The center of our neighborhood when I was a kid was a playground. We also used to "create" plays in the back yard that we basically preformed for ourselves. Many times our picnic table & benches were part of our scenery. (At one point, the picnic table bench was my balance beam-as I would pretend that I was in the Olympics.) And kids used to go out unsupervised all the time. We basically did what we wanted it just as long as we were home when the street lights came on. Now days, you wouldn't dare let a kid go out unsupervised. You hear about kids being snatched etc. I don't recall seeing neighborhood playgrounds any more. They are usually attached to schools.



Cat



speaking of neighborhood playgrounds...my mom would always tell me how they would always have activities at the local playgrounds....they would even have a little wagon with a stage that they would set up there and they would have talent shows and put on little plays and stuff for the neighbors. Kids back then knew how to entertain themselves.

Now that we may be on the same page; no I didn't think of the past at a younger age. When I was 15 or so, all
I could think about was when I would be able to drink and drive, though not necessarily at the same time,  ;D and I
would think about how I could get the hot little number in High School or even the girl down the street. It wasn't
until I graduated High School and was out on my own that I realized how I, "had it made," when I was younger.


Yeah, that makes sense (sorry if I wasn't totally clear before, lol). My parents were sorta like that too. From the times I've asked them, they didn't start missing aspects of the past until at least their 30s, probably more like 40 though....and even then, they didn't do it half as much as me now. Which they playfully give me a hard time about. ;D

speaking of neighborhood playgrounds...my mom would always tell me how they would always have activities at the local playgrounds....they would even have a little wagon with a stage that they would set up there and they would have talent shows and put on little plays and stuff for the neighbors. Kids back then knew how to entertain themselves.



In the summer, we had a "councilor" come with all sorts of "goodies"-arts & crafts stuff, coloring books, sports equipment, etc. She would orginize activities for the kids. Every week (or 2), we would have a "special" day. One time it was "Hat Day,"  "Costume Day", etc and there was judging in several catagories/prizes. Our favorite was always the "Saverger Hunt". We would have teams of 2 and was given a list. Then we would have to go to houses in the nieghborhood looking for these items. Yes, the entire neighborhood would be involved (similar to our Halloween which I have mentioned about in several threads). I can't remember if it was twice or once a week, our councilor would take the kids to a local pool. I only got to do this once because I was always too young (you had to be 8 to go) and when I was finally "of age", then we moved.  :\'( :\'(  The whole thing was almost like a day camp without the camp. The camp came to our neighborhood. I know they do something similar here in my town (in fact, I used to belong to the orginazation that put that program together).



Cat

In the summer, we had a "councilor" come with all sorts of "goodies"-arts & crafts stuff, coloring books, sports equipment, etc. She would orginize activities for the kids. Every week (or 2), we would have a "special" day. One time it was "Hat Day,"  "Costume Day", etc and there was judging in several catagories/prizes. Our favorite was always the "Saverger Hunt". We would have teams of 2 and was given a list. Then we would have to go to houses in the nieghborhood looking for these items. Yes, the entire neighborhood would be involved (similar to our Halloween which I have mentioned about in several threads). I can't remember if it was twice or once a week, our councilor would take the kids to a local pool. I only got to do this once because I was always too young (you had to be 8 to go) and when I was finally "of age", then we moved.  :\'( :\'(  The whole thing was almost like a day camp without the camp. The camp came to our neighborhood. I know they do something similar here in my town (in fact, I used to belong to the orginazation that put that program together).



Cat




that sounds really fun, Cat. 8)

The kids today have it too easy.  I wasn't alive in the old days, but growing up in the early 80s, we had no ipods, or hi def tVs or all these super graphics video games, and looking back now, I don't think i'd want that stuff back then.  When you grow up with not alot, you learn to appreciate later in life what you have when you can get alot

The kids today have it too easy.  I wasn't alive in the old days, but growing up in the early 80s, we had no ipods, or hi def tVs or all these super graphics video games, and looking back now, I don't think i'd want that stuff back then.  When you grow up with not alot, you learn to appreciate later in life what you have when you can get alot



What? No ipods? No hi def tvs? How did you ever survive?  ;) :D ;D ;D




Cat

Kids these days, they've got it so easy. Fire up the PC, click the mouse a few times, you've got all the porn you'll ever need right in front of you.

It wasn't like that back in the 80's. We actually had to go out and earn our porn.

Luckily for me, Rick and Jerry (we were probably about 12-13 at the time, which would've been around 1983-84), it just so happened that during that time there was a large residential subdivision under construction in our small town, and on the weekends when the construction workers weren't around we'd go exploring inside the half-finished houses. We quickly discovered that if porno magazines were like gold (which, to the average 13-year old male, they are), then a house that was under construction was like a gold mine.

Some kids our age moved into one of the new houses in the new subdivision right around that time, and although I got along with them all right (and sometimes I hung out with them) they were somewhat considered to be rivals to me, Rick and Jerry, mainly since we were all born on the same block and they were the newbies.

