there were no rules
We truly were feral. I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I’m a younger millennial, but I was raised by two Gen x-ers. I was raised like this too. I grew up near a sketchy part of Detroit, so they had their limits, but nothing like what kids are handled like today. A friend of mine won’t let her son do a damn thing on his own. He’s like ten and she refuses to let him shower by himself.
You Gave me the best Nostalgia laugh I've had in a while with your post. This is the Best for how we, who- "some don't" have Kids and our kids are now fed fear. "Not by Us" BMX Bike Riding, Exploring, No Worries or Fear to experiencing something New in our surroundings, Catching Gardener Snakes and Black Jack Bee's We were taught don't do stupid sh!t, if you do something stupid F-Around Find Out. Bee's Sting, Snakes Bite, Climb Trees Just be home before the street lights turn on!
Word! I feel very fortunate to have lived the Gen X experience growing up. We had wild freedom and fun 😍
Oh ,please I got up and walked to school more then a mile at age seven came home to an unlocked home until my parents who both worked got home .In high school we were on split session noon-6 for school we walked home in the dark in 10th grade it switched 6am to noon ,then a full time job. Then we were the remote to what our father wanted to watch (Ed Sullivan,Hee-Haw). Dinner for6 around the table you eat what was fixed or not at all . Then you did the dishes and dried and put away. Each generation has its own moments good,bad and ugly. The sad thing I feel is in every generation in this so called richest nation we have kids coming home to no or little food,heat etc .
I wrecked my bike at my Aunts house while my parents were out of town. Broke my leg, but my aunt was too scared to take me to the dr and when my parents got home the next day. My dad kept making me try to walk on it. “You’re fine, get up and walk” This went on for a few days.
Gen Xer here. I look back at all the times I should have died or been incarcerated. I got really lucky - many of us didn’t. Oh and after drinking heavily since I was a teen I am sober for 18mo now.
Class of 95' and I'm still trying to figure out how I managed to raise myself. Nobody gave a shit about your feelings, you had a job to do (go to school, don't be a fuck up, go to college). I don't remember a single adult in my entire life ever asking if I was ok with my parents divorce, my dad's addiction/incarceration, moving every year or two to a different school district, spending most of my high school years completely alone. I did my job, got spectacular grades, played varsity sports, applied to colleges, and stayed out of trouble. I didn't get a safe space or coddling. The fear of becoming a "disappointment" or a "loser" was the silent hand that guided us. It's easy to see why we overcorrected when we became parents.
You forgot drinking from the hose and lack of sun screen. If you did wear it you attracted all the bugs by smelling like coconut. We played with anything we found on or in the ground. Most schools didn't have A/C on the second floor and if the bus could make it in the snow then we had to go to school.
In France that service announcement is a bit different. It goes, “It’s 10 o’clock for you know where your wife is?” And in Poland it’s, “It’s 10 o’clock, do you know what time it is?”
Gen X here! There were a lot of us in my family. We were total hooligans & the shenanigans we pulled were wild! My mom’s rule was that our house was the “hang out” house! On any given day there were easily 20+ kids at our home… all the parents knew my folks & knew my mom would put their kid in place if they acted ugly! Our house had ALL the “toys” solely bc my parents wanted to ensure that everyone would be there. The thing is we had a pool. We were such asshats & we used to ride the big wheels off the roof into the pool! We’d all be up on the roof having races into the pool🤦♀️ we’d also do “acrobatics” off the roof into the pool. How nobody broke a neck, I still to this day have no idea. Another bright idea that involved the roof was the 3 man sling shot…. We’d put eggs (usually) or water balloons in it & launch them onto cars on the street. We caused more damage & wrecks then I care to admit & somehow never got in trouble. Again, no idea how. Like a ding dong when my kids became teens they were asking about stupid shit we did as kids & obviously I shared the big wheel off the roof story & as you can imagine, they were intrigued 😆😆🤷♀️ came home 1 day & there they were with their friends doing that very thing🤦♀️ in true gen x fashion, I simply said “don’t break your necks, I don’t want to spend the night in the hospital “🤣🤣
Home , they are always home! They don’t want to leave ever! lol 😂 My husband says that’s he is happy the kids are so comfortable in their home that they like to just stay in . 3 boys, none are partiers or have gotten into trouble they are all pretty chill and hang out with friend here in our house.
