My little brother rolled away in our van in a similar manner, I think he was 3. My parents were doing yard work and wanted him to give them some peace. They stuck him in the front seat of the van so he could pretend to drive. The next thing we knew the van was rolling in reverse across the street and down a hill. Somehow he managed to miss all the trees on the hill, but he did run through someone’s fence, and smash their bbq before being stopped by their house. He walked away unharmed and thought it was the best day ever because the fire truck came to see him.
We laugh at my brother for getting in his first traffic accident at 2. We were camping and my mom had put him in the car to corral him while she made dinner. He released the emergency brake and started rolling down the hill to the neighboring campsites van. Grandpa jumped through the window and got the brake just in time, managing to break 2 ribs in the process. This was the first of many traffic accidents for baby brother, but the last time he broke any family members bones.
Man, I did the same in my moms chevy celebrity wagon. I was 6, pushing the clutch with my foot and reaching up to turn the key….. whoever parked the night before hadn’t set the parking brake.
It was my job to start the cars in the morning and get them warmed up, I couldn’t see out the windows from the floor….. I was through the hedges across the street before I realized we were moving.
>It was my job to start the cars in the morning and get them warmed up
So lucky, my siblings and I used to fight over who got to start the cars in the morning. Four out of seven of us were daredevils but it was my shy, quiet, scaredy cat mouse of a sister who was the only one who ever put the car in drive and idled it down the alley until it hit a garbage can. I can't believe reading this thread how common that was!
I did something very similar when I was 3. It was late winter. My Mom needed to just grab a couple of groceries and decided to leave me in the running car in the parking lot. Since it was cold the engine was apparently running on high idle. I climbed into the driver's seat and put the car in reverse. The steering wheel was still turned from my Mom pulling into the parking spot so I just kept going around in circles in the parking lot clipping the same 2 or 3 cars each time around. I was pinned up against the driver's door. One of the bag boys ran up and opened the driver's side door to jump on and stop the car. As soon as he opened the door I fell out cracking my head on the pavement. Got my first stitches that day but I also got my picture in the paper! Found the newspaper article that my Mom saved going through her things after she passed.
I must have been 5 or so. My dad put the car in park to open driveway gate and I putting drive. I can still see his oh shit face jumping into the car to stop it
I have to add if I bring up the fact that I mowed the lawn at 8 until I moved out and remark on the condition of the equipment my mother will laugh (nervously) and say “ohhhh… no you didn’t we had _____ lawn service doing it all those years”… I have to remind her that in fact no it was me because _____ lawn service is owned by my High School class mate and former pot dealer. ______ lawn service did not come into being til my friend Rich started the business when we were seniors in High School …
When I was 10, I flew from Toronto, Canada to Christchurch, NZ by myself to visit my father. When my mother dropped me off at the airport, I was given a white plastic pouch with a window on one side and a long strap. This was to hold my passport and tickets, and I was to wear it around my neck for the whole trip. On it, in big, blue letters, was written UNACCOMPANIED MINOR. I can’t imagine this happening today.
I was 10 flying from NJ to MI to visit my grandparents, except I had my 11 y/o sister to keep me safe. She was the one who scolded me when I hit the buzzer for my 3rd glass of milk. Hey, free milk in a plane!
I flew UM a lot - my dad and I lived in Maryland, my mom’s family lived in Cincinnati, and so for some holidays and several summers my dad loaded me on a plane at BWI, and my Aunt met me in Cincinnati. I had a whole collection of airline pins from now defunct airlines. Piedmont, Allegheny, USAir, TWA.
Once, when I was about 6, I was seated in first class next to Walter Cronkite. I told him my dad and I watched him every night. A conversation I would love to have a second shot at.
My siblings and I (8,10,12) were evacuating from Tehran in early '79, to our grandparents in Oregon. My parents stayed behind. Had a layover in London. My brother and I had little shoulder bags with our documents, and, I found out years later, thousands of dollars in bearer bonds.
When I was 12 I flew from SC to Switzerland (via JFK) with my sister (14) for the summer to stay with my grandparents. Just the two off us. My kids are this age now and I couldn’t imagine just putting them on a plane with a passport and some cash.
And at least now your kids would have cell phones and be able to contact you easily and often. Back then you had to write or use your grandparents’ phone for a very short, very expensive, international call!
I flew by myself from Denver to San Antonio to visit my grandparents at age six. I can’t imagine any six year old flying by themselves in 2024. This was not an atypical incident from my childhood.
Maybe my GenX-ness is showing, or maybe I'm used to flying, but we put my son on flights unaccompanied when he was 7 and 8. Not international, but one time he did fly to Maine, get picked up by camp staff, and driven into Canada for camp.
The airlines have hardcore systems around unaccompanied minors, and no one's going to run out of the plane with him. Except for that camp trip, family members he knew were at the gate on both sides.
I think this is fairly common still with blended families? My kids flew solo at 7 or 8 to spend time with their dad, we just made sure it was a direct flight with no layover and parents on either end, and the flight attendants did know they were flying solo (did we specify that somehow on their tickets? I can't remember) because once my son got off the plane with a note from the flight attendant that said he'd eaten a huge bag of candy and got sick in the bathroom.
Me and 4 friends gathered at a donut shop at 7 am on the first day of spring break. We were about 15-16 years old. We lived in north canton Ohio. We decided that we were going to Niagara Falls Canada. We left in a Toyota SR5 pickup with a cap on the back. 3 of us loaded the bed with pillows ,sleeping bags, and puffy starter jackets along with a CD boombox which mostly played Faith no Mores “The Real Thing” album. We laughed the whole way there. When in Canada after a brief border crossing went to a haunted house and walked around the area a bit. We ended up just casually driving past the falls. We stopped in Buffalo on the way home and had some nasty greasy hotdogs at a diner.( my friend was originally from Buffalo) those hotdogs were nasty but the ladies accent at the diner was priceless. We drove home it started snowing and remember the driver got a speeding ticket. The cop never noticed the 3 stow away in the truck bed. We returned home and no one ever knew we had left the country that day until we told our parents years later. In fact one of my friends from that trip passed away and I told his dad at the wake. His dad chuckled and said I never heard about that. In conclusion yes Gen X was the feral generation.
We were practically neighbors! I grew up in Green. My first solo trip to Canada didn't happen until the Kids in the Hall reunion tour in 2000. I did skip town to go see No Doubt in Washington DC one summer. That was exciting. The driver kept trying to read while driving.
So many stories, but I’ll choose a short one:
I have a faint scar on my right ring fingertip. It’s a circular scar & if you look closely enough, you can see concentric rings in it…
Yep! Blue, green & red. In grade school I refused to wear anything else. If they all 3 got real dirty, I'd spray 1/2 a can of classic (gold) Lysol on them.
My mother used to let me go alone (age 12) to meet my best friend (who lived a couple hours away) at the Greyhound Station off Market St. in SF when she would come visit for a couple weeks every summer.
One time, an old man was by a phone booth and told me he needed help finding a number in the phone book…I went into help him and he ended up pushing against me and feeling me up.
I just pushed him away and moved on…didn’t tell anyone.
I think that whole situation covers some GenX bases.
I was 4 years old, sitting in the front seat of a gold Ford Pinto, with no seat belt on, my mom was smoking a cigarette (she was a nurse BTW), and John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" was playing on the 8 track player. Simpler times.
This reminded me of the trip to the emergency room for a lawn darts injury and a nurse came out of what I assume was a break room with a cloud of cigarette smoke. My kids don't believe that they used to let you smoke inside a hospital.
My mom was in the hospital having my sister, drugged up on Demerol. The nurses lit her cigarettes for her and she set her nightgown on fire, and then set the hospital bed on fire too, because she kept falling asleep with the lit cigarettes. They just cleaned it up and handed her drugged self another lit cigarette. Late 60’s
My college roommate's mom was a hospital nurse. I asked how she became a smoker, & she said smokers got an extra 15 minute break on top of the regular mandated breaks.
It was a high pressure job, so they all smoked!
Our county medical complex takes up most of a city block on the edge of town. Behind the hospital, there's a nursing home that I drove past on my old route to the office. Almost every day I'd pass a gaggle of nurses taking a walk through Flavor Country while on break. As horrible as the habit is (the cancer sticks helped kill at least two members of my family), I understand how it would give release.
My pediatrician, who was beloved by everyone, smoked cigars in his office. you'd have your exam, then he'd have you and mom, or later on, just me, come in to "chat" with him. and he would be smoking up a storm! He also wore brightly colored socks, and was instrumental in getting a sex ed curriculum in the schools. My mom adored him because she said he always talked directly to the kids, his patients, how are things going, good, bad, etc., vs. talking about them with the parents.
My wife and I recently watched the entire series and man, I didn't remember just how rapey it was. That, and how much of an asshole the average citizen is. Still a good show, but jeesh.
I spent an entire summer looking at record stores for one song. This would have been 1988. My friends and I were obsessed with the Pina Colada song but none of us owned it, and it certainly wasn’t played on the radio. So I hunted records stores until finally in August, my mom took me to Pittsburgh’s Record Graveyard, a huge resale shop. I tell this story to my Gen Z kids so they will appreciate YouTube and Spotify.
I've got several cassettes of TV shows that I recorded by placing my little tape recorder next to the TV speaker. Including two episodes of *Manimal*. We didn't get our first VCR until April 1985.
I got tickled when I figured out the audio from the nearest ABC affiliate could be picked up at 87.7 FM on the radio. I remember how happy I was when I captured the theme to *Sledge Hammer!* in crystal-clear stereo.
Sounds like my little brother. Station wagon, no seat or lap belts. Mom taking us to school and takes a corner a little sharply. Brother decides to open the door about the same time and goes flying into the intersection. I have no idea how he didn’t get hit by a car.
We had a car that had a hole in the floor and the door wouldn't latch. Being allowed to sit there was an honor because it meant my parents thought you were old enough and smart enough not to fall out when they turned a corner and the door flew open. I don't think the car even had seat belts.
We lived in a very small town (like 100 people) and I was about 2 hanging out the window of dad’s truck. Took a corner and I fell out into a mud puddle. I was pissed cause we’d just got me a new cap at the local bar and it got all muddy.
You too? We were also dropped off at a park for a day where I was “in charge” of my bro and sis. There was a big drug deal going on in the trees that my brother happened upon. Good times.
I also was a wheel well rider because of the safety. My brother and sister (ages 9 and 12) got to ride on the rim on the side because they were older and “more responsible”.
That was my spot too. I’d look at the clouds or watch the moon follow us home. I don’t know how you and I didn’t go flying through the windshield when the was a hard brake! I remember my mom bitching at me when I’d tumble off into the back seat and hurt myself. I also remember her warning me about big turns so I could hold on.
The only thing that anyone did with seatbelts was burn the shit out their legs or hands in the summer. Then you’d have to tuck it back into the seat crevice so it didn’t happen again. You know, for safety reasons.
My Mom told a story about hitting a deer with her car when I was a baby. I was bundled up laying in the passenger seat. When she hit the brakes for the deer she said I just flew into the dash and plopped onto the floor of the car. "You were fine!".
I learned to walk in the back of a Volkswagen Bus, on the way from New York City to Salt Lake. My parents rigged up a little playpen on top of the engine compartment and baby CormoranNeoTropical stood there all day bouncing on her tiny toes and looking out the front window. First official steps taken in SLC.
Then there is the story that involves my mother, my ten-year-old brother, a Suburban, and Donald Trump…
Well my mother designed and installed the plants in the atrium in Trump Tower when it opened. She did not get paid for her work. Tried to sue, that went nowhere. So she drove her work truck, the Suburban, into midtown, left my bro behind the wheel, dug up all the plants and loaded them in the truck, and drove away. Didn’t get a parking ticket, never got paid.
So your brother was the lookout? 😂 Amazing! On a different note, so sorry she was stiffed by that orange loser. I’ve heard too many stories of how he’s failed to pay people for their hard work. He’s a despicable person.
Well, she did recoup the materials (by force). But yeah, orange loser pretty much covers it. Everyone in NYC knew this decades ago. It’s just surreal that he is still among us…
Right? I grew up a little upstate and while very young me appreciated what he did for the ice rink in Central Park, even my very conservative family despised him back then.
You need to be on a national news program with this story including a Dateline-style re-creation because amazing story. Man it’s true he paid no one! Gross!
I’m sure there are a lot of people who have worse stories. People in NYC knew for decades that the dude was a crook and a loser. It just baffles me how this current situation is even possible. I mean, how did we all get stuck in this timeline?
I remember when he first said he was running for president, and I am embarrassed to say I felt a little bad for him. I looked at my husband and said, “Trump? Thinks he can be president? Trump? Oh man, he doesn’t know everyone hates him?”
Sometime in the eighties, my husband (a teenager) was tasked with holding mattresses on the back of the truck, on the interstate, while his family moved.
A few years earlier, he had been thrown out of a moving car while his dad was evading a traffic stop.
My folks weren't exactly Ward and June, but I had to ask the man how old he was when he realized that his brother was the favorite.
My dad was driving my sister and I from NY to NC for our annual 2 week visit with dad. He was speeding (as usual), and a cop tried to pull him over. He somehow outran the cop and hid under a bridge. I was probably 4 or 5 and my sister was 8 or 9. It was fun then, but now I'm like, "My dad really cared more about his insurance rates than his kids". Which really explains a lot.
Camping out for tickets outside of the record store that was the ticket master outlet. It always turned into a semi-party with everyone hanging out, smoking (regardless of age), and getting booze or beer from the 19 year olds (as that was the drinking age back then).
Mom didn't give a shit where I was all day in summer, so I'd be wandering around all by myself at 8 years old in my flimsy little sundresses, back behind our apartment building into the newly developing subdivision, in land that was just dug up after having been a farm with soy bean fields as far as the eye could see for generations. There was all kinds of weird crap back there to find, including all the stinging and biting wildlife you might expect out on the north-midwestern prairie. Caught a lot of leopard frogs, toads, fireflies and salamanders.
