We were the generation that sat down for breakfast with a carton of milk with the picture of a missing child on it. Than, was told to go outside and play.
For gen X there were only ever 2 rules, 1: Survive. 2: Don't get caught. If you got caught, then you deserved to get an ass whoopin'. That's how we learned to become indestructible or stay invisible, so everyone forgets about us. Most of us learned both skills, so since the other generations can't see us, they quickly forget about us, and if they do manage to spot us, we can easily shrug off anything they can do to us. We are the ninja generation.
@@Forced2DoThis1 Indeed, the squeakiest wheel always gets the most grease, so while most of us were happy to be ignored some went out of their way to get attention. A few rotten eggs often get the whole carton thrown out. Some rotten eggs provided the media with juicy material for their gossip [misrepresentation of us... eg: the whole "slacker" thing - theres a reason the grunge scene came and went so quickly, because most of us werent slackers into grunge, that was totally a media/Holyweird hyped stereotype that only represented a small minority of Gen X]. Other rotten eggs never internalized the Gen X punk-rock spirit (I call it punk but it was much larger than just one music genre or subculture it was and still is a whole zeitgeist which really isnt confined to just a single generation but for whatever reason it did seem to possess more of the youth throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s) and so the sellouts sold their souls to the beast system, Babylon, the world serpent, the Establishment, the Man, the Matrix, the NWO or whatever you wish to call it. They got into playing the game of Duopoly politics or climbed the ranks of corporate power.
So funny and so true!! And no one paid any attention to what we were doing. We could be gone doing whatever all day as long as you’re home for chores and homework
True story. Mid 70’s. My mom driving, nephew in back seat of car jumping around. My mom repeatedly telling him to sit down. All of a sudden my mom slams on the brakes, nephew flies into the back of the seats and ends up crumpled on the floor of the back seat. Without missing a beat my mom slowly accelerates and says “that’s why Granny told you to sit down”.
Similar story, my brother and I were messing about in the back of the car. Our dad told us to stop we ignored him. Middle of the road jammed on the anchors, got out of the car opened each of the back doors gave us both a whack on the legs, hard enough to leave a mark. didn't say a word. Got back in the car and drove home. We were not unusual; violence and the threat of violence was the norm in pretty much every household. Taught us a valuable lesson. There is always someone more powerful. I had my first pint at 12, saw much first fist fight in a bar at the same age. Had my first fight at 6, got my nose broken at 10. The kid that did it helped me clean-up. I was the instigator, so I just told the school nurse I fell over FAFO Shit happens ... you get on with it. Soft times make weak people.
My kid caught me teaching my dog to sit in the moving vehicle... Then he laughed so hard he lost his breath because I did it to him first! They learned
Yup..... Rings a bell here as well. And yes. People totally smoked everywhere back in the 70's and 80's. Public transportation, both trains and bus. Smoked in the waiting room at the doctor. Smoked in restaurants.....
BwaaaHaHaHa ! He said if he were a kid in the 70's he would have stayed in the house. He is assuming that his parents would have allowed him to stay in the house. Bless his heart.
He’s also forgetting that his parents would have worked him like a slave, because all the tech Gen X invented didn’t exist yet and wasn’t there to help or entertain.🤷🏾♂️
@@tammycenter8757 Remember having the LIVING room, which was kept immaculately clean, and the den where people actually lived? We ALL had one… so hysterically funny in retrospect but sadly now a thing coming back into popularity because I hear vague references that sound the same from people all the time. It boggles the mind!
Back in the day, there was a Timex Watch Commercial with the catch phrase "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking", that's how you describe a Gen X kid.
In 1977 I went down a slide head first on a dare. The ground around the slide was pea gravel. I got gravel embedded in my palms and had to walk to ER. My father said he would meet me there. He showed up 2 hours later after the football game. He was mad that he missed the postgame show. I was 6. And that is my Gen X story.
@Evan-lr8nq Evan get some XRP n XLM and you'll be rich my Gen X brother 🙏 also Zimbabwe Zim bonds, their currency will soon be redeemable if you understand all that LoL 😆 follow the white rabbit 🐇 and you'll have generational money 💰
She told no lies - no seat belts, no sunscreen, no doctors unless an absolute emergency, high toxin exposure, no help with bullying or beef with neighbor kids, walked or rode bikes (no safety gear) everywhere within boundary set by parents, left alone at home with younger siblings at 8 to 10 years, etc. Gen X can survive a zombie apocalypse. 😂
Dogs weren't on leashes back then. When I was 13, I slipped and broke a bone just above my wrist on a cement step while running from a German shepherd in the rain. My stepdad called me a vagina for wanting to go to the hospital. I set it myself with 2 bandanas. It's got a slight bend in it from not quite healing right but has full functionality. No teachers or anyone asked me about it because it was common to tie bandanas on your wrists in the 80s lol.
I learned to drive with my older brother when I was 14. He had a six pack of beer in between us and gave me my first beer while I was behind the wheel as a reward for doing a good job backing the car into a parking space. It was a different time.
@@this.is.a.username Another way of looking at that is that nature culled the slowest and dumbest or least creative from our generation while today they are being coddled and protected from the process of natural selection which does not bode well for the future of man kind.
@@Bob_CratchitYour stepdad was an abject sack of tish. Hopefully you’re nothing like him. I too had a stepfather (although I am a millennial) who tried some stupid tough bravado nonsense like that when I fractured all four fingers while rollerblading. My hand then looked like it belonged to the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man the next day, and my stepfather looked exactly like he idiot that he is. I think he’s actually part of Gen X but on the whole, Gen X hasn’t collectively offered much to society. Acting tough doesn’t make up for being largely forgotten.
And a deli owner that would sell me Winston cigs at 12 "for my mom"... when he KNEW she smoked Vantage Ultra Light and no chance she switched that hard! The dirty mags were on the bottom shelf of the magazine rack too, no plastic wrapper, I thought I was so brilliant slipping one inside a newspaper and paying for the paper.
in the bathroom, so no adult even saw you buy them lmao. wed just walk into a bar and go to the bathrooms and walk out. you could walk into bars then because noone was serving you alcohol so they didnt care if you went to the bathrooms.
The biggest difference was we were taught responsibility , how to cook and clean. There were no cell phones, bullying was done but solved pretty quick. I miss the old days where people actually talk to each other
The bullying thing is amazing to me. I was so surprised a few years ago when I saw pictures and videos of boys wearing dresses and girls with green hair. I thought what kid would be stupid enough to do something like that, the other kids are going to destroy them! My surprise turned to shock when I saw those kids being cheered and applauded. I saw a video of this kid saying how much social pressure there was in school to make sure you never forgot someone's personal pronoun. When I was their age the peer pressure was to take drugs. It's unbelievable to me that now you're peer pressured into respecting others' personal pronouns. It's politically correct to say that's a good thing and it's progressive. I don't think it's that simple, for the reason of Judy's comment. What it has done is turned out a generation of dependent and emotionally fragile people. One of the reasons I think things are so polarized these days is precisely because nobody born after 1990 or 1995 has any social conflict resolution skills.
And cook meant cook. There may have been a microwave available, but it wasn't used for much more than heating up leftovers. Hell, I'm fifty now, and my microwave rarely gets used. My millennia wife uses it in a few months. More than I've used it in my lifetime
responsibility isnt a generational thing. My 17 year old sibling is more responsible than either parent is, and wasnt taught by them either. Had to learn it through neglect
Gen Xer here. I LOVED being left alone. When you were saying 'how sad' I was thinking 'are you insane??? Gen X is the best, and it's a blessing that people forget about us because you can get away with murder when no one is watching you. All generations after us are having smaller and smaller lives and have less and less ability to deal with the slightest adversity because they are treated like breakable creatures . I am grateful to be an Xer. Yes, everything she is speaking on is 100% true.
Same. When I was 8 I had to go to an after school nanny. I fought tooth and nail not to have to go there. I was so happy age 9 when I could stay at home until mom got home. Loved it
The things we got into and got away with shaped our adulthood in ways that cannot be replicated. My grandad fixed up two mopeds for us when I was 8. Bro and I motorized a red wagon the next year. We had playground equipment that burned skin, left splinters, and broke bones on the regular. We built forts and survival shelters and started fires with the one kid’s glasses. I bought my moms cigs on my bike from the corner gas station with a blank check. Most of us forged parent signatures on permission slips starting in elementary school. The librarian taught me intra-library loans the summer I was 7 because the local branch didn’t have enough books to keep me entertained. We started our own businesses, babysitting, lawn care, and selling crap we made, before our age was double digits. We had a great childhood and its better no one cares than everyone telling us it was all trauma and neglect.
@@kvbstudios316 Now kids start a business like mowing and some grumpy gen x'r with a landscaping business calls the cops on them 😛Happened twice in my small town and seen it many times in posted videos.
As a Gen-Xer it's NOT that I don't care, I just don't care enough to fix people that can't figure out how to fix themselves. I had to keep myself company, find like minded people to hang out with, do my own research (no Google back then). I came from the self-help book generation before I realized that helping myself is a basic survival instinct that I learned from childhood because my Baby Boomer mother couldn't deal with her own childhood trauma to give me the answers I needed. I learned how to fail, dust myself off, and start over. So I care, just not enough to disrupt the comfort I temporarily feel right now in the moment, but as soon as life throws me a curve ball, then I will care so hard you will wish you could ignore me.
Climbing thru big commercial buildings under construction. Always one pyro in the crowd. Riding your bikes 20 miles to the beach. Building forts inside billboards 50' off the ground. Hanging onto car bumpers on a skate board, crouched so driver can't see you. And yes, the red dodge ball.
Which was a stupid commercial.....at 10pm it was night time and the street lights were on.......Every Gen Xer knew to be home before the street lights came on!
I'm GenX. Last year I had a collapsed lung. I drove myself to the hospital. When the nurses found out I drove myself instead of calling an ambulance their eyes got real wide.
i got a taxi. walked up to taxi rank so girlfriend never knew i blacked out. i was in car accident 3 weeks before. had 700 cc of air in chest cavity and torn lung from broken ribs. lung recollapsed but im stretching it out with an ancient plant vapour. im beating stage 3 copd now, putting on weight after dropping down to 42 kg at most critical. fixing shoulder, hip, back and will restart a business when i get medically cleared. i mostly eatcheese butter lard eggs and meat now. this old rig was built solid back on the 70's.
Born in '67 GenX. I wouldn't trade my childhood with anybody. Everything she said was true. Our experiences made us tough and independent. We adapt to and survive any crisis. We didn't fight each other through cyber space. We fought face to face with our fists. We were bullied, drank warm water from the garden hose, played outside and rode our bikes miles from home with no supervision only to return for dinner when the street lights came on at dusk. We jumped bikes over home-made ramps with no helmets, no gloves, no knee pads, and no elbow pads. We wore no seat belts, sat on scorching hot black vinyl car seats in the summer, and inhaled our parents' cigar, pipe, and cigarette fumes. We were our parents' TV channel changer before remote controls. We memorized phone numbers and carried change for emergency calls from pay phones.
We were also antenna extensions by standing next to the rabbit ears in the right spot. The ones that learned how to program the new microwaves and VCRs. Had Mr.Yuk stickers on toxic chemicals but didn't actually need them and memorized all the emergency service numbers because 911 wasn't a thing until we were graduating from HS. We put lemon juice on our hair in the summer and baby oil on our skin for tanning. And could NOT WAIT to get our driver's license, usually on our birthday that we became eligible.
My brother lost his front teeth on a bike ramp they made in the road. I was mad because we were supposed to go on vacation, and my brother had to go and get a concussion. 😂
As a Gen. X-er, our inside joke is, We'll lock them in a room with a rotary telephone, a regular face clock, and the directions of how to use both written in cursive..they'll never get out..
When we were outside, we were like little "McGyvers", or even the "A-Team". We would create something useful, fun, and possibly dangerous, out of whatever we found lying around. Like, Outdoor forts, and bike ramps. As long as we put Dad's tools back. We could use them unsupervised. 😂
I had to pull things apart and put it back together because of Mcguyver nearly electrified myself trying to fix a very old box tv learnt to turn the power of and pull the plug out that day
@@MudMarsh I completely disassembled the lawnmower with the intention of using the engine to build a motorized go cart. One of my many failed childhood projects. You cant make an omelete without breaking a few eggs!
