re: I miss summertime when I was a kid in the mid 90s

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Drive by any sports complex and you will see literally hundreds of kids playing outside.

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thank you

its funny the OT rails against travel ball then says kids are fat and dont play outside anymore :lol:

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I have neighborhood kids playing up and down my street all day long right now.

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mine too. I have 3 boys and they pretty much live outside.

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Maybe you never see kids playing outside because you NEVER go outside?

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well i will say....there are a lot of parents who do not let or want their kids to play outside. My mother only had my wife so it has taken her a long time to get comfortable letting the kids roam the neighborhood when she watches them during the summer. I have yelled enough about it that she does it now, but she still doesnt like it.

and there are lots of kids that are friends with mine who do not play outside much.

i will say the kids that play on my kids travel ball teams seem to play constantly outside.

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I told my son to enjoy his childhood because before you know it, you will be an adult, have responsibilities, and pay bills.

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And his childhood will still never be as good as what we experienced in the 90s

GOAT time to be a kid becoming a teenager

I was kid in the 70s. Every summer as soon as school ended it was the same deal.

The first thing was to take all your school jeans (Toughskins, Wrangler, whatever cheap stuff your mom bought at Sears, Penneys or KMart) and a pair of scissors and turn them into cut-offs, which were worn all day even when swimming. I don't think I owned a swimsuit back then.

Then I would go to Biloxi for about a month and a half, splitting time between my two grandparents' homes. One set lived about 2 short blocks from the beach on the east end, the other set lived 4 short blocks from Back Bay near Keesler. My grandparents let me run free and have fun; fishing, swimming, walking to the Li'l General to get Icees and comic books or to Milles to get a sno-ball, going to see all those 70s movies.

In my later years I had two different sailboats to use, first a heavy boxboat and then my Uncle Mike passed down to me a little sunfish-type made of Styrofoam that he never used, which was a lot better. On an occasional weekend the extended family on my dad's side would go out to one of the islands on one of their boats.

I had younger cousins and a couple of uncles who were only 5 and 7 years older than me, and I always had a blast playing with and hanging out with them. I put together a lot of plastic model kits those summers and gave them to my younger cousins.

I rarely wore shoes, the bottoms of my feet toughened up quick and were black most of the time.

Never got a haircut in the summer, either.

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I honestly see no reason outside of LSU sports to go into Baton Rouge anymore

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I have to make 2-3 appearances back to BR every year for family obligations and I detest it every time. Nothing like flying into BTR and seeing the wonderful view of Scotlandville and the EBRPP.

My summers as a kid were an absolute blast.

Wake up at about 7 AM, watch about three hours of SportsCenter with Stuart Scott and Rich Eisen, then watch The Price is Right at 10 AM on the Lafayette feed, and yesterday’s Price is Right at 11 AM on the Baton Rouge feed (Baton Rouge was always a day behind on which episode aired than Lafayette. They might still be). Then every once in a while we would get a 12 PM Atlanta Braves baseball game which was a special treat once or twice a week.

On days that there were no noon Braves baseball games, my buddy from one street over would come over to my parents house. My parents have a long, wide driveway, so we would put on our rollerblades and set up two nets and just play street hockey for hours at a time. Then it was off to baseball practice or a game in the late afternoon. And then a little swimming in the evening to round out the day

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And his childhood will still never be as good as what we experienced in the 90s

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The 50's and 60's were pretty damn good times too. I honestly think I spent way more time outside the house than inside by a good margin-----especially in the summer months.

I'd wake up early and eat something and be out the door heading down the road to a friend's or cousin's house and not be back home until damn near dark.

There were no pagers/cellphones, etc. for my parents to keep up with what I was up to or where I was, for that matter.

Some days would be spent fishing the Mississippi River in Arabi across from where the old stockyard use to be, running through the woods around the RR tracks in Arabi, walking or riding bikes on the levee from the Jackson Barracks down past the old Murphy's Sand Pits off Palmisano in Chalmette.

Hell, a couple of cousins and myself would spend days at a time camping on the batture between the Sugar Refinery and the Chalmette Slips.

A fun thing to do back then was to soak cattails in kerosene and use them as torches to explore the eroded area we called the "Slip Caves" under that facility. Pretty spooky the first time you head in there, but you got use to it.

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Home when the street lights come on.

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Me and my friends didn't go inside until our moms told us for the 10th time