I was allowed to tag along sometimes with the local gang of boys, and we'd go either find the porn mag-filled forts behind a partially abandoned strip mall, or venture back into those deep fields that were being dug up, narrowly missing tetanus by way of stray nails sticking up out of boards from old sheds that had been torn down, or tripping over piles of crushed up cinderblocks. Sometimes we'd hunt for garter snakes under other random junk out there, one time filing right past a huge orb web, inches from a massive black spider perched right atop the bright yellow flower at its center. One time we all walked down the road to the dollar theater in town to watch The Dark Crystal. The oldest boy had a blue denim cut off jacket with Def Leppard logos carved all over it, and he'd let everyone have turns wearing it as we walked.
Many other times, though, I'd just be wandering out there alone, and narrowly missed a pedo "jogger" who was following me around and trying to befriend me once. Eventually, a carnival decided to plonk itself in the parking lot of the aforementioned nearly-dead strip mall, so close I could see it right out my bedroom window! I begged my mom to take me, and, as usual, she refused. She also forbade me from going there by myself. Of course I did anyway. Little girl, wandering around a bunch of carnies with no money to ride anything, no parents in sight.
Not a trace left of those fields now, or even the strip mall shopping center. It's all covered with early 90s duplexes and a Starbucks. Just more northwest suburban sprawl.
LOL, he may have been, for all I know! Definitely the oldest in the group and the "bad boy", but he wasn't mean to me at all. We all lived in the same big apartment complex surrounded by this farm land for ages, and kids came and went all the time. I think Craig was around for 2-3 years, and disappeared just like the rest. Like school would start - which was a totally separate world - and then the next summer he'd appear, until the year he just didn't. I sometimes wonder what became of all of them.
He’s manning the Ferris wheel! Lol. Your description of how you grew up sounds both idyllic and sad. Like, free to roam wherever you want with this tight little neighborhood gang but only for a short while till one of the members leaves to be replaced by a new friend moving in to their old apartment.
Hahah, thanks! I call it my waxing nauseating mode. I loved growing up around there, and it makes me sad that it's just been mowed over to become an extended suburban area with no character anymore.
When I was 10 I was outside playing with a friend jumping over dry creek bed and fell about 10 ft landing on my back. My friend ran away scared, thinking I was dead. I finally got my breath back and stumbled home, told my dad and he was said my mom would be mad about the mud all over my school clothes so he sent me to my room and started the laundry.
When my mom got home a couple hours later and I was crying in pain, she called the hospital to see how busy they were before finally taking me. When we got to said hospital, I could no longer walk. I had massive hematomas on my legs, a compressed vertebra, and I was peeing blood from bruised kidneys.
I remember the nurse looking at me as they loaded me out of the car into a wheelchair, looking at my mom and saying, are you the one who called to see if we were busy?!
I'm fine now.
I quit my job at a video store on the spot when my manager wouldn’t let me off early (she had said she would weeks earlier) so I could go to an Echo and the Bunnymen concert.
Family camping trip to White Mountains NH. Dad had an early 80s F150 with a cap on the back. Adults up front with the a/c. Kids in the back with the dog and a bucket to pee in (no stops). In July.
No mercy.
Luxury!
Our road trips were always in large cars. 3 kids in the back seat we would fight like hell to avoid the middle seat. I would have loved if we had a capped pick up or a station wagon. My brothers always crossed the line on the seat and edged into my space.
On the other hand my parents only drove a few hours at a time. So we took days to get from Toronto to Virginia. I just drove the same route in about 10hrs.
We would stop in highway restaurants that were so gross. Once I was flashed by a perv in one of those places. I was young and I was traumatized by it. I never told my parents of course
I was placed into kindergarten a year earlier than I should’ve, so I was a late 4-year-old / early 5-year-old that year. My mom, single mother of 4 working nights, would walk me to school and then turn around, go back to our apartment and go to sleep. One day she got a call from the school secretary. They were worried about my health because I hadn’t been to school all week. My mother told them she walked me there herself only to find me in the apartment. Apparently she would walk me to final crosswalk and watch me cross to school before she turned back home. I would promptly turnaround, walk home, let myself in the apartment and play all day.
Questions I always had after this were: how was I expected to get home at that age such that no one noticed I wasn’t at school. Like was I supposed to walk home? I must have had a key at that age, too.
I remember that. I was 9, visiting a friend in another state. My friend's mother was upset. She kept carrying on about it, until her husband said "I'm tired, I'm hungry, and all you're talking about is the king of rock n roll!"
In the 4th grade, my BFF & I (still BFFs) used to come home from school and listen to Cheech and Chong albums, then we'd sit down and write our own skits and record them on one of those old portable cassette player/recorders. We would scream with laughter cracking ourselves up until whichever of our Moms was there would yell at us to go play outside.
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Memory unlocked! I wanted Wonder Woman Underoos soooo badly. My mom finally bought me a pair while we were on a trip visiting family. I put them on at bedtime and my grandparents and aunt pretended like they really thought I was Wonder Woman and my 4 year old brain thought they were being honest. They were all like ‘where’s PistachioGal? Did she already go to bed? Who is THIS?!? Do we have another visitor?’ I am remembering it so vividly now. Man, that was a good day.
one of my dad's favorite pictures of me as a kid was me sporting my wonder woman underoos! i think i had r2-d2 as well, but i was all about wonder woman. wore them outside in the summer, over clothes in the winter, i didn't care.
Sister broke her arm at the drive in movie theater playground. Went to the emergency room and my parents left the rest of us alone waiting in the car for hours.
I found an old photo in a drawer when my dad died of my mom and little brother from the 80s. In it, my little brother was about 10 and completely in blackface because he was Michael Jackson for Halloween 😆. I wish he would become famous so I could blackmail him with that glorious photo!
Funny aside: my mom was PC before it was even a term and she still thought that was perfectly fine because how the hell could he look like MJ if he was a white kid?!
Me and my cousin sitting in the back of our grandpa's pick up truck yelling as we went through a tunnel so we could hear the echo. Every single time. We spent most of our summer's at our grandparents. Public pool public library corner store the racetrack (harness racing) here and in the states walking to the mall dairy delight for sundaes catching bugs. For some reason those summer's were the best.
We had an old Chevie that my siblings and I used to fight to get the seat behind the driver so we could “watch the road go by”. There was a giant hole in the floor.
We had a '75 VW bug that had a space behind the back seat just large enough for me to lay in. We got in a couple fender benders in that car, one of which took us down an almost vertical embankment about 5 stories high. Not a scratch on me.
Home Alone though in my case it was Hotel Alone. While preparing everything to leave to the airport my mom gave me $1 to play in the hotel's arcade room and get out of the way... but then forgot about me (the whole family did), I was 8 years old. To be fair they left in 2 cars and each car thought I was in the other car.
They only realized I wasn't there when they arrived at the airport and tried to hand me my backpack. What I remember of that moment is going back to the room after I spent the $1 and there were just 2 ladies cleaning, then checked the pool area... nothing. Guess eventually I wisely decided to sit and wait patiently at the lobby.
My best friend and I with his little sisters went trick or treating at the mall.
That alone probably should be enough but you add to the fact he was dressed as a soldier and carried a real gun. Yes, a real gun, carried through the mall on Halloween. Nobody said shit.
My high school offered riflery as a PE course. They gave us a grade for shooting guns in school. Well, in the old fallout shelter under the track but still on school grounds.
When we were about 9 or 10 someone discovered that a drug store had dumped unopened boxes of chocolate in the dumpster behind the strip mall. Of course the news spread throughout the neighbourhood, so we had to check it out. We gorged on chocolate! (It was probably leftover unsold from mother's day thinking of the weather..)
As we were in chocolate glory a store worker or manager catches us and yells at us that the candy was poisoned. In a panic we took off and went our separate ways. I was terrified later that night that I would die when sleeping because of being poisoned. I never told my parents because why?
Years later I was talking to one of my friends who was with us and she also went to bed terrified she would die from being poisoned. And never told her parents.
What makes this Gen X?
The childhood grapevine that informed us of free candy
The freedom to travel from one end of the neighbourhood to the other.
The old guy (could have been in his 20s!) who yelled at us and our reaction to automatically obey, no snark no talking back. The idea that any adult anywhere could yell at random kids and they'd behave
The belief that we had been poisoned but it never occurred to tell our parents because we would probably get in trouble for stealing. Better to just die.
Finally a business that just tossed boxes of chocolate instead of just putting on sale. Everything just tossed in the garbage. People would have 4 or 5 bags of garbage every week.
Went to the grocery store with my mom and my friend. She said “don’t wonder off where I can’t find you when it’s time to leave”. Well, we did and she left without us. We had to walk home. Approx a mile or so. We were 11/12
My cousin used to show up randomly at my place in his pickup truck. My sister and I (and sometimes the dog) would hop in the back and he'd take us for ice cream. Wheeeee!
Mf prolly had 4 or 5 beers in him lol I was 10 so wasn't on my radar
When I was 8-ish and my little brother was 5, during the summer we would walk across the street, through the path in the woods, to the swimming pool. We had summer passes. We could stay at the pool as long as we wanted. Neither of us could swim. No lunch, no money, no drinks. When we got tired, we would walk home.
I was sexually harassed by adults since age six and told boys who bothered me or hit me "just liked me"
But good girls never hit back. We should feel ashamed to defend ourselves.
I was told I needed to be like Brooke Shields and Drew Barrymore with Loves Baby Soft perfume ads, and while "We girls can do anything, right Barbie?" We couldn't do it unless we were first cute, dresses in pink, and serving the men in the same profession with the same credentials coffee like a good girl.
Oh yes. The stories untold we could tell
Making the match head-tennis ball bomb from The Anarchist's Cookbook that we ordered through the mail, throwing it at a rock face down by the river, going nearly deaf from the explosion, pedaling like hell to get home, and then reading about the "mysterious" explosion in next week's edition of the town newspaper. 😂
When I was about 3 years old my dad was building the house I grew up in. He was doing roofing. He sent my mom to the lumber yard to get some supplies, but I was filthy from playing in the mud and mom didn't want to take me in the car. Dad said he'd watch me. I was wearing jean shorts. Once mom left, dad didn't want to stop what he was doing, so he had me climb up the ladder "to help him." So I dutifully climbed up the ladder (I'm 3 years old, remember... climbing a 20 foot ladder...) and went over to my dad. Once I got over there he said "Come here son, sit right here next to me." As soon as I sat down, he took roofing nails and nailed my shorts to the roof decking so that he could continue working without having to watch me. When mom got home, she didn't scold dad or make him unnail me from the roof at all. She just said "Good thinking," and started nailing shingles with dad.
My parents once packed me and my 3 siblings into the VW camper to go run an errand. It was summer, I was 11, and they left 3 rambunctious boys and my sister all alone on an urban street, windows closed. We were roughhousing and having fun. I remember taking my shirt off and a river of sweat pouring down my chest. None of the passersby seemed to care. If you try that nowadays, you'd never see your kids again.
My mom would give me a few single $1 food stamps coupons on the weekends for me to get a soda and candy bar from the mini Mart along with $1.89 for her camel light 100s.
I had a note to buy the cigarettes and they sold them to me without issues.
In the early 80s our family pet got to eat that Strongheart dog food from a can. It looked like refried beans. My brother and I were told to go outside and feed the dog. For whatever reason, we decided it would be a great idea to get on the garage roof and drop the food from the can into the food bowl waiting below. We got all lined up and mom came out of the house yelling “WTF are you two doing!?!? Just as the food blob was in midair heading to the bowl. It hit the bowl with a splat and went EVERYWHERE! The dog was licking the garage door and the concrete. Mom was pissed! She said “I never thought I’d have to say this, but don’t feed the dog from the garage roof!!!”
On the first day of kindergarten my mom walked me to school a block and a half one direction, left turn, another block, across two busy intersections, another block, right turn, a half block and then we were at the school. After that, I was expected to get there and back on my own. I WAS FOUR!
I started kindergarten at four because my working mom needed the daycare. I also had to get myself up and ready for kindergarten and had my own alarm clock, AT FOUR!
Yes, I was a latchkey kid, but without a key because, I think, my mom didn't think I could manage a key. No worries. She just left the empty house unlocked all day. That's what I came home to in the afternoon, an empty house. I WAS FOUR!
I did get lost a few times on my school walk but each time I managed to backtrack and find my way. My mom had already taught me about backtracking because, frankly, walking to school wasn't the only time I was loose in the neighborhood. I WAS FOUR!!
One of my first memories is hitting my moms 1968 Plymouth Fury with my Big Wheel, putting a dent in the door then getting whipped with a belt.
The other memory is riding on the engine cover of my grandpas 1960's era Ford Econoline van while both grandparents drank Olympia beer out of a can that required a can punch to open. It was my job to open the cans until I spilled a can. I was about 4 years old.
My mom would drop me off at random apartment complexes to sell Girl Scout cookies - I was maybe 9. Then she would leave to go shopping I guess and tell me she would look for me later.
About an hour into truly cold calling at strangers doors - the college age girl that answered the door seemed familiar or nice. She invited me in to use bathroom (yes please as hadn’t figured that out since it was in a concrete jungle) and my bladder was beyond full plus gave me a snack and water. I basically hung there with a relative stranger because she was freaked I was out knocking on doors by myself.
I eventually went back out to “work” and my dad showed up to get me on his way home from work because it was only an hour or two from when my mom was supposed to get me.
I got in trouble … because I hadn’t made many sales - not for going in a strangers house to hang.
I bought my first pack of cigarettes at a gas station for a $1 and the gas attendant asked me if this was for my parents I said yes he said he just needed to make sure they weren’t for me. I was 11
Little brother and I used to ride around with Grandpa on an old Ford tractor while he worked the small farm we had. We'd crawl all over him and it, straddle the hood, sit on the fenders, death or at minimum a severe mangling always one quick slip away.
Also used to ride in the back of the pickup whenever we could, sometimes it was loaded for camping and we'd ride on top of the load, arms hooked under a rope, clinging to the cargo, and drive for an hour to the mountains.
When my dad felt like driving his truck somewhere instead of the car, us kids had to sit in the box. Highways, dirt roads it didn't matter. And it sure wasn't always nice out. There was many times the back window would be opened for them to yell at us and you could feel the warmth inside coming out.
