What Decade Marks Your Young Childhood?

I was a born in the very late 1970s which makes me part of that X/millennial cusp group. I was a young kid in the 80s and a teen in the 90s.

Generally speaking, those decades kinda blew. Being born at the tail end of the baby bust meant that lots of stuff was winding down and closing up shop throughout my childhood. For example, my local gradeschool closed after in attended first grade meaning I spent the rest of K-8 getting busses two suburbs over.

The overall vibe was decline and general panic (strangers, drugs, the Tylenol thing. AIDS, economic woes, satanism, etc.). There was some “free range childhood” but enclosure was happening in real time—so it felt like you were constantly losing something and new rules and surveillance mechanisms were being imposed. And you were always hearing about how everything was going to hell and that everything was not as good as before and blah blah blah.

There were some early examples of hyper commercialized bespoke childhood happening, but if you weren’t rich it just made you realize that you weren’t getting any of it. Lots of plastic junk and sugared crap rolled yr way. But being 10 years old at the tail end of the 80s meant you were mostly drinking the decade’s back wash. And even when the 1990s got cool for two or three years, folks in my cohort were really too young to get in on it other than as a kiddie consumers of secondhand cool.

In general, it was a bit of a harsh realm.

I just tapped into a memory that probably perfectly sums up what my childhood is like.

I am 7 years old and a grown adult is lecturing children about the horrors of Garbage Pail Kids stickers and how they will ruin the world. I am 12 years old and a grown adult is lecturing children about how a Bart Simpson t-shirt that says “Don’t Have a Cow” is going to doom society. I am 15 years old and a grown adult is lecturing children about how a Co-Ed Naked shirt nailed Christ to the cross and summoned the beast Leviathan. I am 47 years old and some grown ass adult younger than me is telling me how Bad Bunny is summoning demonic powers to turn the world Puerto Rican.
 
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Born in '61, so that's put my formative years around '65 = '75. Prominent memories from my childhood include:

My mom went back to work when I was in 3rd grade. She'd make me breakfast and pack my lunch before she left for work. It was up to me to get myself out the door and on my bike with enough time to pedal the 1 mile to school...and not be late. Mom & Dad wouldn't get home from work until 5-ish, so there was unsupervised time after school as well. Sometimes I'd come straight home, but many days I'd just end up at a friend's house, or a vacant lot somewhere for a pickup game of baseball for football. Personal responsibility was learned at a young age.

We lived on a cul-de-sac in the suburbs on the outskirts of Houston with a neighborhood full of boomer kids. Pretty much every afternoon as the sun was getting low enough to be bearable, those kids would show up for a pickup game of baseball played in the cul-de-sac. We had bases painted on the cement and we'd play with a tennis ball instead of a baseball so as to not break things. Those were good times, but much like the movie "The Sandlot", folks grew up or moved away, and those games went by the wayside.

Summertime was, have breakfast, get on your bike and head out for some sort of adventure. We pretty much lived on our bicycles. We'd build ramps for jumping, take shovels to a vacant lot and build a bmx track, or just ride along the bayou for miles to see what we'd find. The only rule was to be home in time for dinner.

When I was about 12 or 13 I started cutting yards in the neighborhood for spending money. A couple yards a week would keep $20 in my pocket, which was a lot of money for a 12 yr old kid in the early '70s. That's about the time I got into music and a lot of that money went to buying albums. I still have 'em all.

I was lucky to have had the independent childhood that I did. I look back on it fondly.
 
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Born in '73. So I was a very young child in the 70's, and the later part of my childhood took place in the early 80's. I saw Star Wars as a very young child when it came out in '77, and since I was so young I had convinced myself that we really went into space and shot the movie. I was also into Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I do remember my family going to a lot of parties during that time, and we hung out at skating rinks and Straw Hat Pizza with friends. Lot of happy memories from that time. I did have to take myself to and from the bus stop for school. Even at 5 years old I was quite independent compared to kids today of the same age or older. I also got really into Lego during this time thanks to a friend that I knew back then. I did play outside a lot with the neighborhood kids. We used to knock on each others doors and ask the parents if so-and-so could come out and play. I remember getting really bad sun burns because I got so into playing outside, and I wore only shorts and a tank top and didn't think about sun block (was that even around in the 70's?).

My parents got divorced in '79, so that's when I got to have the experience of being a latch-key-kid, coming home from school with no parents around because my mom had to work. Those were difficult times for me, as my older sister really had it in for me, and she took advantage of the situation. We also moved a bunch during that time. We moved from Sacramento to Anaheim in 1980, and the latch-key-kid experience continued there until my Mom remarried in late 1981.

