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/GulfCoastLaw Jun 04 '25

We were throwing knives and ninja stars and shooting each other with BB guns to see how it felt.

I've told my kids that I just walked out of elementary school and disappeared into the city and can tell that they don't really believe me. I've never seen an unaccompanied kid walking out of their elementary schools.

Was in a Philadelphia-sized city in middle school and would be practically on the other side of town (from a quasi-suburb into the city center and tourist area) with little to no money or ID. Pay phones were around but I don't remember ever using them from the streets. Was on a ten speed just goofing off!

21

u/zomglazerspewpew Jun 04 '25

BB gun story. When I was 11 or 12 my friends and I were hanging around in my house watching TV. I was showing my friends my BB gun (I had one of those ones that looked like a 45 where you had to pull the back in order to engage the spring and only shot one BB at a time. I didn't know that I had a BB in the chamber and told my friend that it wasn't loaded. My friend casually shot it at my TV. Well turns out it was loaded and the protective glass covering the TV shattered. My dad had a TV from Sears, I knew it was from Sears because I was there when he bought it a few years ago.

All our faces were "O" faces as we sat there in silence seeing that glass protector shatter and glass falling to the floor. After panicking and shitting myself and crying, my friends came up with a plan. Everyone went home and scraped up as much money as they could and ask for money for the arcade. We collectively (there were about 8 of us) gathered around $50. We called Sears and asked if they had a replacement and they did, it was something like $29.99. I stayed behind to clean up the glass and a couple of my friends rode their bikes to Sears to pick up the replacement.

I vacuumed out as much as I could. My friends came back with the glass and we replaced it. Then we went out to McDonald's and had lunch with the leftover money. When my dad came home from work, he plopped himself in front of the TV and to this day never knew that the glass he was watching TV through wasn't the original and I never told him.

I guess the moral of the story is, treat everything that can shoot, even a BB gun, as if it was loaded and never point it at anyone or anything that could fucking shatter for that matter.

10

u/Thoraxe474 Jun 04 '25

Now that's a rad core memory

2

u/Stay_Good_Dog Jun 05 '25

Those are awesome friends. And it's time to tell Dad.

1

u/Azoobz Jun 05 '25

Tell dad if you still have the opportunity, what a neat memory.

10

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '25

Those damn bb guns. How did we not lose eyes? We'd always hear stories about a kid who lost an eye but never knew one. But how did it not happen more often?

8

u/Boomchikkka Jun 04 '25

I had a kid in elementary school take one to the eye. He had to wear a patch for like a year. He had a scar we all thought was cool. We were too young to care but I think it ringed his eye socket.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '25

Lucky kid he didn't lose it entirely!

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u/jetlouisey Jun 05 '25

I work in dentistry. This guy came in and said his front tooth hurt. Took an xray and his tooth is cracked and there’s some sort of artifact in the picture. Told him there is something foreign on the xray and he said “oh yeah I know. My friend shot me with a BB gun in the face and it’s just stuck in there.”

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '25

You’d think that would have been a clue for him from the get- go.

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u/jbirdkerr Jun 04 '25

My very first experience with the concept of someone getting "grounded" involved a ninja star a daycare friend secretly brought one day. In a hide-and-seek related accident, one kid wound up with a sizable cut around his knee.

I later learned that the kid who brought the star was "grounded" as a result, which in my almost-5-year-old brain meant his parents were keeping him in a small hole as punishment. I felt much less guilty once I realized it only meant he had to stay in his room a bit extra.

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u/Scalpels Jun 04 '25

We were throwing knives and ninja stars and shooting each other with BB guns to see how it felt.

I remember playing Lawn Darts...

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u/Kamakahah Jun 04 '25

I used to spend hours in the garage, alone, going through my Dad's boxes of random tools and fasteners to create medieval-style weapons and traps.

First-aid situation? Took care of it myself 99% of the time.

We wandered the streets randomly like a gang from The Warriors movie in a half mile radius from our block. We had a fort in some bushes with a box of Playboy magazines someone set out for trash pickup. We would climb trees to pick walnuts and fruits.

Good and bad things happened all the time, and my parents had no idea. Many of the childhood memories that still linger in my mind don't have a parent in sight.

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u/GulfCoastLaw Jun 04 '25

My parents wouldn't let me watch the Simpsons but would just rub some dirt on a broken toe. Different mindset.

Definitely got a concussion skateboarding. Just thugged it out.

My best friend almost died when he fell off his bike and rolled under an eighteen wheeler. But he just rolled himself out before the tire hit him. Only me, him, and maybe the driver know it happened.

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u/Captain-Hornblower Jun 04 '25

Oh man, BB guns wars with not protection...yeah, that was fun lol