"When I was kid..."

[lugaru]

Figured I would bring in a little fun and nostalgia to the forum, and get to know you all a bit better. Mine:

- Tag was fun, but moreso on a bicycle.
- OMG the Nintendo looked realistic compared to the Atari.
- Between you and everyone you know, you could put together a decent number of Joes and Transformers.
- Your parents would send you to buy beer and cigarretts for them.
- If an adult caught you with fireworks, he would usually join in.
- Jumping off a roof, getting hit by a rock or falling off a bike was a totally mundane, nearly weekly thing.
- Saturday morning cartoons started at 4 am and ended at 2 pm, especially if you re-watched them on another channel.
- Matches, paperclips, rubber bands, superglue, electrical wires, batteries, box cutters and screw drivers where part of an average toybox.
- Everything I needed to know about grown up life could be discovered in comics... I'm surprised I'm not married to the clone of a prior dead girlfriend at this point.

[thalaw2]

 - Using your imagination to play with your toys, outside with other kids, was the preferred method of spending play time.
- Didn't need vaccinations because getting sick was best way to get over most illnesses.
- Germs were cool.

[Talavar]

- Using your imagination to play with your toys, outside with other kids, was the preferred method of spending play time.
- Didn't need vaccinations because getting sick was best way to get over most illnesses.
- Germs were cool.

You grew up before smallpox?  Colour me impressed.

[Tomato]

- VHS was the shizznit.
- The cool kid on the block was the one with the best Batman figures
- Jumping from a shed, bouncing off a trampoline, then landing on the ground was a brilliant idea
- Online fan discussion meant sifting through dozens of AOHELL groups to find the ONE that actually pertained to you
- Animorphs was the greatest book series ever
- If you got the chicken pox, much celebration was had by all (except you). If one of your parents got it... ZOMG THE WORLD IS ENDING!
- Comic book based cartoons actually looked like actual comic book art
- DOS games found on floppy drives were a waste of weeks of free time
- If a character died, s/he stayed dead... except if it was Doctor Doom.
- Game doesn't work? Yank it out and blow on it.

[ow_tiobe_sb]

-The only folks speaking of upgrading to the latest Os were chemistry professors discussing a transition metal.
-The best thing on the Android market was Marvin (of HHGTTG fame).
-The only "Ga Ga" on the Radio featured a Queen and not a Lady.
-Microwave ovens were, well, kinda macro.
-Reality television did not play a role in your typical American family; on the other hand, the Louds played roles in An American Family, which was reality television.
-Fordism--which no longer referred to a penchant for driving a particular make of car--gave way to "flexible accumulation"--which no longer simply referred to one's limberness with respect to romantic prowess--as the new dominant, capitalist paradigm.
-At the movies, director Steven Spielberg lost an ark but gained a terrestrial surplus.
-Police who pulled you over were impressed that you could use your hand to hold a telephone to your ear whilst driving.

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Whirled Braker

[Randomdays]

Comics went from 12 cents to 35 cents
- Saturday morning cartoons went from great (Space Ghost, Herculoids, Shazzan) to "educational" (Superfriends, Shazam, Isis)
- When I got my $5 allowance, I would ride my bike to the 7-11 and get a slurpee and comics from the comic rack - no such thing as a comic book store.
- To get my allowance, I had to actually work for it, mowing the lawn, pulling weeds, etc.
- I could take off on my bike for a whole afternoon and my parents wouldn't have to worry about me - not as many sicko's out there.
- Halloween trick or treating was still house to house - once again, no sickos.
- putting a baseball card in your bike spokes was cool.
- Laying Hot Wheels tracks throughout the house was cool.
- Army men were cool.
- "Dangerous" toys were still around - cap guns, Daisy BB gun rifles, wood burning kits, chemestry kits.
- You actually thought that some of the ads in the comics were cool and you wanted to order them - Sea Monkeys, X-Ray specs, pepper gum.
- In the ads, a superhero could defeat a bad guy with Twinkies or Hostess cupcakes.
- Instead of the sitcoms all being about another modern family with a couple of quirks, we had witches, spies, genies, martians, monsters, rock groups, people stuck on a desert island, in a fort or in the pacific in WW2. Action shows had wild west spies, space ships, giants, and submarines, fighting monsters, aliens and dinosaurs. Lets hear it for DVD season sets bringing 'em back.

[thalaw2]

- Using your imagination to play with your toys, outside with other kids, was the preferred method of spending play time.
- Didn't need vaccinations because getting sick was best way to get over most illnesses.
- Germs were cool.

