GenXers, Post Your Quintessential GenX Experience

I could leave the house and be gone for hours out playing and no one freaked out because I didn’t call or text every five minutes.

Getting home from school to get on your private line, to call a friend with 3 way calling, you each call another friend extending it to include every body who you're friends with to bs about that day at school.

I wanted and got my MTV!

I used to watch the scrambled cable channels hoping to get a glimpse of the soft core porn on Showtime.

Childhood freedom.

I saw Nirvana in Detroit, Michigan in 1991. One of the best shows ever.

Complete liberty when the parents were not around, which was most of the time. The world was a little more mysterious and exciting.

Ah yes r4 or Skinamax as we used to call it.

Pitfall on my Atari 2600

Oh, and AIDS

no fucking phones, no fucking worrying about charging the phone. when people got together, they talked TO EACH OTHER, played games and music. didn't alternately stare at phones, which pulls one out of present space & time.

wandering around large metro areas with only faith in one's internal directional system, and bus fare. no preplanning, looking things up, planning an exact route. serendipitous wandering and finding surprises without direction.

everyone had to watch what the big show was on TV that week at the same time, or they missed it. now there is so much crud out there, and everybody watches whatever/whenever so there is a lot less sharing and examining of same cultural phenomena. most of the time, they haven't seen what you've seen and vice versa, and *might* only watch it after a strong recommendation, and even then won't want to talk about it.

Calling my friends and having to speak to their parents first.

Getting dropped off at the mall either alone or with friends. Having my mom buy tickets for R-rated movies for me and all my friends and letting us go in without her.

I got Boy George’s cassette tape for my 9th birthday, but had to run down the street to my friend’s house to play it on their tape recorder. The only tape recorder we had was my little sister’s Fisher Price one, and it ran out of batteries. No, we weren’t poor, but those friends were the richer ones. They were also the only ones with MTV and they would have 12-15 neighborhood kids all gathered round to watch it.

I would babysit at our neighbors house and they had the cable box with the dial in the middle. If you wanted to watch a dirty movie and the signal was scrambled, you could fold up a piece of paper and try to get the dial between two channels. That would allow the picture to come in clear. I got pretty good at that and was able to watch some very dirty movies!

Flashlight tag in the neighborhood after dark!

Esprit clothing!

My first slice of Sbarro pizza in a mall food court!

And setting the VCR every Sunday night to record "120 Minutes" on MTV, just for a glimpse of Robert's red lips.

I was obsessed with 120 Minutes. I almost came to blows with my brother fighting over the TV when it came on.

I've owned several records/singles in album, cassette, CD, and mp3 format.

Fear of death by AIDS. The culture wars.

House music! The early days, underground clubs, it was a movement! The 80s ruled.

ABC, NBC and CBS

And their annual fall promo campaigns

Making a mixed tape for a friend

Convincing my parents to finally pay for cable TV and call waiting.

A Quintessential GenX GAY Experience: recording the theme from Falcon Crest on a cassette tape.

Debbie Allen’s Beat Stick

London Trade at Turnmills in the 90s with Mitsubishi pills, great music and people and an overwhelming feeling of unity, of belonging to something special.

Nobody cared what I did,NOBODY. Raised by wolves. I have two stories, in 1998 I flew to Amsterdam on a plane ticket that my sister couldn't use, with her name on it. I'm Michael, she's Christina. Nobody even noticed. My passport also had a TYPO on it. Nobody cared.

When I was 16, I dropped out of high school, and began living in a dorm room of a local state college with a friend. His roommate had left to join a fraternity. I snuck into the food hall everyday for lunch and had a large social group of college kids, all who knew I was 16. Eventually that year I got my own show on the college radio station. It only lasted a year, but was WAY more fun than when I finally get my GED and went to college for real.

Nobody thought any of this stuff was weird. My parents thought it was ok, because I was kinda going to school. My dad is a chemistry teacher, and always completely remote 1950s dude. Never talks. Mom on wine and pills. I didn't see them for 9 months. I had complete freedom, and looking back it was a totally insane situation.

This feeling of the world being a wild fun place, ended for me after 9/11, and then completely after the housing crisis. People became mean, totalitarian, and petty. Rules Rules Rules.

Doing "bedroom drag" to 45 records of Tracey Ullman, the Go-Go's, and Bananarama

Spending hours in the library at the local university hunting sources for my 11th-grade research paper; cramming for my SATs from a phone-book-size prep guide

Beating off to $50 gay porn magazines that my only gay friend in high school let me borrow (he got them from his much older boyfriend)

Faithfully watching Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and later The Golden Girls and Designing Women; also: MTV, Solid Gold, Night Tracks on TBS, Star Search, and Supermodel of the World

Getting my hair cut into a wedge with a rattail by a friend in her dorm room; watching the Challenger explosion on TV; freaking out (and high off my ass) when the US bombed Libya; making calls on the pay phone in my dorm and the RA leaving messages under my door because I couldn't afford my own line; reading Michael Musto's column in the Village Voice in the college library

R26 - agree. We were the freest generation. Sex, drugs, divorce of the 70s and we were left alone. I still prioritize being free and doing what I want. Probably the biggest cultural outlook differ ever from the helicopter parenting that started in the 80s.

Wanting to watch Battle of the Network Stars, but not being allowed to because it was on at 9 PM. Past my bedtime.

My parents were Boomers are totally self involved. They thought being good parents meant food on the table and a roof over your head and a comfortable lifestyle. They were completely involved with their own lives and didn't give two shits about mine. As long as my grades were good, I could get away with murder.

The Wizard of Oz aired on network TV once a year in primetime and it was a VERY BIG DEAL.

First boy-girl party in 1985-86. I was in 5th or 6th grade and they concept of playing spin the bottle was very exciting. The co-ed swim team sleepever party at the pool - First kiss. Getting dropped off at the roller skating rink on a Friday or Saturday night. Going to the local pizza place after a high school football game. Watching soft core porn on Skinamax or Prism during a sleepover

My first encounter with gay porn was a handful of low quality images gleaned from some BBS dialups I somehow found the numbers for, age 13.

Spin Offs... The Jeffersons....Rhoda.....Laverne and Shirley....Mork and Mindy....

As a 5 year old in 1979 I walked to and from the bus stop at the end of the block by myself as a kindergarten student. No parent walking me or driving me and sitting in the car waiting which is what I typically see today. Even before kindergarten, I was allowed to be gone from home all day for hours on end playing with friends. No one ever asked where I was or what I was doing.

My mom's rule was, "I don't care what you kids do, just be quiet!"

The roller rink on Friday and Saturday nights...ahhh.....

I just remember the ease of asking complete strangers the time, directions, what's going on, and them being more enthused about responding. Now it feels intrusive when asking, like you shame on you for not relying on your phone.

Not always but...

Totalphone while watching mtv afterschool. Having all my friends over between 2pm school dismissal and mom coming home at 6:00. Going to nyc for shows at age14/15 no one knew where i was. Baked every day after school even at my afterschool job. Good f-ing times.

Finding out freshman year of college, that Jon Bon Jovi lived in Rumson, NJ. We drove all the way there from Wayne, NJ, just to drive down his street, at least that's what the guy told us, to yell we love you Jon! Good times.

[R15] I had to strain real hard to determine if I wrote your post or not. I didn't obviously--but you described some of my same bullet points and it was momentarily shocking to read -- the shock of familiarity

Hanging out and getting up to shenanigans at my friend’s house because his mother worked and we had the run of the place. So fun!

Labor Day weekend, 1989: A friend of mine invited me along on an impromptu road trip to Pensacola, Florida. He was lots of fun but a total stunt queen who loved to spend money he didn't have, and he had somehow persuaded BellSouth Mobility to lease him a brick-size cell phone despite not having a job. He let me use it to call some mutual friends, and it was one of the most glamorous experiences of my life to that point.

you bitches and your half-dial Skinemax! we had a satellite dish (large, wire, motorized) and the local dealer xeroxed sheets of monthly codes for his customers to decrypt the scrambled signals.

it was all straight soft-core porn (Spice) but I made the most of it: a high-school jock would come over when he had a free afternoon to watch the porn and blow in my mouth.

Surviving coronavirus while the millennials killed all the boomers because they couldn’t resist breaking quarantine for bottomless mimosas and avo toast brunch.

Oh boy. Well, taking the train from Long Island to NYC by myself starting at the age of 12 to see my dad. Also took the subway everywhere too. So did lots of kids. Arcades! Holy shit - the massive arcade in Times Square was just a fucking zoo of adolescents with no parents. There was another one on the upper east side as well. Galaga, Centipede, Defender - for hours with quarters lined up. We all smoked too...kids starting from 12 on up. There was a boy who used to hang out there a lot who I would shoot the shit with sometimes - johnny habib. One weekend when I wasnt at the arcade, two white trash kids beat him with a bat and killed him. It was ALL over the newspapers.

I was a latch key child. Had total freedom from 10 on. My mom even left me home alone for 2 months in the summer when I was 14. My 17-year old punk brother was the adult "looking" after me. He had a firehouse red mohawk, and he and all his punk friends took over the house. It was so so out of control. All I remember was listening to a ton of New Order, Depeche Mode, Echo and The Bunnymen.

On that note - crazy 16 Candles style house parties were the norm. As mentioned, so many parents peaced the fuck out, leaving massive houses to be the venue for so many raging keg parties. Then we'd drive drunk to New Wave clubs like Spize and Malibu (link). So so fucking out of control. And fun!