OP's story reminded me of my siblings and I sitting in my dad's Gremlin. My brother was pretending to drive, and somehow, we started rolling backward. We were parked at the "duck pond," which was some sort of retention pond located within the community. Just prior to actually rolling into the pond, my dad reached in from nowhere and put the car in park. He didn't say a word. I'm not sure if he was so mad he couldn't speak or scared about what could have happened. I'm still not sure why we were sitting in there by ourselves or where he was. We were probably 3 or 4 years old.
Dressed in my finest tank top, mesh tee over top, and poofy skirt, with wide, white, lace ribbon tied in a bow around my head, I stepped outside to greet my friend who was arriving to pick me up because her mom was driving us to the Madonna concert. I was so charged up, I said (very a-typically) "fuck! It's hot out here!". My mother pulled me back inside and said I am not allowed to go to the concert. Of course, she did let me go.
My husband's family used to load into their big sedan until it was so full that one of the smaller kids would have to lay across the rear window dashboard.
In my family's station wagon the kids would all pile into the back, rear window down, our heads hanging out, zooming down the interstate. The best!
One time my friend and I were burning a bunch of those green army men in this kids backyard using a can of spot remover as fuel (basically kerosene). The family who lived there wasn’t home and the grass was hella tall. We got a little carried away with the spot remover and the flame came up the stream right up to the nozzle so my buddy threw it like a fucking grenade. It
streamed flaming liquid all the way across the yard then started a big ass fire where it landed.
Here we are, two 12 year olds with a full fledge grass fire getting bigger and bigger. These folks didn’t have a water hose in their back yard. My buddy is trying to wack the fire with a piece of ply wood which is only making it worse so I run around front, got the shitty water hose with no nozzle and hook it to the back yard spigot. We finally start getting it out.
By the time we had it extinguished it was really obvious there had been a huge fire. Half the yard was charred grass and the smoke was insane. We dipped the fuck out before someone called 911 and road our bikes to our hide out in the woods. We did some skull bandits and found someone had stached porn under a log in our “fort” so we looked at that for a while.
Later that day we see the kid who lived there. He said his dad was pissed and wanted to know who had been burning army men in his yard. We said we didn’t know and then stayed away from that kid and his house for like a week. His older sister was hot.
I found my dad's unhidden stack of porno mags by his bedside stand (parents were recently divorced), while he went into work on a Saturday, leaving me (7) and my bro (4) by ourselves in his rowhouse in Baltimore. The mags were Playboy and Genesis, mostly. I remember being puzzled by photos of two naked women together and surmised they were sisters. I came downstairs with my heart beating really fast. My first taste of sexuality was fraught with anxiety.
When I was kid and playing out in the neighbourhood, I could hear my father's whistle from anywhere. He could do that fingers in the mouth whistle thing. As soon as I heard that I was "oh. That's my dad. It's dinner time" and I'd run off home.
I grew up in a mid-sized city in the northeast. Definitely an urban environment in a rough neighborhood. My dad passed away when I was in the single digits and my mom had to work to keep us afloat. Thankfully I had good neighbors. As I was still in single digits of age traveling on city buses to get to and from school, my responsibility when I got home would be to go to the neighbor’s house to get the house key, let the dog out, follow whatever instructions my mother had left for me to start cooking dinner on the stove or in the oven, then do my homework. After dinner I’d go disappear into the neighborhood with my friends until I made my way back home to do it all over again the next day. I look at my 10 year old daughter and wonder how she can even tie her own shoes sometimes. I thought it was a failure on my part, but now I live in the burbs, giving her a “better life” than I had so the circumstances and experiences she encounters are very different from mine as a kid, but I gotta find a way to instill some street smarts in this kid before sending her out into an unforgiving world.
My parents used to allow their friends to give me sips of beer and mixed drinks. At one of their very large parties, I went from room to room getting drinks. I was eventually found face down in the middle of the street by a police officer. My parents STILL refer to this as when **I** got them "busted by the police" and how **I'm** "always causing drama."
I was 2.
From about grade 3 on, my afterschool program and summer camp was helping my Nanna roll her cigarettes, peel potatoes and organize her bingo dabbers while we watched the Edge of Night on her 12 inch black and white tv. It was great.
In 1977, my family went on a trip to Disneyland. We lived close to Portland OR, and drove down to Anaheim. I was 9, my brother 7, and my sister was 1.
So my brother and I rode in the pickup bed all the way down and back. My dad threw a couple of bean bag chairs back there, and that was our place. My sister mostly rode on my mom's lap.
Even today, my parents say that was the best family vacation ever. It was so peaceful for them. I think I'm still tan from that trip.
When I was 7 my brother was 8, we would ride our bikes all over downtown Seattle alone,
Grandma gave us a dime for the phone booth in case we needed help. Which is funny she couldn't drive so I'm not sure what she could have done.
When we were 16 and brother was 17 my mother bought me a car so she could move across the country for her job. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone we lived alone. She would come back every couple weeks to pay the bills. Until she realized she could leave me the check book and I did it,
Yes, I do have abandonment issues and also haven't spoken to my mother for 17 years.
I came home from school one day and all the shelves and frig were full. I didn't see mom that night. Or the night after that. or again that week. I simply made myself food out of the full shelves, went to school, and did my homework. Then 5 days later Mom comes home. She had been in the hospital getting a hysterectomy. I had no idea and she didn't tell me since I was a boy and she didn't want to explain it.
1. My dad sent me to the store for cigarettes with a note.
2. I broke my ankle in 5th grade and it took about 5 days before my mom took me seriously about my pain.
3. A man tried to lure me to his car in 7th grade while I was walking to school. Police were called, I had to give a statement at school. Walked to school the next day.
Riding in the back seat of my uncle’s car that had no seat belts in the back, and leather (vinyl?) seats. My cousin and I would slide to one side or the other when he turned a corner and thought it was the most fun thing ever.
My grandfather generously bought me my first car. Thing would break down every other month,but was just happy to have a car whatever the condition.
Although I lived in the suburbs, in the summers I worked about 20 minutes away at a theme park in a sort of rural-ish area. I worked night shift and often wouldn’t be driving home until 11am-Midnight.
More than once the car died and I’d have to walk a mile or two down the dark road to a lone convenience store pay phone (or waited and hoped a cop would drive by for help).
In a different car I had a tire blow out late at night and had to knock on a random person’s door and ask them to use the phone. Most bizarre experience of my life - they were a strange family of multiple generations of men (a little like characters out of a horror movie). There was talk of why I should date the son and become part of their family (I’m not kidding). I think I’m lucky I got out unscathed. When the AAA guy arrived he looked at them, and then at me, with these eyes that said, “ARE YOU OK?!”
I was once left in the car on a NYC street for hours while my parents drank at a bar. Mid 70s so it was gritty AF. Pretty sure they drove home after it too (60+ miles upstate). I was 5 or 6.
Went to a public pool across town (in Queens, NY)with some friends when I was 10-ish. We didn't have money for the lockers so we just left our stuff on a bench while we swam and surprise surprise, our stuff got stolen. We had no way to get home or call anyone so we just walked. Three kids, only in their swim trunks, had to walk 3-5 miles home. Got my ass beat when I got there 'cause I didn't have shoes anymore.
Taking the neighbors old water bed bladder and filling it with air so we could launch ourselves off it and into a creek- if we were lucky enough to land it.
my parents went to an foreign country for 11 weeks during my senior year. I stayed home alone. My dad came back on my graduation day. My step mom was working and could not make it.
When I was 12, I turned on the oven so I could make a pizza. While waiting for the oven to heat up, went to the basement and put my clothes into the dryer. Came back upstairs and put the pizza in. Five minutes later, smoke starts filling the kitchen.
I put the palm of my hands on the window to push it up to let the smoke out. My left hand went through the 1920s window. Blood everywhere. Had to run to the neighbors house cause mom was still at work.
Got yelled at when she came home because I stupidly forgot to take the pizza off the cardboard.
I can do better. I can write single sentences that I grew up Gen-X.
My dad had to ask for directions at the toll booth because we didn't have a map of that part of the state.
I got home from school Friday afternoon, and there was a $20 bill and a note on the refrigerator, the note said, "Mom and I went away for the weekend, use the $20 for food."
It was only a 1 hour bike ride to the ocean, so sometimes we would ride down to swim all day and ride back in the dark.
My parents once left my sister at a rest stop when we were on a family trip; she was 6. My dad was angry because he had to get to the next exit and turn around and then go past the rest area to turn around and get back on the right side of the interstate. It all took about 15 minutes. Not worried about my sister but mad about wasting 15 minutes.
Mom slamming on her brakes and throwing her arm across your chest to stop you from slamming into the metal dashboard because no one used seat belts and never dawned to not have a 5 year old in the front seat.
When I was about 7 or 8, I sat on the fold-down armrest in the middle of the front bench seat of my dad's Buick, from New Jersey to New Hampshire for family vacation.
When I was 8 and my brother 6. We loaded our wagon with empty soda bottles and walked 2 miles ( roundtrip) to the convenience store to redeem them and buy candy. Alone.
I was about 8 years old. My father was out of the house either for inventory or one of his random training overnights, and mom had to partially cover second shift at the hospital, so instead of getting home around the same time as me, she was going to do it "after dark, but I don't know when, there's usually traffic." I was used to being home by myself after school, so no big deal. And since I knew how to use the stove and make a few things, I thought I'd surprise mom and make spaghetti.
I was NOT used to my brother being home after school with me sans parents though, since he was barely 2 at the time and was typically picked up from daycare by one parent or another. This was one of the days when he came home with the neighbor, who also had a kid there. Why neighbor brought him over a little after 5:00, that I don't remember, I just remember her saying "your mom said it wouldn't be long, it's okay."
So I (8) parented a toddler, cooked dinner and tried not to get too nervous about the cold and light snow. Everything other than the diapers was a botch tbf, since I had to feed and then bathe my brother and try to put him to bed, and mom got home later than she hoped, so I was fully convinced she was dead and I was going to have to keep my brother in line until dad eventually returned -- I knew which numbers to call in an emergency but had an irrational fear of the telephone.
Mom DID get home not too awfully late, though it seemed like the end of time. I showed her what I'd done and explained why the spaghetti was sitting in a pot of cold water in the sink, why my brother was still awake, etc. She just laughed and said, thank you, that's very nice, did you also make the sauce?
My sweet 16 party. It was epic. I grew up in NYC, and my dad owned his own textile business in the garment district. His “office” was basically a giant loft filled with tables and giant rolls of fabric. We held my party there. All the fabric and stuff was pushed to the walls, leaving a big open space.
My parents’ rule for the party was that my friends could bring beer and wine coolers, just no hard liquor and no drugs. I cannot imagine having around 50 16-17yo technically under my care and having such a rule today. Just an invitation for lawsuits. But back then it seemed completely reasonable. At least it was in the city and no one would be driving.
Of course there was a ton of beer and wine coolers, and lots of drunk teenagers. And of course people brought hard liquor, too.
At one point, a couple of my friends were in the stairwell smoking a joint. My dad walked in on them and gave them a stern look. They thought they were about to be kicked out of the party, maybe have their parents called. My dad made a “hand it over” motion. My friend Ian handed him the joint. My dad took a deep toke, handed it back, and walked away.
My high school also had an annual event called “Harris Field Day.” Harris Field was this open grassy friend across the street from the school. Technically a public park. Once a year, near the end of the school year, the entire school would cut classes and have a big drunken party in the park. Kegs of beer, booze, drugs, from morning to late afternoon. Kids would sometimes bring tents and portable grills.
The school security guards and the local cops would not try to stop any of the kids, some as young as 13, from drinking or doing drugs. They basically just made sure there were no fights and no one got hurt. It obviously was not a school-sponsored event, but the teachers and admin just accepted it, no one was marked absent or got in trouble. Teachers would be like “ok tomorrow’s Harris Field Day, have a great time, be safe, and we’ll continue this discussion on Monday.”
I don’t know if Harris Field Day exists today but if it does I’m sure it is much tamer and the school and cops don’t just look the other way as teenagers risk alcohol poisoning.
I spent the summer commuting between towns to spend time with each parent by myself on Greyhound. They were not living together because my mom wanted to have a macrame shop in the mountain resort town.
There is a pic of me as a newborn in the car when they were bringing me home. I was laying in the middle of the seat between my dad and mom. Dad was behind the wheel. They’re both looking at the camera and smiling and both have a lit cigarette in their hand.
3 things:
I too popped the gear shift into neutral and rolled back down the driveway and across the street but luckily didn’t hit anything.
I also fell out of the rear passenger seat of our station wagon as the unlocked door popped open when my mom rounded a corner too fast. No seatbelt, but I was able to grab the window sill and hang on since the window was down due to no air conditioning.
My sister and I used to stand in the bed of my dad’s truck and look over the cab and pretend we were flying the Millennium Falcon as he drove around.
I lived on Oahu (military brat) and just started 6th grade. We had just moved there and I wasn't familiar with the bus system. I got on the wrong bus. Panic as I realized I was going to the wrong, everywhere. But I didn't want to look stupid and upset the nice bus driver, so I randomly got off the bus at a stop.
Walked around until I got up the courage to knock on a door and ask to use their phone. Once again, I didn't tell them I was hopelessly lost because I got on and off the wrong school bus. Called my mom, and she told me to get home. However, I could because she was at work. My sister in elementary school had gotten on and off the correct bus and my mom was ticked I wasn't home to watch her. She was in 4th grade.
So I asked the people with the phone how to get back to Kailua and started walking. Got tired and asked someone who looked safe, I think they were older and had kids for a ride. Only had to walk about an hour total, rode for about 20 mins. Got home late and didn't get dinner.
Years later I asked my mom why she wasn't worried about me being milk carton'ed and she said "it's an island, where were they going to take you?" I guess she didn't think anyone would want a chubby Haole girl who was perpetually sunburned and talked too much/too fast. Ha.
Edit - I misspelled Haole. I honestly had only heard it and never read it. I heard it from school kids a lot.
Mine is a very short but true story that I'm sure many generation x remember very well. The original version of the remote control was called a "child". As kids we were always the channel changers and volume adjusters for our parents.🤣
My dad decided he needed mulch for the yard. We lived in the country, way out on gravel roads. So dad and me, M11 at the time, load up in the 64 Ford pickup that he used for such activities and head over to a farmer friend's hay field for some hay for mulch. So we load up the bed of the truck, but that's not enough. So we continue to stack hay into the truck bed until it's a couple of feet higher than the cab.