LOL... oh wow.. so true.. this Canadian now remembers at the age of 11 my little orange hand held transistor radio stopped working one day.. while I was outside with it .. holding it up to my ear to listen to the local AM station in the RAIN... while swinging dangerously high on the swings!!!!! 😳😲😂 Well as soon as it stopped working.. I came in the house and set to work taking it apart and fixing it! Honestly can't even remember what I did to fix it.. but so funny that I was able to get it put back together and had it working for another few months!!!! Craziness!!! 😜🤣
I remember when Ricky made a go cart out of his dad's 12 foot ladder. He knocked down every mailbox on my side of the street when he tested it. It was hilarious.
The best thing about gen x and their self sufficiency is they policed their own and knew that choices have consequences (usually bloody painful ones). The upside of this disregard to personal safety is it is extremely hard to control gen x, as when given an ultimatum they generally take the 'or else option'. Their playtime built up huge levels of resilience and fortitude.
And then you realize that we choose the "or else" for the nostalgia and fond memories of childhood we get. And that should scare people lol. Its a "do it. I dare you. You think that's supposed to scare/stop me? I got worse for punishment in kindergarten."
Yip, I do find myself asking or else what? Often, which I have to say just gets worse the older I get. I'm definitely going to be one of those pensioners who think they should be answerable to no one 😅
OKAYYY!When he said that,i threw my arms up and announced that i was 147 yrs old!!Random old number.Ya i yelling at my laptop"its fat-wait you really dont know?"
it baffles me that people think hydrogenated vegetable oil (almost all cooking oil) is better than animal fats. Yes, coconut oil and olive oil are debatably the healthiest, but animal fats are a million times better for us than the fake oil junk all our food is cooked in these days.
I am a Gen X kid and if someone broke the rule of a game we were playing one of two things would happen. 1. The game would stop and all of us playing would get mad at the rule breaker and tell them stop or leave, if they broke the rules again they were rejected from the game and sometimes not allowed to play with us for a week or longer depending on how many times they broke the rules(if they broke the rules all the time we called them cheaters and never let them play with us (consequences for actions). 2. There was an immediate fight or violent retaliation, that the rule breaker knows is going to happen.
We were just more social aware. Justice were served swiftly and there. That said. Once the beef is over, the beef is over. And nobody needed to go get their friends for help because of having a grudge over something that happened a week ago.
I"m Gen X and I remember at family gatherings adults (usually male adults) would take a blanket and four of them would take one corner. They would take a child, place us in the middle of the blanket and fling us in the air as high as possible. Hopefully, they catch us with the blanket on the way down. True story.
I remember that as well, especially the time that my sister's friends trying to act like the adults, missed. I hit the ground, saw stars, waited to breathe again, got up, and the next time they caught me.
My Dad would have me lay in the middle of a blanket, gather all 4 corners, and spin me around and around, lay it down, but I'd still be spinning trying to stand up!
@@sonnyd1527 I remember the breathe again issue, which to this day creeps me out in movies depicting not being able to breathe, cause my Dad made me a swing I really liked, till I swang out just as the rope broke, and I hit the ground flat on by butt jolting every ounce of air from my lungs. I sat there praying I wouldn't die, not breathing for a few seconds, but suddenly my lungs pulled air back in. Boy, talk about being scared for a moment! Yep, I hate underwater, space, choking, whatever in movies, and I always find myself breathing deeper during those scenes!
Copays were $5, ten minutes and they gave you a cure to anything and everything. Now it's a 3,000 deductible and the insurance only cover like 60% of the bill. If you go to the drs today it's at least several hundred dollar bill and at least 5 hours of life for them to tell you they have no idea how to fix anything and its automatically covid because you didn't get your tenth booster
In 1979 my father died from cancer. It was at that moment i became a full on adult and "latch key kid" at the age of 9. I had to learn how to use the lawnmower, weed trimmer, and snow blower. I did laundry, cleaned the house, help keep up with our garden, and learned how to use the stove so i could cook dinner for me and mom because she now had to work a full time and part time job with dad gone. I got myself up, made my lunch, and got off to school every morning. Everything this woman said is spot on and for the most part, its because it was a different time culturally back then. We all looked out for one another and my family knew nearly every other family in our neighborhood because the parents had card game nights, bingo, BBQ's, or dinner parties every week and the kids knew each other from school so we would have sleep overs. My best friend lived across the street and i used to call his mom "mom" because our families were so close and she was like a second mother to me. None of these things are even remotely true in society today and its quite sad to be honest. Aside from not having a dad growing up, i had a great childhood and thats why GEN X is sarcastic and doesnt seem to care, because we went through things that would cause the younger generations to curl up in the fetal position and cry for mommy.
NEIGHBORHOOD BLOCK PARTIES !!!! My parents along with half the neighborhood would be out in their driveways drinking beer , listening to music, as all of the kids would play flashlight tag. It was glorious. Plus it was the perfect way of getting to know the people who live around you. You were never really out of bread, sugar, milk etc... Everyone knew each other and their kids. Sorry to hear about your Dad BTW. My parents had me at the age of 17 in 1972 . So I basically grew up with them.
I had a silent generation English teacher in high-school who said that the downfall of America was the invention of the air conditioner. Took me a few years to fully grasp the importance of what he was saying but he was 100% correct. We were forced by necessity to hang out and interact as a whole community all day long and especially evenings after dinner. Parents would sit on their porches and drink/smoke or wander to a neighbor's porch to do the same. The kids were almost over and usually up to something stupid, which the parents would watch knowing full well pain was about to visit the neighborhood. And when it did they usually laughed and went back to smoking. If someone wasn't actually legitimately dying it was someone else's problem. Man, I have so many memories from things like that... that was probably the single greatest time period in American history. Super strong communities. Incredibly self reliant and capable youth. More freedom than we really knew what to do with. Lot of issues sure but as kids we more or less resolved them on our level.
It's not that we don't care. It's the fact we care more than most, we'd take care of each other, and if we have to get involved in something, that means everything went sideways and things are about to get real for whomever is doing wrong.
I’m gen x. Born in 1976. I was brought home from the hospital in my mother‘s arms and she was in the front passenger seat. A lot of this is very true for me, but my parents were very overprotective . They called everybody’s parents before I could go over to someone’s house. I was an only child and my parents are weird. But there were a lot of freedoms to run the neighborhood and we were way more independent than my Gen Z kids are now. Like I can’t believe how many kids these days don’t want to get their drivers license.! That was the first thing when I turned 15- 😅 I got my learners permit.
Gen Xer here: we were raised as feral children and I wouldn't have it any other way. Kids nowadays never experience the freedom we had back in the day. We were outside all day, BUT we got to do whatever we wanted to do (As long as we didn't "get into trouble"). Children today suffer from lack of development and personal responsibility because their childhood experiences are so controlled and curated by the adults caring for them. Oh and the "rules were enforced" because we got the shit beat out of us by our parents (or neighbors/friends parents) if we got out of line. The lines were fairly well defined; but the space between the lines was enormous.
@@karlkuttup i said above, i got into alot of trouble, but i got out of more lol. we would have been fuc*ed if they had cameras everywhere like we do now. im 100% sure of it lmao
Don’t forget our parents *encouraging* our teachers to beat the crap out of us in front of god and everybody. I wouldn’t trade my Gen X (70s/80s) childhood for anything. Best time to be a kid, in my opinion, not that it was all great, but we had freedoms that nowadays they don’t have. Thankfully. Haha
OG Gen X here, wouldn't trade my childhood for the world. Grew up with 3 siblings and life back then was one continuous adventure. Our parents were not aware of one fifth of the shenanigans that we got into. I remember a family gathering around the table after us kids had gotten into our 30's and talking about things we'd done when we were young. Our parents sat listening in amazement and laughed out loud at many of our antics. Originated operation "Shock n Awe" long before GW Bush. LOL!
I’ve told my parents years ago about the shit I snuck right past them so many times…like the time when I was 16 (1991) a friend came to my house in the middle of the night, the neighbor saw him creeping around our house in the middle of the night and called the police, and I had to hide him just inside the door to the living room. Police officer, my big brother, and both of my parents standing
I’m Gen X as well. All of my siblings do the same thing we sit around and tell our parents the story they didn’t know about also. They would laugh too and we tell all the kids now that they are older. They are cracking up, laughing too.😂😂
At 18, my best friend and I "borrowed" her Mom's car while she was out of town and drove from the Midwest to New Orleans for a long weekend. There was no GPS. All we had was a huge road atlas my Dad had given me and next to no money. We made it no problem and had the time of our lives! It's a Gen X thing.
When I was 16 we "borrowed" a friend's brother's car and went to Tennessee from Illinois with $30. We made it back and our parents never even knew we were no longer in the state for a whole weekend lol. It was so much fun! We went to a concert 🙂
When I was 15 I hopped a train and went to a city in the next state over and spent a weekend exploring it while sleeping under a bridge. Got caught going back the same way by the police checking rail cars and my dad had to come get from jail. It was fun and well worth the fact I couldn't sit down for 2 days without feeling it. I earned the razor strap instead of teh belt on that one.
When I was 19 we drove from Massachusetts to Minnesota to pick up a friend and made it all in one weekend. Time of our lives on that trip and the playlist - chefs kiss
If you wanted to know your way around a town, you found the kids on bikes and asked them. They knew every street, trail, path, shortcut, hole in a fence for a w0 mile radius and could get anywhere faster than emergency services could.
From about 1985-1989, every summer, my friends and I would go to “first week” at the beach with barely any money and would sofa surf in hotels where parties were going on or sleep on the beach. It was amazing and some of the best times of my life!
I'm Gen X and have two sons. The oldest is a Millennial and the youngest is Gen Z and I swear the difference between the two are night and day. Both are very smart, however the oldest seems to have more common sense than the younger one. The oldest couldn't wait to drag me to the DMV when he turned 16 to get his learner's permit while the youngest didn't get his DL until he was almost 20! The oldest can cook for himself a 3-4 course meal while the youngest sticks to the very basics of cooking (pop stuff in the microwave). The oldest joined the military, youngest just graduated college. The oldest deals with mostly cash while the youngest barely carries cash and pays for everything with a debit/credit card. However, not leaving my millennial off the hook. When he was in boot camp and wrote his first letter to me to give me his mailing address and provide a status on how he was doing, the envelope included "Mom" as the recipient along with our address. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I stood outside of my mailbox laughing for several minutes before I could open the envelope. I recall telling myself that I failed as a parent to teach him how to properly address an envelope (so I responded to his letter and told him that he may want to actually use my first AND last name as the recipient (even though I am the only person the letter could possibly be for 😂😂). The youngest when he was about 12 asked me why the 4 meat pizza was called 4 meat when he only counted 3 pepperonis. After cracking up I told him not to ever say that out loud outside of the house. 😂😂
We got older and realized how insanely stupid and dangerous our childhood was and how our parents were never there for us. We overcorrected a bit with our own in GenZ, but overall, they're good kids and I'm proud of them.
Everything she said was true. We were adults before we hit puberty. Our parents ignored us until we did something wrong. We're all stronger for it and also more damaged because of it. But we're GenX and we don't care adn we don't cry.
GenX here, we may joke about how we grew up and sarcasm is a huge part of our humor since we were kids. Honestly we're glad that we grew up the way we did and we have no regrets about it nor would we change how we grew up. Yes it was a time when things did get tough but it was also a time when we fully enjoyed the freedom from it and took full advantage of that freedom. Regarding the gum "cigarettes", they had a coating of powder sugar over the gum that was wrapped around with paper. When you blew into it, the powder would blow out in a way that simulated smoke.
And in the winter tying a ripe behind the truck and dad towing you down the street at 40mph in a sled and turning and braking but you kept going until the sled gets yankednout from under you and you go flying and tumbling. Get up, bloody nose and huge shit eating grin and climb back into the sled which just makes dad proud and gun it harder.