Kids today are fucking Buddhists compared to what we were in the 80s.

I carefully bought my first cassette: Paula Abdul/Forever Your Girl, after carefully calculating all the songs that I liked and comparing prices at Sunrise Records and Sam the Record Man in the mall.

r35, I was 10 in '75 and was taking the El train (Chicago) to and from school everyday. I did have creepy old guys following me around (I'm female), and I would have to shake them off by getting off the wrong stop, or going into stores and hanging out for a while. I was at the arcade where John Wayne Gacy picked up his kids (lucky I was a girl).

I purchased cigarettes and Ortho Gyno (to my everlasting shame) for my parents, who had a handwritten note for me to give to the cashier.

Being home alone, I've burnt myself with an iron, had a needle stuck in my finger with a sewing machine, and blew up a pot of popcorn (the oil was too hot), set a wastepaper basket on fire playing with matches, crawled into an open pantry window from a porch, 3 stories up, jumped off garage roofs onto a huge snowbank, and stayed outside until dark on summer nights.

Grape Bubble Yum!

Freshman year in college in Cleveland and three friends said they were going to the Violent Femmes at the agora theater downtown. We rode the BUS, which was likely dangerous, and went to the theater. The opening act was Some single guy singing, we were up against the stage, open seating (or standing). Then the VFs came on full lights and loud music and we four realized that we were standing in the epicenter of a violent MOSHPIT. I immediately got thrown to the ground. People were being tossed onstage and knocked unconscious. Security throwing them back into the pit. The band played great and stoked it all up. Someone vomited in my coat I recall.

Weird experience but so glad that I went.

When I finally got my license to drive I would drive my ‘78 T-bird around all over the city! I loved exploring because before my license the furthest I would go was as far as my bike could take me. I loved the freedom! I would tell my parents I was going to a friends house but would go cruising instead. I only had a.m. radio so I would bring my gigantic boombox with me. It only took 8 D batteries!

Getting high with friends while watching Ren & Stimpy and Liquid Television.

Lol@R48! I would be mortified if my parents made me buy contraceptives for them.

Which reminds me of my mom’s diaphragm. Somehow my dog would find her diaphragm and run around the house with it hanging from her mouth! That would make my mom really mad because she had to buy a new one! I never understood why my dog really liked her diaphragm ! I didn’t even know what a diaphragm was.

R46 must have been a WLIR listener!

r53- our dog loved my brother's underwear and socks. He would practically eat them.

Really, I know we're all on phones but fuck phones. It was nicer chatting with people wherever you went. There was more respect. Fuck the internet for taking the social life online.

That comment about the video arcades - YES! We practically lived in the one at the mall on the weekends!

So many memories of figuring out the patterns on Pac-Man, Galaga and Space Invaders. It really was a great time to be a kid, wasn't it?

I was a total latchkey kid starting in Kindergarten. Busied myself after school until my mom got home from work.

My mom and all my friend's mother's watching the "Soaps". Including, my paternal grandmother. She also had a HUGE crush on Tom Selleck.

Playing with my friends outside and wandering wherever. Coming back when it was getting dark. No one cared where you were at.

Parents letting you be kids. Most of my friends weren't involved in 10,000 activities and sports. I only knew one girl, who was.

I still wish I could get some of my Esprit clothing from that time, in an adult size!!

I can still remember what a big deal it was when Thriller premiered.

OP, bless you for starting this thread! Brings back so many good memories, in our current dark times.

Remember Dragon's Lair? So frustrating!

My mother had a crush on Tom Selleck too. She used to giggle when she mentioned his name. I'd roll my eyes.

We had the Kavanaugh and Simpson personalities - on a much more low skill working poor level.

We lived through and observed the drop in lead pollution. Seriously, psychopaths were more common; they just blew up on family and neighbors.

Getting a Swatch for Christmas.

Nintendo NES.

My first cologne purchase: Hugo by Hugo Boss. Discovered from a scent strip inside Details magazine.

The TV Guide Fall Preview issue.

Recording songs off the radio.

Calling the radio station to request a song and being pissed when they didn't play it.

Saving for months to buy a certain pair of Nike Airs in eighth grade—still my favorite shoes I've ever owned.

Going to Disney World for three days with a friend from college in 1991 (before Animal Kingdom was built). We stayed at a shitty motel near downtown Orlando so we could hit the bars at night. A one-day park ticket cost $33.

It was the BEST time to be a kid r57 !

Still waiting for "showered with my coach in middle school" troll

Almost forgot: One of the nights we were in Orlando was Oscar night, and we watched Madonna's bundle-of-nerves "Sooner or Later" before we went clubbing.

ALWAYS lying to mom, climbing out my bedroom window pretending I was sleeping every night. Sneaking out her car. Being high for at least five years straight. Friends selling pot to our high school teachers. We all smoked like chimneys and would scamper in Denny’s lobbies and use those weird quarter machines where you pull the pole out to get your smokes. ALWAYS having lighters and matches.

Tripping for the first time at The Who.

Tripping for the second time from the Dead parking lot.

Hippies and Hare Krishnas. Punks and New Wave. Very slutty girls (I was one of them). Lots of wild hot hot hot sex.

Going to watch Jane’s Addiction at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. Watching Pantera there too.

Watching Henry Rollins at the Vic.

Going to Metro constantly.

Being at the Dead’s last show (only the parking lot, always) taking “hippie crack” for hours, then the cops confiscated all the canisters of Nitrous (they were HUGE maybe four feet high, 12 inch diameter. There must have been 50 of them and the cops were letting all the nitrous out and we just stood there with our faces in the gas inhaling as much as could while cops yelled at us but they’d hands were on the tanks.

Going to bars starting at 15. fake ID’s, toms i’d INSANE situations. One bar I could drink at when I was a kid was in a very shady area but it was packed. We stayed super late one night. I suddenly realize that the crowd has changed, it’s all men, and the few women working the men were hookers. Next think I know there’s a pool on the floor and the women are jello wrestling.

It was very very much a 16 Candles scene.

Girls made these constantly.

Color-coordinated custom ribbon barrettes for school pics was a cute look that I never got to really rock.

R68 I loved those barrettes! I have not seen them captured in any old movies or tv shows from the time except for the movie Xanadu.

Watching TV all Saturday night with my sisters and cousin while my mom and aunt hung out at a bar and then drove home drunk. Being a passenger in cars driven by drunk, smoking adults.

Being a surburban latchkey kid spending hours after school watching Partridge Family and Brady Bunch reruns, but being a dawn-to-dusk free-roaming kid in the summers in my grandparents' small town in the middle of nowhere.

Hanging out at a local hole-in-the wall club and realizing later that I probably saw Nirvana but we were there for our local bands.

Visiting my big sister at Western Michigan University when I was still in high school. I was such a straight arrow and she was determined to corrupt me. She took me to a house party off-campus. I was drinking, smoking cigarettes, having a good time. She passed me a joint and I never smoked weed before and she pointed at me and said look everyone my sisters first joint! Like a proud parent. LOL. Next thing I remember sitting on the couch watching Bolero with the sound off and feeling so stoned!

Eventually we went downstairs to dance and some punks were slam dancing against each other & the cinder block walls of the basement! Some people were actually bleeding! That kind of freaked me out. It was a weird night!

R7, where did you go to high school? I went to Lane Tech. But I was a total introvert- I had like 10 friends in a school of 4000. In the summer, we would go to the Lake everyday. Junior year, I was a New Waver, but then I got a boyfriend Senior year and became a Preppie to the extent my mother got my BF and I matching pastel Ralph Lauren polo shirts.

What today's kids wouldn't know: having cash on you at all times, knowing where all the payphones were in your neighborhood.

Going to the Wherehouse to buy cassette singles (and later CD singles) because I couldn’t afford the whole album. Making mixtapes from the radio and trying my very best not to get the DJ’s voice in the recording. Going to Blockbuster to rent a movie on a Friday night.

Joining a long, snaking queue at the Virgin Megastore to buy Whitney Houston's 'The Bodyguard Soundtrack' CD.

Being turned loose at the mall or movie theater with a pack of friends and no adult supervision.

Hurrying home after school to watch Dark Shadows on TV.

Going with friends to the local roller rink where my older cousin was the DJ/babysitter (and had to dress in a referee uniform).

Getting a portable cassette player with headphones as a birthday gift so I wasn't tethered to the ginormous record player console in the family dining room.

I was born at the very last part of the Baby Boom - I mean the year it ended. So I'm on the line between Baby Boom and Gen-x.

I was 14 in 1978. And that's when a neighbor boy and I started our sexual experiments.

Put it this way I was 20 years old in 1984. Oh was that a fun fucking time. The next year I had a radio show on a college station for a couple years. This got me able to meet and greet all the rappers back then.

In 1989 I was 25. The 1980's were a very fun time. Even with the plague of AIDS it was fun.

Then the pilgrimages to Tower Records in New York. Those were fun. When I think about where we've come from vinyl discs to cd's to computers, mobile phones that can play music etc.

So satisfying to have the anticipation of a new LP coming out on cassette tape. The release date! The MTV World Premiere Video! Getting to the music section of whatever store--Camelot Music, Musicland, TapeWorld, Hypermart, Venture, whatever--and seeing a whole strip of new release cassettes on the rack. And the theft-prevention devices! Those weird, plastic chastity-belt devices that they put on the shrink-wrapped cases to prevent shoplifters!