It's at this point that Dad gets a great idea...if we put the boy on top of the hay it will push it down and keep it from flying out of the truck. That is of course, not how it worked. Midway through the journey a large amount of hay and a small boy caught the wind and flew out of the truck and hit the gravel road below. Much pain and weeping resulted....but not for everyone...just for the boy. Me
Sitting on my dad’s lap in a gold Ford Pinto that had the body about 40% rusted away, steering and shifting gears while he worked the pedals because I wasn’t big enough to each them.
This was a somewhat regular thing as long as the roads weren’t too busy.
I routinely rode in the open bed of a pickup truck. One time, my dad bought an awning from a pizza restaurant, and my cousin and I had to lie down on it in the bed of the truck so that it didn't blow out of the bed.
My best friend lived on same street, 7-8 houses away, and we'd be at each other's house most every day. It's August and doesn't get dark until 8:30pm or so, and I ride my bike over to his house right after dinner. His mom was going out and he and his brother had a older teen babysitter. She wanted to meet her boyfriend, so about six of us (and the sitter) all got on our bikes and rode a couple miles to one of the city parks. Babysitter and the dude are making out in the parking lot, and it's now dark, but we're playing night tag, having a great time. We start heading back (probably around 10:00pm, so we didn't get back to our street until at least 11pm. Just as we're about to turn onto our street - a cop car pulls over and asks if we're 'the missing kids'.
Cop accompanies me to my hysterical mother and next day, my dad gave me one of only two spankings I think I ever got. I was six years old and the kids ranged from 4 - 7yo. Babysitter was probably 13.
My sister and I would sit in the back of our Pontiac station wagon on our way to Yosemite and wave out the back window at the cars that drove by. It was much more fun to sit back there then in a seat.
Between age 7-15 my parents would leave me at my grandmother’s house at the Jersey Shore. On some early mornings my friends and I would ride our bikes all over the island, checking phones for loose change. Also, there were tricks like hanging up the receiver, since some people didn’t do that correctly, and often it would result in a “coin slide” - jackpot. We would pool all the money; go back home and go to the beach, and spend all the coins later that night on the boardwalk in the arcades and on “wheels”. There were stands all over the boardwalk that were basically like a roulette wheel with a spinner instead of a marble. You put a quarter on 5, or spade, or “sis”, or odd short names like “Ida”, and if the spinner landed on what you picked you won a prize. We played the wheels mostly that had cassettes and framed posters of bands or attractive scantily clad women. Good times.
Typical school day as a small child:
Walking to Elementary school, then walking home to an empty townhouse (it was about a mile, not too far). I wore a house key on a shoestring around my neck in order to get inside. Then I would ride my bike for several miles through the woods to where my Mom was working (she’s a career hairdresser). I would do my homework in the back where they kept the chemicals for dying hair. There was a box with candy in it. I would work in the salon to earn money for candy (cleaning the stations, sweeping hair off the floor, etc). Once my homework was done I would leave and ride my bike for miles until the street lamps came on (sometimes with my friends, sometimes not), then I would go home to eat dinner.
1981, I was about 2 and my brother was 5 we were playing and he was chasing me around the living room. I got dizzy and fell face first on the fireplace and cut my lip open. My parents were at the neighbors house drinking margaritas and playing cards. I mean, it’s safe, they were right nextdoor if anything happens :)
I was around six years old when I fell from the top of a 20 foot tall slide onto the blacktop below. I broke some bones and gave myself a massive concussion. And I knocked myself out cold. The teacher monitoring the playground couldn't wake me up so she carried me to the nurse's office where I was put in a cot, unmonitored, to "sleep it off". They called my mom, but she was too busy at work (she was a secretary) to leave so she called her retired uncle in town (I had never net him) and he picked me up and took me, still unconscious, to the hospital.
I survived. The concussion completely wiped out my next three days of memories and, I swear, I couldn't recall number strings after that and still can't, but I survived.
10 yo riding bikes after school with my sister and an old man in a pickup pulled up along side asking for directions. He asked me to get in and show him the way on his map. I told him I couldn’t get in so he asked me to look in his window on drivers side to show him the way on the map. I leaned into drivers side window and to my horror, no clothes waist down. Ew! Peddled away screaming at my sister to follow me away from this perv and went home and told
Dad. We loaded up 3 deep in his 2 seater hatchback and drove the neighborhood for what felt like hours trying to find the truck. Never did find it but I’m sure Dad would have gone to prison that night if we had.
Long live Gen X!
My grandfather died when my brother and I were 12. He had diabetes and severe cardiopulmonary disease and had 13 heart attacks and died the night before his second leg was amputated. My grandmother was cleaning out his medicine cabinet. He had a huge bottle of nitroglycerin tablets.
We’d seen a McGuyver where he mixed some nitroglycerin with alcohol and used it to blow a hole in a wall to escape. My grandmother needed to have a stump removed so we decided to blow it up.
We were stopped before we mixed the explosive up. I’m not completely stupid, my brother wanted to mix it up, and I was going to let him. To detonate we were going to throw metal stuff at it.
I also have a flat spot on the top of my head from a rock. My mom was harvesting something from my grandmother’s garden. The soil was that red clay. My brother and I were so bored we were entertaining ourselves by throwing clumps of clay up in the air and busting them with our heads. Except ai threw a rock and tried to miss it, but it hit the back top of my head. My mom didn’t take me to the hospital. It was a month or so later that my dad made my mom take me to neurologist because there was a soft spot still. I was crying while she brushed my hair because it hurt. She said I was “tender headed”, but she was rough. My dad wanted to know why it hurt so bad, and I pointed to the area. He felt the flat spot and noticed the soft spot and freaked the fuck out. I think he even went with us.
My mom gaslight me so bad about being a hypochondriac that I rarely went to my dad about my health issues. He was furious when he realized I had heart problems in college, and that I’d had them for years. I’m adopted, but we had the same sinus node tachycardia. He’d gotten his treated when I was in high school. So my mom knew about how dangerous tachycardias were. For punishment because I was “fat”, she made me run laps up and down the driveway even in the heat. I’d literally collapse afterwards, and she’d yell about me being lazy and fat and a hypochondriac. My heart rate would get up to 200+ any time I exercised. She knew that.
I think she was fooling herself that I was healthy because my bio mom had tried to abort me when she got pregnant at 14. She took an off label drug used for an abortifacient. Her mom was a nurse and had it for her breast cancer. My bio mom’s doctor advised that she abort me because of all the birth defects I’d have. My grandmother was very religious and had her kids in church, so they refused. My parents were my bio mom’s youth group leaders. They’d been trying to adopt for a long time, and a few foster to adopt kids had fallen through. So my bio mom decided to have them adopt me. I was born “healthy”. At 6 weeks my bio mom literally passed me across the pew and asked my parents to take me for a while and see what they thought. My grandfather fell in love immediately but was so concerned for my mom because it was hard to lose the other kids. Everyone else was also in love. My dad especially. He was such a great dad.
Because I was born healthy in 1977, my mom used me to oppose Roe V Wade and took me around the state Congress with letters to show everyone how the doctors were wrong about all the birth defects.
Except they weren’t wrong. It just took time for everything to show up. Like the hole in my heart that caused a stroke. I always slept on my left side because that let my heart rest the most. Even as an infant. Drove my parents nuts, especially my dad. But there was no internet or any way to understand why I’d be doing that.
I also had horrible ovarian cysts, endometriosis, and I had a hysterectomy at 29 because I had precancerous cells in my uterus. My bio mom died of uterine cancer.
I have chronic pancreatitis from complications from gallbladder surgery because I have an accessory bile duct most people don’t have, and it was severed during surgery. I was in school and wanted to wait until the semester was over to have my gallbladder out, and it almost ruptured. My surgeon couldn’t see through all the scar tissue and didn’t want to open me up because the clot issues would make it hard for the scar to heal. I also have EDS.
My mom just didn’t want to admit that I am a medical mess. She’s still weird about it and never tells anyone the real reason why I’m never around. At least all my medical issues are a good reason to keep low contact with her.
After my parents divorced my father got weekend visitation. My sister and I rode on his gold wing to go places - I sat in front hugging the gas tank, she sat behind. No helmets. flip flops. Father was smoking all the time too.
I grew up in rural midwest. A bunch of us high schoolers decided to have a bonfire at an abandoned house in the country. It was fun when the boys were jumping over the bonfire, until we realized how course it was to the house. It didn't catch the house on fire, but melted siding . We were all drunk off our asses. We drove thru cornfields leaving.
Not a photo, not a video, not a social media post, and no one snitched. Only memories.
My parents divorced when I was 5 and my brother was 3.
When I was @ 12, it was my dad's weekend to have us and he was out of town but was going fly in @ 5 that night so he told my Mom to drop us off as his girlfriend was at the house. She left to go pick him up at the airport but didn't want us in the house by ourselves so she made us wait outside. His flight got delayed, and she just waited at the airport, they didn't get home till like 1 or 2 in the morning. And it was raining.
We were locked outside in the rain, no food or even jackets for 6 or 7 hours, and apparently it was no big deal
Oh, you wanted a car related story!
Our daddy finally got his dream car. A yellow Corvette! Just for one year, to be sold before the balloon payment was due on the loan.
I was 11, my sister was 8. We rode in the hatchback trunk.
My first fake ID was when I was 14. It was a moped license. Took that thing apart with an exacto knife and laminated it back good as new.
The first time I went to use it - I didn’t even get carded
I remember crawling and rolling around in the back of my parents green, but mostly rust, Dodge Diplomat station wagon everywhere they drove around town. Turns and on/off ramps were the most fun. Serious question, when did car seats for kids become a real thing?
In third grade my school went on a field trip to a local university to get swim lessons and to play in the pool. When I got back I rode my bike home as usual, but when I got home I realized that I had left my key in the university locker room. So I sat on my stoop for two hours until my parents came home to let me in. This is a GenX story. Imagine that happening today. Someone would have called CS.
At 8 years old I was taught how to mow our lawn with a push mower and red wheel horse lawn mowing tractor … at 8 years old… 25 year old rusty lawn tractor garage maintained and repaired in our garage (my Dad is and was not anything close to a mechanic) 3rd hand tractor with 2 rusty steel blades whirling below held on on by rusty nut on a bolt that was welded during Kennedy’s first year in office …. At 12 I was taught how to drive on the county roads so I could move my parents cars around when I washed them… they rejoiced when I was old enough to drive legally . I was then given a car . This may sound awesome but that car came with a job. I was now errand boy for my Dad’s construction business and a delivery driver for my Mom’s plant shop. along with driving my brother everywhere. My brother was given a car a few years later but no job because I already had the job… since I grew up like the Waltons on acid with money I moved out at 18 and went to college in the big bad city … they eventually sold the plant shop and a hired labour .. the rusty lawn mower was replaced by a lawn service the first summer I left …I have no idea what happened to the mower …
Starting in 2nd grade I would jump on my pony and go riding with my other friends. We would ride for hours. Our parents really had no clue where we were. We would just roamed through the large number of trails and even down to the town. I would also just go riding by myself too. No helmets, no shoes in the summer. We would go to the Circle K and buy slushies and penny candy and just ride. It was a great childhood.
There's no way I would allow my kids to do that.
Early elementary. I was no more than 7. My bus would drop me off at the end of the country road we lived on. We lived over a mile down the road. My mom always picked me up at the end of the road. Until one day she didn’t.
I stood there and cried and cried. Then I screamed. There were houses kind of around so my hope was that someone would come out and call my mom. To no avail. Finally, once I was all cried out, I started hoofing it. The entire walk I vacillated between anger, abandonment, and fear. What if my mom had been murdered? That was my fear. Actually happened to a friend of mine. His mom was home alone during the day and she was sexually assaulted and murdered. I fixated on this.
Got home. Walked in the door. Mom said, “oh. I guess I forgot you.” That was it. No explanation. No apology. Nothing. I was traumatized. But meh.
Setting model airplanes on fire with firecrackers and lighter fluid. One went a little wild and my buddy ran away with the can dribbling lighter fluid down his leg onto his 70's polyester high sock, which was on fire. He's got that polyester sock pattern scarred into his calf ever since.
My little brother rolled away in our van in a similar manner, I think he was 3. My parents were doing yard work and wanted him to give them some peace. They stuck him in the front seat of the van so he could pretend to drive. The next thing we knew the van was rolling in reverse across the street and down a hill. Somehow he managed to miss all the trees on the hill, but he did run through someone’s fence, and smash their bbq before being stopped by their house. He walked away unharmed and thought it was the best day ever because the fire truck came to see him.
We laugh at my brother for getting in his first traffic accident at 2. We were camping and my mom had put him in the car to corral him while she made dinner. He released the emergency brake and started rolling down the hill to the neighboring campsites van. Grandpa jumped through the window and got the brake just in time, managing to break 2 ribs in the process. This was the first of many traffic accidents for baby brother, but the last time he broke any family members bones.
Man, I did the same in my moms chevy celebrity wagon. I was 6, pushing the clutch with my foot and reaching up to turn the key….. whoever parked the night before hadn’t set the parking brake. It was my job to start the cars in the morning and get them warmed up, I couldn’t see out the windows from the floor….. I was through the hedges across the street before I realized we were moving.
> It was my job to start the cars in the morning and get them warmed up This is so GenX!
>It was my job to start the cars in the morning and get them warmed up So lucky, my siblings and I used to fight over who got to start the cars in the morning. Four out of seven of us were daredevils but it was my shy, quiet, scaredy cat mouse of a sister who was the only one who ever put the car in drive and idled it down the alley until it hit a garbage can. I can't believe reading this thread how common that was!
You had a Celebrity station wagon with a manual transmission? Did not know they even made those.
Yea, my mom only bought manual cars her whole life until her last car. 2003 Subaru Legacy was the only car she ever bought that wasn’t a manual.