Shortly after that we moved to Orange and life got a little more stable for me. My mom ran a day care business from home, so no more latch-key-kid life. I did take myself to and from school, but Handy Elementary was only a few blocks away. I walked to school in 2nd grade, and then I rode my back from 3rd grade on (for some reason the school required a "bike license" to ride your bike to school and you couldn't get it until 3rd grade). School life kinda sucked for me. I was bullied a lot due to the fact that I was small and intelligent, and I was one of those kids that didn't like getting into trouble. However this reality helped me to stop caring what people thought about me, and I learned early on that life isn't fair, and you have to make the best out of what you have.

It was during this time that I met a kid at school who had a lot in common with me. We both were totally into Star Wars, and he had the whole collection of action figures. As we grew up together we also got into Transformers, GI Joe and Robotech. He was my best friend through most of my older childhood and adolescence. I spent a lot of time with him and his parents who were totally awesome. They only had 3 rules for us.

1. No automatic gunfire in the house
2. Don't burn the house down
3. Don't stuff beans up your nose.

It was a very liberating experience for me to have a friend like that, and his parents are some of the most wonderful people I've ever known. I saw them pull themselves up by their boot straps and build a successful business, and that taught me the value of hard work, and they were very generous with me, and that taught me the value of showing kindness. They had cable TV (my family was too poor for cable at the time), and that was my first taste of MTV (when they actually played music videos).

I also had another close friend who was several years older than me who was very much into music. He had an awesome sound system and a CD player and we used to sit back and listen to albums and talk about stuff. That's where I got exposed t0 Pink Floyd, The Who, Genesis and other classic rock artists from the 70's. He ended up as my best man when I got married later in life.

It was also during this period that I started taking piano lessons from my Grandmother, and it was discovered that I have some musical talent as I started composing my own music while I was still learning to play. It was serious classical music training that included recital performances and tests of music theory knowledge. That said, my mom had to get on me about practicing, since I was more interested in playing with my toys and my friends at the time. (Later on as a teenager I discovered that girls like musicians so I got more serious about playing music then).

I remember the summers were awesome. I would go out and play with my friends all day when I was at home in Orange. When I went to my Dad's house in Sacramento, I was left at home alone all day while he went to work. He taught me how to make scrambled eggs. He also would take me camping, where I learned how to build a campfire and catch fish.

For the most part I was a very independent child. I learned how to take care of myself at a very young age. By the time I hit my early teens I was already wandering all over Orange and Santa Ana on my bike or skate board. I was pretty much left to my own devices, I just had to let my mom know where I was going.

I think I was fortunate to live in SoCal during that time. It was the entertainment center of the universe. There was always something fun to do. There were a lot of bad things that happened to me during that time, but there was a lot of good times too, and I remember those more than anything. I do miss how simple life was for me back then, but life goes on.
 
1980s. Born in '74.

Mixed upbringing - my parents were left-leaning idealists, not hippies as such but working as NGOs, often abroad, saving the world and other people's children, stuff like that. So I got to spend a lot of time with my grandma and my aunt and uncle, the old school, old money, conservative part of the family. There were rules for sure, but I kind of dug that.

So what did I do? Late '70s to early '80s it was Lego, and later on slot cars and Airfix kits, BMX bikes too. Roller skates. We spent a lot of time just being kids on our own, mostly outside. Board games was a thing too.

Then, by '83-'84, I guess, I got into music, exchanging mixtapes, the charts, reading magazines and collecting posters. Girls happened, parties and dancing, and just hanging out. Got my first couple of vinyls in '85, I think. The bubble gum years.

Late '80s was all about country living, farm work and machines, lending a helping hand and becoming part of the business. Horse riding, shooting guns and driving 4x4s, tractors and harvesters, which you get to do when you follow the rules. Being respected and relied on at 14 is awesome. Still girls were definitely happening very much, parties and just hanging out. Lots of responsibility and lots of freedom.
 
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Late 70's, early 80's.

I remember Mom taking me to see Star Wars and that giant spaceship flying from the back of the theatre into the top of the screen.... my world would never be the same.
 
Peen Simmons said:
I was a born in the very late 1970s which makes me part of that X/millennial cusp group. I was a young kid in the 80s and a teen in the 90s.

Generally speaking, those decades kinda blew. Being born at the tail end of the baby bust meant that lots of stuff was winding down and closing up shop throughout my childhood. For example, my local gradeschool closed after in attended first grade meaning I spent the rest of K-8 getting busses two suburbs over.

The overall vibe was decline and general panic (strangers, drugs, the Tylenol thing. AIDS, economic woes, satanism, etc.). There was some “free range childhood” but enclosure was happening in real time—so it felt like you were constantly losing something and new rules and surveillance mechanisms were being imposed. And you were always hearing about how everything was going to hell and that everything was not as good as before and blah blah blah.