I’m gen x and I can tell you from my perspective, I truly don’t care we are forgotten. I’m kinda glad we are. Being made to be independent at an early age has, I believe, enabled us to become successful people who never back down from a challenge.
I'm GenX. My folks were Silent Gens. They were literally dirt poor and grew up in the poverty of the Great Depression and the austerity of WW2. They both drilled into me and my sister the harsh reality of being poor and working hard for everything. Nothing is free. On top of that, my dad was a combat vet who was harsh physically and verbally. They taught us basic skills and demand that we get an education. Growing up I hated it and resented them. But, as an adult, I was set up with the skills, and the toughness with thick skin to survive anything. Thanks, Mom and Dad! RiP, Dad.
I'm gen X my parents were boomers. Probably less strict. Yes we went to the store with food stamps bought candy as a reward for buying cigarettes with the change from paper foodstamps. Where are the candy cigarettes dang lol helmets were for nerds.
@@melonmonte6385 I wasn't raised by one but I do remember Nam vets being a big part of popular culture while I was growing up. They were in many of the TV shows and movies I watched as a kid. And I had neighbors who were veterans of that war. Me and all the other boys my age were in awe of them due in large part because we imagined them being real life Rambos or Colonel Braddocks or one of those zany lovable characters from my favorite Nam movie "Uncommon Valor". I used to visit the army navy depot every week to check out the stuff in there. For a while I wore an olive drab army jacket I had found at the Army & Navy store as a way of showing solidarity with the Veterans. I guess seeing Chuck Norris beaten and torchered, covered in leaches from being dunked in a cess pool will have that effect on a kid. :D
We used the small rubber balls and play Hot Rice. The sting of that ball on your flesh, the massive mark it left and the face smile and fast blinking as you pretend it didn't hurt is seared into my brain
😭 … did you just say “ what’s cursive !?” 🤯 We were graded on our cursive as well as content and grammar when we submitted our hand written homework. And what girl wasn’t proud of her handwriting skills which was spent secretly writing notes in class - even our emojis were hand drawn. Each note embellished with many a happy face , hearts and flowers 🌸
They dont teach cursive today (especially in America) because you cant read founding documents if you cant read cursive. Things like the Bill of Rights. It's easy to violate your rights if you dont know them. My daughter was actually failed in high school on a paper because she wrote her name in cursive.
I was 11 years old, the year was 1976 and I was riding my motorcycle, a Honda MR 250, by myself in the woods 3 miles from home and I crashed into a tree, breaking my arm. I rode the bike home one handed, pulled into the driveway and my dad laughed when I told him what happened as we got in the car to go to the doctors office where my mom worked.
Sounds about right. My best friend's family had just been redoing their back porch. I jumped down and had a nail go right througm my foot, leaving a bruise on the top of my foot as I found out later. I still pedaled my bike home about 5 miles, including crossing a 4 lane highway to get back. I'm just glad it wasn't further. Good times, good times!
Fellow Gen Xer. One of my dad's favorite lines after I did something either stupid or foolish and got hurt. Dad: Did it hurt? Me: Yeah Dad: Won't do it again will ya? Best lesson to learn from any Gen Xer, walk that shit off. If you're dead, then you can complain, otherwise slap some dirt on it an go outside
This was how you learned breaking and entering before reaching double digits. And your parents knew you knew and would ask you to let them in when they locked themselves out.
We knew there was a window we could push open if only we could reach it. Maybe stand on that old tire on top of that old rusty bucket. That looks promising.
I literally fell out of my mother's car. She picked me up from kindergarten and I was leaning against the passenger door when suddenly it opened and I was rolling under the car. Thankfully my mom stopped before she ran me over... BUT... she ran out of the car, picked me up, shoved me BACK into the car and never once asked me if I was okay. It was DONE, it was OVER, it was the GEN X generation.
Honey I'm glad you didn't get hurt but knowing my mom your mom probably thought the door opening was your fault and was pissed when putting you back in the car 😂
OMG that happened to me, too. She was turning left, I was leaning against the door and out I went. She picked me up, dusted me off, checked for blood (none) and stuffed me back in the car, all while telling me what a fucking idiot I was. I was 5...
All of the hand me down toys I inherited from my uncle were big and made of metal, and extremely realistic, but I remember all of the toys my parents bought me when I was little in the late 70s and early 80s were plastic or rubber. For example the evil keneval action figure with the motorcycle and launch ramp which wound up the rear wheel when you pulled it back. That was all plastic with plastic gears and everything, but it was much bigger than the action figures that came out later, same with the GI joe and star wars action figures which were also bigger and had more detail or more movable parts than later action figures. The old adage "they dont make em like they used to" also applies to kids toys from generation to generation as well it would seem. I remember an action figure I had made of rubber with a wire frame inside so it could be posed in any position. I think it was the Hulk, not sure though, memory is a bit fuzzy that far back.
After stores cracked down and wouldn't accept the note from a parent for cigarettes, we would be sent to the local bar with the cigarette vending machine.
I was one of those kids. Kool menthols for my Mother and a box of Willy Wonka Nerds for me. Then the Rite - Aid stopped selling them to me , so she sent me to Pebbles Pub to buy them , right at the front door of the bar.
There are both positives and negatives to being left alone all the time. I was born in 1972 so I lived the gen x childhood. Positive: we learned to be self sufficient, problem solving skills, interpersonal communication skills, conflict resolution skills, and the ability to keep a secret lol. ( some parents still don’t know what their kids got up to). Negative: we don’t know how to ask for help, we don’t know how to share our emotions, some of us didn’t learn healthy communication skills, and much of our lives had no plan or structure.
Same. I recently read a book called “Adult Children of Emotionally Unavailable Parents”, and I swear that book should be required reading for all of Gen X.
Born 1972 as well, and it was an epiphany just now realizing how important self sufficiency was and is. The cigarette purchase reality too, because us kids didn’t like adult smokers, and the opposite sex as kids didn’t like it either. Like a whole different child society within an adult society. We kids made our own code of ethics a lot of times. Wild, but true.
45 year old female gen Xer here. When I was a kid...probably around 5-6 years old, I practically lived in trees and loved climbing things. One summer day, I was playing in our orchard in my undies and no shoes, climbing to the roof of a big shed...as one does...and sliced the side of my stomach open on some aluminum siding. Ran home to my mom (we had a big property so it took me a minute) I get home with blood running down the side of my stomach, my mom slapped some alcohol on it and immediately sent me back outside... in underwear... no shoes... no bandages... nothing... went back to climbing the thing. Also used to walk home from preschool on my own...probably half a mile, stopping by a bread store on the way and picking up a loaf for family dinner...sometimes in snow or rain. I've got a gen Z kid (almost15)...and I'm thinking it's time to take her camping/fishing and teach her some unplugged survival skills like my dad did with me.
i learned early that i wasnt good in the sun so went everywhere with jeans and a tshirt from the age of about 7, but thats in the uk where the weather isnt that stable anyway, but i remember the whole getting cuts and lacerations and either using some form of high % alcohol or pure salt to stop the bleeding, to this day i still use pure rocksalt on deep cuts to help stem the bleeding
See me being 38 makes me a Millennial but I grew up basically the same way. Sure my brother and I had few game consoles earlier in life, but we were only allowed on them for like an hour in the evening AFTER our homework was done. We didn't even have a computer in my house at all until I was like 10 or 11, even then we were only allowed on it for an hour at a time. Most of our playing was done outside with sticks, rocks, and imagination and I have the scars to prove it. A lot of us older Millennials had childhoods that were not that different from Gen X.
Also 45. One morning a horse bit my brother on the cheek. Had to be stitched up. Came home and he went back to the same neighborhood home (which back up to a field) and climb a tree and feel out and broke his arm. He didn’t get care on that for days because we were supposed to shake it off.
@nidgrim same! Spending quality time with dad was magic. My dad's still around but has dementia thanks to a brain tumor and doesn't know who I am half the time, not to mention is very physically impaired. Sucks because he was always so sharp, physically and mentally. A real MacGyver type. I like to think I take after him in that respect. He taught me so much, including how to change a tire and fix pretty much anything! I've managed to change my own tire on the side of a freeway... before I had a cell phone. I also replaced a radiator cooling fan in my car all by my lonesome... before TH-cam tutorials. Baby boomers built survivors...that's for damn sure! Miss you dad ❤️.
Our vehicles were also made in the USA with metal. Not foreign plastic. We didn't need air bags. The seatbelts always folded neatly clipped to the roof.
I remember the days when seatbelts weren't required. We only started wearing them when it became a law that would cost my parents extra $ if we got caught not wearing one.
Gen X-er here, I believe the nonchalance and emotional unavailability that our parents showed us, made us be more of the helicopter parents for the future generation. We take care of our kids the way we wished we were taken care of, which lead lead to overprotectiveness, trying to help our kids with everything, creating safer places and knowing everything our children are doing. We created Gen Z, so we have no room to complain about them. I love all the generations and I don’t believe one is better than the other. ❤
I've long thought the whole generation gap thing was either created on purpose, or exploited if it did begin as a natural phenomenon, as just another means used by the power elite to divide and conquer the masses. Not that they have any more conquering left to do, but certainly to maintain their elite status and keep the 99.9% of humanity from uniting in revolt against their global hegemony requires constant reinforcement to maintain the unnatural imbalance of power. I read a book called Revolt Into Style by George Melly which seems to explain how and why these generational cultural rivalries began. According to his sociological observations pop culture actually began as a form of rebellion by the masses against the power elite who monopolize every source of power. The only means of revolt left to the common man was through the arts and the formation of new subcultures. But as soon as any one of these subcultures gains widespread popularity the Establishment swoops in and exploits it thus creating a vacuum that needs to be filled again by the next generation of rebels. Pretty fascinating stuff in my opinion. I was into the punk rock, hardcore and thrash metal scenes of the 80s and 90s. In retrospect I can see how each generation of rebels feels the need to one up the previous generation of rebels. Not only to shame the sellouts who took their underground music and culture into the mainstream but also in an attempt to finally come up with something so raw and radical and offensive that it could never go mainstream, so no one involved could sell out. Of course that strategy hasn't seemed to work so far. The mainstream entertainment industry simply moves the goal posts so that what was once shocking becomes normalized. And they just keep getting richer while the rest of us get poorer.
"We created Gen Z, so we have no room to complain about them. I love all the generations and I don’t believe one is better than the other. ❤" I think "created" might be too strong of a word in this context. I mean, think about how much control or influence we actually have over the upbringing of our children. Sure it is almost absolute during their most formative years, while they are learning to crawl, walk, talk and read and write. But think about how quickly that parental control and influence evaporates from then on and how exponential the external influences (from outside the family) increase from junior high school on, especially if you send them off to college. I noticed the biggest change beyond my influence when our youngin graduated from college. While she credits me for teaching her to be independent and think for herself I noticed that after college she is far more conformist and dependent on authorities of all kinds and on being politically correct at all times than I ever raised her to be. She basically believes everything the mainstream media tells her and relies on social media and the internet for the "official" answer to everything but only from trusted Big Tech curated sources ofcourse. I never taught her anything like that. None of that shit. And I think that shit is what has fucked them all up. I agree with you on the arbitrary social construct of generations though I do think that like most social constructs it can serve a useful purpose. Each generation represents a period of time in which a large number of youth all share the same slice of history, the same major events, celebs, musicians, movies, etc. influenced them. I think of the generations as being like those people at the end of the movie Fahrenheit 451, the book people. Each book person was a living representation of a certain book they memorized. In a similar manner a whole 'generation' of youth become imprinted with the zeitgeist of their brief childhood which is then carried into all the eras which follow providing a unique perspective on everything from each generation's different point of view.
Gen X here, despite any problems, I wouldn't change my childhood at all. I loved the independence and the outside and the game consoles and being feral.
Loved everything but the molestation! But every generation has that….ice ball fights. Glad no one hit me with one of those. Playing near railroad tracks but being smart enough not to play on them except to put pennies on then to retrieve after the train rolled over them.