The impatience of trying to get the things unwrapped without breaking the case was almost sexual in its clumsiness and frenzy.

I remember fumbling that way with the George Michael "Faith" tape. And "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me" by The Cure.

Taping School Ties off of HBO and putting it on slo-mo during the shower scene with Matt Damon and Brendan Fraser so I could jerk off to it. Also, Calendar Girl for Jason Priestly's nude scene and brief flash of cock.

In those pre-internet days, you really had to take what you could get when it came to male nudity.

Being able to afford concert tickets to Rolling Stones, among others, on babysitting money

Being a teenager with a car I paid for myself

Recording songs off the radio

Awww, the record store. We had Tower Records, Sam Goody, and Peaches.

Only one tv in the whole house.

When I visited L.A. from Chicago, scouting for universities , they had Licorice Pizza, which I thought was the coolest record store EVAH.

Did anyone stay up late to watch the, "Midnight Special"? I was so excited to see Queen perform, "Bohemian Rhapsody".

[quote]Making a mixed tape for a friend

Mixtape, baby. They're called mixtapes.

[quote]We all smoked too...kids starting from 12 on up.

I forgot all about that. Yes, many of us started smoking in middle school. Marlboro Reds or Marlboro Lights. By the time we were in high school, we were smoking in public and didn't really get bothered about it by adults. I imagine today a group of 16 year-old kids smoking in public would cause adults in the vicinity to have a complete meltdown.

We had a smoking section in our high school parking lot, I can't imagine that now

EVERYBODY drove drunk. EVERYBODY smoked in the house and in the car, children being present not even a consideration. Nobody gave a shit.

Up early on a Saturday morning to watch cartoons and made breakfast for me and my younger brother (cereal, toast, orange juice). The rec room was kid zone, so we could watch whatever we wanted on the old floor model TV.

After cartoons, we'd have lunch and then head out on our bikes and meet up with all the other kids on the street and roam around the neighbourhood - in and out of various friend's homes sometimes, other times we'd take off and explore and not come home till supper.

After dinner us older kids (meaning over eight or nine) would head back out and play either hide and seek with the entire street (lived on a huge cul de sac surrounded by a small wooded area and a creek) as our hiding zone or neighbourhood tag. Sometimes one or two of the dads on the street would join in which would make things fun since he'd usually be "it." Those same dads would also organize a game of softball and all the kids on the street would play, even the teenagers. It was fun.

Ha- I remember ashtrays embedded in the arms of the chairs in movie theaters. Smoking on planes! That's what chaps my hide when I see period stuff and people aren't smoking.

A good third of my graduating high school class in 1990 were already living on their own. Quite a few kicked out by parents, some moved out on their own, about three were already married with kids. Everybody was already working jobs. Teachers were fucking and marrying students and no one cared.

On top of that, like everyone else has said, everyone was drunk, smoking, neglecting their kids, not getting proper medical care, hitting their children/students, etc.

It can get kind of weird when a Millennial says they had it as bad as GenX but the same Millennial didn't know even ONE kid who was kicked out of the house for being gay.

You didn't have to have a perfect sculpted gym body to be considered "hot." As long as you were reasonably thin, that was good enough.

I started Prozac right around the time ‘Prozac Nation’ hit the shelves.

I can ditto so much of this. I'm an older X (born in 67) and I have to wonder if our unbridled freedom actually resulted in helicopter parenting.

Probs.

Naming my (now long deceased) cat "Frances Bean".

Buying Sony blank tapes and making song compilations for friends and (especially) crushes - trying to send a "message" through the song mix, and making an artsy cover, etc. Such a crystallization of someone's life and personality at the time! That was such a cultural phenomenon! "I love you, so I made you this tape."

I wish I had kept some of the ones people made for me.

I wonder if any of my old unrequited crushes kept the ones I made for them.

I had a lover in Paris make me a playlist for when I was back in the States. It was totally unexpected and quite romantic. He has amazing taste in music.

I loved making mixtapes. Music in general was great in the 90s. I miss good music. It’s out there, but you have to hunt it down.

I loved it all

Oh, one I just thought of.

My mom driving some MG convertible when I was a toddler. No car seat. She went around a corner, the driver side door opened up and she pulled my in by my arm!

Sitting at "the kids' table" while the adults in the other room smoked and drank and had adult conversations. Children were not present in the dining room, as they are now.

Racing home every afternoon after school to watch music videos on T.V Weekends we played outside or went to the mall to buy the latest cassette tape.

[quote] I can ditto so much of this. I'm an older X (born in 67) and I have to wonder if our unbridled freedom actually resulted in helicopter parenting.

I'm a little younger than you, but I experienced all that freedom and I loved it. It has always baffled me why my (our) generation has become such smothering, awful parents. Everyone I know loved growing up the way we did.

Live Aid

Malls and movie theatres were social hubs. Teens and tweens would go to see and be seen.

Sleeping out at the box office for concert tickets.

A friend and I slept out at the Rupp Arena BO for Springsteen tickets back in 86 or 87.

Those were the days, my friends! We thought they'd never end!

R97 Ordering tapes from indie and punk labels unheard, because a singer or band you liked recommended them, hoping they were good. Going to indie/punk shows not sure who would be playing. Making sure you had time to listen to a particular show on your college radio station that played the music you liked, taping them to listen to later. Making trips to the city (San Francisco in my case) to visit record stores and go to shows. House show after house show after house show all over Central and Northern California.

Drinking a Shirley Temple at a fancy restaurant! buying cigarettes for your parents at the local party store. The owners knew me and my parents so they allowed it. The dirty magazines were actually kept behind the counter with brown paper bag wrapping around them.

Shoplifting Playgirl magazine from Waldenbooks. For many of us, that was the only outlet for frontal male nudity. Porn was inaccessible.

My three-pack porn magazine purchases were the most ridiculous and humiliating thrill I repeated until bbs became available. Then it was jerking to jpeg libraries at 14 baud. I think the kids call that edging.

Amazing how we could jerk off to one photo of a naked guy. That does nothing anymore, you can't get off unless it's video.

The thrill of hard drives being invented — the pc-xt! So now I could play “gunship” without changing disks.

A huge 10meg hard drive! More space than a teen could ever need for his machine ....

Playing Pong....... And being entertained by it!

The thrill of my 1st cd player.

The thrill of my first Sony Walkman! And also they made one just with the FM radio and it was really small and compact and easy to sneak in class!

Teen night clubs (!) Hard drug-taking at said club by age 15 or so. Dancing to the 45 minute remix of "World Destruction" (by Time Zone AKA Afrika Bambaataa/John Lydon, while nihilistic, B&W images of nuclear blasts played on the projector. So different than the sunrises and flowers blooming shown at, say, a DJ Tiesto show.

Roller skating all of the time.

Ice cold glass pop bottles and YooHoo in the bottle, not the box.

Having a best friend I talked to every night on the phone stretched to reach my bedroom.

If a friend 's parents were not divorced or separated they were unusual. Absentee fathers, single mothers on welfare, and a cavalier attitude about not paying for child support. I think most people today would take a much dimmer view of a father who didn't know or care if his children starved. It was commonplace.

'Zines! Punk rock shows costing like $2 to $7 dollars.

Renting records at used record stores to tape them. Buying the high quality "chrome" tape for special recordings. If you wanted to make sure no one recorded over your mixtape you'd break the tab out.

Always having some sort of paperback I was reading, and people being really into what each other read or listened to but you carried it with you, not posted it online.

Writing all over our shoes with "meaningful" (lol) quotes. Thrifting and modifying clothes thrifted. Looking like a guttersnipe at times, and not always "flexing for the 'gram. "

Financially supporting the family. Boomer parents expecting support from their kids and their parents. Friends' with developmental delays from being conceived and reared by hippie drug abusers.

In the 80s it was super common for 20-something year-old guys to trawl the schoolyard for underage girls to date. i mean, like a legitimate hobby or way of life. I think that has become a lot more difficult with school better secured.

Oh, cigarette vending machines! Wth.

Gangsta Rap - Tupac vs Biggie, West Coast vs East Cost.

R&B and Rap Groups - Boyz II Men, TLC, Jodeci, En Vogue, SWV, Xcape, WuTang Clan, Salt N’ Pepa, Naughty B Nature,

Alternative Rock - Nirvana, R.E.M, Green Day, Blessed Union of Soul, Todd the Wet Sprocket, Soul Asylum, Third Eye Blind, Hole, Smash Mouth, Jimmy Eat World, Alanis Morrisette, Fiona Apple, Shawn Colvin, Paula Cole, Joan Osborne, Sophie B. Hawkins, The Wallflowers, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Beastie Boys, Oasis, Nine Inch Nails, The New Radicals, Fast Ball, 4 Non-Blonds, Natalie Imbruglia, Lenny Kravitz, The All-American Rejects, The Smashing Pumpkins, XTC, Crash Test Dummies, BareNaked Ladies,

U2, Oasis Muse,

D’Angelo, Angie Stone, Erykah Badu, The Roots, The Fugees, Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, Arrested Development

Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Celine Dion, George Michael,

Sade, Enya, Seal, Luther Vandross, Anita Baker,

Deciding at age 13 to try smoking because I had just seen The Outsiders in the movies and wanted to be them. But I could not handle unfiltered Camels or even Marlboros, so my choice was True with the peace sign shaped filter. Then I graduated to Benson and Hedges, and then Triumph, which was a short lived brand on its way out.