There were some early examples of hyper commercialized bespoke childhood happening, but if you weren’t rich it just made you realize that you weren’t getting any of it. Lots of plastic junk and sugared crap rolled yr way. But being 10 years old at the tail end of the 80s meant you were mostly drinking the decade’s back wash. And even when the 1990s got cool for two or three years, folks in my cohort were really too young to get in on it other than as a kiddie consumers of secondhand cool.

In general, it was a bit of a harsh realm.

I just tapped into a memory that probably perfectly sums up what my childhood is like.

I am 7 years old and a grown adult is lecturing children about the horrors of Garbage Pail Kids stickers and how they will ruin the world. I am 12 years old and a grown adult is lecturing children about how a Bart Simpson t-shirt that says “Don’t Have a Cow” is going to doom society. I am 15 years old and a grown adult is lecturing children about how a Co-Ed Naked shirt nailed Christ to the cross and summoned the beast Leviathan. I am 47 years old and some grown ass adult younger than me is telling me how Bad Bunny is summoning demonic powers to turn the world Puerto Rican.
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I was born in 82 and was looking for your response because I knew we were similar in age, because I figured you’d sum it up pretty well. You did.

The unique thing from my experience was my parents were much older than my peers and my siblings were all at least 8 years older, so while there was a certain amount of leave on a bike and come back whenever, my folks were definitely all in on the moral panic about society going to shit. They would’ve been really scared for razor blades in Halloween candy if Halloween candy weren’t going to doom me to hell and already forbidden. It was an interesting mix of OMG you’re going to get kidnapped and be back home for supper.

By my teen years, they were really tired and I had figured out how to not get in trouble by staying under the radar. I wasn’t really into stereotypical cool 90s stuff though. I didn’t really get all the fuss about grunge. I would rather listen to swamp pop or country music. Mallrats didn’t make sense to me. I’d rather go camping.
 
rhino said:
I was born in 82 and was looking for your response because I knew we were similar in age, because I figured you’d sum it up pretty well. You did.

The unique thing from my experience was my parents were much older than my peers and my siblings were all at least 8 years older, so while there was a certain amount of leave on a bike and come back whenever, my folks were definitely all in on the moral panic about society going to shit. They would’ve been really scared for razor blades in Halloween candy if Halloween candy weren’t going to doom me to hell and already forbidden. It was an interesting mix of OMG you’re going to get kidnapped and be back home for supper.

By my teen years, they were really tired and I had figured out how to not get in trouble by staying under the radar. I wasn’t really into stereotypical cool 90s stuff though. I didn’t really get all the fuss about grunge. I would rather listen to swamp pop or country music. Mallrats didn’t make sense to me. I’d rather go camping.
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Yeah. I had young parents relative to my cohort. My dad was 25 when I was born and my mom was 22. My dad is younger than Gary Blanchard.

And we didn’t really dig on religious fundamentalism because my parents were and remain decadent feral teenagers.

I grew up in a crumbling mid-century planned community (there’s a big exhibit in the Smithsonian about my hometown). But it had seen better days. Dirtbag suburban mall stuff made sense, but John Hughes movies might have well as taken place on the moon vs 45 miles to the north.

My dad is a rock dad with the boomer equivalent of contrarian hipper than thou tastes, so grunge et al. was definitely on the menu.
 
Peen Simmons said:
Yeah. I had young parents relative to my cohort. My dad was 25 when I was born and my mom was 22. My dad is younger than Gary Blanchard.

And we didn’t really dig on religious fundamentalism because my parents were and remain decadent feral teenagers.

I grew up in a crumbling mid-century planned community (there’s a big exhibit in the Smithsonian about my hometown). But it had seen better days. Dirtbag suburban mall stuff made sense, but John Hughes movies might have well as taken place on the moon vs 45 miles to the north.

My dad is a rock dad with the boomer equivalent of contrarian hipper than thou tastes, so grunge et al. was definitely on the menu.
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Oregon Trail?
 
rhino said:
Oregon Trail?
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I mean, I remember it as it was a feature of school computer lab time.

I was never super into it. I think Math Blaster was booted up more frequently at my school. And the kid next door who had a computer played King’s Quest a lot and I remember that been super fun despite it being slow and not exactly designed with young kids in mind.

We had an old black and white pong machine that plugged into the tv that my dad got from some guy. But we didn’t have a computer until I bought one my senior year of HS. And the big technological innovation was when we got an NES in 1988 the year when they dropped the price down to $100 and everyone got one.
 
Math blaster. lol. Yeah. I had a friend who was way into Kings Quest. I didn’t get it.

That’s the same guy who tried to convince me to get a Facebook page my freshmen year of college when it was only available to .edu email addresses. I told him no because why would I want another leash. I also didnt want a cell phone. He said it would change the world. My argument was it wouldn’t be for the better. I was right. He is a rocket scientist now and I am not. So there’s also that.
 
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