Gen X’er here and of course our parents cared. They loved us very much and because they loved us they understood they we needed to be outside in the fresh air, learn how to use our imaginations, form friendships and learn that sometimes the world can be less than perfect and injury or emotional hurt is a part of life. They prepared as for the real world by letting us learn from mistakes, recover from failure and put in the work if we wanted something, from good grades to the trendy but unnecessary clothes or items. We valued what we had a lot more than those after us. We had the tools & skills to make it through university or technical training, we knew how to get and keep a job, what makes a good employee and a good friend. We all could handle basic first aide, kept supplies at home and could easily figure out when medical help was required. We were prepared to survive our first dorm / apartment (we actually moved out of our parents homes, we loved them too but learned independence and couldn’t wait to give it a go), we learned on our own to figure out red flags in job interviews and in relationships and how to quit both professionally and safely if the flags were hidden at first. We preferred to be left alone at our practices / lessons / classes so that we had no external pressure and were able to both discover if we really liked it and if so could make mistakes without fear during the learning process. When we learned enough to put something we could be proud of together (game / performance / recital) our parents were there thrilled and proud of our accomplishments and praised us for sticking with it and figuring it out. If we cared out something, so did they on our behalf they just wanted us to learn the right lessons, the most important being there will always be winners & losers and that’s okay, if you love it just keep playing for yourself. Also, it takes more than participation to get a trophy but trophies aren’t what matters most if you’re doing something you enjoy. We learned about the actual real world and how to survive and thrive, lessons my nephews, nieces (brothers & sister 15-20 years older, boomers) and friends kids never did. They range from their 20’s to 40’s now and in the entire bunch only two have the skills to survive and five are in their 30’s and still live at home, three are unemployed and have never lasted even a year at any job. Gen X’ers have to start taking over governments so that the planet doesn’t grind to a halt when the boomers dementia fully kicks in.
As a genxer myself I can tell you that we simply understand the reality of the world. We have a thick skin and love a good diss. So it’s hard to hurt our feelings. We would attempt to “burn” each other endlessly. We did things like BB gun wars and cliff jumping for fun. We did have many many injuries. We did have some losses along the way. We fought a lot and hugged it out after. We were build different. But we do care. We care more than most I think. We simply do not care about silly things like feelings over reality.
I love her! As a fellow Gen X'r, everything she says is right, and I believe it benefited us. I had parents who were tough on my grades because college was my only option after high school graduation. I'm glad I was born in 1970. Loved my childhood in the 70s and my teenage years in the 80s. Best time to grow up!!!
I’m a later gen x er. Probably the last to learn how to pee in a pop bottle in the back seat of a moving car on the highway because my dad didn’t want to stop. And there weren’t rear seat belts until the mid-80s so we were just sliding around in the back of my dad’s 78 Buick.
And college classrooms had built in ash trays in the desks, trains and planes also had built in ash trays, and all teachers smoked in the classrooms during lunch. Then we went home to a smoked filled house.
@@molexeightysix I think they had my grandfather on a respirator, we all smoked, he wanted one too! He had effing lung cancer. Oh I was 13 or 14 at the time.
That was hilarious! I’m a Gen Xer and she speaks the truth. I was a “goody goody” so I didn’t get into the fights, but they definitely happened. I was more into riding bikes and roller skating everywhere. We used to roller skate to the store and get cigarettes for my friend’s mom all the time 😂 Your question about whether being brought up that way was actually better was interesting. I think it definitely made us strong and independent. Most Gen Xers I know have a great sense of humor (you have to laugh at this stuff or it would be too traumatic), but I think you can tell how we feel about being raised that way by looking at how Gen Xers have raised their own kids. Gramted, technology changed a lot of it, but most Gen Xers don’t talk to their kids the way we were or expect their kids to take on these grown up roles the way we had to. I think that says a lot about how we feel children should be treated and brought up.
Gen X here. Does anyone remember Mercurochrome? They put it on our open scrapes. It is banned now because of the mercury content but somehow we all survived to laugh at these jokes.
Is that anything like merthiolate-it dyed your skin red and it stung worse than the injury itself? I learned quickly to stop complaining whenever I got hurt because I knew Grandma would likely get out that damn merthiolate! 😱😝
My God! Was that the red one that burned? I remember my Mom coming at me with it and (being a little girl), I'd start screaming "not the burny one, not the burny one." Her blowing on it didn't help at all.
100% mercurochrome built character. It hurt worse than the actual hurt, my mother would tell me to stand quiet and let her “treat” it and she would not have us let out a whisper: “stand quiet and swallow the crying, it is your fault you got hurt, if you cry I will give you a reason to cry”.
I was born in 64, technically a Boomer, but raised Gen-X. Any more than 3 pumps on the BB gun, the BB went too deep into the person to squeeze it out like a pimple!!!!! Any deeper & you had to either go to the hospital to get it removed, or carry it around inside you, like shrapnel!!! Had a cyst removed from my shoulder blade years ago, they sent it off to be tested, & when they called the doctor asked me why I'd never mentioned being shot!!! Ask him what he was talking about, he said they found 1 shotgun pellet inside the cyst!!! It was a BB we couldn't get out!!!
One of mine and my friends favorite games was standing in a circle while one of us heaved a lawn dart high in the air. The concept of this game was basically “chicken”, everyone stays in place or scatters for their life. The one still standing nearest to where the dart was thrown was the winner.
We threw rocks at each other one day when we couldn't find a ball, and we had heard that was a good substitute. So I threw one at a girl (who was younger than me by 3 years), not meaning to hurt her at all, but I did. Did you know that a head would, no matter how NOT bad it is, bleeds like you are dying? It does. Her mother (like a 2nd mother to me) was SO MAD at me for that, I think we were banned from playing together for the rest of the summer...and that REALLY sucked because they had the pool...so me and my sister would stare at them swimming over the fence with huge puppy dog eyes...tragic in more ways than one :)
I was born in 1967. When I was around age 10, there was a major regional shopping center being built about a block from our house. When the workers weren't there, me and my friends would go to the construction site and crawl through the massive sewer tunnels they were building, climb up huge mounds of dirt, have dirt clog fights, and sometimes play on the construction equipment. Our parents knew. They would say, "Don't get hurt, and be home for supper." Those were their rules. Thinking back, that was nuts! But we certainly had a blast, lol!
My mom was 30 when she had me. I was 30 when I had my son. All through his life I would think, "at his age I was allowed to ... " and then I would look at my small child and think, "Oh, helllll, no." LOL
Fellow 67er here, same for me. Dirt clod fights were the norm if there was a foundation dig for a house. Our bikes were freedom! Just be home when the streetlights came on.
Im a Gen X. What's ironic is that Gen Z are generally our kids. I hate that we crap all over them. It's what Boomers did to us. Apparently, II was a "slacker", despite going to school, holding a part time job, and taking care of my siblings on a regular basis. We raised Gen Z - and I think sometimes we over compensated for what our parents did to us. That being said, rubbing some dirt on it from time to time just has to be done! 😊
It's not that we overcompensated. We respected the health and safety laws, the child protection laws and every other law that came out that prevent led us from raising our kids the way we were. Everything was illegal and classed as abuse or dangerous or destructive and our kids would come home from school being the new expert on what was acceptable. They were banned from every fun game we played like bulldog, marbles, two balls, skipping,and hot rice. They couldn't run, talk loudly, hold hands, play wrestling. They couldn't play with a normal ball and had to use sponge balls. They couldn't learn to cook until older because if anyone knew you put a child near a stove or gave them a knife to cut something you risked the child saying something at school and being reported for abuse. It's not just the parents. The law and the do gooders or busy bodies ruined childhood for younger generations. Gen X was thrown into the position of raising kids in a new way without any knowledge because how they knew was no longer allowed. They did it with one hand tied behind their backs
Hearing stories from my mom (she says she's a Xennial, but she still has a similar experience to the youngest gen Xers) where she would sneak out to my dad's house or went to a concert with a rando she met on the internet was fucking wild. I told her that was so incredibly irresponsible and I had the realization that I was lame and her teenage self would think so too😭. I always thought the teenagers sneaking out to parties or being left alone all the time in T.V. shows around that time were classically Hollywood exaggerated, but apparently it was based in the reality of latchkey kids. It's so insane to me how little freedom I have in comparison to my parents. I don't have an issue with it, but I suppose I've never known anything else, so what do I know lol. I don't quite understand what the vast majority of gen x's issue is with us, I suppose we just lead incredibly different lives than a lot of them did. The ones that post videos online aren't the kind of people I take critique from anyway, and I think most gen x people I've actually met have been pretty cool people and not at all the kind of people who insult me just because of my generation.
@jellynear-tears3775 you guys aren't that different from Gen X - suck right behind a huge group (Millenials) that will suck up all the resources you guys will need. It's the loud, obnoxious Gen Z's that annoy Gen X'ers - but that's just those who post their lives on Tik Tok etc. The majority of the Gen z's I know just want to be able to have a job, house and family one day. They work and try very hard.... I personally refuse to label an entire generation based off social media. BTW - Gen X is sorry for inventing that crap. Our bad 😆 🤣
We learned where the line between actually stupid amd "yeah, I can do that" actually was. We took risks, we pushed boundaries... but as we got older and had learned the hard way we got very good at accurately judging a situation so we could take those risks and be reasonably sure to remain safe. We were very quick learners out of necessity.
Sometimes when I tell my teens stories from my youth, they tell me they’re jealous. I feel proud & sad all in one moment. I had an amazing childhood of dirt lots, sliding down palm trees, watching my sister get ready & head down to the Sunset Strip, climbing & running on car dealerships roofs & the fear that I truly wasn’t going to make it home, before the street lights came on. It was great…scary lol but great #1973 genx
You know what Jayflex, I just appreciate that you are taking time to learn a few things about at least one generation that came before you and appreciating them, a lot of people your age just want to hate on older generations and say they don’t know or understand anything but we were all young once and experience is an excellent teacher.
"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I was 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in 7 years." ( Mark Twain)
we learned conflict resolution, and you knew the order... Family, Friends, Neiborhood, school, town... what color you were what nationality you were didnt matter at all... at all.. everyone was judged on their personality.. and when someone said they would do something they did it..
I 100% am happy that I was raised that way. It made me who I am. While I can't in good conscience raise my own kids this way, I know that I benefitted from it. And it was fun as hell!
I’m a Boomer who experienced everything this woman was speaking about as a Gen X. If there was a Zombie Apocalypse, would you want to be on Team Boomer/Gen X or Team Millennial/Gen Z? Hint: there won’t be any participation trophies involved.
Gen X is it's own team. I know the world doesn't know what we can do yet - but just wait. We're not the gen to let those stupid idiots run things and keep carrying on with this corruption shite. We're the first computer coders and many of us buıilt the game so when it all comes crashing down - you won't even know who did it. Probably some username like DarkShadowLordII - haahahaha. They'll hack the robots and order them around from their basement rooms while drinking Shasta and eating grilled cheese.
Net positive!! (Gen X non-raising) Concerning the fights, it taught us respect actually. Knowing that if you go too far the other person will go too far on you...same action observed in a well armed population leading to a very polite population.
Gen x did care. THEY RAISED the older millennials they gave us more care then boomer parents. You want to know why we messed up.... our parents were our teenage siblings TRYING their best to raise us right. WE salute you Gen X.
Yeah, deep down, we really care too much. We are the ones that coddled and sheltered the kids of today into being the often useless, entitled, lumps they are.
Yes, if we Gen-X folks were treated differently, then we would be much different’ we’d be Millennials. I actually applaud you for covering this topic and trying to get a grasp of the differences in generations. But honestly, i wouldn’t have wanted to grow up any other way. It forced me to be independent, take my licks, and figure stuff out on my own. The problem with Gen-Xers is that they produced Millennials and softened things up too much because we didn’t want them growing up like us…THIS was our one MASSIVE mistake.