I think the entire experiment lasted three months and I smoked maybe 25 cigarettes.

^ you're lucky

I never really liked it, so I don't think of it so much as luck as it just never actually appealed to me. It was fairly apparent that lighting up a cigarette was doing nothing to turn me into Rusty-James or PonyBoy Curtis. And I would rather have spent my money going to the movies or buying records than on cigs.

I smoked Marlboro Reds and loved every single one of them. Light cigarettes were for pussies lol.

My dad's hacking cough and the smell of his nasty Winston Lights was enough to make sure I never smoked a cigarette. Though if he'd smoked a pipe like my uncle I might have picked up the habit—I still remember the scent of that smoke fondly decades later.

Going on CND marches and singing 'We Are Gentle Angry People', feeling both scared and in awe of the women at Greenham Common, reading Adrian Mole, going to a friend's house to do homework because his parents had the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica (not just the first few volumes), the smell of hairspray, keeping coins in my sock for the phone box, and only ever hitchhiking with a friend because if there were two of us it was safe.

Getting dropped off at the mall. Eating a Mrs. Fields cookie or Sbarro pizza there. Hanging out at Merry Go Round where a cute guy worked. Looking through the posters at Spencer Gifts, looking through the albums at Sam Goody.

Getting maps at AAA and planning a road trip. Pulling over to figure out map when lost. Getting directions at a gas station

*CND = Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, for the non-Brits

[quote]I have to wonder if our unbridled freedom actually resulted in helicopter parenting.

Probably not just our generation but the wholesale neglect of kids from roughly the Depression through the 70s caused the backlash.

Every so often we have a true crime story posted here that dates from the 50s, 60s or 70s, where there was a teen who disappeared and the family just shrugged because kids ran off all the time and no one paid much mind. It was like that for a LONG time, and the backlash in the 80s was a long time coming.

Additionally, there were a number of child abduction/murder cases that occurred close to each other; the TV movie Adam -- about the abduction and murder of 6 year old Adam Walsh -- was watched by almost 40 million people when it aired in 1983, and was re-broadcast twice -- each time ending with photos of different missing children.

More and more stories like that occurred, despite the fact that there was no statistical increase in the number of missing children -- it just made for a good story in the emerging 24 hour news cycle. Still, the psychological effect was to result in the modern helicopter parenting.

[quote]Shoplifting Playgirl magazine from Waldenbooks. For many of us, that was the only outlet for frontal male nudity. Porn was inaccessible.

yes, yes and YES

Record stores and music videos. Loved hanging out in record stores for hours and watching music videos. I used to videotape them all.

R125: the threat of Nuclear Warfare was a Thing.

Haaaa r130, remember "Two Tribes"? Remember how shocking they were?

r107, my Dad and Uncle used to play for a softball league in Chicago, sponsored by a bar (which is still there!). After the games, everyone would head over to the bar to drink. I was maybe 11 at the time and used to order Shirley Temples all the time.

I was THRILLED by this Newsweek cover:

Trying to download gay porn over a dial up connection, and someone in our household would pick up the damn phone to make a phone call.

Speaking of telecommunications...calling a boyfriend in another area code and having to be really careful not to talk too long because of the phone bill.

R115 in 7th grade a very mature looking girl i knew had a 20 year old camaro driving boyfriend that used to visit her while we were outside at recess

[R135] When I was in middle school (late 80s), there was a phenomenon of "baby headbanger" girls that would double-date 20-something guys together with their moms.

There were at least 3 girls in my 7th grade class (Angie, Anjela, and Jennifer) who could not have been older than 13 (maybe 14, if they had been held back a grade), visibly involved in these weird dating situations (as in, the adult boyfriends would pick them up from after-school detention). The moms had presumably been teenage mothers, so were late 20's/30-tops at the time.

How was that even legal? At the time, 7th grade-me thought it was something that heavy-metal juvenile delinquent types just "did." The school did not seem to care--at least not in the same way that they would today. #MeToo never made it to the Headbangers' Ball, I guess.

So that's a GenX thing, but not a good one!

Hair Metal. Ugh. The worst garbage music ever. Thank God for Kurt Cobain, for making that shit obsolete overnight.

The Italian teacher at my high school obviously grooming and sleeping with her male students but the administration couldn’t do anything about it, because she always waited until they had turned 18 to make her move.

R137, when Kurt appeared on Headbangers Ball wearing a prom dress, it took aim so squarely at all the pervy machismo of the hair bands--it wasn't just their music he made obsolete, but their whole nasty attitude.

r36 It was also very common for the "hot" chick in high school to have a boyfriend that was older, in college or sometimes even in his 30s. Other girls would envy her because the guy usually had a car and money to taker her places. They would often go to prom with her too. NO ONE CARED! It wasn't until my own senior year (1998) that schools started to crack down on this. They made a rule that anyone over 21 could not attend prom. This was so common it was even in movies, Adventures in babysitting and Just one of the guys to name a couple.

I meant to type r136, sorry.

My experience is the same as R140. This was the late 80s and 90s and no one thought twice about a 15/16 year old girl dating someone 5, 10 years older. My US Government teacher (male) was fucking female students on the dl. And I know of at least one female teacher who fucked several different guys in my grade.

A guy I knew in 10th grade (who admittedly looked like he was on the other side of 30) had his stepmother hitting on him once the new wore off of his dad's paycheck. I don't recall him saying whether or not he took the bait, but we weren't friends, I was just around him in class so not privy to the choicer details.

Walking my high school hallways in 1994 and all I could smell was CK One.

Yes, yes, you're ALL brave little snowflakes.

Pussies.

Always amazed by how many DLers have stories of their high school teachers fucking students. The teachers at my high school were all menopausal hags or middle-aged fat guys. The very few teachers who were under 40 were absolutely hideous. None of the students would've fucked any of them at gunpoint.

I thought every school has the requisite one hot male teacher and one hot female teacher. The rest are trolls of course.

The Never Ending Story, Goonies, and my mom's cousin dying of AIDS and the entire family pretending it never happened, that about sums it up.

I've posted this before but one of our shop teachers was apparently fucking various female students; he was arrested and sent to jail a few years after I graduated. He was hot, too, in a Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit way.

Stopping in at 7 Eleven at 2 am and getting a microwave burrito

Leaving high school because we had open campus -- with outdoor smoking and dipping areas -- to drive into Dallas and go to gay bars in in Oak Lawn and buy legal Ecstasy (that's MDMA, younglings). It was so new it wasn't against the law yet.

Late gen X here, born 1979, and i'll say most of these were still in effect in the 80's up to the early 90's. It really was a great time to be a kid, we had freedom, communism fell it really did seem like the world was going to be ok...and we were wrong. Has anyone mentioned staying up late watching music videos on MTV or Friday Night Videos?

R149 how did a shop teacher score so much tail? He was a SHOP TEACHER.

Were the girls fug or special needs, or..?

What I don’t think other generations could understand (nor should they because it is so silly), is that there was literally a culture war between the creatives vs the sheeps. The sheeps were the people who were die-hard metal heads and burnouts. Generally, they had lower IQ’s. They abhored anything that was different. And the gods they worshiped like Vince Neil or Sebastian Bach were just gross pigs and totally full of themselves, hated women, hated POC, hated non-metals.

Many of us resented having this shit hair metal music and their scene shoved down our throats 24/7. It dominated radio and pop culture for a while, I guess mostly the second half of the 80’s? We were the creative, motley nerds, the punks, the gays, the poors, the druggies. Most of us came from working class families. The headbangers I rarely partied with didn’t even truly party — they drank a ton and smoked pot, but many if them looked down on drugs. We, on the other hand, were in some ways the leftovers from the 70’s, we were quite hedonistic. And we were totally ostracized for it.

So when Guns n‘ Roses happened, it was huge because they were much much nastier than say pretty boy Jon Bon Jovi. GnR was the beginning of the end of hair metal. Then came Jane’s Addiction, Red Hot Chili Pepoers, lollapalooza (yes, I went to the first four), and then Nirvana blew the whole lid off. (My order may be wrong, but it was close).

Nirvana was a Revenge of the Nerds, Punks, Grunge, Creatives — it was a validation of what we all felt for ten long years — hair metal sucked ass. And I’m sorry, but you just haven’t lived if you haven’t listened to Courtney read Kurt’s suicide almost immediately after his body was found!

This entire post is stupid, I know. Why? Because it is essentially an 80’s/early 90’s West Side Story, a tale as old as time. It’s the story of youth culture and subcultures. Funny what mattered sooooo very much as a kid. Now I’m scared the pain in the middle of my chest is fucking Coronavirus.

Meeting cool people at the record store.

Receiving my first blow job in a car, from a cute, muscular and hung boy with whom I worked at a local supermarket. It was the most monumental moment of my life at the time. When I blasted, I held his head firmly in my hands and just kept running my fingers through his curly hair. It was so good, I think I cried. Then I was violently yanked out of bliss when some cop started rapping on my car window with his night stick...

I forgot to mention Erasure was playing on the car stereo when I was cumming. There's the Gen-X part.

Did everyone else get the Red Menace videos? If the communists win, we’ll sacrifice our belief in God for candy! The candy looked good in the movie.

R154 Who took part in these "culture wars" you speak of depends on where you lived. Maybe for you it was burnout hair metal vs. hardcore/punk/alernative. In other places, you might have been considered the sheep, and the creatives were listening to hip hop and house. Someone might have thought you were sheep for liking Nirvana, when you should have been listening to Fugazi or Bikini Kill.