One summer, the "rival" kids built a fort in a field right next to the county road maintenance shops (which were just behind the new subdivision). A couple times late at night, we climbed over the 8-foot tall fence topped with barbed wire and into the lot outside the maintenance shops, because it was rumored that if you climbed inside the road graders and gravel trucks, they were a rich source of pornographic material as well. Needless to say, we were not disappointed.

Anyway, during one summer afternoon, we learned from a mutual friend that the "rival" kids were out of town on vacation and so Rick, Jerry and I decided to go on a mission to investigate this fort of theirs. When we arrived we quickly found that we had hit the mother lode. There were stacks and stacks of Playboys, Penthouses, Hustlers and Ouis. This was the Fort Knox of porn, and we had to raid it. But there must've literally been hundreds of them, way too many for us to carry.  So we each went home and got our wagons out of our parents' garages and grabbed some bookbags, and then we returned and cleared the place out. In hindsight I'm glad that my parents never caught me towing a wagonload of stroke books down the street at 3 in the afternoon because, well, I'm 36 years old now and I'd probably still be grounded if they would've seen me.

We got the porn safely back to Jerry's place, where we had spent a few afternoons converting an old tool shed in his backyard into our own fort, which we also used as a base of operations for our mudwhipping missions (which I'm sure I've mentioned here before somewhere). We spent many afternoons that summer hanging out and thumbing through the countless dirty magazines which we had amassed in out great raid.

Honestly? I'm almost glad we didn't have the Internet back then. It was so much more fun that way.

^ Must've missed this post before. ;)

Actually I was born in late 1981, but I paid attention to things pretty early and my meaningful memories go as far back as age 3-4. In some ways I'm probably like an "honorary 1977er" or so, because I know the mid '80s to some extent. Also, one of my best friends in Elementary school was four years older than me, so almost your age.

Yeah, I lived in both worlds at the same time until about 14 (when I definitely started considering myself more grownup). On the one hand, I liked watching shows like Unsolved Mysteries or stuff on VH1 and things that appealed to teens or adults, but I also still played water balloons, Super Soakers, rode bikes and many of the things you mentioned too.

My parents are different ages, but are generally Boomers in one way or another (my mom is 1954 and my dad is 1938). But almost all of my adult relatives had a youngish vibe to them for their ages and still basically do. They (as well as many of my friends/peers/classmates, or other people I knew as a kid) always liked some pop culture things in the '80s, explaining my early exposure to it - as well as some then-classic stuff too. I was always around cassettes, VCRs, video games and things like that.

Yeah, 5-6 years isn't really enough most of the time to seem like they're another generation, even if there's some minute differences. I've always been able to relate to 1975ers pretty well, and I now have come to feel the same with 1987ers. If you're dealing with only a few years gap like that, both people will more often than not relate to quite a bit of the same stuff, even if they didn't quite experience it on the same stage of life.

I think it takes more like 10 or 12 years to start really seeming like they're "different" people who are a little alien to you. Although this largely depends on who you ask. On a place like this dedicated to nostalgia, we might not be a totally accurate representation. We're probably more "old-school inclined" than certain people you'd interact with in the world. I have some friends a couple years older than me who are far less retroish than I am, and some are still almost like teenyboppers, lol.

There's, like 36-year olds who are into modern music, and 14-year olds who like classic rock. Especially as time goes on, tastes seem to be more individualistic with a little of everything depending on the person. I find this to be really fascinating, since you never know what to expect when you meet someone merely based on their age or appearance.

Good topic Marty, I think I'll add my experience here.

I grew up in the '90s, and I had video games(SNES, and then later the Sega Genesis), but to be honest I still spent most of my time outside playing with my brother, cousins, and neighbors. At one point, after I finally got the NES, I had 3 video games systems, but still I rarely spent more than 30 or 40 minutes playing video games at a time, and usually if I did play them I did so right before I went to bed, since it was dark and I couldn't play outside. Sure, I watched TV, but after watching about an hour of cartoons I would get bored and want to go outside and play anyway. The only time that I really spent alot of time watching TV was on Saturday mornings(but who didn't,lol). We didn't have a computer for along time(1999 I thing), so I basically had no experiences with computers at a young age.

I really don't know how much things have changed since then, I'm not really around little kids that much so I can't say from experience whether they spend more or less time outdoors than I did. I have noticed a few things though. Like back in the '90s Mp3 players, and cell phones were way too expensive for kids to have them, unlike today where your average 10 year old has both. When I was 10 I didn't even know what an Mp3 was,lol. Also most kids use the internet pretty regularly today, and usually at a pretty young age. We didn't have internet access at our house until I was 13, so I basically went my entire childhood without it.

^ Yeah, I also had both lives sort of co-existing at once back in the late '80s and early-mid '90s too. I always tried to balance indoor entertainment with doing things outside with kids at school, etc. Despite the huge amount of time I watched TV as a kid and very early teen (centrally 9 to 13-14), I made sure I never became a couch potato, lol.

While cellphones did proliferate enough in the second half of the '90s for them to be pretty common, there were still alot of people who didn't have them. Certainly you didn't see every other person in the mall who had them. It was all older teens and adults too.

Sure, I had "technology" when I was 10 too, but it seems like tapes and video games were alot less annoying, lol.