99% of what she said was true. Parents kicked us out the house all day, so we relied on one another for survival. If someone got shot in the face, the group would come down on the person who did it. The rules of the games were peer enforced because no one wanted to go home and explain an injury to their parents. Because if you got hurt YOU were the one in trouble. Because you didn't follow the rules. And that carried over into everything else, and for that reason we have a lot of survival and handyman skills. I walked to school at 6 or 7 years old rain or shine. This included crossing a major street with no crossing guard. And I came home to an empty home, unlocking the door myself since both parents worked. We knew our neighbors intimately, and not just the next door ones, but the entire block including the street behind us. If we rode bikes, at any point we could be MILES away from home, and no one asked where we had been as long as we got back home unhurt, by the time the street lights turn on. It sounds like a tragic life, but to be perfectly honest it taught all of us independence, self reliance, teamwork, the value of friendship, and responsibility. Of course we tested our limits quite a few times and had several close calls, and even hid some injuries from our parents to avoid getting in trouble. But we learned. I mostly raised my son the same way, though I also made sure to take an interest in his interest. But I let him make his mistakes and learn his lessons. He's 26 now and I'm very proud of the man he's become. Personally I think it was the best way to grow up, since most of the kids I see these days are far too dependent on the most basic things and lack what I feel is basic knowledge. Also, to be honest we actually don't care about being forgotten in the generational debate because the only generation we care about is our fellow Gen X's. As long as we recognize one another we are happy. If you want to see a Gen X smile, go outside wearing a "Big Trouble in Little China" shirt, and I promise you someone will comment haha.
My cousins and I got lost in the woods one summer day and came home at 9 pm. Our parents told us dinner was in the oven and went back to their wine and cards.
LOL, I forgot about dirt clod fights. When I had beef with my friend and neighbor we started off with dirts clods, escalated to rocks, but a majority was unripened fruit. Peaches, apricots and plums. LOLOLOL. How many kids did you know in school that had their teeth knocked out, had stitches in their head, wore casts? One of our worst traits is we were relentless at teasing other kids. To the point where I think some kids from elementary school were scarred for life.
Gen X here. I'm from Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. We had the worst blizzard in the winter of 1977. I was 7 yrs old, in grade one. The snow was falling at such a high level & speed that the school decided to close and send the kids home. I walked home by myself - 1.3 km. I was terrified! Every step I took with my short legs made me sink into the deep snow. It was freezing cold with high winds blowing the snow around, decreasing visibility. There was a snow plow coming up beside me on the road to clear it for the vehicles. I was so scared that the driver wouldn't be able to see me, then bury me with the snow he plowed from the street b/c it would end up on the sidewalk where I was! Thankfully he saw me & this didn't happen. But talk about being on your own & fending for yourself!!! The whole region was ground to a halt for several days. People were stranded in their cars. Many died! Edit: Just realized I didn't turn 7 until the end of Oct. The blizzard took place in Jan. I was SIX!!! 🤯
I remember this!! I was also 7 in 1977, but I was in Brooklyn, NY. I’m sure the snow wasn’t as bad but bad enough to close schools-a rarity in NYC. And I was a tiny thing, walking home, stomping through snow that was above my knees-waist high by the next day. It was scary but also kind of magical. (My family immigrated the year before and snow was something I looked forward to.)
My mom was a teacher and her school board for her school didn't make the call to send kids home early enough. The blizzard came in on a Friday and she was stranded at the school until Sunday or Monday. I was only a toddler when this happened, but it created a strong enough memory for me to remember flashes of watching out the living room window at the snow, hanging with dad and asking when mom would be home. It was crazy. Mom and the rest of the teachers and students were all okay, a bunch of people in the school vicinity (it was a rural school...we lived nowhere near the school, and neither did the bulk of the students) brought in food and blankets on snowmobiles. It was crazy. Upside...the school board was a lot quicker to call for snow days for quite a while after that in order to avoid this ever happening again, so I benefitted from that a few times while I was at school!
@@princess20-sideddie95 I remember that storm, I was 9. The snow covered our back door to the house. I dug a tunnel to get out through the back door about 20 feet long, it was fun to play in, but no one could go anywhere
We were the generation that sat down for breakfast with a carton of milk with the picture of a missing child on it. Than, was told to go outside and play.
We roamed free and raised ourselves like a pack of wolves.
My siblings used to tell me we had our milk delivered so I wouldn't see my picture on the back of the milk carton...
Then, we heard stories about serial killers and molesters kidnapping kids. Every white van made us wonder. 😂
At least I got told not to talk to strangers with candy.
Gen X was out here being raised on hose water and Neglect.
For gen X there were only ever 2 rules, 1: Survive. 2: Don't get caught. If you got caught, then you deserved to get an ass whoopin'. That's how we learned to become indestructible or stay invisible, so everyone forgets about us. Most of us learned both skills, so since the other generations can't see us, they quickly forget about us, and if they do manage to spot us, we can easily shrug off anything they can do to us.
We are the ninja generation.
Most of us.....Unfortunately the wastes of space of our generation polluted the future!
@@Forced2DoThis1 Indeed, the squeakiest wheel always gets the most grease, so while most of us were happy to be ignored some went out of their way to get attention. A few rotten eggs often get the whole carton thrown out. Some rotten eggs provided the media with juicy material for their gossip [misrepresentation of us... eg: the whole "slacker" thing - theres a reason the grunge scene came and went so quickly, because most of us werent slackers into grunge, that was totally a media/Holyweird hyped stereotype that only represented a small minority of Gen X].
Other rotten eggs never internalized the Gen X punk-rock spirit (I call it punk but it was much larger than just one music genre or subculture it was and still is a whole zeitgeist which really isnt confined to just a single generation but for whatever reason it did seem to possess more of the youth throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s) and so the sellouts sold their souls to the beast system, Babylon, the world serpent, the Establishment, the Man, the Matrix, the NWO or whatever you wish to call it. They got into playing the game of Duopoly politics or climbed the ranks of corporate power.
Hahaha !!! 😂 True.
So funny and so true!! And no one paid any attention to what we were doing. We could be gone doing whatever all day as long as you’re home for chores and homework
And we learned to never, ever snitch on each other. We're the ultimate secret society.
I remember making ash trays. In school For gifts.
Me too. Made one for my mom. You know, the kind of mom who smoked in the car with my dad and me in it.
OMG I remember that, my mom got her ashtray still!
Me too!!! 😂
💯 💶 My parents didn't smoke!
realestmaybeyea4921 Smoking was encouraged. Asa boomer 12 yr old I used to run and get my mom a pack of Viceroys.
True story. Mid 70’s. My mom driving, nephew in back seat of car jumping around. My mom repeatedly telling him to sit down. All of a sudden my mom slams on the brakes, nephew flies into the back of the seats and ends up crumpled on the floor of the back seat. Without missing a beat my mom slowly accelerates and says “that’s why Granny told you to sit down”.
I'm still laughing... belly laughing! So damned true!
Similar story, my brother and I were messing about in the back of the car. Our dad told us to stop we ignored him. Middle of the road jammed on the anchors, got out of the car opened each of the back doors gave us both a whack on the legs, hard enough to leave a mark. didn't say a word. Got back in the car and drove home.
We were not unusual; violence and the threat of violence was the norm in pretty much every household. Taught us a valuable lesson. There is always someone more powerful. I had my first pint at 12, saw much first fist fight in a bar at the same age. Had my first fight at 6, got my nose broken at 10. The kid that did it helped me clean-up. I was the instigator, so I just told the school nurse I fell over FAFO
Shit happens ... you get on with it. Soft times make weak people.
My mom would do that but hold her fist up so the beatings came to her & she didn't have to risk a wreck to turn around & smack us.
My kid caught me teaching my dog to sit in the moving vehicle... Then he laughed so hard he lost his breath because I did it to him first! They learned
Yup..... Rings a bell here as well. And yes. People totally smoked everywhere back in the 70's and 80's. Public transportation, both trains and bus. Smoked in the waiting room at the doctor. Smoked in restaurants.....
BwaaaHaHaHa ! He said if he were a kid in the 70's he would have stayed in the house. He is assuming that his parents would have allowed him to stay in the house. Bless his heart.
He’s also forgetting that his parents would have worked him like a slave, because all the tech Gen X invented didn’t exist yet and wasn’t there to help or entertain.🤷🏾♂️
Or that there were more than 5 TV channels!! Stay in the house and read or do chores. Hahaha 😂
tammycenter8757🤣🤣🤣
You hit that door running!
@@tammycenter8757 Remember having the LIVING room, which was kept immaculately clean, and the den where people actually lived? We ALL had one… so hysterically funny in retrospect but sadly now a thing coming back into popularity because I hear vague references that sound the same from people all the time.
It boggles the mind!
“What’s cursive?” Hit me right in the joint pain.
Proves the point.
Back when we were graded on our Penmanship. I also took Calligraphy. Definitely never hear that word used anymore!
Joint pain? Ditch the oil and switch to lard. #carnivorewisdom #meathealsus
@@fast4health.safely I’m from the South. No oil in this house just a trusty jar of bacon grease.
@@fast4health.safely This is actually true! Went carnivore myself. Silent generation was right about lard!
Back in the day, there was a Timex Watch Commercial with the catch phrase "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking", that's how you describe a Gen X kid.
100% 😋
Exactly.
Facts😂
😂😂😂. Fact
Yep!
In 1977 I went down a slide head first on a dare. The ground around the slide was pea gravel. I got gravel embedded in my palms and had to walk to ER. My father said he would meet me there. He showed up 2 hours later after the football game. He was mad that he missed the postgame show. I was 6. And that is my Gen X story.
And it's insane stuff like this that make us the badasses that we are today.
I was thinking the same, Evan you are probably tough and independent right?! 😂
Sounds about right.
@@MathisChronicles Hell no! i am freaking wreck!
@Evan-lr8nq Evan get some XRP n XLM and you'll be rich my Gen X brother 🙏 also Zimbabwe Zim bonds, their currency will soon be redeemable if you understand all that LoL 😆 follow the white rabbit 🐇 and you'll have generational money 💰
She told no lies - no seat belts, no sunscreen, no doctors unless an absolute emergency, high toxin exposure, no help with bullying or beef with neighbor kids, walked or rode bikes (no safety gear) everywhere within boundary set by parents, left alone at home with younger siblings at 8 to 10 years, etc. Gen X can survive a zombie apocalypse. 😂
Dogs weren't on leashes back then. When I was 13, I slipped and broke a bone just above my wrist on a cement step while running from a German shepherd in the rain. My stepdad called me a vagina for wanting to go to the hospital. I set it myself with 2 bandanas. It's got a slight bend in it from not quite healing right but has full functionality. No teachers or anyone asked me about it because it was common to tie bandanas on your wrists in the 80s lol.
I learned to drive with my older brother when I was 14. He had a six pack of beer in between us and gave me my first beer while I was behind the wheel as a reward for doing a good job backing the car into a parking space. It was a different time.
"Gen X can survive a zombie apocalypse"
no, we can't. the reason things have changed is because many kids didn't survive.
@@this.is.a.username Another way of looking at that is that nature culled the slowest and dumbest or least creative from our generation while today they are being coddled and protected from the process of natural selection which does not bode well for the future of man kind.
@@Bob_CratchitYour stepdad was an abject sack of tish. Hopefully you’re nothing like him. I too had a stepfather (although I am a millennial) who tried some stupid tough bravado nonsense like that when I fractured all four fingers while rollerblading. My hand then looked like it belonged to the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man the next day, and my stepfather looked exactly like he idiot that he is. I think he’s actually part of Gen X but on the whole, Gen X hasn’t collectively offered much to society. Acting tough doesn’t make up for being largely forgotten.
You don't want us to care. If GenX decides to get involved things will not go your way.
😈
TRUTH
Mainly because we are the definition of "creative destruction" :-)
Hahaaa. So true.
Word!
We had cigarette vending machines that anyone could walk up and use.
And a deli owner that would sell me Winston cigs at 12 "for my mom"... when he KNEW she smoked Vantage Ultra Light and no chance she switched that hard!
The dirty mags were on the bottom shelf of the magazine rack too, no plastic wrapper, I thought I was so brilliant slipping one inside a newspaper and paying for the paper.
in the bathroom, so no adult even saw you buy them lmao. wed just walk into a bar and go to the bathrooms and walk out. you could walk into bars then because noone was serving you alcohol so they didnt care if you went to the bathrooms.