This level of pretentiousness was so much part of the culture in general in the 80's and 90's. So much of your identity was wrapped up on who you listened to, who you read, what movies you watched - the more obscure the better. This is what's led to the current culture worshipping people like Cardi B, Maroon 5, and Harry Styles. People treat them with the same level of reverence we would have reserved for the Replacements or Dead Prez. The creatives lost the war. We are all sheep now.

[quote] Additionally, there were a number of child abduction/murder cases that occurred close to each other; the TV movie Adam -- about the abduction and murder of 6 year old Adam Walsh -- was watched by almost 40 million people when it aired in 1983, and was re-broadcast twice -- each time ending with photos of different missing children.

I grew up in the same area as Adam Walsh and was only about 2-3 years older than him. We used to go to that mall all the time. (It was called the Hollywood Mall but everyone referred to it as the Sears Mall to differentiate it from the other mall in Hollywood, The Hollywood Fashion Center, which was a smidgen more upscale and had a Burdines).

I can't tell you how many times my parents left me off in the toy department at that Sears to play while they shopped in the store. And we all remember his disappearance very well. It was right in our own backyard. That being said, our moms let us still go to the mall on our own during the day.

I don't want to place blame, but I think 6 years old is a little young to leave your kid on his own, even if you were in a different part of the store. Sears was big. And the toy department there was right near the outer entrance doors to the parking lot, so it was very easy to grab a kid and be outside before anyone noticed.

Of course there are lots of rumors that it was a targeted kidnapping, but I don't buy any of that.

People read Literary Theories, rather than Literature, in elite liberal arts colleges.

Wasn't one of the rumors that Adam's mom was there to meet up with a guy she was fucking?

I went to summer school at Lane Tech in 1986 r73, for an English class that I cut too much lol. I was class of 1987 at Von Steuben. Loved the Metro, Aragon, Riviera, Rainbo, House music, just being a teenager in 1980s Chicago was fun as hell. The 90s were pretty fun too. Everything just kind of changed in the new millennium. Its not the same.

R154, another regional difference here: I grew up in Florida and the late 80s for the “others” there were dominated by freestyle dance: Expose, Stevie B., The Cover Girls, etc. It was a sunnier alternative to the bland excess of hair metal.

Being bitter and depressed in junior high because my working-class mom could only afford to buy me The Fox, Hunt Club, and Trax instead of Izod, Polo, and Nike.

Freestyle dance music was also popular in the tri-state area.

The fucking haystack series by Van Gogh visited our city at the same time friends where plodding through Thoreau. I realized I was totally ok with being vapid.

Thank god I had torn sweatshirts.

R115 David Wooderson. Every high school had a David Wooderson. Ours would even hang out in the school halls and cafeteria with the junior and senior guys. Alright alright alright.

My memories:

Heavy, dry-humping make-out sessions with my boyfriend to Friday Night Videos.

EVERYONE smoked, either Marlboro Reds or Parliament. Spending loads of time in record stores flipping through the vinyls.

My bedroom decorated with so much shit from Spencer Gifts, I could have opened shop.

As a little kid, staying out during the summer until it got dark, which was usually 9pm. Our parents didn't always know where we were, but knew we were okay, as long as we were home by dark. FREEDOM!

Clubbing in the city with fake ID's, from the age of 14ish..Palladium, Limelight, Danceteria etc...

My parents let me have parties while they went and hung out with the neighbors next door. They were pretty close to those 16 candle parties mentioned above, but they never gave me shit or punished me. When it started to get really late, my dad would go out and get bags and bags of murder burgers to soak up the drunk kid's alcohol level so they'd go home a little more sober.

Insisting you drive because you weren't as drunk as the friend who had the car, and him getting all insulted and not letting you.

Keeping some change and a subway token in you sock when you went into the city so you could call and get home if you got mugged.

Buying Larks for your mom at the candy store at age 9

Larks! Wow, I haven't heard that brand name in ages.

My mom and dad smoked Viceroys. My grandparents smoked Bel Airs. My aunt smoked Pall Malls.

They're all dead except for my aunt who has one part of one lung left.

Total freedom to come and go at any hour...no one gave a shit. Everyone smoked indoors. Cats stayed outdoors. Mass death from AIDS. Everyone HATED gays. Lots of disposable income. Life was affordable and real wages were higher than today.

R170 -- My grandfather smoked filterless Chesterfields, at least a pack a day since he was around 16. He got lung cancer at 84 - no shock there. He quit cold turkey after surgery and lived to be 91. Genetics are strange.

My Mom smoked Kent. I would have to go to store to get them for her and could keep the change the get a Fudgesicle or candy. I even remember cigarette machines. My Mom would always let me pull the lever for her.

I got my own phone for my birthday, no, not a phone line just a phone! Average households back then only had one line so everyone in the house could hear your conversation if they picked up another extension. You can imagine how listening into your sister or brothers conversation with other friends played out.

Getting semi arrested with my friend at the age of 14 without a license while parked by the side of the road trying to decide what to do with the liquor we scored at the 7/11. You could ask any random adult to buy it for you and they would do it without much thought. After the cop hand cuffed us and put us in the back of his car, instead of taking us to the police station he took us to my friends house woke up his parent and left us in there custody. LOL Parent weren't happy about it. Laughed it off in the morning. Simple times.

170, My Dad used to smoke Kool Menthols, my Mom, Virginia Slims.

Dang R172 what is the point of quitting at such an advanced age? The thing I'm looking forward to being old is drinking and smoking as much as I want.

[quote]Cats stayed outdoors.

Not at my house. When Tiger wanted in, we let him in.

For the Xennials in the thread - masturbating to Jordan Catalano.

Ah, the rollcall of cigarette brands .... Dad Viceroy, Mom Kools, Grampa Lucky Strike (lucky strike, don't strike back!)

Both parents worked knowing it was the first generation to do so. But they were not like Boomer helicopter parents. Quite the opposite. There was a lot of talk about not spoiling kids and how doing so would ruin them so many parent treated use like young adults with a lot of room to sink or swim. But they gave us life skills to help is with that, they didn't leave it to some private preschool or babysitter. Teaching us manners and respecting adults and public behavior was highly regarded. There is no way you could run around a restaurant free to bug other people like they do today.

I was close enough to walk home from school and typically neither parent would be there for a few hours. "Lock the door and don't let any strangers in". And back then strangers did knock on the door, usually trying to sell products to "the lady of the house". Oddly, once they were home, I could go out and play with the only rule to watch out for cars and come home before dark. No cell phones, you were really on your own. I was maybe 7 years old. I loved it, gave me a sense of adventure that stuck with me for the rest of my life.

I forgot- My grandfather originally smoked Raleighs, and then for some reason (maybe they stopped making them) he switched to Bel Air, which my grandmother smoked.

I just found this online. I cannot believe some of these brands are still manufactured. The next time I'm in a drugstore, I'll have to look. Oh, I probably won't be in a drugstore for months.

[quote] Brands. R.J. Reynolds brands include Newport, Camel, Doral, Eclipse, Kent and Pall Mall. Brands still manufactured but no longer receiving significant marketing support include Barclay, Belair, Capri, Carlton, GPC, Lucky Strike, Misty, Monarch, More, Now, Old Gold, Tareyton, Vantage, and Viceroy.

My boyfriend smoked Players and I used to joke he was a player

We will never never again witness hair on a man this fabulous.

Mom smoked viceroy. Dad smoked a pipe.

The smell of a pipe always reminds me of my dad.

Gen X would be defined by the 90s and the rise of the Wide World Web.

STOP WITH THE SMOKING THREAD! Geez guys, can we get back on topic, GenX Experience?

Another mentioned TV Guide fall preview.

And listening to America’s Top 40 on my “boom box” with the cassette player loaded with a blank tape so I could record all of the songs I liked.

r182, smoking was one of the quintessential GenX experiences.

"Gen X would be defined by the 90s and the rise of the Wide World Web."

GenXers grew up in the 80s and early 90s and this generation is characterized by a offline childhood with first internet experience in late teens/early 20s.

[quote]GenXers grew up in the 80s and early 90s a

Gen X grew up in the 80 and 90s. The first time all of Gen X was eligible to vote at full capacity was in the 2000 presidential elections.

Gen X starts in 1965 - so plenty of us grew up in the 70s as well.

R189 is right--smoking is a GenX experience, since so many of our parents smoked. And another GenX thing: the cool kids smoked clove cigarettes.

"Gen X starts in 1965 - so plenty of us grew up in the 70s as well."

65' - really? Isn't there something in between Boomers and GenX? I was born late 70s and I'm almost a Millennial, but I think there is a name for people who were born late GenX/almost Millennial, I dont remember right now.

However demographers or DLers define it, for me Generation X is tied up with the Douglas Coupland novel, which was published in early 1991 and set in 1990. The books's atmosphere and state-of-mind (nowhere jobs, fear of nuclear Holocaust, rejection of Baby Boomer lifestyles) is what I identify with. So I'm puzzled when people who were children or babies in 1990 consider themselves to be Gen X.

I was born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s. I did not fear nuclear holocaust and was too young to reject any lifestyles. But I'm also definitely not a Millennial.

[quote]65' - really? Isn't there something in between Boomers and GenX?