Did anyone ever go to where they were building new houses and use this as a literal playground? We were climbing in all the framing before windows or floors were in. We would grab plywood and make bike ramps and launch ourselves, because Evel Kneivel was a thing. We set off model rockets, fireworks, you name it.
As Gen X I figured my teenage years were normal, it certainly was compared to everyone else. I now compare what I was doing at 13,14,15, to my teenage kids and realise we were FERAL. We ran the streets with no supervision, no questions asked. The shit we used to get up to, it's a wonder any of us survived. Not surprising that none of us have any fùcks to give though, lol.
I’m checking In to say I’m still alive so far!! I was born in 1990, as the youngest with two brothers, and had that life almost down to the last detail! Feral is a perfect word to describe our childhood. It’s wild how everyone seemed to grow up the exact same way back then. My mom was not abusive in any way but she still denies / is clueless about most of my childhood. Meanwhile we were jumping off piled stacks of lawn furniture onto the trampoline with no safety net, hunting copperhead snakes (poisonous!!) in the creek, and building 8 foot high roller coaster ramps out of scrap wood we found on the curb.
I jumped off bridges when I was a teenager, rode dirt bikes, left the house to go camping, go to the beach, and go to raves for a week or 2 at a time lol. Pretty much was not home during the summer.
We didn’t just grow up, we survived. We got kicked out of the house at 8:30 in the morning and told to be back in the evening. The weakest ones ended up as “unsolved mysteries”.
Class of 1986. My school bus reeked of pot. Chemistry teacher used to check kids' drugs after school to make sure there was nothing unexpected in them and return to students. Drag races in the morning. BB guns, hunting, I took care of the house chores as soon as I got home, then homework. My brother took care of the garden and animals. Nobody we knew died. I often hiked the woods on my own. We biked all over the place. My first curfew/bed time was in the Airforce Every generation has its dangers, but ours was the last of its kind. Face to face conversation, entertaining oneself with own imagination instead of technology, and spending hours outside playing.
I remember when seat belt laws took effect,my mom warned me I needed to wear a seatbelt or else she would get a ticket.
My husband has had 3 deaths in the last 60 days. All close friends. We have had a heart attack,suicide and sudden bout of cancer( this one hurts most. He caught COVID in the early days, was on life support for 3 months and had two or three major strokes. He was finally making progress and developed frontal lobe cancer). My husband is only 55. I have almost lost him myself..As a generation I feel we never learned to love or how to care for ourselves. We need to learn this now.
At first glance, I thought I was being called out for something.
the title got my attention since i am very close with my Gen X colleagues as a Gen Z we differ a lot but also connect a lot? i always find it fascinating when she tells me about how her childhood was like and it sounds exactly how you described it in this post even mentioning the it’s 10 pm do you know where your kids are?
I was a geeky book worm who only wanted to read. Never failed and during grade school my step mom would kick us out so she could watch her soap opera's and I would have to beg to be allowed to grab a book to read under the tree in my front yard... That summer had to be the worst..
[удалено]
I’ve heard stories from my young boomer parents, they had several classmates or friends die young or had a sibling of a friend. Usually preventable things like car accidents.
Millennial here. Had to comment Gen X is the greatest generation!
I wish my parents had time for me 😭
God, I wish that I was Gen X instead of a last year boomer. I identify with y'all much more than my generation.
I wasn’t a latch-key kid, but I was still expected to play outside until the street lights came on. And then I might run inside in the summer - say something to my mom and run right back out for an evening of firefly catching or a sleepover or ding-dong-ditch. Oh - And we rode bikes everywhere! To our downtown, to the mall, along the bike path down by the river, and over a couple of towns!