Yes and we even had them in school .
Every cigarette pack in its spot with the label above
Omg! I totally forgot about that. Hahaaa
The biggest difference was we were taught responsibility , how to cook and clean. There were no cell phones, bullying was done but solved pretty quick. I miss the old days where people actually talk to each other
The bullying thing is amazing to me. I was so surprised a few years ago when I saw pictures and videos of boys wearing dresses and girls with green hair. I thought what kid would be stupid enough to do something like that, the other kids are going to destroy them! My surprise turned to shock when I saw those kids being cheered and applauded.
I saw a video of this kid saying how much social pressure there was in school to make sure you never forgot someone's personal pronoun. When I was their age the peer pressure was to take drugs. It's unbelievable to me that now you're peer pressured into respecting others' personal pronouns.
It's politically correct to say that's a good thing and it's progressive. I don't think it's that simple, for the reason of Judy's comment. What it has done is turned out a generation of dependent and emotionally fragile people. One of the reasons I think things are so polarized these days is precisely because nobody born after 1990 or 1995 has any social conflict resolution skills.
Yes.
And cook meant cook. There may have been a microwave available, but it wasn't used for much more than heating up leftovers.
Hell, I'm fifty now, and my microwave rarely gets used. My millennia wife uses it in a few months. More than I've used it in my lifetime
So true. If someone made fun of me or picked me, I kicked their azz and I never got picked on again. Facts.
responsibility isnt a generational thing. My 17 year old sibling is more responsible than either parent is, and wasnt taught by them either. Had to learn it through neglect
Gen Xer here. I LOVED being left alone. When you were saying 'how sad' I was thinking 'are you insane??? Gen X is the best, and it's a blessing that people forget about us because you can get away with murder when no one is watching you. All generations after us are having smaller and smaller lives and have less and less ability to deal with the slightest adversity because they are treated like breakable creatures . I am grateful to be an Xer. Yes, everything she is speaking on is 100% true.
Same. When I was 8 I had to go to an after school nanny. I fought tooth and nail not to have to go there. I was so happy age 9 when I could stay at home until mom got home. Loved it
The things we got into and got away with shaped our adulthood in ways that cannot be replicated. My grandad fixed up two mopeds for us when I was 8. Bro and I motorized a red wagon the next year. We had playground equipment that burned skin, left splinters, and broke bones on the regular. We built forts and survival shelters and started fires with the one kid’s glasses. I bought my moms cigs on my bike from the corner gas station with a blank check. Most of us forged parent signatures on permission slips starting in elementary school. The librarian taught me intra-library loans the summer I was 7 because the local branch didn’t have enough books to keep me entertained. We started our own businesses, babysitting, lawn care, and selling crap we made, before our age was double digits.
We had a great childhood and its better no one cares than everyone telling us it was all trauma and neglect.
You had learned to be creative and to enjoy being happily alone functionally back in the day without wasting all of your time on internet activities.
@@kvbstudios316 Now kids start a business like mowing and some grumpy gen x'r with a landscaping business calls the cops on them 😛Happened twice in my small town and seen it many times in posted videos.
@@kingscroach a grumpy boomer with a lawn care business got run out of my neighborhood for being mad at us kids for mowing.
As a Gen-Xer it's NOT that I don't care, I just don't care enough to fix people that can't figure out how to fix themselves. I had to keep myself company, find like minded people to hang out with, do my own research (no Google back then). I came from the self-help book generation before I realized that helping myself is a basic survival instinct that I learned from childhood because my Baby Boomer mother couldn't deal with her own childhood trauma to give me the answers I needed. I learned how to fail, dust myself off, and start over. So I care, just not enough to disrupt the comfort I temporarily feel right now in the moment, but as soon as life throws me a curve ball, then I will care so hard you will wish you could ignore me.
yes we did
Well said.
So true!!
Well said 👏 👌 👍
100 %
10:08 Airbags?! 😂😢😂 We had steel dashboards.
@dave77t I had plastic. And a pillow. Usually the same pillow I was sleeping on in the backseat
And wooden steering wheels with a great big metal nut in the centre...
Or an arm
She's spot on about how Gen X was raised .......we were wildly unsupervised......and none (or at least very little) was caught on film......
Climbing thru big commercial buildings under construction. Always one pyro in the crowd. Riding your bikes 20 miles to the beach. Building forts inside billboards 50' off the ground. Hanging onto car bumpers on a skate board, crouched so driver can't see you. And yes, the red dodge ball.
@monkeyweather that unmistakable THUNK when it hit ....lol
I wish we had more film evidence of how crazy a day in the life was back then
@KUTFO588 lol...yea, but then we'd be incriminating ourselves
@@jerireneeroberts1647 haha that footage would be for close friends only....even the mild stuff would blow people's minds today.
Benefit.
They had commercials at night at 10pm saying:
“parents, do you know where your children are?”
For real.
Gen X’er here 😊 Yup I remember that too 😂
yep we were half way down the stairs trying to listen to the tv without being caught.
@@strawdog7704 or we had climbed out of the window and were trying to sneak into pubs
@@Gomorragh 85 i was down the pub never got checked till i was 19 (might have been due to the sh*ty fish hook tattoo's)
Which was a stupid commercial.....at 10pm it was night time and the street lights were on.......Every Gen Xer knew to be home before the street lights came on!
I'm GenX. Last year I had a collapsed lung. I drove myself to the hospital. When the nurses found out I drove myself instead of calling an ambulance their eyes got real wide.
i got a taxi. walked up to taxi rank so girlfriend never knew i blacked out. i was in car accident 3 weeks before. had 700 cc of air in chest cavity and torn lung from broken ribs. lung recollapsed but im stretching it out with an ancient plant vapour. im beating stage 3 copd now, putting on weight after dropping down to 42 kg at most critical. fixing shoulder, hip, back and will restart a business when i get medically cleared. i mostly eatcheese butter lard eggs and meat now. this old rig was built solid back on the 70's.
Lol had the same reaction for driving to the Hospital while dealing with a heart attack.
I drove to the er with a flesh eating bacteria in my damn driving foot. I bandaged that bad boy up and thank God the hospital was only 7 miles away.
Glad we're all alive.
@@stevenanthonycomedy agreed, gives us another opportunity to toughen up the youngsters to prepare them for the probable future. 😂😂🤣🤣😂😂
Born in '67 GenX. I wouldn't trade my childhood with anybody. Everything she said was true. Our experiences made us tough and independent. We adapt to and survive any crisis. We didn't fight each other through cyber space. We fought face to face with our fists. We were bullied, drank warm water from the garden hose, played outside and rode our bikes miles from home with no supervision only to return for dinner when the street lights came on at dusk. We jumped bikes over home-made ramps with no helmets, no gloves, no knee pads, and no elbow pads. We wore no seat belts, sat on scorching hot black vinyl car seats in the summer, and inhaled our parents' cigar, pipe, and cigarette fumes. We were our parents' TV channel changer before remote controls. We memorized phone numbers and carried change for emergency calls from pay phones.
lol my grandma got a “remote” that TURNED THE DIAL😂😂
We were also antenna extensions by standing next to the rabbit ears in the right spot. The ones that learned how to program the new microwaves and VCRs. Had Mr.Yuk stickers on toxic chemicals but didn't actually need them and memorized all the emergency service numbers because 911 wasn't a thing until we were graduating from HS. We put lemon juice on our hair in the summer and baby oil on our skin for tanning. And could NOT WAIT to get our driver's license, usually on our birthday that we became eligible.
We're built Ford tough!😮💨
My brother lost his front teeth on a bike ramp they made in the road. I was mad because we were supposed to go on vacation, and my brother had to go and get a concussion. 😂
My brother had bike gloves... they were black leather with the fingers cut off, and nails sticking out 😂😂
As a Gen. X-er, our inside joke is, We'll lock them in a room with a rotary telephone, a regular face clock, and the directions of how to use both written in cursive..they'll never get out..
When we were outside, we were like little "McGyvers", or even the "A-Team".
We would create something useful, fun, and possibly dangerous, out of whatever we found lying around.
Like, Outdoor forts, and bike ramps.
As long as we put Dad's tools back. We could use them unsupervised. 😂
I had to pull things apart and put it back together because of Mcguyver nearly electrified myself trying to fix a very old box tv learnt to turn the power of and pull the plug out that day
@@MudMarsh I completely disassembled the lawnmower with the intention of using the engine to build a motorized go cart. One of my many failed childhood projects. You cant make an omelete without breaking a few eggs!
LOL... oh wow.. so true.. this Canadian now remembers at the age of 11 my little orange hand held transistor radio stopped working one day.. while I was outside with it .. holding it up to my ear to listen to the local AM station in the RAIN... while swinging dangerously high on the swings!!!!! 😳😲😂 Well as soon as it stopped working.. I came in the house and set to work taking it apart and fixing it! Honestly can't even remember what I did to fix it.. but so funny that I was able to get it put back together and had it working for another few months!!!! Craziness!!! 😜🤣
I remember when Ricky made a go cart out of his dad's 12 foot ladder. He knocked down every mailbox on my side of the street when he tested it. It was hilarious.
sorry but the people younger than about 29 probably don't even know about mcgyver or the a-team unfortunately lol
The best thing about gen x and their self sufficiency is they policed their own and knew that choices have consequences (usually bloody painful ones). The upside of this disregard to personal safety is it is extremely hard to control gen x, as when given an ultimatum they generally take the 'or else option'. Their playtime built up huge levels of resilience and fortitude.
And then you realize that we choose the "or else" for the nostalgia and fond memories of childhood we get. And that should scare people lol. Its a "do it. I dare you. You think that's supposed to scare/stop me? I got worse for punishment in kindergarten."
@@ppp.pp.p Confirmed 👍 you cannot intimidate those who consider your threat a viable option.
Yip, I do find myself asking or else what? Often, which I have to say just gets worse the older I get. I'm definitely going to be one of those pensioners who think they should be answerable to no one 😅
@@caramelanomaly2873 funny thing is, we often lose to the "or else" , just like everyone. Difference?: The Patron Saint of Gen -X is Cool Hand Luke.
@@garretsteward8012 🤣🤣🤣
"What's lard?" lol God I've never felt so old!!!! 🙈🙈🙈
The fact is, lard is making a comeback, at least in my circle. Turns out lard isn't the devil they said it was.
OKAYYY!When he said that,i threw my arms up and announced that i was 147 yrs old!!Random old number.Ya i yelling at my laptop"its fat-wait you really dont know?"
it baffles me that people think hydrogenated vegetable oil (almost all cooking oil) is better than animal fats. Yes, coconut oil and olive oil are debatably the healthiest, but animal fats are a million times better for us than the fake oil junk all our food is cooked in these days.
Lard creates excellent flavor it pulls out the flavor well. It also has so many calories and fat it is important to use sparingly.
lol tell me about it.
I am a Gen X kid and if someone broke the rule of a game we were playing one of two things would happen. 1. The game would stop and all of us playing would get mad at the rule breaker and tell them stop or leave, if they broke the rules again they were rejected from the game and sometimes not allowed to play with us for a week or longer depending on how many times they broke the rules(if they broke the rules all the time we called them cheaters and never let them play with us (consequences for actions). 2. There was an immediate fight or violent retaliation, that the rule breaker knows is going to happen.
We were just more social aware. Justice were served swiftly and there. That said. Once the beef is over, the beef is over. And nobody needed to go get their friends for help because of having a grudge over something that happened a week ago.
I"m Gen X and I remember at family gatherings adults (usually male adults) would take a blanket and four of them would take one corner. They would take a child, place us in the middle of the blanket and fling us in the air as high as possible. Hopefully, they catch us with the blanket on the way down. True story.
Oh my days I remember that when I was little!!!
I remember that as well, especially the time that my sister's friends trying to act like the adults, missed. I hit the ground, saw stars, waited to breathe again, got up, and the next time they caught me.
My Dad would have me lay in the middle of a blanket, gather all 4 corners, and spin me around and around, lay it down, but I'd still be spinning trying to stand up!
