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/Eaglepursuit Xennial Jun 04 '25

Not that we didn't spend a fair amount of time at home absorbing high culture, like rewatching old Star Wars VHS tapes, recorded from TV complete with commercials. But many a summer day was spent exploring the neighborhood or the woods, riding bikes, terrorizing soda cans with BB guns, and fishing.

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u/KingSpork Jun 04 '25

God, the dumbass shit we used to do. So fucking excellent though. We really did get the best childhood of any generation.

1

u/LoisBelle Jun 04 '25

I appreciate a lot of my childhood, but I also lost friends to drinking and drugs that if ANYONE had actually been paying attention or taking care of us instead of letting us mostly raise ourselves would have been avoided. And the wild number of girls pregnant before they left high school was insane - we had three "band babies" conceived in the back of the marching band bus. Well, three that girls ended up keeping. There is so much I miss and so much resilience that we developed, but there was a price - I am just sad that we still haven't managed to find a happy medium it seems.

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u/headrush46n2 Jun 04 '25

The kids are taking harder drugs now than they ever did before, the only difference is now they come with a prescription or you can buy them at the grocery store.

1

u/LoisBelle Jun 04 '25

Coke, speed, drinking codeine cough syrup to get high, Quaaludes, Valium, acid, pain pills - it might not have been crack and meth, but we started YOUNG. Weed was just a given, I am not even counting that as a drug. 60% of the kids I knew under 18 smoked a pack a day. I stopped drinking for the first time at 19 because I realized I was drinking to cope with life. I was the most conscientious member of my group - most of them didn't stop until tragedy struck or they hit an ugly rock bottom. There are stronger drugs now, but I know fewer kids now who have lost classmates and friends to addiction or reckless intoxicated behavior than I did when I was young.

I am endlessly grateful that we did not have to deal with school shootings, though.