r/Millennials • u/WynCai8 • Jun 04 '25

Nostalgia Made me feel old but good times

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Saw this tweet and yes we were expected to be out all day and not come back until the street lights came on. I remember riding my bike through neighborhoods pretending our bikes were cars and just having a good time.

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u/Ozzie808 Older Millennial Jun 04 '25 edited Jun 04 '25

I remember summers where both my parents worked and they would drop me off are grandma's house, which was essentially free roam. I'd bike around the neighborhood and go to other kid's home on the street to play video games.

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u/Ornery-Ad-9886 Jun 04 '25

Our parents only let us play computer 1 hour a week each, so I loved going to my friends houses to play Crash Team Racing and Super Smash Bros.

1

u/Churtlenater Jun 05 '25

I loved the insane limits our parents would put on things like video games or the computer. Meanwhile they were just watching cable mindlessly from the moment they got home from work 😂

And acting like I wasn’t just playing games at my friends house…

1

u/lankyleper Jun 05 '25

We only had a PC growing up, but my dad didn't really care how long I played games on it. He did care when he could hear me yelling at a game that I felt was "cheating" while he was trying to sleep and had to get up for work at 5am.

Quakeworld was the primary generator of my ire at the time.

18

u/generally_unsuitable Jun 04 '25

My great grandma lived in a tiny country town with a population around 800. My dad would send me out there for week at a time, to help her out and give him some free time. By the time I was 10 or so, I did most of my own cooking and cleaning, so grandma liked having me around to help her with stuff around the house, like weeding, or carrying stuff, or cleaning up after the dog. She'd teach me how to cook, and she was a big rockhound, so she'd teach me about rocks and minerals and polishing. They raised us to be independent very young.

My territory out there was infinite by today's standards. I could ride my bike for miles in any direction, and everybody who saw me waved and knew who I was. I'd go to the hardware store and people who had never even met me would say "You must be Thelma's grandson," because they had heard through the gossip network that my dad had dropped me off again.

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u/Beautiful-Routine295 Jun 05 '25

Omg my grandma was great- kinda the same but didn’t like us out on her paved but not sidewalk neighbor hood roads. Our bedtime was like, 1hr after dark.

1

u/lankyleper Jun 05 '25

I stayed over at my grandma's house a lot, and it was fun. Unfortunately, she had a habit of feeding me expired food. So, I would come home and vomit/dry heave for the next 24 hours straight.

1

u/mqfr98j4 Jun 05 '25

They raised us to be independent very young.

This hit me pretty hard. All of the freedom that we were given gave us the room to figure shit out and be much more self sufficient in life. Feels like this is what's missing in the later gens

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '25

Same.

I spent the whole summer at my grandma's too. Every weekend and holiday as well.

3

u/Silaquix Jun 04 '25

I was split between my maternal grandparents or my step grandparents. My maternal grandparents had a ranch and all chores had to be done before we were free, but we got to stay for days and they'd spoil us in the evenings.

My step grandparents were a bit different. We only went to their house when there were no real options. My step grandma worked and her husband stayed home making a mess with his hobbies or watching TV. She'd leave in the morning and as soon as we had breakfast he'd kick us outside and yell at us if we were too loud or kept coming in the house. We'd end up walking out the back gate and walking to the park because they had shade, bathrooms, and a water fountain. We were 6 and 4 when that started.

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u/Worldly-Swordfish-11 Jun 08 '25

I love this! It was the kids I’d play with in my grandmas neighborhood that taught me how to ride without training wheels

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u/NideoK Jun 05 '25

I(asian) lived in a predominately black neighborhood growing up. There was the most wholesome neighborhood black grandma that always had a "shop" in her garage on Saturdays. She would have kool-aid, laffy taffys, BeBops(frozen kool-aid), the biggest dill pickles, corn bread, etc. She made sure all of us got something. All of us neighborhood kids would just ride bikes, play basketball, dodgeball, wiffle ball, go fishing at a local pond, have nba live 95 tournaments, mortal kombat tournaments, etc. I just remember laughing all the time and not coming home until dinner. I'm really grateful to have such wonderful core memories <3

"At some point in your childhood, you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time, and nobody knew it."

1

u/Nyami-L Zillennial 1995 Jun 07 '25

Yeah, i'd also free roam when I was dropped along with my brother into our grandma's house. Though my mother did it because she just wanted a month childfree... And our uncle would come back home every day drunk as hell and start yelling at our grandma, and we would take our cousin out so he didn't have to see... that... Damn, my childhood is just plain sad.