@@sonnyd1527
I remember the breathe again issue, which to this day creeps me out in movies depicting not being able to breathe, cause my Dad made me a swing I really liked, till I swang out just as the rope broke, and I hit the ground flat on by butt jolting every ounce of air from my lungs. I sat there praying I wouldn't die, not breathing for a few seconds, but suddenly my lungs pulled air back in. Boy, talk about being scared for a moment!
Yep, I hate underwater, space, choking, whatever in movies, and I always find myself breathing deeper during those scenes!
SO much fun!
The doctor would literally walk in your hospital room smoking a cigarette
Patients sneaking off the cardiac unit to another floor to smoke
Copays were $5, ten minutes and they gave you a cure to anything and everything.
Now it's a 3,000 deductible and the insurance only cover like 60% of the bill. If you go to the drs today it's at least several hundred dollar bill and at least 5 hours of life for them to tell you they have no idea how to fix anything and its automatically covid because you didn't get your tenth booster
In 1979 my father died from cancer. It was at that moment i became a full on adult and "latch key kid" at the age of 9. I had to learn how to use the lawnmower, weed trimmer, and snow blower. I did laundry, cleaned the house, help keep up with our garden, and learned how to use the stove so i could cook dinner for me and mom because she now had to work a full time and part time job with dad gone. I got myself up, made my lunch, and got off to school every morning. Everything this woman said is spot on and for the most part, its because it was a different time culturally back then. We all looked out for one another and my family knew nearly every other family in our neighborhood because the parents had card game nights, bingo, BBQ's, or dinner parties every week and the kids knew each other from school so we would have sleep overs. My best friend lived across the street and i used to call his mom "mom" because our families were so close and she was like a second mother to me. None of these things are even remotely true in society today and its quite sad to be honest. Aside from not having a dad growing up, i had a great childhood and thats why GEN X is sarcastic and doesnt seem to care, because we went through things that would cause the younger generations to curl up in the fetal position and cry for mommy.
NEIGHBORHOOD BLOCK PARTIES !!!! My parents along with half the neighborhood would be out in their driveways drinking beer , listening to music, as all of the kids would play flashlight tag. It was glorious. Plus it was the perfect way of getting to know the people who live around you. You were never really out of bread, sugar, milk etc... Everyone knew each other and their kids. Sorry to hear about your Dad BTW. My parents had me at the age of 17 in 1972 . So I basically grew up with them.
I had a silent generation English teacher in high-school who said that the downfall of America was the invention of the air conditioner. Took me a few years to fully grasp the importance of what he was saying but he was 100% correct. We were forced by necessity to hang out and interact as a whole community all day long and especially evenings after dinner. Parents would sit on their porches and drink/smoke or wander to a neighbor's porch to do the same. The kids were almost over and usually up to something stupid, which the parents would watch knowing full well pain was about to visit the neighborhood. And when it did they usually laughed and went back to smoking. If someone wasn't actually legitimately dying it was someone else's problem. Man, I have so many memories from things like that... that was probably the single greatest time period in American history. Super strong communities. Incredibly self reliant and capable youth. More freedom than we really knew what to do with. Lot of issues sure but as kids we more or less resolved them on our level.
The good thing was that neighbors helped people make it thru. People even have to make "play dates" so their kids can have friends Nowadays.
It's not that we don't care. It's the fact we care more than most, we'd take care of each other, and if we have to get involved in something, that means everything went sideways and things are about to get real for whomever is doing wrong.
@@mycroft16Well said! For sure the downfall started with the A/C. ❤
I’m gen x. Born in 1976. I was brought home from the hospital in my mother‘s arms and she was in the front passenger seat.
A lot of this is very true for me, but my parents were very overprotective . They called everybody’s parents before I could go over to someone’s house.
I was an only child and my parents are weird.
But there were a lot of freedoms to run the neighborhood and we were way more independent than my Gen Z kids are now. Like I can’t believe how many kids these days don’t want to get their drivers license.! That was the first thing when I turned 15- 😅 I got my learners permit.
76'er my self.... I remember we just went to friends houses and knocked on the door. Nobody sat up play dates. We did our shit on our own.
Gen Xer here: we were raised as feral children and I wouldn't have it any other way. Kids nowadays never experience the freedom we had back in the day. We were outside all day, BUT we got to do whatever we wanted to do (As long as we didn't "get into trouble").
Children today suffer from lack of development and personal responsibility because their childhood experiences are so controlled and curated by the adults caring for them.
Oh and the "rules were enforced" because we got the shit beat out of us by our parents (or neighbors/friends parents) if we got out of line. The lines were fairly well defined; but the space between the lines was enormous.
rule 1 of being a gen x make sure no parent or much older brother or sister see the trouble you get into after a week all clear normally home free lol
@@karlkuttup i said above, i got into alot of trouble, but i got out of more lol. we would have been fuc*ed if they had cameras everywhere like we do now. im 100% sure of it lmao
Don’t forget our parents *encouraging* our teachers to beat the crap out of us in front of god and everybody.
I wouldn’t trade my Gen X (70s/80s) childhood for anything. Best time to be a kid, in my opinion, not that it was all great, but we had freedoms that nowadays they don’t have. Thankfully. Haha
gen-z and alpha (lower case on purpose) literally need to go outside and pick a switch... or belt... or extension cord. 🤣 iykyk
This is so true. I would be off for hours, wandering round old railway tracks, tunnels and getting chased by cows!
OG Gen X here, wouldn't trade my childhood for the world. Grew up with 3 siblings and life back then was one continuous adventure. Our parents were not aware of one fifth of the shenanigans that we got into. I remember a family gathering around the table after us kids had gotten into our 30's and talking about things we'd done when we were young. Our parents sat listening in amazement and laughed out loud at many of our antics. Originated operation "Shock n Awe" long before GW Bush. LOL!
I’ve told my parents years ago about the shit I snuck right past them so many times…like the time when I was 16 (1991) a friend came to my house in the middle of the night, the neighbor saw him creeping around our house in the middle of the night and called the police, and I had to hide him just inside the door to the living room. Police officer, my big brother, and both of my parents standing
I’m Gen X as well. All of my siblings do the same thing we sit around and tell our parents the story they didn’t know about also. They would laugh too and we tell all the kids now that they are older. They are cracking up, laughing too.😂😂
There are still many things my parents know nothing about. And I'm not telling them now. 🤐
Same!!
WORD... just, WORD!
At 18, my best friend and I "borrowed" her Mom's car while she was out of town and drove from the Midwest to New Orleans for a long weekend. There was no GPS. All we had was a huge road atlas my Dad had given me and next to no money. We made it no problem and had the time of our lives! It's a Gen X thing.
When I was 16 we "borrowed" a friend's brother's car and went to Tennessee from Illinois with $30. We made it back and our parents never even knew we were no longer in the state for a whole weekend lol. It was so much fun! We went to a concert 🙂
When I was 15 I hopped a train and went to a city in the next state over and spent a weekend exploring it while sleeping under a bridge. Got caught going back the same way by the police checking rail cars and my dad had to come get from jail. It was fun and well worth the fact I couldn't sit down for 2 days without feeling it. I earned the razor strap instead of teh belt on that one.
When I was 19 we drove from Massachusetts to Minnesota to pick up a friend and made it all in one weekend. Time of our lives on that trip and the playlist - chefs kiss
If you wanted to know your way around a town, you found the kids on bikes and asked them. They knew every street, trail, path, shortcut, hole in a fence for a w0 mile radius and could get anywhere faster than emergency services could.
From about 1985-1989, every summer, my friends and I would go to “first week” at the beach with barely any money and would sofa surf in hotels where parties were going on or sleep on the beach. It was amazing and some of the best times of my life!
I'm Gen X and have two sons. The oldest is a Millennial and the youngest is Gen Z and I swear the difference between the two are night and day. Both are very smart, however the oldest seems to have more common sense than the younger one. The oldest couldn't wait to drag me to the DMV when he turned 16 to get his learner's permit while the youngest didn't get his DL until he was almost 20! The oldest can cook for himself a 3-4 course meal while the youngest sticks to the very basics of cooking (pop stuff in the microwave). The oldest joined the military, youngest just graduated college. The oldest deals with mostly cash while the youngest barely carries cash and pays for everything with a debit/credit card. However, not leaving my millennial off the hook. When he was in boot camp and wrote his first letter to me to give me his mailing address and provide a status on how he was doing, the envelope included "Mom" as the recipient along with our address. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I stood outside of my mailbox laughing for several minutes before I could open the envelope. I recall telling myself that I failed as a parent to teach him how to properly address an envelope (so I responded to his letter and told him that he may want to actually use my first AND last name as the recipient (even though I am the only person the letter could possibly be for 😂😂). The youngest when he was about 12 asked me why the 4 meat pizza was called 4 meat when he only counted 3 pepperonis. After cracking up I told him not to ever say that out loud outside of the house. 😂😂
I never comment on people's comments but this made me LOL!
Gen X was the reason the following generation got safety rules. We just did things and safety was NEVER part of the plan.
We got older and realized how insanely stupid and dangerous our childhood was and how our parents were never there for us. We overcorrected a bit with our own in GenZ, but overall, they're good kids and I'm proud of them.
@@rylian21 I agree
@mikewilliams126
Lol
first thing comes to mind... Lawn Darts!!!!
Best reply yet! LMAO!!!! So flipping true
Everything she said was true. We were adults before we hit puberty. Our parents ignored us until we did something wrong. We're all stronger for it and also more damaged because of it. But we're GenX and we don't care adn we don't cry.
GenX here, we may joke about how we grew up and sarcasm is a huge part of our humor since we were kids. Honestly we're glad that we grew up the way we did and we have no regrets about it nor would we change how we grew up. Yes it was a time when things did get tough but it was also a time when we fully enjoyed the freedom from it and took full advantage of that freedom.
Regarding the gum "cigarettes", they had a coating of powder sugar over the gum that was wrapped around with paper. When you blew into it, the powder would blow out in a way that simulated smoke.
I used to love gum cigarettes and also the gum baseball chew bags too.
@@JadeDeCosta yeah I used to love the Big League Chew.
Yeah but if you accidentally inhaled instead of blowing you would choke on the powder. 😅😅
And the most important.
We solved our problems with one on one fist fights, not guns.
Everyone went home.
I loved riding in the back of pick-up trucks standing up, looking over the cab with the wind in our faces.
@@dawnsmith3278 or sitting on the railings. Nobody cared.
And in the winter tying a ripe behind the truck and dad towing you down the street at 40mph in a sled and turning and braking but you kept going until the sled gets yankednout from under you and you go flying and tumbling. Get up, bloody nose and huge shit eating grin and climb back into the sled which just makes dad proud and gun it harder.
Probably the thing I miss the most from the past, being able to ride in the back with the dogs.
And depending on who was driving they might hit a bump or pothole just for funsies
I’m gen x and I can tell you from my perspective, I truly don’t care we are forgotten. I’m kinda glad we are. Being made to be independent at an early age has, I believe, enabled us to become successful people who never back down from a challenge.
Preach, my fellow Gen X-er! :)
I don't think they truly forgot about us. I think they ignore us because they can't get to us...we're the sticks and stones generation.
Thank you for being someone who hears or reads a word that's new to you and looks it up!
And back in the day, we had to look it up in a humongous encyclopedia because there were no cell phones!
@@beverly_310 I kinda miss those
Because as Gen Xers that’s exactly what we did, don’t know what a word is or means, go look it up. Dictionaries, encyclopedia’s, thesaurus, etc etc.
We had cigarette machines. I remember buying my parents cigarettes from the machines.
I'm GenX. My folks were Silent Gens. They were literally dirt poor and grew up in the poverty of the Great Depression and the austerity of WW2. They both drilled into me and my sister the harsh reality of being poor and working hard for everything. Nothing is free. On top of that, my dad was a combat vet who was harsh physically and verbally. They taught us basic skills and demand that we get an education. Growing up I hated it and resented them. But, as an adult, I was set up with the skills, and the toughness with thick skin to survive anything. Thanks, Mom and Dad! RiP, Dad.