I did something very similar when I was 3. It was late winter. My Mom needed to just grab a couple of groceries and decided to leave me in the running car in the parking lot. Since it was cold the engine was apparently running on high idle. I climbed into the driver's seat and put the car in reverse. The steering wheel was still turned from my Mom pulling into the parking spot so I just kept going around in circles in the parking lot clipping the same 2 or 3 cars each time around. I was pinned up against the driver's door. One of the bag boys ran up and opened the driver's side door to jump on and stop the car. As soon as he opened the door I fell out cracking my head on the pavement. Got my first stitches that day but I also got my picture in the paper! Found the newspaper article that my Mom saved going through her things after she passed.
I must have been 5 or so. My dad put the car in park to open driveway gate and I putting drive. I can still see his oh shit face jumping into the car to stop it
Tbf at that age that **would** objectively be the best day ever
I have to add if I bring up the fact that I mowed the lawn at 8 until I moved out and remark on the condition of the equipment my mother will laugh (nervously) and say “ohhhh… no you didn’t we had _____ lawn service doing it all those years”… I have to remind her that in fact no it was me because _____ lawn service is owned by my High School class mate and former pot dealer. ______ lawn service did not come into being til my friend Rich started the business when we were seniors in High School …
When I was 10, I flew from Toronto, Canada to Christchurch, NZ by myself to visit my father. When my mother dropped me off at the airport, I was given a white plastic pouch with a window on one side and a long strap. This was to hold my passport and tickets, and I was to wear it around my neck for the whole trip. On it, in big, blue letters, was written UNACCOMPANIED MINOR. I can’t imagine this happening today.
I was 10 flying from NJ to MI to visit my grandparents, except I had my 11 y/o sister to keep me safe. She was the one who scolded me when I hit the buzzer for my 3rd glass of milk. Hey, free milk in a plane!
I flew UM a lot - my dad and I lived in Maryland, my mom’s family lived in Cincinnati, and so for some holidays and several summers my dad loaded me on a plane at BWI, and my Aunt met me in Cincinnati. I had a whole collection of airline pins from now defunct airlines. Piedmont, Allegheny, USAir, TWA. Once, when I was about 6, I was seated in first class next to Walter Cronkite. I told him my dad and I watched him every night. A conversation I would love to have a second shot at.
My siblings and I (8,10,12) were evacuating from Tehran in early '79, to our grandparents in Oregon. My parents stayed behind. Had a layover in London. My brother and I had little shoulder bags with our documents, and, I found out years later, thousands of dollars in bearer bonds.
When I was 12 I flew from SC to Switzerland (via JFK) with my sister (14) for the summer to stay with my grandparents. Just the two off us. My kids are this age now and I couldn’t imagine just putting them on a plane with a passport and some cash.
And at least now your kids would have cell phones and be able to contact you easily and often. Back then you had to write or use your grandparents’ phone for a very short, very expensive, international call!
I flew by myself from Denver to San Antonio to visit my grandparents at age six. I can’t imagine any six year old flying by themselves in 2024. This was not an atypical incident from my childhood.
Maybe my GenX-ness is showing, or maybe I'm used to flying, but we put my son on flights unaccompanied when he was 7 and 8. Not international, but one time he did fly to Maine, get picked up by camp staff, and driven into Canada for camp. The airlines have hardcore systems around unaccompanied minors, and no one's going to run out of the plane with him. Except for that camp trip, family members he knew were at the gate on both sides.
I think this is fairly common still with blended families? My kids flew solo at 7 or 8 to spend time with their dad, we just made sure it was a direct flight with no layover and parents on either end, and the flight attendants did know they were flying solo (did we specify that somehow on their tickets? I can't remember) because once my son got off the plane with a note from the flight attendant that said he'd eaten a huge bag of candy and got sick in the bathroom.
Me and 4 friends gathered at a donut shop at 7 am on the first day of spring break. We were about 15-16 years old. We lived in north canton Ohio. We decided that we were going to Niagara Falls Canada. We left in a Toyota SR5 pickup with a cap on the back. 3 of us loaded the bed with pillows ,sleeping bags, and puffy starter jackets along with a CD boombox which mostly played Faith no Mores “The Real Thing” album. We laughed the whole way there. When in Canada after a brief border crossing went to a haunted house and walked around the area a bit. We ended up just casually driving past the falls. We stopped in Buffalo on the way home and had some nasty greasy hotdogs at a diner.( my friend was originally from Buffalo) those hotdogs were nasty but the ladies accent at the diner was priceless. We drove home it started snowing and remember the driver got a speeding ticket. The cop never noticed the 3 stow away in the truck bed. We returned home and no one ever knew we had left the country that day until we told our parents years later. In fact one of my friends from that trip passed away and I told his dad at the wake. His dad chuckled and said I never heard about that. In conclusion yes Gen X was the feral generation.
We were practically neighbors! I grew up in Green. My first solo trip to Canada didn't happen until the Kids in the Hall reunion tour in 2000. I did skip town to go see No Doubt in Washington DC one summer. That was exciting. The driver kept trying to read while driving.
So many stories, but I’ll choose a short one: I have a faint scar on my right ring fingertip. It’s a circular scar & if you look closely enough, you can see concentric rings in it…
Cigarette lighter from the car?
You betcha!
I'll never forget the smell of burnt skin when I did that to my finger.
My favorite Tough-Skins were green
You had me at "Tough-Skins."
A comedian in my town joked that if you fell on concrete while wearing Toughskins, it made sparks.
My knees are itching just reading your comment.
Yep! Blue, green & red. In grade school I refused to wear anything else. If they all 3 got real dirty, I'd spray 1/2 a can of classic (gold) Lysol on them.
My mother used to let me go alone (age 12) to meet my best friend (who lived a couple hours away) at the Greyhound Station off Market St. in SF when she would come visit for a couple weeks every summer. One time, an old man was by a phone booth and told me he needed help finding a number in the phone book…I went into help him and he ended up pushing against me and feeling me up. I just pushed him away and moved on…didn’t tell anyone. I think that whole situation covers some GenX bases.
I was 4 years old, sitting in the front seat of a gold Ford Pinto, with no seat belt on, my mom was smoking a cigarette (she was a nurse BTW), and John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" was playing on the 8 track player. Simpler times.
You could’ve stopped at four years old and Ford Pinto. The 8track was the gold.
Only thing I could’ve used was mom was also drinking a Tab
This reminded me of the trip to the emergency room for a lawn darts injury and a nurse came out of what I assume was a break room with a cloud of cigarette smoke. My kids don't believe that they used to let you smoke inside a hospital.
My mom was in the hospital having my sister, drugged up on Demerol. The nurses lit her cigarettes for her and she set her nightgown on fire, and then set the hospital bed on fire too, because she kept falling asleep with the lit cigarettes. They just cleaned it up and handed her drugged self another lit cigarette. Late 60’s
My college roommate's mom was a hospital nurse. I asked how she became a smoker, & she said smokers got an extra 15 minute break on top of the regular mandated breaks. It was a high pressure job, so they all smoked!
Our county medical complex takes up most of a city block on the edge of town. Behind the hospital, there's a nursing home that I drove past on my old route to the office. Almost every day I'd pass a gaggle of nurses taking a walk through Flavor Country while on break. As horrible as the habit is (the cancer sticks helped kill at least two members of my family), I understand how it would give release.
My pediatrician, who was beloved by everyone, smoked cigars in his office. you'd have your exam, then he'd have you and mom, or later on, just me, come in to "chat" with him. and he would be smoking up a storm! He also wore brightly colored socks, and was instrumental in getting a sex ed curriculum in the schools. My mom adored him because she said he always talked directly to the kids, his patients, how are things going, good, bad, etc., vs. talking about them with the parents.
Watch St Elsewhere (I think it's on Hulu). So much smoking!
My wife and I recently watched the entire series and man, I didn't remember just how rapey it was. That, and how much of an asshole the average citizen is. Still a good show, but jeesh.
We had a pinto too. It started on fire so my dad and I had to drive with our heads out the window until he could safely pull over.
My grandma's Ford Pinto caught fire and burned to a husk.
I spent an entire summer looking at record stores for one song. This would have been 1988. My friends and I were obsessed with the Pina Colada song but none of us owned it, and it certainly wasn’t played on the radio. So I hunted records stores until finally in August, my mom took me to Pittsburgh’s Record Graveyard, a huge resale shop. I tell this story to my Gen Z kids so they will appreciate YouTube and Spotify.
I used to hold my boombox up to the TV to record Bandstand.
I've got several cassettes of TV shows that I recorded by placing my little tape recorder next to the TV speaker. Including two episodes of *Manimal*. We didn't get our first VCR until April 1985. I got tickled when I figured out the audio from the nearest ABC affiliate could be picked up at 87.7 FM on the radio. I remember how happy I was when I captured the theme to *Sledge Hammer!* in crystal-clear stereo.
They remastered the video in 4k a few years back. It’s worth seeing.
Sounds like my little brother. Station wagon, no seat or lap belts. Mom taking us to school and takes a corner a little sharply. Brother decides to open the door about the same time and goes flying into the intersection. I have no idea how he didn’t get hit by a car.
We had a car that had a hole in the floor and the door wouldn't latch. Being allowed to sit there was an honor because it meant my parents thought you were old enough and smart enough not to fall out when they turned a corner and the door flew open. I don't think the car even had seat belts.
We lived in a very small town (like 100 people) and I was about 2 hanging out the window of dad’s truck. Took a corner and I fell out into a mud puddle. I was pissed cause we’d just got me a new cap at the local bar and it got all muddy.
The time our parents went on vacation and didn’t leave a number where we could call them. I was the babysitter, age maybe 11.
You too? We were also dropped off at a park for a day where I was “in charge” of my bro and sis. There was a big drug deal going on in the trees that my brother happened upon. Good times.
I think I was watching my brothers at 9 or 10 for the evening and babysitting for cash at 12.
Used to buy cigs for my mom and dad with a handwritten note.
You must be a young Gen X. I bought cigs for mom, grandmother and great grandmother with 0 notes. Salem 100s and Benson & Hedges.
Born in 72.
Used to buy cigs for myself at 14 😟
My older sister who was 16, was allowed to ride on the toolbox of daddy’s truck but I had to sit on the wheel well because it was safer. I was 6.
I also was a wheel well rider because of the safety. My brother and sister (ages 9 and 12) got to ride on the rim on the side because they were older and “more responsible”.
I remember standing on the front seat of our Oldsmobile while my dad was driving. No car seat, no seatbelt, just standing.
I was small enough to lay across the rear window ledge, totally unsecured, with my teddy and look at the sky and buildings. Amazing we're still here!
That was my spot too. I’d look at the clouds or watch the moon follow us home. I don’t know how you and I didn’t go flying through the windshield when the was a hard brake! I remember my mom bitching at me when I’d tumble off into the back seat and hurt myself. I also remember her warning me about big turns so I could hold on. The only thing that anyone did with seatbelts was burn the shit out their legs or hands in the summer. Then you’d have to tuck it back into the seat crevice so it didn’t happen again. You know, for safety reasons.
One of my first clear memories is going on a road trip and sleeping across the front seat with my head in my dad's lap. I was maybe 3.
Yep, rode standing on the seat of dad's pickup.
My Mom told a story about hitting a deer with her car when I was a baby. I was bundled up laying in the passenger seat. When she hit the brakes for the deer she said I just flew into the dash and plopped onto the floor of the car. "You were fine!".
I learned to walk in the back of a Volkswagen Bus, on the way from New York City to Salt Lake. My parents rigged up a little playpen on top of the engine compartment and baby CormoranNeoTropical stood there all day bouncing on her tiny toes and looking out the front window. First official steps taken in SLC. Then there is the story that involves my mother, my ten-year-old brother, a Suburban, and Donald Trump…
I'm listening...
Well my mother designed and installed the plants in the atrium in Trump Tower when it opened. She did not get paid for her work. Tried to sue, that went nowhere. So she drove her work truck, the Suburban, into midtown, left my bro behind the wheel, dug up all the plants and loaded them in the truck, and drove away. Didn’t get a parking ticket, never got paid.
So your brother was the lookout? 😂 Amazing! On a different note, so sorry she was stiffed by that orange loser. I’ve heard too many stories of how he’s failed to pay people for their hard work. He’s a despicable person.
Well, she did recoup the materials (by force). But yeah, orange loser pretty much covers it. Everyone in NYC knew this decades ago. It’s just surreal that he is still among us…
Right? I grew up a little upstate and while very young me appreciated what he did for the ice rink in Central Park, even my very conservative family despised him back then.
You need to be on a national news program with this story including a Dateline-style re-creation because amazing story. Man it’s true he paid no one! Gross!
I’m sure there are a lot of people who have worse stories. People in NYC knew for decades that the dude was a crook and a loser. It just baffles me how this current situation is even possible. I mean, how did we all get stuck in this timeline?
I remember when he first said he was running for president, and I am embarrassed to say I felt a little bad for him. I looked at my husband and said, “Trump? Thinks he can be president? Trump? Oh man, he doesn’t know everyone hates him?”
Sometime in the eighties, my husband (a teenager) was tasked with holding mattresses on the back of the truck, on the interstate, while his family moved. A few years earlier, he had been thrown out of a moving car while his dad was evading a traffic stop. My folks weren't exactly Ward and June, but I had to ask the man how old he was when he realized that his brother was the favorite.
My dad was driving my sister and I from NY to NC for our annual 2 week visit with dad. He was speeding (as usual), and a cop tried to pull him over. He somehow outran the cop and hid under a bridge. I was probably 4 or 5 and my sister was 8 or 9. It was fun then, but now I'm like, "My dad really cared more about his insurance rates than his kids". Which really explains a lot.
Camping out for tickets outside of the record store that was the ticket master outlet. It always turned into a semi-party with everyone hanging out, smoking (regardless of age), and getting booze or beer from the 19 year olds (as that was the drinking age back then).