Actually the first birth of Gen-X is 1963. Popular media typically use birth years around 1965 but it's not accurate. The guy who first came up with the term was a writer and he puts it at 1963. Obama for example is considered the first Gen-X President. Some people are trying to rewrite the era between Boomers and Gen-X called Jones but it never took and largely wishful thinking. Some even say 1961 as cusp of Gen-X.

Obama is Gen X and that's the end of it. The boomers can have Dump.

I went to college as a Gen-X. It was a very highly rated Design school. Everything I learned was done by hand. Computers existed, but not really in the art world. They had one graphic design class you could take as an extra elective but the computers were so crude and lacked so much memory and processing power my smart watch is more powerful then what could be done with all those computers combined. Eventually they got better and I taught myself how to use all the major graphics programs long before games came out. I have been using 3D for almost 25 years!

What's unique about the Gen-X is that we have both the traditional and modern worlds of art in our background. Many of the things I learned doing them the traditional way apply with what I do today. I actually feel lucky. I can see what kids get today get from an art school is lacking certain vision and understanding of why things work, not just how to operate the program.

[quote] Actually the first birth of Gen-X is 1963.

Err no, Gen X was always defined by being the smallest generation alive. It is a 12 year generation compared to Boomers and Millennials who are an 18-20 year Generation.

[quote] Gen X would be defined by the 90s and the rise of the Wide World Web.

That would be Millennial, sweetheart. Millennials were the technology generation.

Err no hon.

The greatest bulk of Gen X was born in the tail end of the generation. They were kids of the 80s and teenagers in the 90s. There is an overlap with older Millennials since Gen X is sandwiched between to very large generations.

Researchers and popular media typically use birth years around 1965 to 1980 to define Generation Xers, although some sources use birth years beginning as early as 1960 and ending somewhere from 1977 to 1984.

1968 - 1980

Reality Bites and Singles are movies about Gen X. If you were a child/teenager in the 90s, they're not about you, even if demographers call you Gen X.

Similarly, by some definitions I fall at the end of the Baby Boomers but pop culturally I have nothing in common with people born in the late 1940s or fifties.

Country mouse GenX - I remember going to an all-ages night at a dance club in the big city with one of the youth groups I was in. A couple of the mothers drove us. Must have been 6th grade and I was just amazed.

The last year GenX were teenagers was the year 2000.

Dr. Demento.

The arguing about dates is getting tiresome.

I kept separate cassette tapes on the tape recorder (the good stereo in the living room, after Sunday school, while my parents were at church) for recording songs on AT40 vs. Dr. Demento. I also had to flip back and forth between the two stations, just in case AT40 had a song on that I liked more, because there was some overlap between the two programs. Fortunately Demento was on during the less popular portion of AT40. Plus, the stations only had one station in between on the dial - the easy listening station - so it wasn't too difficult physically to go back and forth.

Play/Record/Pause. Unpause. Pause. Unpause.

R210 here - should have specified the "overlap" was timing of the programs, not content

Gen Xers were the first to use DVDs and DVD players.

The World Wide Web (www.) was first used by teenage Gen Exers when it went up in the first half of the 90s

Getting lighter fluid down your arm doing this:

Buying cigs for your parents was universal. Mom - Benson & Hedges 100s (the "classy" smokes) Dad - Marlboro Reds. Everyone's dad smoked Marlboro, Winston or filterless Pall Mall. My brother and I, both in grade school at the time, would be sent down to the store with a $5 bill to buy several packs and could get candy with whatever change was left over. Two little boys walking down the street with cigarette packs in our hands and nobody batted an eye. I imagine that today CPS would be called.

[quote]Reality Bites and Singles are movies about Gen X. If you were a child/teenager in the 90s, they're not about you, even if demographers call you Gen X.

Those of us who were born in the 70s and were teenagers in the 90s are most definitely Gen X.

Drinking a can of beer while driving was a popular activity with many adults and teens. It was considered perfectly normal.

No car seats in any of my childhood photos. My parents left us alone when we were still very young children and told us to go to our next door neighbor if there was a problem. Mom kicked us out of the house after breakfast on weekends and holidays and we only came back for food or when it was getting dark. I had to go alone to Kindergarten from an early age. No one ever drove us to school. We all took the bus or our bikes in the summer. We were camping all alone with several friends as teenagers. - boys and girls all in the same tents. Spent two weeks in London alone with a friend when I was only 16 yo. We started to go out to bars and clubs around 14/15 (some even earlier) and usually came home the next morning. Alcohol was easily available. All of this was normal and I never heard of any helicopter parents.

Speaking of car seats for kids, putting seat belts on was optional. My mom would always do that arm bar thing when she had to brake fast and I was in the front passenger seat.

The definition of a cohort is not in any way a hard fact -- the border between boomer and genX is always argued. The Baby Boom as a demographic event ended around 1965, but as other posters have stated the cultural factors that define a cohort are what this classification game is all about. GenX as it was first defined was a reaction us then youngsters had to the hippie/yuppie go-go boomers -- we were ironic, "slackers," felt that the world might end because of nukes, we had limited job mobility because of all those boomers, and that "nothing matters, and what if it did." So those born between 60 & 65 have a GenX attitude and experiences more than a Boomer one. As one poster stated upthread we grew up in an analog world; and learned skills that were soon to be moved to various types of computers in our mid 20's. An no car seats or seat belts - we all piled into the flat back area of the station wagon and horsed around as our moms yelled at us. While smoking.

Drunk driving was commonplace until the mid '80's until the carnage was so great that societal attitudes began to change. Driving with a bottle of beer between your thighs was a skill. Seat belts were regarded with suspicion. I knew many people in the 70's and 80's to die in car wrecks. I have not known anyone to die that way since the 90's Cars today and drivers are far better and safer.

Since smoking is a popular topic on this thread, here's a fun article on old cigarette brands -

Generation X (or Gen X for short) is the demographic cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the Millennials. Researchers and popular media typically use birth years around 1965 to 1980 to define Generation Xers, although some sources use birth years beginning as early as 1960 and ending somewhere from 1977 to 1984.

[quote]Clubbing in the city with fake ID's, from the age of 14ish..Palladium, Limelight, Danceteria etc...

Where did you go to get good fakes? In my neck of the woods everybody went to Newberry's.

Autoreverse in cassette players. Camping out for tickets.

Funny story about my dad getting "busted" for drunk driving. One night, my mom gets a phone call from a police officer saying that he was in an accident (he hit a telephone pole) and was drunk. Very drunk. somebody had to pick him up or else he was going to be arrested and thrown in jail.

My mom didn't drive. My sister had her learner's permit. So my grandfather drove with my sister and my mom and of course I wanted to tag along.

My sister ended up driving my dad's car with me and my mom and my grandfather drove home.

No handcuffs no arrests not even a ticket. Could you imagine getting away with that today?

In some cases, if you got pulled over for drunk driving back then, the cops would make you leave your car by the side of the road and drive you to the police station where you'd call someone to come and take you home. No shit. It was such a different world.

My mother's relatives were constantly driving drunk back then, nothing ever happened.

"One for the road"

My Dad was always picking me up drunk off his ass. I remember one time he got pulled over and the police officer just followed us home to make sure he was okay. I'm not sure if those were better days or worse days or what.

Not ordering from Dominos because they donated to Operation Rescue.

Ha you just reminded me of, "LIve Aid", r228:

In 6th grade in 1975 I made a model of the Parthenon for a Social Studies project. I used Eve cigarets for the columns.

Not only did we not have car seats or seatbelts, we rode around in the back of pickup trucks!

My brother and I rode all the way to Boston from Ohio in the back of our pickup. Dad was pulling our camper and the cap was on the truck but still. We were completely unrestrained just bouncing around back there.

My mom put down old carpet in the bed and we covered it with blankets and cushions. We had games, cards and a cooler with snacks.

We stopped at a campground in upstate New York for a few days.

We ride our bikes all over that campground completely unsupervised.

Sounds like it was a load of fun, r231. We used to fight about who could sit in the backwards facing seat in the station wagon on our summer trips to Wisconsin. It was always the cousin who would get car sick who would win.

Spencer Gifts - that genX mall staple for killing time and looking at vaguely dirty gag gifts also fueled my 6th grade infatuation with practical jokes - besides the fart cushion I bought a battery operated gizmo that you stuck to the bottom of the toilet tank with a suction cup - there was a clear tube that ended in a squeeze bulb that you placed between the rim and the toilet seat. When someone sat down the burst of air triggered the thing to turn on and a voice from under the toilet yelled "Hey, what are you doing up there!?! I'm trapped!! = fart noises. I set it up before bed, and it caught my dad in the middle of the night. He said, laughing, that he was so startled he almost fell off the can.

That's funny, r233! I needed that laugh!

I saw that thing but thought it was too complicated to set up correctly

In a McDonalds restroom, one of my friends set an opened ketchup packet between the toilet seat and the toilet base. The opened end was facing into the bowl.

Millennials are sometimes referred to as "echo boomers" due to a major surge in birth rates in the 1980s and 1990s, and because millennials are often the children of the baby boomers. This generation is generally marked by their coming of age in the Information Age, and they are comfortable in their usage of digital technologies and social media. Millennials are often the parents of Generation Alpha.

TONS of Gen Xers also had Boomer parents. Esp. late Gen Xers, born in the second half of the 70s.

[quote] TONS of Gen Xers also had Boomer parents. Esp. late Gen Xers, born in the second half of the 70s.

