It hits me sometimes, watching kids today, fingers flying across screens. Always connected, always… somewhere else online. Makes me think back, you know? What did we do before all this? Before Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever the new thing is.
Well, I can tell you what I did. We went outside. A lot. Sounds simple, right? But it was our whole world.
Out the Door, Rain or Shine (Mostly Shine)
Soon as school let out, boom, dump the backpack, out the door. We didn’t really plan things like kids seem to now with schedules and playdates booked weeks ahead. You just… went out. Your friends were already there, or you’d knock on their door, or yell up at their window.
What did we do out there? Man, everything and nothing.
- We rode bikes. Everywhere. Miles and miles. Until the streetlights came on, that was the signal to head home. Sometimes later if we could get away with it.
- Played games. Tag, hide-and-seek that covered the whole neighborhood, kickball in the street (had to yell “Car!” a lot). Made up weird rules.
- Built stuff. Forts in the woods behind my house, using fallen branches and scraps we found. Terrible forts, mostly. Fell apart easy. Didn’t matter.
- Just… explored. Walked around. Found shortcuts. Looked at bugs. Climbed trees – fell out of a few, too. Got scraped knees. Went home, got a bandage, went back out.
When Stuck Inside
Okay, it wasn’t always sunny. Rainy days happened. Or when it got dark early in winter. What then? Still no social media, remember.
We had board games. Monopoly could take days, seriously. Battleship. Chess, if you were feeling smart. Card games. Lots of arguing over rules, probably.
Books. Actual paper books. I’d go to the library, come back with a stack. Read ’em all in a week. Comics too. Spread them out on the floor.
Music was a big deal. Tapes first, then CDs. You’d listen to an entire album. Read the liner notes. Maybe try and record songs off the radio onto a blank tape, hitting pause real quick to cut the DJ out. Usually messed that up.
And the phone! The landline. Stuck to the wall. If you wanted to talk to your friend, you called their house. Might have to talk to their mom or dad first. No texting. If you wanted privacy, you stretched that curly cord as far as it would go, maybe into a closet.
Making Connections, The Old Way
It sounds kinda primitive maybe? Less connected? I dunno. It was just… different. Slower. Your world was more local. Your friends were the kids on your street, in your class. You saw them, face-to-face. You learned to read people, figure out if they were mad or happy without an emoji.
Boredom was a thing. You’d actually get bored. And your parents would tell you to go find something to do. That boredom, though… that’s where the weird games came from, the exploring, the fort building. You had to make your own fun.
So yeah. That’s what this kid did, anyway. We played, we explored, we got bored, we figured it out. We were busy, just… not online.