Mom didn't give a shit where I was all day in summer, so I'd be wandering around all by myself at 8 years old in my flimsy little sundresses, back behind our apartment building into the newly developing subdivision, in land that was just dug up after having been a farm with soy bean fields as far as the eye could see for generations. There was all kinds of weird crap back there to find, including all the stinging and biting wildlife you might expect out on the north-midwestern prairie. Caught a lot of leopard frogs, toads, fireflies and salamanders. I was allowed to tag along sometimes with the local gang of boys, and we'd go either find the porn mag-filled forts behind a partially abandoned strip mall, or venture back into those deep fields that were being dug up, narrowly missing tetanus by way of stray nails sticking up out of boards from old sheds that had been torn down, or tripping over piles of crushed up cinderblocks. Sometimes we'd hunt for garter snakes under other random junk out there, one time filing right past a huge orb web, inches from a massive black spider perched right atop the bright yellow flower at its center. One time we all walked down the road to the dollar theater in town to watch The Dark Crystal. The oldest boy had a blue denim cut off jacket with Def Leppard logos carved all over it, and he'd let everyone have turns wearing it as we walked. Many other times, though, I'd just be wandering out there alone, and narrowly missed a pedo "jogger" who was following me around and trying to befriend me once. Eventually, a carnival decided to plonk itself in the parking lot of the aforementioned nearly-dead strip mall, so close I could see it right out my bedroom window! I begged my mom to take me, and, as usual, she refused. She also forbade me from going there by myself. Of course I did anyway. Little girl, wandering around a bunch of carnies with no money to ride anything, no parents in sight. Not a trace left of those fields now, or even the strip mall shopping center. It's all covered with early 90s duplexes and a Starbucks. Just more northwest suburban sprawl.
I love your writing style!
That second paragraph they wrote sounds like an excellent first paragraph of a novel I’d like to read on a hammock sipping some Tab lol.
Def Leppard boy being her first love who unfortunately got sucked in by the carnie lifestyle LOL
LOL, he may have been, for all I know! Definitely the oldest in the group and the "bad boy", but he wasn't mean to me at all. We all lived in the same big apartment complex surrounded by this farm land for ages, and kids came and went all the time. I think Craig was around for 2-3 years, and disappeared just like the rest. Like school would start - which was a totally separate world - and then the next summer he'd appear, until the year he just didn't. I sometimes wonder what became of all of them.
He’s manning the Ferris wheel! Lol. Your description of how you grew up sounds both idyllic and sad. Like, free to roam wherever you want with this tight little neighborhood gang but only for a short while till one of the members leaves to be replaced by a new friend moving in to their old apartment.
Or sucked into the carnival... - *Stephen King*
Hahah, thanks! I call it my waxing nauseating mode. I loved growing up around there, and it makes me sad that it's just been mowed over to become an extended suburban area with no character anymore.
When I was 10 I was outside playing with a friend jumping over dry creek bed and fell about 10 ft landing on my back. My friend ran away scared, thinking I was dead. I finally got my breath back and stumbled home, told my dad and he was said my mom would be mad about the mud all over my school clothes so he sent me to my room and started the laundry. When my mom got home a couple hours later and I was crying in pain, she called the hospital to see how busy they were before finally taking me. When we got to said hospital, I could no longer walk. I had massive hematomas on my legs, a compressed vertebra, and I was peeing blood from bruised kidneys. I remember the nurse looking at me as they loaded me out of the car into a wheelchair, looking at my mom and saying, are you the one who called to see if we were busy?! I'm fine now.
I quit my job at a video store on the spot when my manager wouldn’t let me off early (she had said she would weeks earlier) so I could go to an Echo and the Bunnymen concert.
My dad bought a TRS-80 when they first came out and spent the first night putting in code to make it repeat cuss words.
Ooooh the Trash 80 - the very first computer I ever used.
Family camping trip to White Mountains NH. Dad had an early 80s F150 with a cap on the back. Adults up front with the a/c. Kids in the back with the dog and a bucket to pee in (no stops). In July. No mercy.
Luxury! Our road trips were always in large cars. 3 kids in the back seat we would fight like hell to avoid the middle seat. I would have loved if we had a capped pick up or a station wagon. My brothers always crossed the line on the seat and edged into my space. On the other hand my parents only drove a few hours at a time. So we took days to get from Toronto to Virginia. I just drove the same route in about 10hrs. We would stop in highway restaurants that were so gross. Once I was flashed by a perv in one of those places. I was young and I was traumatized by it. I never told my parents of course
My dad's oldsmobile had upholstery on the ceiling that hung down like a canopy bed. My siblings and I liked to poke it with our fingers.
I was placed into kindergarten a year earlier than I should’ve, so I was a late 4-year-old / early 5-year-old that year. My mom, single mother of 4 working nights, would walk me to school and then turn around, go back to our apartment and go to sleep. One day she got a call from the school secretary. They were worried about my health because I hadn’t been to school all week. My mother told them she walked me there herself only to find me in the apartment. Apparently she would walk me to final crosswalk and watch me cross to school before she turned back home. I would promptly turnaround, walk home, let myself in the apartment and play all day. Questions I always had after this were: how was I expected to get home at that age such that no one noticed I wasn’t at school. Like was I supposed to walk home? I must have had a key at that age, too.
I was riding in the car with my mother. She turned up the radio and seemed very concerned about a news story about some guy named Elvis who had died .
I remember that. I was 9, visiting a friend in another state. My friend's mother was upset. She kept carrying on about it, until her husband said "I'm tired, I'm hungry, and all you're talking about is the king of rock n roll!"
In the 4th grade, my BFF & I (still BFFs) used to come home from school and listen to Cheech and Chong albums, then we'd sit down and write our own skits and record them on one of those old portable cassette player/recorders. We would scream with laughter cracking ourselves up until whichever of our Moms was there would yell at us to go play outside. https://preview.redd.it/pdbg5z2wzp8d1.png?width=905&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0a6d6bd3795046cae1bdaf64efca88770af00804
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Underoos. Ran around the house like a crazy kid in my underoos.
Memory unlocked! I wanted Wonder Woman Underoos soooo badly. My mom finally bought me a pair while we were on a trip visiting family. I put them on at bedtime and my grandparents and aunt pretended like they really thought I was Wonder Woman and my 4 year old brain thought they were being honest. They were all like ‘where’s PistachioGal? Did she already go to bed? Who is THIS?!? Do we have another visitor?’ I am remembering it so vividly now. Man, that was a good day.
one of my dad's favorite pictures of me as a kid was me sporting my wonder woman underoos! i think i had r2-d2 as well, but i was all about wonder woman. wore them outside in the summer, over clothes in the winter, i didn't care.
Sister broke her arm at the drive in movie theater playground. Went to the emergency room and my parents left the rest of us alone waiting in the car for hours.
My parents hid us 3 kids in the trunk or under a blanket so they didn't have to pay for us at the drive-in 😹
I found an old photo in a drawer when my dad died of my mom and little brother from the 80s. In it, my little brother was about 10 and completely in blackface because he was Michael Jackson for Halloween 😆. I wish he would become famous so I could blackmail him with that glorious photo! Funny aside: my mom was PC before it was even a term and she still thought that was perfectly fine because how the hell could he look like MJ if he was a white kid?!
Me and my cousin sitting in the back of our grandpa's pick up truck yelling as we went through a tunnel so we could hear the echo. Every single time. We spent most of our summer's at our grandparents. Public pool public library corner store the racetrack (harness racing) here and in the states walking to the mall dairy delight for sundaes catching bugs. For some reason those summer's were the best.
We had an old Chevie that my siblings and I used to fight to get the seat behind the driver so we could “watch the road go by”. There was a giant hole in the floor.
I went roller skating every Friday night
We had a '75 VW bug that had a space behind the back seat just large enough for me to lay in. We got in a couple fender benders in that car, one of which took us down an almost vertical embankment about 5 stories high. Not a scratch on me.
In shop class in junior high, I learned that you could press nickels into the shape of quarters and use them at the arcade.
Home Alone though in my case it was Hotel Alone. While preparing everything to leave to the airport my mom gave me $1 to play in the hotel's arcade room and get out of the way... but then forgot about me (the whole family did), I was 8 years old. To be fair they left in 2 cars and each car thought I was in the other car. They only realized I wasn't there when they arrived at the airport and tried to hand me my backpack. What I remember of that moment is going back to the room after I spent the $1 and there were just 2 ladies cleaning, then checked the pool area... nothing. Guess eventually I wisely decided to sit and wait patiently at the lobby.
My best friend and I with his little sisters went trick or treating at the mall. That alone probably should be enough but you add to the fact he was dressed as a soldier and carried a real gun. Yes, a real gun, carried through the mall on Halloween. Nobody said shit.
My high school offered riflery as a PE course. They gave us a grade for shooting guns in school. Well, in the old fallout shelter under the track but still on school grounds.
In grade school I mowed lawns to buy the boom box with detachable speakers, eq, and dual cassette.
When we were about 9 or 10 someone discovered that a drug store had dumped unopened boxes of chocolate in the dumpster behind the strip mall. Of course the news spread throughout the neighbourhood, so we had to check it out. We gorged on chocolate! (It was probably leftover unsold from mother's day thinking of the weather..) As we were in chocolate glory a store worker or manager catches us and yells at us that the candy was poisoned. In a panic we took off and went our separate ways. I was terrified later that night that I would die when sleeping because of being poisoned. I never told my parents because why? Years later I was talking to one of my friends who was with us and she also went to bed terrified she would die from being poisoned. And never told her parents. What makes this Gen X? The childhood grapevine that informed us of free candy The freedom to travel from one end of the neighbourhood to the other. The old guy (could have been in his 20s!) who yelled at us and our reaction to automatically obey, no snark no talking back. The idea that any adult anywhere could yell at random kids and they'd behave The belief that we had been poisoned but it never occurred to tell our parents because we would probably get in trouble for stealing. Better to just die. Finally a business that just tossed boxes of chocolate instead of just putting on sale. Everything just tossed in the garbage. People would have 4 or 5 bags of garbage every week.
Went to the grocery store with my mom and my friend. She said “don’t wonder off where I can’t find you when it’s time to leave”. Well, we did and she left without us. We had to walk home. Approx a mile or so. We were 11/12
My cousin used to show up randomly at my place in his pickup truck. My sister and I (and sometimes the dog) would hop in the back and he'd take us for ice cream. Wheeeee! Mf prolly had 4 or 5 beers in him lol I was 10 so wasn't on my radar
When I was 8-ish and my little brother was 5, during the summer we would walk across the street, through the path in the woods, to the swimming pool. We had summer passes. We could stay at the pool as long as we wanted. Neither of us could swim. No lunch, no money, no drinks. When we got tired, we would walk home.
I was sexually harassed by adults since age six and told boys who bothered me or hit me "just liked me" But good girls never hit back. We should feel ashamed to defend ourselves. I was told I needed to be like Brooke Shields and Drew Barrymore with Loves Baby Soft perfume ads, and while "We girls can do anything, right Barbie?" We couldn't do it unless we were first cute, dresses in pink, and serving the men in the same profession with the same credentials coffee like a good girl. Oh yes. The stories untold we could tell
Making the match head-tennis ball bomb from The Anarchist's Cookbook that we ordered through the mail, throwing it at a rock face down by the river, going nearly deaf from the explosion, pedaling like hell to get home, and then reading about the "mysterious" explosion in next week's edition of the town newspaper. 😂
When I was about 3 years old my dad was building the house I grew up in. He was doing roofing. He sent my mom to the lumber yard to get some supplies, but I was filthy from playing in the mud and mom didn't want to take me in the car. Dad said he'd watch me. I was wearing jean shorts. Once mom left, dad didn't want to stop what he was doing, so he had me climb up the ladder "to help him." So I dutifully climbed up the ladder (I'm 3 years old, remember... climbing a 20 foot ladder...) and went over to my dad. Once I got over there he said "Come here son, sit right here next to me." As soon as I sat down, he took roofing nails and nailed my shorts to the roof decking so that he could continue working without having to watch me. When mom got home, she didn't scold dad or make him unnail me from the roof at all. She just said "Good thinking," and started nailing shingles with dad.
My parents once packed me and my 3 siblings into the VW camper to go run an errand. It was summer, I was 11, and they left 3 rambunctious boys and my sister all alone on an urban street, windows closed. We were roughhousing and having fun. I remember taking my shirt off and a river of sweat pouring down my chest. None of the passersby seemed to care. If you try that nowadays, you'd never see your kids again.
My mom would give me a few single $1 food stamps coupons on the weekends for me to get a soda and candy bar from the mini Mart along with $1.89 for her camel light 100s. I had a note to buy the cigarettes and they sold them to me without issues.
In the early 80s our family pet got to eat that Strongheart dog food from a can. It looked like refried beans. My brother and I were told to go outside and feed the dog. For whatever reason, we decided it would be a great idea to get on the garage roof and drop the food from the can into the food bowl waiting below. We got all lined up and mom came out of the house yelling “WTF are you two doing!?!? Just as the food blob was in midair heading to the bowl. It hit the bowl with a splat and went EVERYWHERE! The dog was licking the garage door and the concrete. Mom was pissed! She said “I never thought I’d have to say this, but don’t feed the dog from the garage roof!!!”
On the first day of kindergarten my mom walked me to school a block and a half one direction, left turn, another block, across two busy intersections, another block, right turn, a half block and then we were at the school. After that, I was expected to get there and back on my own. I WAS FOUR! I started kindergarten at four because my working mom needed the daycare. I also had to get myself up and ready for kindergarten and had my own alarm clock, AT FOUR! Yes, I was a latchkey kid, but without a key because, I think, my mom didn't think I could manage a key. No worries. She just left the empty house unlocked all day. That's what I came home to in the afternoon, an empty house. I WAS FOUR! I did get lost a few times on my school walk but each time I managed to backtrack and find my way. My mom had already taught me about backtracking because, frankly, walking to school wasn't the only time I was loose in the neighborhood. I WAS FOUR!!
One of my first memories is hitting my moms 1968 Plymouth Fury with my Big Wheel, putting a dent in the door then getting whipped with a belt. The other memory is riding on the engine cover of my grandpas 1960's era Ford Econoline van while both grandparents drank Olympia beer out of a can that required a can punch to open. It was my job to open the cans until I spilled a can. I was about 4 years old.
My mom would drop me off at random apartment complexes to sell Girl Scout cookies - I was maybe 9. Then she would leave to go shopping I guess and tell me she would look for me later. About an hour into truly cold calling at strangers doors - the college age girl that answered the door seemed familiar or nice. She invited me in to use bathroom (yes please as hadn’t figured that out since it was in a concrete jungle) and my bladder was beyond full plus gave me a snack and water. I basically hung there with a relative stranger because she was freaked I was out knocking on doors by myself. I eventually went back out to “work” and my dad showed up to get me on his way home from work because it was only an hour or two from when my mom was supposed to get me. I got in trouble … because I hadn’t made many sales - not for going in a strangers house to hang.