I would assume most Gen X people had boomer parents, especially when you consider that at least into the early 70s most couples got married and started families right out of high school.

Yes, people got married and had kids at younger ages back them. I was born in '76. My father was born in '46 and my mother in '50. Most of the kids I went to school with had Boomer parents too. Of course, it was rare for my generation to have kids that young. Most of them didn't have kids until they were well into their 30s. We're all early/mid 40s now and everybody's kids are still in grade school or in middle school.

Gne-X here. Yes, I was adopted and my parents didn't get me until they had been married for 8 years. When I was born, my adopted father and mother were 28 and 27, respectively. Both were pre-boomer age, having been born in the early 40s. I remember going through grade and middle school and being slightly embarrassed that my parents were almost a decade older than most of my classmates' parents.

My parents were Silent Generation rather than Boomers, but I fall firmly in Generation X. I don't recall it seeming strange that they were 30+ years older than me, that seemed to be about the norm among my circles of friends.

Walked to school and back by myself at age 6. Many friends whose parents both worked had keys (latchkey kids) and were home alone until parents got home from work. And I lived in large cities growing up.

Now it is illegal. I shit you not. You cannot leave kids alone under the age of 14 in many parts of the US.

My mom used to drop me off at the train station and I would take the train to see my aunt and other grandparents at age 10. 1979.

Kids used to fly alone! Remember that! You needed an adult, a letter and another adult at the destination to pick you up. Did it a couples of times Chicago to Los Angeles in '75.

I used to do it all the time. I'd fly Delta or Eastern to NYC. My mom would put me on the plane, I'd then have my own stewardess assigned to me (not that she wouldn't be helping others) and I'd get to go on the plane first. I got all sorts of toys and gifts and special attention.

[quote]Not only did we not have car seats or seatbelts, we rode around in the back of pickup trucks!

We did that too, grew up on the west coast. Rode around in the back of the truck was a lot of fun, mother was a little nervous but once Dad got the camper shell is was like a mobile kids room. Had a camping cot in there, even a pass though window to the main cab.

Politically, people were a lot more respectful of each other. My parents were on opposite sides of the spectrum never had a problem except on election day maybe. Dad would try to talk my mom out of going because he though it would cancel out his vote. LOL Even people you disagreed with, would usually end the conversation with "well, to each his own". No anger or shade.

They also had Liberal and Conservative Republicans back then. Can you imagine that now?

Remember the Chevy Luv truck? My uncle had one. It was light blue with a cap on the back. He put carpeting in the bed and put his black lab back there. I would beg him to ride in the back with the dog! It was so much fun! No seatbelts either!

I played softball as a kid and after every game, we'd all hop in the back of someone's pickup and ride around town chanting what team we beat (when we won).

Then we'd stop at the dairy Queen or dreamy whip for ice cream and the other parents would meet us there.

It was great. So many great memories of riding around in the summer in the back of a pick-up truck with the wind in your hair and the sun on your face!

As a Gen-X redneck, not only did we ride in the back of pickup trucks, but we would be sitting on a pile of inner-tubes on our way to the river to go tubing.

Another Gen-X memory: My aunt and her friends had some sort of video piracy ring going on. They would go and rent three movies (one 6-hour VHS tape), put two VCRs together and record them, then circulate the tapes. It was very organized, so nobody had the rent a movie someone else had copied.

My siblings, cousins and I spent our childhoods riding in the back of my uncle's pickup truck. It was so much fun! None of us ever got hurt.

Us Gen X’ers really had pretty ideal childhoods. So much freedom and being left to our own devices, we learned how to fend for ourselves. It was so carefree.

In the early 70’s my dad had a summer business on the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ. My brother and I were out on the boardwalk/beach all day long with kids whose parents also had businesses, our parents were least bothered. My dad would joke that we’d mysteriously appear at feeding time like 2 puppies. Then back on the boards until late at night and bedtime. And we survived!

Yeah, we figured the world out without all the parental supervision. Learned to entertain ourselves without the omnipresent phone or computer.

The thing I can't figure out is, since we had such independent childhoods, why as a group did we become such overbearing helicopter parents? I decided in my early 20's that I didn't want kids, and am fine with that, but once my friends and sisters were raising their families I thought to myself - I'd be a shitty dad - because there's no way I'd drive a kid everywhere and stay to watch the stupid soccer game. I was an acquaintance of Lenore Skenazy and I can't believe all the crap she got over the "free-range kid" things she wrote - I am in complete agreement with her.

When I was 16 and 17, I flew by myself to the colleges I was interested in attending; it was a time in the mid-80s when airplanes still had bars, and they were happy to serve me cocktails. The other passengers, sitting around the lounge, had normal conversations with me like I was an adult, sharing opinions on different schools and careers as well as their own professions.

I can't imagine a teenager of today experiencing anything remotely similar.

[quote]Speaking of car seats for kids, putting seat belts on was optional. My mom would always do that arm bar thing when she had to brake fast and I was in the front passenger seat.

Every car I ever rode in (ours, parents' friends, grandparents', uncles' and aunts') had the seatbelts tucked away into the seat cracks and totally unusable.

I think ONCE in a snowstorm that descended unexpectedly on a trip across a mountain pass, my mom made us dig the seatbelts out and put them on while my dad affixed chains to the tires.

[quote]The thing I can't figure out is, since we had such independent childhoods, why as a group did we become such overbearing helicopter parents?

That's because most Millennials are the offspring of Boomers not Gen-X. Maybe not in your specific case but in general that is true. Boomers held off on having kids at a young age during their YUPPIE years. Gen-X kids gave birth to Gen-Z.

Tons and tons of Boomers also gave birth to Gen X.

[quote] That's because most Millennials are the offspring of Boomers not Gen-X. Maybe not in your specific case but in general that is true. Boomers held off on having kids at a young age during their YUPPIE years. Gen-X kids gave birth to Gen-Z.

I'm not sure I understand your tracking here. If Boomers were the parents of Gen-X (which they pretty much were), and Gen-X is talking about all their freedoms growing up (which we are), then how are the more sheltered, more helicopter parented Millennials also the offspring of Boomers?

Boomers are a huge generation that lasted almost 20 years. The older Boomers had a lot of Gen X children in the 70s, and the younger Boomers had a lot of Millennial Children in the 80s.

I wrote upthread that I was born in '76 to older Boomer parents and most of the kids I went to school with had older Boomer parents as well. People my age didn't really start having kids until a decade ago, we're the parents of Gen Z or whatever the fuck the current generation of grade school-aged children are called.

R259 - no judgements - just curious — are you raising your kids with more freedom that seems to be the norm today? My GenX sisters really aren’t because it seem “expected” that you ferry your kids around constantly and watch whatever they are doing. I wouldn’t say they are “helicopter” in the sense that they overprotect and meddle - but their lives are taken up by their kids much more than our parents were (and I think we had good parents).

My mother never even walked us to the bus stop past kindergarten & we were walking to & from school by 3rd grade. My sister lives in the same neighborhood we grew up in and she drives her kids to and from high school every day! (She would cut HS after homeroom & go smoke in the woods nearby). We were allowed to come into Manhattan with friends freshman year & on our own thereafter. My nephew couldn’t get himself to my apartment on his own for 100 bucks & he’s 16. I honestly don’t understand it.

There are plenty of GenX born to Depression parents, R259. Old parents are purposefully nearsighted, selectively deaf, and seldom surprised.

They were tired and really worried about what nuclear bombs and leaded gas had done to the air and soil.

Sure r259, but Gen Xers born in the 60s and maybe early 70s. By the time my part of Gen X came along in the second half of the 70s it was mostly Boomers (now in their early 30s/late 20s) who were our parents. Only a handful of kids I went to school with had Silent Gen parents. By the late 70s women of that generation were hitting forty.

^^^You're right. Gen-X born between 1965 and 1971ish had Silent Gen parents. But most Gen X born after 1974 had Boomer parents.

There are no GenXers that were born in 1965. Those are called young boomers.

Gen X : 1968-1980

I’ve noticed each generation classification rejects 196o-67.

Gen X started several years before 1968. 1963/64 is usually the starting point.

It's definitely earlier than 1968.

Not that Wikipedia is hard science - but neither is setting the boundaries of a cohort :

“Generation X (or Gen X for short) is the demographic cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the Millennials. Researchers and popular media typically use birth years around 1965 to 1980 to define Generation Xers, although some sources use birth years beginning as early as 1960 and ending somewhere from 1977 to 1984.“. - Wikipedia

For the millionth time, these are flexible dates, and there is no way to say that one generation ended on December 31st of one year, and the next began on January 1st of the next.

You're not a genius for realizing this.

Both Boomers and Millennials are an 18+ year generation. Gen X is the smallest Generation alive. They were always described as a 12 year generation.

Oprah would know.

Pew research and the federal reserve already made the determination that Millennials are 1981-1996. Gen X‘s cutoff is 1980. Gen X grew up during the time kids could no longer play outside. They grew up with Adam Walsh’s decapitation, missing kids milk cartons and Reagan.

[quote]Gen X : 1968-1980

To go with that logic then Kurt Cobain who is the most quintessential of all GenXers wouldn't be a GenXer.

Adam Walsh's abduction changed everything. I was around the same age he was and overnight parents became paranoid. That was a HUGE turning point, I remember it well.

Shortly after that came the Tylenol cyanide poisonings and that made people even more paranoid. The world became a scarier place because of those two events.

