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This post was inspried from a post by Cranky Old Man about watching movies backwards.  I have no memory of watching a movie backward but the post, as so often is the case, was quite amusing.  However, what caught my attention was the use of the expression "back in the day."

My ten-year-old grandson uses that expression.  Grandma, did you have television back in the day?
Oh, yes, I knew of televisions of a primitive sort.  We had one. One! And my parents (but mostly my father when he was home) had total control over it.  There were cartoons on Saturday morning and Captain Kangaroo on week day mornings but certainly no channels dedicated to kids' viewing 24/7.  The picture was only in black and white.  Programming went off the air for the night.  The horror!

Grandma, what video games did you play back in the day? Oh, the inhumanity!  There were no video games, no hand-held devices or computers.  The one phone in the house was connected to the wall and was used sparingly to talk with someone and with respect for the others on the party line (beyond imagination).  Games were played on boards on the table or outside.

Grandma, what did you do all summer back in the day?  I woke up, had breakfast, and went outside to play.  If I got hungry or hurt I went inside and my mother would give me lunch or put a bandaid on me and send me back outside.  Otherwise I was free until called for supper.  I met up with friends and we played kick the can or Red Rover.  We played cowboys or soldiers if there were boys around or we played with dolls.  We rode bicycles.  We went in the woods and threw rocks in the brook.  We climbed trees.  On rainy days, I might go to a friend's house to play, but mostly I stayed in my room and read so my mother wouldn't hand me a broom or a dust rag.  Beyond comprehension -- You saw your friends everyday? Without a play date?

He can keep up a steady stream of questions.  That coupled with the expression "back in the day" can become very annoying.  (Once he told me my amygdala was becoming excited, but that's a whole different Dane story.)

Sometimes I take Dane to Al's French Fries.  His comment, very apt and I don't believe he has ever seen that Youtube video and which he makes with a kind of nostalgic sigh: I love this place.  I think it must be exactly like things were back in the day.


Comments

  1. My youngest son was complaining one day about being bored. I told him to go across the street and see if John a kid one year younger than him wanted top play. He was 10 and this was a concept beyond him, still he did just that and the two of them were not bored most of the summer. Who invented play dates and why? I know many of the things you speak of must remain "back in the day" for various reasons, but I think kids should still be able to cross the street and ask if "Johnny can come out and play?"

    I love nostalgia posts!

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  2. Ah the lovely playtime at age 11,and younger. By 12 that changed as family members struggled with illness and helpers were needed.

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  3. Olga, all those 'back in the day' things you mentioned, we did too when we were growing up. You played outside most of the day... and even after supper as long as it was light. I don't remember 'being bored'... and perhaps that's why my kids and grandkids know that I don't like that expression "I'm bored". There are too many things to do... and if you can't find something, I sure can.

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  4. I prefer "back in the day" to "olden days when you were young" which I seem to hear but they both tell the story. We are dinosaurs.
    I pretty much did as you did with play time. Can't ever remember being bored, just running out of play time.

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  5. I am laughing. What a great post. I can remember my mother's response when I ask her if she had gone to school with Martha Washington "back in the day". LOL She never let me forget that.

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  6. Great post! My life was much the same back in the day. except that I had lots of siblings and we lived on a small farm, so neighbor kids were not just "Across the street". And from a fairly early age we worked in the fields picking crops. Life has changed so much in my 70+ years, but not everything has to change, like kids playing together.

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  7. I love your post! I may need to borrow it when my grandson gets to that age. lol

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  8. Excellent post and I heartily agree.

    My 3 sons, were raised in a wonderful area, that still had working families and some stay-at-home moms, like me. They always had kids to play with and I am thankful for that and so are they. In their 30's now, they will comment on the "younger generation." Sure my guys had MTV and the weather channel as well as video games, but they always had something to do, outside. They walked to school, or took a bus. (and we lived in a urban area!)

    Ahhhh the good old days...

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  9. Too funny. He's such a great kid.

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  10. What an eye-opening chuckle you post is! What a sweet child you have in your life!

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  11. So cute. The grand girls haven't started that. Hum. Wonder if I'm ready to say or to remember.

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  12. Back in the day! Great post. I read an article about 10 years ago on modern child care. It alluded to the fact that our generation was lucky, we got sent out into our own world with our own society and our own rules. The author also stated that children need to experience on their own with no adult supervision a little danger and perhaps a wee bit of minor criminality.

    I remember in high school of having detention for smoking on the bus. My son had to go to a district magistrate and pay a 300 dollar fine, got a juvenile criminal record, and some community service because he had a tin of snuff in his back pocket at school. Zero tolerance! Kids dressing up as firemen for Halloween in kindergarten, get expelled for having weapons at school. It was a hollow plastic fireman's axe that came with the costume. Zero tolerance for weapons. Is it zero tolerance, or zero common sense?

    My brother in law who was my best friend in childhood and I often discuss how lucky we were to have a patch of woods in our back yards. It wasn't a national forest or some wilderness, just a wooded ravine between suburban streets that would probably amount to no more than 50 acres. Yet adventure, fun, a little danger, a tiny bit of criminality awaited us as we spent our days shooting bows and arrows, pellet guns, setting off fire crackers, studying the birds and wildflowers, identifying trees, and wondering about the mysteries of sex and women. Yes we had our collection of moldy Playboys that we inherited from the older kids and kept in leaky plastic bag hidden in a hollow log, and my brother in law read the juicy parts out of a popular marriage manual of the time around the camp fire. We smoked cigarettes and told dirty jokes. But there was no drugs, no booze, and no damned parents hovering around us ready to take us to violin lessons, tae kon do, or tap dancing lessons. We were not expected to do everything in our power to get accepted at Yale. We were kids, glorious free range kids!

    We couldn't google images on our phones of the mysteries of the female anatomy. Beyond the topless models in our damp and mildewed Playboys, we had to imagine it, and what great fun it was. Nor did we see naked images of our class mates who made the mistake of placing too much trust in a young love.

    When my brother in law went off to college and I went into the military we didn't fall apart because we had never spent an hour alone without supervision.

    I am glad I am not a kid today with time enough for everything but being a kid.

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  13. Amara is still outraged that I don't have any video games on my phone!

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  14. I love Dane stories and Dane questions! All my answers were just about like yours. I think some of the things I did were dangerous by today's standards (and I was quiet shy kid), but we were just turned loose and expected to entertain ourselves.

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  15. I learned how to cope with loneliness -- that I could turn it into an appreciation for solitude. Has been important thru the years to realize I can entertain myself. Grand son sounds fun.

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