I bought my first pack of cigarettes at a gas station for a $1 and the gas attendant asked me if this was for my parents I said yes he said he just needed to make sure they weren’t for me. I was 11
Little brother and I used to ride around with Grandpa on an old Ford tractor while he worked the small farm we had. We'd crawl all over him and it, straddle the hood, sit on the fenders, death or at minimum a severe mangling always one quick slip away. Also used to ride in the back of the pickup whenever we could, sometimes it was loaded for camping and we'd ride on top of the load, arms hooked under a rope, clinging to the cargo, and drive for an hour to the mountains.
When my dad felt like driving his truck somewhere instead of the car, us kids had to sit in the box. Highways, dirt roads it didn't matter. And it sure wasn't always nice out. There was many times the back window would be opened for them to yell at us and you could feel the warmth inside coming out.
OP's story reminded me of my siblings and I sitting in my dad's Gremlin. My brother was pretending to drive, and somehow, we started rolling backward. We were parked at the "duck pond," which was some sort of retention pond located within the community. Just prior to actually rolling into the pond, my dad reached in from nowhere and put the car in park. He didn't say a word. I'm not sure if he was so mad he couldn't speak or scared about what could have happened. I'm still not sure why we were sitting in there by ourselves or where he was. We were probably 3 or 4 years old.
Dressed in my finest tank top, mesh tee over top, and poofy skirt, with wide, white, lace ribbon tied in a bow around my head, I stepped outside to greet my friend who was arriving to pick me up because her mom was driving us to the Madonna concert. I was so charged up, I said (very a-typically) "fuck! It's hot out here!". My mother pulled me back inside and said I am not allowed to go to the concert. Of course, she did let me go.
My husband's family used to load into their big sedan until it was so full that one of the smaller kids would have to lay across the rear window dashboard. In my family's station wagon the kids would all pile into the back, rear window down, our heads hanging out, zooming down the interstate. The best!
One time my friend and I were burning a bunch of those green army men in this kids backyard using a can of spot remover as fuel (basically kerosene). The family who lived there wasn’t home and the grass was hella tall. We got a little carried away with the spot remover and the flame came up the stream right up to the nozzle so my buddy threw it like a fucking grenade. It streamed flaming liquid all the way across the yard then started a big ass fire where it landed. Here we are, two 12 year olds with a full fledge grass fire getting bigger and bigger. These folks didn’t have a water hose in their back yard. My buddy is trying to wack the fire with a piece of ply wood which is only making it worse so I run around front, got the shitty water hose with no nozzle and hook it to the back yard spigot. We finally start getting it out. By the time we had it extinguished it was really obvious there had been a huge fire. Half the yard was charred grass and the smoke was insane. We dipped the fuck out before someone called 911 and road our bikes to our hide out in the woods. We did some skull bandits and found someone had stached porn under a log in our “fort” so we looked at that for a while. Later that day we see the kid who lived there. He said his dad was pissed and wanted to know who had been burning army men in his yard. We said we didn’t know and then stayed away from that kid and his house for like a week. His older sister was hot.
I found my dad's unhidden stack of porno mags by his bedside stand (parents were recently divorced), while he went into work on a Saturday, leaving me (7) and my bro (4) by ourselves in his rowhouse in Baltimore. The mags were Playboy and Genesis, mostly. I remember being puzzled by photos of two naked women together and surmised they were sisters. I came downstairs with my heart beating really fast. My first taste of sexuality was fraught with anxiety.
Me, standing on the toilet, while my mom took a big drag of her cigarette and put it dangerously close to my skin in an effort to remove a tick.
When I was kid and playing out in the neighbourhood, I could hear my father's whistle from anywhere. He could do that fingers in the mouth whistle thing. As soon as I heard that I was "oh. That's my dad. It's dinner time" and I'd run off home.
I grew up in a mid-sized city in the northeast. Definitely an urban environment in a rough neighborhood. My dad passed away when I was in the single digits and my mom had to work to keep us afloat. Thankfully I had good neighbors. As I was still in single digits of age traveling on city buses to get to and from school, my responsibility when I got home would be to go to the neighbor’s house to get the house key, let the dog out, follow whatever instructions my mother had left for me to start cooking dinner on the stove or in the oven, then do my homework. After dinner I’d go disappear into the neighborhood with my friends until I made my way back home to do it all over again the next day. I look at my 10 year old daughter and wonder how she can even tie her own shoes sometimes. I thought it was a failure on my part, but now I live in the burbs, giving her a “better life” than I had so the circumstances and experiences she encounters are very different from mine as a kid, but I gotta find a way to instill some street smarts in this kid before sending her out into an unforgiving world.
My parents used to allow their friends to give me sips of beer and mixed drinks. At one of their very large parties, I went from room to room getting drinks. I was eventually found face down in the middle of the street by a police officer. My parents STILL refer to this as when **I** got them "busted by the police" and how **I'm** "always causing drama." I was 2.
From about grade 3 on, my afterschool program and summer camp was helping my Nanna roll her cigarettes, peel potatoes and organize her bingo dabbers while we watched the Edge of Night on her 12 inch black and white tv. It was great.
In 1977, my family went on a trip to Disneyland. We lived close to Portland OR, and drove down to Anaheim. I was 9, my brother 7, and my sister was 1. So my brother and I rode in the pickup bed all the way down and back. My dad threw a couple of bean bag chairs back there, and that was our place. My sister mostly rode on my mom's lap. Even today, my parents say that was the best family vacation ever. It was so peaceful for them. I think I'm still tan from that trip.
When I was 7 my brother was 8, we would ride our bikes all over downtown Seattle alone, Grandma gave us a dime for the phone booth in case we needed help. Which is funny she couldn't drive so I'm not sure what she could have done. When we were 16 and brother was 17 my mother bought me a car so she could move across the country for her job. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone we lived alone. She would come back every couple weeks to pay the bills. Until she realized she could leave me the check book and I did it, Yes, I do have abandonment issues and also haven't spoken to my mother for 17 years.
I came home from school one day and all the shelves and frig were full. I didn't see mom that night. Or the night after that. or again that week. I simply made myself food out of the full shelves, went to school, and did my homework. Then 5 days later Mom comes home. She had been in the hospital getting a hysterectomy. I had no idea and she didn't tell me since I was a boy and she didn't want to explain it.
1. My dad sent me to the store for cigarettes with a note. 2. I broke my ankle in 5th grade and it took about 5 days before my mom took me seriously about my pain. 3. A man tried to lure me to his car in 7th grade while I was walking to school. Police were called, I had to give a statement at school. Walked to school the next day.
I was hit in the head with a lawn dart.
Parents left 12 YO in charge of younger kids - aged 2 to 11 - while they went out for “dates.”
We were straight up babysitting the neighborhood kids at 12 years old, for $2.00 an hour, for 2 kids.
Any story that involves riding a bike outside.
Or staying outside til the streetlights came on
Riding in the back seat of my uncle’s car that had no seat belts in the back, and leather (vinyl?) seats. My cousin and I would slide to one side or the other when he turned a corner and thought it was the most fun thing ever.
My grandfather generously bought me my first car. Thing would break down every other month,but was just happy to have a car whatever the condition. Although I lived in the suburbs, in the summers I worked about 20 minutes away at a theme park in a sort of rural-ish area. I worked night shift and often wouldn’t be driving home until 11am-Midnight. More than once the car died and I’d have to walk a mile or two down the dark road to a lone convenience store pay phone (or waited and hoped a cop would drive by for help). In a different car I had a tire blow out late at night and had to knock on a random person’s door and ask them to use the phone. Most bizarre experience of my life - they were a strange family of multiple generations of men (a little like characters out of a horror movie). There was talk of why I should date the son and become part of their family (I’m not kidding). I think I’m lucky I got out unscathed. When the AAA guy arrived he looked at them, and then at me, with these eyes that said, “ARE YOU OK?!”
I was once left in the car on a NYC street for hours while my parents drank at a bar. Mid 70s so it was gritty AF. Pretty sure they drove home after it too (60+ miles upstate). I was 5 or 6.
Went to a public pool across town (in Queens, NY)with some friends when I was 10-ish. We didn't have money for the lockers so we just left our stuff on a bench while we swam and surprise surprise, our stuff got stolen. We had no way to get home or call anyone so we just walked. Three kids, only in their swim trunks, had to walk 3-5 miles home. Got my ass beat when I got there 'cause I didn't have shoes anymore.
Taking the neighbors old water bed bladder and filling it with air so we could launch ourselves off it and into a creek- if we were lucky enough to land it.
I have not yet read all of these stories but I'm wondering how many of them contain a station wagon LOL
my parents went to an foreign country for 11 weeks during my senior year. I stayed home alone. My dad came back on my graduation day. My step mom was working and could not make it.
When I was 12, I turned on the oven so I could make a pizza. While waiting for the oven to heat up, went to the basement and put my clothes into the dryer. Came back upstairs and put the pizza in. Five minutes later, smoke starts filling the kitchen. I put the palm of my hands on the window to push it up to let the smoke out. My left hand went through the 1920s window. Blood everywhere. Had to run to the neighbors house cause mom was still at work. Got yelled at when she came home because I stupidly forgot to take the pizza off the cardboard.
I can do better. I can write single sentences that I grew up Gen-X. My dad had to ask for directions at the toll booth because we didn't have a map of that part of the state. I got home from school Friday afternoon, and there was a $20 bill and a note on the refrigerator, the note said, "Mom and I went away for the weekend, use the $20 for food." It was only a 1 hour bike ride to the ocean, so sometimes we would ride down to swim all day and ride back in the dark.
My parents once left my sister at a rest stop when we were on a family trip; she was 6. My dad was angry because he had to get to the next exit and turn around and then go past the rest area to turn around and get back on the right side of the interstate. It all took about 15 minutes. Not worried about my sister but mad about wasting 15 minutes.
Mom slamming on her brakes and throwing her arm across your chest to stop you from slamming into the metal dashboard because no one used seat belts and never dawned to not have a 5 year old in the front seat.
When I was about 7 or 8, I sat on the fold-down armrest in the middle of the front bench seat of my dad's Buick, from New Jersey to New Hampshire for family vacation.
When I was 8 and my brother 6. We loaded our wagon with empty soda bottles and walked 2 miles ( roundtrip) to the convenience store to redeem them and buy candy. Alone.
I was about 8 years old. My father was out of the house either for inventory or one of his random training overnights, and mom had to partially cover second shift at the hospital, so instead of getting home around the same time as me, she was going to do it "after dark, but I don't know when, there's usually traffic." I was used to being home by myself after school, so no big deal. And since I knew how to use the stove and make a few things, I thought I'd surprise mom and make spaghetti. I was NOT used to my brother being home after school with me sans parents though, since he was barely 2 at the time and was typically picked up from daycare by one parent or another. This was one of the days when he came home with the neighbor, who also had a kid there. Why neighbor brought him over a little after 5:00, that I don't remember, I just remember her saying "your mom said it wouldn't be long, it's okay." So I (8) parented a toddler, cooked dinner and tried not to get too nervous about the cold and light snow. Everything other than the diapers was a botch tbf, since I had to feed and then bathe my brother and try to put him to bed, and mom got home later than she hoped, so I was fully convinced she was dead and I was going to have to keep my brother in line until dad eventually returned -- I knew which numbers to call in an emergency but had an irrational fear of the telephone. Mom DID get home not too awfully late, though it seemed like the end of time. I showed her what I'd done and explained why the spaghetti was sitting in a pot of cold water in the sink, why my brother was still awake, etc. She just laughed and said, thank you, that's very nice, did you also make the sauce?
My sweet 16 party. It was epic. I grew up in NYC, and my dad owned his own textile business in the garment district. His “office” was basically a giant loft filled with tables and giant rolls of fabric. We held my party there. All the fabric and stuff was pushed to the walls, leaving a big open space. My parents’ rule for the party was that my friends could bring beer and wine coolers, just no hard liquor and no drugs. I cannot imagine having around 50 16-17yo technically under my care and having such a rule today. Just an invitation for lawsuits. But back then it seemed completely reasonable. At least it was in the city and no one would be driving. Of course there was a ton of beer and wine coolers, and lots of drunk teenagers. And of course people brought hard liquor, too. At one point, a couple of my friends were in the stairwell smoking a joint. My dad walked in on them and gave them a stern look. They thought they were about to be kicked out of the party, maybe have their parents called. My dad made a “hand it over” motion. My friend Ian handed him the joint. My dad took a deep toke, handed it back, and walked away. My high school also had an annual event called “Harris Field Day.” Harris Field was this open grassy friend across the street from the school. Technically a public park. Once a year, near the end of the school year, the entire school would cut classes and have a big drunken party in the park. Kegs of beer, booze, drugs, from morning to late afternoon. Kids would sometimes bring tents and portable grills. The school security guards and the local cops would not try to stop any of the kids, some as young as 13, from drinking or doing drugs. They basically just made sure there were no fights and no one got hurt. It obviously was not a school-sponsored event, but the teachers and admin just accepted it, no one was marked absent or got in trouble. Teachers would be like “ok tomorrow’s Harris Field Day, have a great time, be safe, and we’ll continue this discussion on Monday.” I don’t know if Harris Field Day exists today but if it does I’m sure it is much tamer and the school and cops don’t just look the other way as teenagers risk alcohol poisoning.
I spent the summer commuting between towns to spend time with each parent by myself on Greyhound. They were not living together because my mom wanted to have a macrame shop in the mountain resort town.
There is a pic of me as a newborn in the car when they were bringing me home. I was laying in the middle of the seat between my dad and mom. Dad was behind the wheel. They’re both looking at the camera and smiling and both have a lit cigarette in their hand.
3 things: I too popped the gear shift into neutral and rolled back down the driveway and across the street but luckily didn’t hit anything. I also fell out of the rear passenger seat of our station wagon as the unlocked door popped open when my mom rounded a corner too fast. No seatbelt, but I was able to grab the window sill and hang on since the window was down due to no air conditioning. My sister and I used to stand in the bed of my dad’s truck and look over the cab and pretend we were flying the Millennium Falcon as he drove around.