R273, right? It's as if some think Gen X is a scientific definition rather than a common experience. As said before, see Reality Bites or Singles, definitive Gen X films set in the early 90s about post-college young adults.

This thread reminded me of the fun riding in the back of my grandfather's uncovered pickup. He was a bit crazy and would even swerve around or speed up and slam the brakes just to give us a thrill.

R270 stop trying to make 1968-1980 happen. R269 has it right.

1968? Gen-X. NOPE. As I said before, the man who came up wit the term is the one who owns the right to his observation. It is irrelevant what insurance companies slap a label on latter. It's still wrong. The original author says that Gen-X starts at 1963. Maybe even a little before, but full swing by then in his mind.

Think of it like this, the light bulb was invented on an exact date according to the inventor. Now if you dig deep, it might have been invented by others in a different form pushing the date back even further. But in either case the date never gets pushed forward just becomes some insurance company decided for convenient sake to alter the date that worked better for them.

My brother was born in 1959 and I was born in 1966 and I definitely feel a generation gap. I consider myself a Gen X.

I was born in 1963, I definitely consider myself Gen-X. All the traits that they use to describe that experience match my life growing up exactly. I know a few other people who were born the same year and I can say none of them act like or identify with that Boomer experience either.

Janeane Garofalo was born in '64. Quentin Tarantino in '63. You can't get more Gen X than those two.

I think of the Brat Pack as being a Gen X thing but most of them are probably considered Boomers

Brat Pack defiantly Gen-X.

Boomer were Hippies and later YUPPIES "young, upwardly-mobile professional"

I meant that most of the Brat Pack were born early 60's so if Gen X is technically 1965-1980 they were out of the range.

Sneaking to watch Benny Hill reruns on the local PBS station late at night because sometimes they showed boobs!

I remember when Body Heat came on HBO, we were all talking about it in school the next week

My first 2 albums were Pat Benatar 'Crimes of Passion' and Billy Joel 'Glass Houses'

Then it was REO Speedwagon Hi Infidelity, think they all came out about 1980

[quote]f Gen X is technically 1965-1980 they were out of the range.

NO Technically they were not. That rang has not been accepted as fact. It's made up and other ranges go as far back as 1960 which is just as technically correct.

1963 born textbook GenX-er here too. For an earlier analysis of the psyche and experiences of our cohort than Coupland’s 1991 novel there was an article in Esquire in early 85 called “The New Lost Generation - the children of the 70s”. It really captured exactly what I was feeling at the time.

Found it!

Bicentennial Minutes every night on CBS! “Two hundred years ago today...”

That morning we went down to the harbor to see the Tall Ships, then since it was a Sunday my mom made us go to church! After a block party barbecue we went back to the harbor that night to watch the amazing fireworks.

For later Gen Xers - growing up with Madonna. We were in early elementary school when she became famous, and she had a huge impact on our formative years.

As somebody on the tail end of Gen X (born in 1978) I have more in common with early Millennials then those born in the 60s or or early 70s. I didn't relate to Singles or Reality Bites because of was in either junior high or high school when those came out. I certainly have nothing in common with somebody who was born in the 60s and was in college when I was entering kindergarten.

r293 I'm only two years older than you and it's the opposite for me. I'm 100% Gen X and never felt much in common with Millennials, even though agewise I'm closer to their generation than people who were born in the 60s.

r290 it sounds like he is a little too old for Gen X

I remember my sister (who is a Boomer by age) was like a teenage hippy. She had the cool room in the house. Organic hanging lamp, black light posters, beads in the doorway inflatable chair, bean bags and a chain of beer can tabs folded onto each other forming a chain from scrap. Primitive recycling I guess. She listened to the Beatles and turned me on to Nancy Sinatra. I was born in 1963, by the time I was her age, my teen years were nothing like that. My life in high school was more like That 70's Show becoming 80's New Wave.

When I was younger, riding my bike all over town and being gone all day.

When I was 17, spending every weekend cruising the rest stops on the thruway and my parents never asking where I was. I think they thought I was at friends. Never had a curfew because they wanted me to have friends.

R295, David Leavitt was born in 1961.

R296, when the show started, so were the kids in That '70s Show, except for maybe Jackie. But they stretched 1976-1979 into eight years, so it's hardly a perfect computation.

Born in 1962. Flying to the US from Frankfurt Airport to Cleveland to my german uncle, who was living there at the age of 15. Never been on a plane before, never been outside Europe before. Had met my uncle only once before. They had a picture of me, so they could identify me at the airport.

I stayed there for 4 weeks to improve my English. Calling my parents maybe 4 times on R calls. Writing airmail letters (anybody out there, who remembers?)

When coming back picked up by family friends who brought me to the train station so I could head back to Stuttgart. My parents were on their 4 weeks vacation with friends on Corse/France meanwhile.

How did I survive that?

R299 - I remember airmail letters, and how expensive long-distance calling was thru the late 80's. I had two aunts that lived overseas in the 70's - one set of cousins in Italy, the other in Japan -- you would get the airmail letter on very thing, colored paper that folded to make it's own envelope. Since calls were too expensive we all would make tape recordings and send them back and forth; first on reel to reel, and then on cassette. I can remember going to a great uncles apt to listen to a tape from Japan because he had a reel to reel deck in his stereo and we didn't. Even in college in the 80's long distance was so expensive I would call my partner's collect, they would refuse the call and call me back so I didn't have to pay.

^^ parents collect. Arbitrary auto-correct; wish we had an edit function

You could be a goth/punk/rebel and people didn't assume you were on track to becoming a school shooter (because school shootings weren't a thing yet). It was a clothes-and-music thing.

Did anybody else get the Burning Airlines catalog? You could order pins, t-shirts, subway posters, limited edition picture-disc vinyl, postcards, you name it.

I remember filling out the order form by hand, in pen ink, going to the bank to buy the money order, and waiting 6-8 weeks for my box of Burning Airlines stuff to arrive. Magic!!

You can recite every single word from this scene verbatim....

Every mix tape had this song it.

R304 - While that may not be the “best” one-hit-wonder song of all time, I think it may be the most successful - it still got regular airplay on generic MOR stations into the late 90s.

( I know Modern English did have one or two other hits at the time.)

Discovering Cappuccino flavored Silk while listening to Matchbox 20.

Other songs on the mix tape:

Blister in the Sun

It's the End of the World As We Know It

Mony Mony

Rebel Yell

Red Red Wine

Rock the Casbah

Free Fallin'

You, or somebody you knew was addicted to a video game. Could be Pac-Man, donkey Kong, centipede, or space invaders. They would spend hours at the local party store or pizza shop and play. They would steal money from their parents to feed their habit!

Except for one afternoon in my twenties, I never got the fever for video games. Played them, sure, but I didn't breathlessly anticipate each new one or beg my parents when Atari and later home versions became available. That extends to the modern pastime too, I guess I'm just missing the particular nerd gen that sparks enthusiasm for them.

Why we’re so good at Corona Isolation - Xer’s have been isolated our whole lives.

Love and totally relate to that article, R310. Ha. I think the need to be constantly entertained is going to kill the Millenials. What would happen if the electricity went out and they couldn't charge their phones for two days! Mass suicide.

I hate to say it r311 but Gen Z the generation after the Millennials is even worse. The only good thing about them being so attached to their phones is they can live without actual human contact.

I think Gen-Z is similar to Gen-X that way. One in virtual isolation, one in real isolation. Millennials are more like Boomers, got to go somewhere, got to do something, got to be entrained, group project, oh wait, we cant do that now....FUCK!!!!!!

Isn't Gen Z supposed to be the 2nd coming of Gen X?

I could see that R314. I know Millennials think they are so different, but they really act like carbon copies of Boomers. Most of them had Boomer parents not Gen-X parents. Gen-Z is in the same position as was Gen-X only with more technology. They will get the shitty end of the stick the Millennials left behind.

The shelter in place and city lockdown are really showing what people are made of.

I honestly didn't think there was much if a difference between boomers and GenX but I can see there's a huge difference in attitude. Just between myself (Gen X) and some of my Boomer friends.

They really are going crazy not being able to go out to eat, to the movies, shopping and the like. They're angry and scared and want things to go back to "normal". It's weird. They're behaving like children.

I never really did any of that so I am perfectly happy to stay home and entertain myself (and so are my GenX friends). It's not a big deal to us. Maybe because we never expected much to begin with?

It's just annoying to hear them and the millennials constantly whining about what they want.

Just suck it up and shut it up, FFS!

R314 If the show "Euphoria" is in any way truthful, then yes, those Gen Z kids are our kids.

Thinking that in 2020 there would be flying cars.

It's 2020 and we have smartphones and computers, but not that much has changed really. Travelling from A to B is still slow and uncomfortable.

Apparently Gen X are the only Democrats who aren’t supporting Biden. Younger and older voters are willing to vote for him. The author of this article can’t fathom why it is that us Gen Xers find Creepy Uncle Joe so repellant...

We grew remembering Joe Biden as the senator from little Delaware who kept running for the presidency even though no one wanted him to. We also remember him as gaffe prone in his prime and when he was gaffing, he was plagiarizing.

Still, I'll vote for him Look at the alternative...

Oh dear...

We grew UP remembering Joe Biden as the senator from little Delaware who kept running for the presidency even though no one wanted him to. We also remember him as gaffe prone in his prime and when he WASN'T gaffing, he was plagiarizing