You grew up before smallpox?  Colour me impressed.

Well...actually I grew up after it was pretty much eradicated in the region I was living in.  Therefore, didn't need the vaccine.  So, unfortunately, can't color you impressed.   

[UnfluffyBunny]

- games came on cassettes and took 3 minutes to get to the start up screen
- floppy discs were the size of cd cases
- console games came in colour (if you switched the plastic sheet on the screen)
- you could do anything in a game with a D-pad and 3 buttons
- when game characters were updated they actually looked different
- 20 poly's was ground breaking 3D
- going to the arcade for hours and playing violent games didn't imply you had a personality disorder
    (ok ok i'll do some non-computer stuff now )
- rpg's were books where you have to turn to specific pages depending on your choices
- kids were happy with a deck of cards
- handsaws, chisels and hammers, with real wood, were educational toys
- parents encouraged listening to bands such as iron maiden, guns and roses and metallica
- fast food was mcdonalds, kentucky fried chicken and pizza hut, and you went to one of them as a treat once a week if you were really good (not the staple of people's diets it is nowadays ¬_¬)
- vampires were in horror movies, not chick flicks (even if you want to press it and call in interview with a vampire, atleast they were still REAL vampires)
- CHILDREN DIDN'T CURSE

[Tomato]

- CHILDREN DIDN'T CURSE

Yeah, but our parents were usually smarter about it. I don't remember my dad (former career army) cursing in the house until the last 5 years or so. Beyond that, I don't recall parents ever freaking out the way some do now (which means kids curse more just to troll them).

[chuckles]

- Playing marbles was a social activity
- Poor kids had die-cast cars not Hot Wheels
- Cereal had prizes
- Milkmen delivered milk
- Candy was a penny
- Not every kid got an award
- Boys had pocket knives (even in school)
- Girls played jacks
- Some boys played jacks
- Hippies were everywhere
- Reform school was our deterrent 
- Children were "left behind"
- Viet Nam was protested
- Music was "Groovy"
- We were younger
- No one was Politically Correct

[lugaru]

- Playing marbles was a social activity

At my school marbles was a crime syndicate rivaling the movie Casino. It was not often that the marbles came out and when they did a few kids lost a bunch and it would get banned for a while.

A few more:

- Steal some traffic cones and you can close a street down for a good soccer game, at least until the cops or somebodies parents found out.
- All a soccer game needs is a ball and 4 bricks to mark the two goals. Maybe that is why it is the 3rd world game of choice.
- The craziest thing peer pressure got me to do was a first communion and church for a couple of years.
- Abandoned houses or houses under construction where ripe for spelunking.
- Reading was a daily source of entertainment.

[Tawodi Osdi]

-$2 every other week could buy a handful of comics with money for a little candy left over
-additional funds could be obtained by scouring the ditches for returnable bottles
-on a hot summer night, taking your blanket out to sleep in the front yard on a main street and being perfectly safe
-Super hero and GI Joe "action figures" were tall enough to push Ken aside and show Barbie what a real man was like.
-cartoons were for Saturday mornings and after school. The rest of the time was for playing, usually outside.
-horror and sci-fi movies on late night TV and old comedies on Sunday afternoon TV.

[JeyNyce]

 - If a bully picked on you, you'll either beat them up or get in trouble from your Father for not defending yourself
- The Internet was for the military
- Comics were 75 cents
- Kids would meet up OUTSIDE and not ONLINE
- Your neighbor would tell your parents if you were misbehaving
- Arcade machines existed
- People used the word misbehave

[BWPS]

- Good music was just something you lucked into, either because your friend liked it or you gambled on a CD. And there was less of it.
- TV networks wouldn't take a chance on a show until they finally picked up the greatest show ever. That same network immediately made an even more successful and completely terrible clone of that show and didn't make anything original since. 3 nonfamous friends couldn't make a show about horrible people with an Irish pub, and no drama about 1960s advertisers or Chemistry teachers who sold meth and murdered people when it came up.
- People were the same as they've been in every point in history, they just dressed different.
- When a kid did something wrong, he was punished if his parents weren't divorced yet. It had no effect on what a terrible person he'd be in middle school.
- Video/computer games were irritating and forced you to backtrack or pixel-hunt or arbitrarily guess at things. If you left for a while, there'd be no objective to tell you what to do next and you'd have forgotten so games were often left stuck on some part and abandon a game for months at that state.
- There was no internet, and people had to complain about their stupid crap in newspapers or their friends.
- NO INTERNET.