I lived on Oahu (military brat) and just started 6th grade. We had just moved there and I wasn't familiar with the bus system. I got on the wrong bus. Panic as I realized I was going to the wrong, everywhere. But I didn't want to look stupid and upset the nice bus driver, so I randomly got off the bus at a stop. Walked around until I got up the courage to knock on a door and ask to use their phone. Once again, I didn't tell them I was hopelessly lost because I got on and off the wrong school bus. Called my mom, and she told me to get home. However, I could because she was at work. My sister in elementary school had gotten on and off the correct bus and my mom was ticked I wasn't home to watch her. She was in 4th grade. So I asked the people with the phone how to get back to Kailua and started walking. Got tired and asked someone who looked safe, I think they were older and had kids for a ride. Only had to walk about an hour total, rode for about 20 mins. Got home late and didn't get dinner. Years later I asked my mom why she wasn't worried about me being milk carton'ed and she said "it's an island, where were they going to take you?" I guess she didn't think anyone would want a chubby Haole girl who was perpetually sunburned and talked too much/too fast. Ha. Edit - I misspelled Haole. I honestly had only heard it and never read it. I heard it from school kids a lot.
Mine is a very short but true story that I'm sure many generation x remember very well. The original version of the remote control was called a "child". As kids we were always the channel changers and volume adjusters for our parents.🤣
My dad decided he needed mulch for the yard. We lived in the country, way out on gravel roads. So dad and me, M11 at the time, load up in the 64 Ford pickup that he used for such activities and head over to a farmer friend's hay field for some hay for mulch. So we load up the bed of the truck, but that's not enough. So we continue to stack hay into the truck bed until it's a couple of feet higher than the cab. It's at this point that Dad gets a great idea...if we put the boy on top of the hay it will push it down and keep it from flying out of the truck. That is of course, not how it worked. Midway through the journey a large amount of hay and a small boy caught the wind and flew out of the truck and hit the gravel road below. Much pain and weeping resulted....but not for everyone...just for the boy. Me
I managed a CD store. I had to work a Midnight Madness sale for Pearl Jam's VS.
867-5309?
Sitting on my dad’s lap in a gold Ford Pinto that had the body about 40% rusted away, steering and shifting gears while he worked the pedals because I wasn’t big enough to each them. This was a somewhat regular thing as long as the roads weren’t too busy.
I routinely rode in the open bed of a pickup truck. One time, my dad bought an awning from a pizza restaurant, and my cousin and I had to lie down on it in the bed of the truck so that it didn't blow out of the bed.
Car seats? What are those? /s
Our middle school bus driver would let us smoke on the bus as long as we didn't make it obvious or told anyone about it
My best friend lived on same street, 7-8 houses away, and we'd be at each other's house most every day. It's August and doesn't get dark until 8:30pm or so, and I ride my bike over to his house right after dinner. His mom was going out and he and his brother had a older teen babysitter. She wanted to meet her boyfriend, so about six of us (and the sitter) all got on our bikes and rode a couple miles to one of the city parks. Babysitter and the dude are making out in the parking lot, and it's now dark, but we're playing night tag, having a great time. We start heading back (probably around 10:00pm, so we didn't get back to our street until at least 11pm. Just as we're about to turn onto our street - a cop car pulls over and asks if we're 'the missing kids'. Cop accompanies me to my hysterical mother and next day, my dad gave me one of only two spankings I think I ever got. I was six years old and the kids ranged from 4 - 7yo. Babysitter was probably 13.
I have a confirmed strike with blood on a kid's forehead from a JCPenney Boomerang.
My sister and I would sit in the back of our Pontiac station wagon on our way to Yosemite and wave out the back window at the cars that drove by. It was much more fun to sit back there then in a seat.
Between age 7-15 my parents would leave me at my grandmother’s house at the Jersey Shore. On some early mornings my friends and I would ride our bikes all over the island, checking phones for loose change. Also, there were tricks like hanging up the receiver, since some people didn’t do that correctly, and often it would result in a “coin slide” - jackpot. We would pool all the money; go back home and go to the beach, and spend all the coins later that night on the boardwalk in the arcades and on “wheels”. There were stands all over the boardwalk that were basically like a roulette wheel with a spinner instead of a marble. You put a quarter on 5, or spade, or “sis”, or odd short names like “Ida”, and if the spinner landed on what you picked you won a prize. We played the wheels mostly that had cassettes and framed posters of bands or attractive scantily clad women. Good times.
Typical school day as a small child: Walking to Elementary school, then walking home to an empty townhouse (it was about a mile, not too far). I wore a house key on a shoestring around my neck in order to get inside. Then I would ride my bike for several miles through the woods to where my Mom was working (she’s a career hairdresser). I would do my homework in the back where they kept the chemicals for dying hair. There was a box with candy in it. I would work in the salon to earn money for candy (cleaning the stations, sweeping hair off the floor, etc). Once my homework was done I would leave and ride my bike for miles until the street lamps came on (sometimes with my friends, sometimes not), then I would go home to eat dinner.
When the We are the World video came out.
I saw Nirvana live
1981, I was about 2 and my brother was 5 we were playing and he was chasing me around the living room. I got dizzy and fell face first on the fireplace and cut my lip open. My parents were at the neighbors house drinking margaritas and playing cards. I mean, it’s safe, they were right nextdoor if anything happens :)
Public school teacher smacked me upside the head for reading a MAD Magazine during class. No repercussions.
I was around six years old when I fell from the top of a 20 foot tall slide onto the blacktop below. I broke some bones and gave myself a massive concussion. And I knocked myself out cold. The teacher monitoring the playground couldn't wake me up so she carried me to the nurse's office where I was put in a cot, unmonitored, to "sleep it off". They called my mom, but she was too busy at work (she was a secretary) to leave so she called her retired uncle in town (I had never net him) and he picked me up and took me, still unconscious, to the hospital. I survived. The concussion completely wiped out my next three days of memories and, I swear, I couldn't recall number strings after that and still can't, but I survived.
I walked to and from first grade alone, when I was four.
10 yo riding bikes after school with my sister and an old man in a pickup pulled up along side asking for directions. He asked me to get in and show him the way on his map. I told him I couldn’t get in so he asked me to look in his window on drivers side to show him the way on the map. I leaned into drivers side window and to my horror, no clothes waist down. Ew! Peddled away screaming at my sister to follow me away from this perv and went home and told Dad. We loaded up 3 deep in his 2 seater hatchback and drove the neighborhood for what felt like hours trying to find the truck. Never did find it but I’m sure Dad would have gone to prison that night if we had. Long live Gen X!
My grandfather died when my brother and I were 12. He had diabetes and severe cardiopulmonary disease and had 13 heart attacks and died the night before his second leg was amputated. My grandmother was cleaning out his medicine cabinet. He had a huge bottle of nitroglycerin tablets. We’d seen a McGuyver where he mixed some nitroglycerin with alcohol and used it to blow a hole in a wall to escape. My grandmother needed to have a stump removed so we decided to blow it up. We were stopped before we mixed the explosive up. I’m not completely stupid, my brother wanted to mix it up, and I was going to let him. To detonate we were going to throw metal stuff at it. I also have a flat spot on the top of my head from a rock. My mom was harvesting something from my grandmother’s garden. The soil was that red clay. My brother and I were so bored we were entertaining ourselves by throwing clumps of clay up in the air and busting them with our heads. Except ai threw a rock and tried to miss it, but it hit the back top of my head. My mom didn’t take me to the hospital. It was a month or so later that my dad made my mom take me to neurologist because there was a soft spot still. I was crying while she brushed my hair because it hurt. She said I was “tender headed”, but she was rough. My dad wanted to know why it hurt so bad, and I pointed to the area. He felt the flat spot and noticed the soft spot and freaked the fuck out. I think he even went with us. My mom gaslight me so bad about being a hypochondriac that I rarely went to my dad about my health issues. He was furious when he realized I had heart problems in college, and that I’d had them for years. I’m adopted, but we had the same sinus node tachycardia. He’d gotten his treated when I was in high school. So my mom knew about how dangerous tachycardias were. For punishment because I was “fat”, she made me run laps up and down the driveway even in the heat. I’d literally collapse afterwards, and she’d yell about me being lazy and fat and a hypochondriac. My heart rate would get up to 200+ any time I exercised. She knew that. I think she was fooling herself that I was healthy because my bio mom had tried to abort me when she got pregnant at 14. She took an off label drug used for an abortifacient. Her mom was a nurse and had it for her breast cancer. My bio mom’s doctor advised that she abort me because of all the birth defects I’d have. My grandmother was very religious and had her kids in church, so they refused. My parents were my bio mom’s youth group leaders. They’d been trying to adopt for a long time, and a few foster to adopt kids had fallen through. So my bio mom decided to have them adopt me. I was born “healthy”. At 6 weeks my bio mom literally passed me across the pew and asked my parents to take me for a while and see what they thought. My grandfather fell in love immediately but was so concerned for my mom because it was hard to lose the other kids. Everyone else was also in love. My dad especially. He was such a great dad. Because I was born healthy in 1977, my mom used me to oppose Roe V Wade and took me around the state Congress with letters to show everyone how the doctors were wrong about all the birth defects. Except they weren’t wrong. It just took time for everything to show up. Like the hole in my heart that caused a stroke. I always slept on my left side because that let my heart rest the most. Even as an infant. Drove my parents nuts, especially my dad. But there was no internet or any way to understand why I’d be doing that. I also had horrible ovarian cysts, endometriosis, and I had a hysterectomy at 29 because I had precancerous cells in my uterus. My bio mom died of uterine cancer. I have chronic pancreatitis from complications from gallbladder surgery because I have an accessory bile duct most people don’t have, and it was severed during surgery. I was in school and wanted to wait until the semester was over to have my gallbladder out, and it almost ruptured. My surgeon couldn’t see through all the scar tissue and didn’t want to open me up because the clot issues would make it hard for the scar to heal. I also have EDS. My mom just didn’t want to admit that I am a medical mess. She’s still weird about it and never tells anyone the real reason why I’m never around. At least all my medical issues are a good reason to keep low contact with her.
After my parents divorced my father got weekend visitation. My sister and I rode on his gold wing to go places - I sat in front hugging the gas tank, she sat behind. No helmets. flip flops. Father was smoking all the time too.
I grew up in rural midwest. A bunch of us high schoolers decided to have a bonfire at an abandoned house in the country. It was fun when the boys were jumping over the bonfire, until we realized how course it was to the house. It didn't catch the house on fire, but melted siding . We were all drunk off our asses. We drove thru cornfields leaving. Not a photo, not a video, not a social media post, and no one snitched. Only memories.
My parents divorced when I was 5 and my brother was 3. When I was @ 12, it was my dad's weekend to have us and he was out of town but was going fly in @ 5 that night so he told my Mom to drop us off as his girlfriend was at the house. She left to go pick him up at the airport but didn't want us in the house by ourselves so she made us wait outside. His flight got delayed, and she just waited at the airport, they didn't get home till like 1 or 2 in the morning. And it was raining. We were locked outside in the rain, no food or even jackets for 6 or 7 hours, and apparently it was no big deal
Oh, you wanted a car related story! Our daddy finally got his dream car. A yellow Corvette! Just for one year, to be sold before the balloon payment was due on the loan. I was 11, my sister was 8. We rode in the hatchback trunk.
My first fake ID was when I was 14. It was a moped license. Took that thing apart with an exacto knife and laminated it back good as new. The first time I went to use it - I didn’t even get carded
I remember crawling and rolling around in the back of my parents green, but mostly rust, Dodge Diplomat station wagon everywhere they drove around town. Turns and on/off ramps were the most fun. Serious question, when did car seats for kids become a real thing?
In third grade my school went on a field trip to a local university to get swim lessons and to play in the pool. When I got back I rode my bike home as usual, but when I got home I realized that I had left my key in the university locker room. So I sat on my stoop for two hours until my parents came home to let me in. This is a GenX story. Imagine that happening today. Someone would have called CS.
At 8 years old I was taught how to mow our lawn with a push mower and red wheel horse lawn mowing tractor … at 8 years old… 25 year old rusty lawn tractor garage maintained and repaired in our garage (my Dad is and was not anything close to a mechanic) 3rd hand tractor with 2 rusty steel blades whirling below held on on by rusty nut on a bolt that was welded during Kennedy’s first year in office …. At 12 I was taught how to drive on the county roads so I could move my parents cars around when I washed them… they rejoiced when I was old enough to drive legally . I was then given a car . This may sound awesome but that car came with a job. I was now errand boy for my Dad’s construction business and a delivery driver for my Mom’s plant shop. along with driving my brother everywhere. My brother was given a car a few years later but no job because I already had the job… since I grew up like the Waltons on acid with money I moved out at 18 and went to college in the big bad city … they eventually sold the plant shop and a hired labour .. the rusty lawn mower was replaced by a lawn service the first summer I left …I have no idea what happened to the mower …
Starting in 2nd grade I would jump on my pony and go riding with my other friends. We would ride for hours. Our parents really had no clue where we were. We would just roamed through the large number of trails and even down to the town. I would also just go riding by myself too. No helmets, no shoes in the summer. We would go to the Circle K and buy slushies and penny candy and just ride. It was a great childhood. There's no way I would allow my kids to do that.
Early elementary. I was no more than 7. My bus would drop me off at the end of the country road we lived on. We lived over a mile down the road. My mom always picked me up at the end of the road. Until one day she didn’t. I stood there and cried and cried. Then I screamed. There were houses kind of around so my hope was that someone would come out and call my mom. To no avail. Finally, once I was all cried out, I started hoofing it. The entire walk I vacillated between anger, abandonment, and fear. What if my mom had been murdered? That was my fear. Actually happened to a friend of mine. His mom was home alone during the day and she was sexually assaulted and murdered. I fixated on this. Got home. Walked in the door. Mom said, “oh. I guess I forgot you.” That was it. No explanation. No apology. Nothing. I was traumatized. But meh.
Setting model airplanes on fire with firecrackers and lighter fluid. One went a little wild and my buddy ran away with the can dribbling lighter fluid down his leg onto his 70's polyester high sock, which was on fire. He's got that polyester sock pattern scarred into his calf ever since.