re: What experiences from your past would you bring back for today's kids if you could?

Pick up sports(baseball, football, basketball, hockey)
Neighborhood schools
Dine in pizza hut(book it)
Video stores
Malls
Etc

Ability to ride a bike from Dentation to Staring Lane, Highland Rd to Perkins Rd without fear of getting snatched. Or ride the bike to elementary school, forget you rode it, ride bus home. Bike still there the next morning. The good old days.

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Had this conversation with someone recently. In the 80’s-90’s a kid could go riding bikes, exploring woods, play ball for 6-7 hrs at a time and it would be perfectly normal. If that happened today people would be distraught

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I was born in 52 and by the time I was around 8 it was nothing for me to run down to one of my cousin's house 6 blocks away either on my bike or on foot.

From there, we'd head out to the Mississippi River to fish, go bike riding as far as we felt like------without helmets, knee padding and silly spandex outfits, head off to the woods to play "War" or cowboys and Indians or just climb trees to see how far up we dared to go.

I was going to school daily and walking or taking a Public Service Bus when in grade school and that was the norm for just about all kids back then.

I would sometimes leave our house in the Lower 9th Ward and head up past Napoleon Ave. on Magazine St. where my grandma lived and did so by bus, using 2 transfers to catch the 3 busses needed to make the trek while still in grade school.


Parents want to call the cops about a missing child if they are not right outside when they look for them---------------IF they even venture outside now.

Too many to post here. But here's a few....

How about an entertainment industry that didn't try to brainwash them?

Commercials that only tried to sell products instead of social engineering and personal injury attorneys.

A safer Baton Rouge, LA- where kids playing outside until dark was a daily reality.

Effective discipline in schools- and more importantly, at home.

No such thing as "online predators" to worry about....

Again, just too many to name....

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I suspect that's why kids these days are not becoming mature adults till much later. They never got to take care of themselves. Zero responsibility.

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This. My best friend drives me up a wall with how he's raising his son. The kid is 14, not in any sports, sits inside and plays video games for hours. His only chore is to take the trash out. My friend still cuts up his food for him. He can barely have a quick chat for more than 2-3 sentences, much less hold a conversation. If my friend has to run errands or leave the house for anything and his son doesn't want to go with him, he takes him to the grandparents house rather than leaving him at the house by himself for a couple of hours.

Working summers in chicken houses, hay fields, gardens, or mowing grass.

When my girlfriends and I entered the 8th grade, all of our parents gave us phones. Nope, not at all what you are thinking.
Each of us got a plug in outlet for our room and we could take the family land line phone into our rooms and talk to our friends in private.

I wish they could visit my Godmother's plantation home and get to know her AND the two elderly black women who lived there. All three were wonderful people.

1980s, I think I saw a tit porn...

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BB gun wars.

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Swarms of us riding through the neighborhoods on our angel-wing handlebarred, banana-seated Stingrays shooting the piss out of each other with our Daisy pump guns and Red Ryders. It’s a miracle 7 out of 10 of us didn’t end up with permanent patches and looking like one-eyed pirates.



Pick up games. Baseball in the Summer, Football in the Fall. “Come home when it gets dark.”

Also the Ducan Yo-Yo craze.

Bottle rocket wars. Picking up the phone and having to check if any one was using the party line (multiple families with one land line). Only dialing 5 digits instead of 7 to call someone. Kill the man with the ball (if could not find the ball we used a can) kill the man with the can. Learning at a young age that being in a tree when having a bb gun war was great until your enemies figured out where you are (huge mistake). Building ramps to jump on bicycles. Riding bicycles miles into town to the arcade. Everyone's houses being unlocked and just walking in without knocking. No cell phones. Very little drama.