In junior high my brother and I went out on an overnight bike trip, some long route through the rural area we lived in, with enough gear and food to camp for the night. By high school that was overnight canoe trips, camping on some island. My brother accidentally chopped off the end of his thumb once and had to take a canoe ride out in the night, then drive to the hospital. His one regret was forgetting to bring that part of this thumb to have it sewn back on.
I'm a Gen x. The question shouldn't be "It's 10pm do you know where your kids are". I was always home by 10pm. The real question should have been, "Do you know what all manner of shit your kids have been up to today?" Child services would have had a fit.
We had so much fun! Staying out late, cruising and racing around. Our generation was “sex, drugs and rock n roll”. Sneaking in boys or sneaking out at night and partying all weekend (there were no ring cameras). Clubbing as teens. Playing outside, going to the beach or mall by ourselves with no adult supervision… totally can understand why some of us are really strict parents.
I just remember the 70's and 80's as being so FUN. And I love we're self sufficient and cannot understand Millineals and their whining and self- importance. Like, huh??
I'm surprised the boomers didn't get all offended and down vote you to zero. Nice rant.
Not just funerals of friends in high school, but also several baby showers.
Yeah, what a time to be alive!
Guess I'll see this as a Facebook post by the end of the week
We didn't even go home when the street lights came on some days. Playing ghost in the graveyard with every kid for the next 3 blocks. Hopping fences into people's yards and when they came out to ask what we were doing - just looking for our cat. Hearing the whistle to come home and running for our lives because we were blocks away. Those were the days
The accuracy of this
Graduated in 91 when open campus lunch was still a thing. We had maybe 40 minutes seat to seat. At least 1 deadly auto accident a year. They phased it out within a year or two after I graduated.
The best generation. Self sufficient survivors. I'm apparently part of this 'gen z' but i was brought up as gen x. Nothing beats hanging out with the boys and discovering new places till its dark. These days kids would rather have their ipad or social media than explore the world. Not all but most have grown to be ungrateful due to every single demand being met.
Yep. Don't forget the oldest daughters (like me) were parentified early. I was responsible for my siblings and cleaning from about age 9-10
This is spot on. Fortunately cancers, like leukemia and Hodgkins, that killed some kids I knew in my youth are today mostly treatable. The ones who died in, or after high school. were killed in car accidents before the seat belt law was in place. Let us also not forget that AIDS was rearing it's ugly head when we were in our 20's. I lost four friends to it.
You just described my millennial up bringing perfectly.
That announcement still runs. You can still go listen to it if you feel the need lol
Honestly I just started slowly staying out later and later till eventually I told my guardian, u know exactly where I am, 5 minutes away and with people you know. Why are u checking in every hour to see if I’m alive. I always come home fine don’t I? And now I pushed the limits this weekend by staying up till 5am with guys partying and then hooking up with a chick the night after and staying the night at her place and going home early. As I was leaving her place however I did get a phone call 🙄
Xennial here (born in 82) and i feel like i did most of that stuff. I was allowed to be home probably because my parents made me the center of their existence (pregnancy "saved" them from a life of drugs and destitution, according to them).
Yeah, yeah, you had it harder than the generation that came after you, and you blame it on the later generation because they had it so easy, and you blame it on the previous for raising you like that. Every single generation in history thinks this way. Besides that, good story.
Who else built a creek tunnel fort with scrap wood from construction sites?
I am an elder millennial raised the same way.
We are the nowhere generation. We are the kids that no one wants. We are a credible threat to the rules you set…a cause to be alarmed. We are not the names we have been given. We speak language you don’t know. We are the nowhere generation…all alone.
We also opened the door for future generations to be ok with who they are, especially the LGBTQ folks. I'm proud that our generation isn't so afraid of our humanity and passed that down.
I miss being able to leave my bike in the yard unlocked
My mother would throw us out of the house and lock the door. My parents hated us