I think most Gen Xers were raised by Korean and/or Vietnam vets. That left a mark.
I'm gen X my parents were boomers. Probably less strict. Yes we went to the store with food stamps bought candy as a reward for buying cigarettes with the change from paper foodstamps. Where are the candy cigarettes dang lol helmets were for nerds.
@@melonmonte6385 I wasn't raised by one but I do remember Nam vets being a big part of popular culture while I was growing up. They were in many of the TV shows and movies I watched as a kid. And I had neighbors who were veterans of that war. Me and all the other boys my age were in awe of them due in large part because we imagined them being real life Rambos or Colonel Braddocks or one of those zany lovable characters from my favorite Nam movie "Uncommon Valor". I used to visit the army navy depot every week to check out the stuff in there. For a while I wore an olive drab army jacket I had found at the Army & Navy store as a way of showing solidarity with the Veterans. I guess seeing Chuck Norris beaten and torchered, covered in leaches from being dunked in a cess pool will have that effect on a kid. :D
🙋♀️
@@melonmonte6385My dad served in Korea. He rarely talked about it. (silent generation)
We can all hear the sound of the red rubber ball.
in England it was a solid leather foot/soccer ball that had been left out in all weathers, you may have just kicked us in the face.
We played a lot of tether ball in elementary school but when we played the goal was to hit the other player in the face. Same with dodgeball 😂
We used the small rubber balls and play Hot Rice. The sting of that ball on your flesh, the massive mark it left and the face smile and fast blinking as you pretend it didn't hurt is seared into my brain
I laughed so hard at that TWANG because its so true lol.
Many bloody noses 😂
I remember there being a "smoking room" for patients in the hospital.
And that was the maternity ward.
People used to be able to smoke on the buses and on the tube...
When my oldest was born i had a smoking room...... 1988!
@@marshavincent9462 Me too!
I remember there being ashtrays in the rooms of the patients.
"What's cursive?" I just died a little inside.
😭 … did you just say “ what’s cursive !?” 🤯
We were graded on our cursive as well as content and grammar when we submitted our hand written homework.
And what girl wasn’t proud of her handwriting skills which was spent secretly writing notes in class - even our emojis were hand drawn. Each note embellished with many a happy face , hearts and flowers 🌸
Right? Blew my mind too!😂
3rd grade: "Cursive makes me curse." But by gum I learned it and I taught it too. It's good for hand-eye and freedom from shoulder & arm pain.
And God forbid you mispell something... write the paper over again or get 50%. Your choice.
They dont teach cursive today (especially in America) because you cant read founding documents if you cant read cursive. Things like the Bill of Rights. It's easy to violate your rights if you dont know them. My daughter was actually failed in high school on a paper because she wrote her name in cursive.
@@dalehammers4425
Log help us all
I was 11 years old, the year was 1976 and I was riding my motorcycle, a Honda MR 250, by myself in the woods 3 miles from home and I crashed into a tree, breaking my arm. I rode the bike home one handed, pulled into the driveway and my dad laughed when I told him what happened as we got in the car to go to the doctors office where my mom worked.
Sounds about right. My best friend's family had just been redoing their back porch. I jumped down and had a nail go right througm my foot, leaving a bruise on the top of my foot as I found out later. I still pedaled my bike home about 5 miles, including crossing a 4 lane highway to get back. I'm just glad it wasn't further. Good times, good times!
I had almost the identical dirt bike experience except it was my collar bone.
@@TheSubygirl I broke my collar bone a few months later, lol.
You got taken to the doctor?!
Fellow Gen Xer. One of my dad's favorite lines after I did something either stupid or foolish and got hurt.
Dad: Did it hurt?
Me: Yeah
Dad: Won't do it again will ya?
Best lesson to learn from any Gen Xer, walk that shit off. If you're dead, then you can complain, otherwise slap some dirt on it an go outside
Being locked out of your house during daylight hours and drinking out of the hose was definitely a thing
This was how you learned breaking and entering before reaching double digits. And your parents knew you knew and would ask you to let them in when they locked themselves out.
We knew there was a window we could push open if only we could reach it. Maybe stand on that old tire on top of that old rusty bucket. That looks promising.
lol i crawled in my window more than once ;)
@@betmo :)
And you let the water run through the hose for a bit until it comes out ice cold. Not gonna lie... I still drink from it when I'm in the backyard.
I literally fell out of my mother's car. She picked me up from kindergarten and I was leaning against the passenger door when suddenly it opened and I was rolling under the car. Thankfully my mom stopped before she ran me over... BUT... she ran out of the car, picked me up, shoved me BACK into the car and never once asked me if I was okay. It was DONE, it was OVER, it was the GEN X generation.
Remember the t shirt that said prevent this tragedy in your family. The graphic was a kid falling out of the car on their head.😂
Ever had your whole hand slammed in a sliding Chevy van door? 😂😂😂
Honey I'm glad you didn't get hurt but knowing my mom your mom probably thought the door opening was your fault and was pissed when putting you back in the car 😂
OMG that happened to me, too. She was turning left, I was leaning against the door and out I went. She picked me up, dusted me off, checked for blood (none) and stuffed me back in the car, all while telling me what a fucking idiot I was. I was 5...
The same thing happened to my brother, lol. I think he was two.
Being able to shrug off verbal insults is only one of the many benefits of our upbringing.
She left out the fact that our Toys were all made of metal, when I see a kid with a plastic Tonka Truck I feel bad for them.
All of the hand me down toys I inherited from my uncle were big and made of metal, and extremely realistic, but I remember all of the toys my parents bought me when I was little in the late 70s and early 80s were plastic or rubber. For example the evil keneval action figure with the motorcycle and launch ramp which wound up the rear wheel when you pulled it back. That was all plastic with plastic gears and everything, but it was much bigger than the action figures that came out later, same with the GI joe and star wars action figures which were also bigger and had more detail or more movable parts than later action figures. The old adage "they dont make em like they used to" also applies to kids toys from generation to generation as well it would seem. I remember an action figure I had made of rubber with a wire frame inside so it could be posed in any position. I think it was the Hulk, not sure though, memory is a bit fuzzy that far back.
Yes! When my kids were young, I was looking for Tonka trucks and was so upset I couldn't find metal ones!
Gen X is just fine, thank you. We actually loved our childhoods. We were enjoying true freedom... as a child. Good video, cheers.
After stores cracked down and wouldn't accept the note from a parent for cigarettes, we would be sent to the local bar with the cigarette vending machine.
Yep remember that lol
I was one of those kids. Kool menthols for my Mother and a box of Willy Wonka Nerds for me. Then the Rite - Aid stopped selling them to me , so she sent me to Pebbles Pub to buy them , right at the front door of the bar.
There are both positives and negatives to being left alone all the time. I was born in 1972 so I lived the gen x childhood. Positive: we learned to be self sufficient, problem solving skills, interpersonal communication skills, conflict resolution skills, and the ability to keep a secret lol. ( some parents still don’t know what their kids got up to).
Negative: we don’t know how to ask for help, we don’t know how to share our emotions, some of us didn’t learn healthy communication skills, and much of our lives had no plan or structure.
Same. I recently read a book called “Adult Children of Emotionally Unavailable Parents”, and I swear that book should be required reading for all of Gen X.
@@bgorum probably for the Millenials who were raised by us too. 🥺
@@rhondahoughton790Canada Facts. I bought copies for mine.
Yes. A lot of people see the past through rose colored glasses.
Born 1972 as well, and it was an epiphany just now realizing how important self sufficiency was and is. The cigarette purchase reality too, because us kids didn’t like adult smokers, and the opposite sex as kids didn’t like it either. Like a whole different child society within an adult society. We kids made our own code of ethics a lot of times. Wild, but true.
45 year old female gen Xer here. When I was a kid...probably around 5-6 years old, I practically lived in trees and loved climbing things.
One summer day, I was playing in our orchard in my undies and no shoes, climbing to the roof of a big shed...as one does...and sliced the side of my stomach open on some aluminum siding. Ran home to my mom (we had a big property so it took me a minute) I get home with blood running down the side of my stomach, my mom slapped some alcohol on it and immediately sent me back outside... in underwear... no shoes... no bandages... nothing... went back to climbing the thing.
Also used to walk home from preschool on my own...probably half a mile, stopping by a bread store on the way and picking up a loaf for family dinner...sometimes in snow or rain.
I've got a gen Z kid (almost15)...and I'm thinking it's time to take her camping/fishing and teach her some unplugged survival skills like my dad did with me.
i learned early that i wasnt good in the sun so went everywhere with jeans and a tshirt from the age of about 7, but thats in the uk where the weather isnt that stable anyway, but i remember the whole getting cuts and lacerations and either using some form of high % alcohol or pure salt to stop the bleeding, to this day i still use pure rocksalt on deep cuts to help stem the bleeding
See me being 38 makes me a Millennial but I grew up basically the same way. Sure my brother and I had few game consoles earlier in life, but we were only allowed on them for like an hour in the evening AFTER our homework was done. We didn't even have a computer in my house at all until I was like 10 or 11, even then we were only allowed on it for an hour at a time. Most of our playing was done outside with sticks, rocks, and imagination and I have the scars to prove it. A lot of us older Millennials had childhoods that were not that different from Gen X.
Also 45. One morning a horse bit my brother on the cheek. Had to be stitched up. Came home and he went back to the same neighborhood home (which back up to a field) and climb a tree and feel out and broke his arm. He didn’t get care on that for days because we were supposed to shake it off.
Oh man, camping trips with my old man, I think I miss that most of all. :(..
@nidgrim same! Spending quality time with dad was magic. My dad's still around but has dementia thanks to a brain tumor and doesn't know who I am half the time, not to mention is very physically impaired. Sucks because he was always so sharp, physically and mentally. A real MacGyver type. I like to think I take after him in that respect. He taught me so much, including how to change a tire and fix pretty much anything! I've managed to change my own tire on the side of a freeway... before I had a cell phone. I also replaced a radiator cooling fan in my car all by my lonesome... before TH-cam tutorials. Baby boomers built survivors...that's for damn sure! Miss you dad ❤️.
Our vehicles were also made in the USA with metal. Not foreign plastic. We didn't need air bags. The seatbelts always folded neatly clipped to the roof.
I remember the days when seatbelts weren't required. We only started wearing them when it became a law that would cost my parents extra $ if we got caught not wearing one.
1983 i think ;)
Gen X-er here, I believe the nonchalance and emotional unavailability that our parents showed us, made us be more of the helicopter parents for the future generation. We take care of our kids the way we wished we were taken care of, which lead lead to overprotectiveness, trying to help our kids with everything, creating safer places and knowing everything our children are doing.
We created Gen Z, so we have no room to complain about them. I love all the generations and I don’t believe one is better than the other. ❤
I've long thought the whole generation gap thing was either created on purpose, or exploited if it did begin as a natural phenomenon, as just another means used by the power elite to divide and conquer the masses. Not that they have any more conquering left to do, but certainly to maintain their elite status and keep the 99.9% of humanity from uniting in revolt against their global hegemony requires constant reinforcement to maintain the unnatural imbalance of power.
I read a book called Revolt Into Style by George Melly which seems to explain how and why these generational cultural rivalries began. According to his sociological observations pop culture actually began as a form of rebellion by the masses against the power elite who monopolize every source of power. The only means of revolt left to the common man was through the arts and the formation of new subcultures.
But as soon as any one of these subcultures gains widespread popularity the Establishment swoops in and exploits it thus creating a vacuum that needs to be filled again by the next generation of rebels. Pretty fascinating stuff in my opinion. I was into the punk rock, hardcore and thrash metal scenes of the 80s and 90s. In retrospect I can see how each generation of rebels feels the need to one up the previous generation of rebels. Not only to shame the sellouts who took their underground music and culture into the mainstream but also in an attempt to finally come up with something so raw and radical and offensive that it could never go mainstream, so no one involved could sell out. Of course that strategy hasn't seemed to work so far. The mainstream entertainment industry simply moves the goal posts so that what was once shocking becomes normalized. And they just keep getting richer while the rest of us get poorer.
"We created Gen Z, so we have no room to complain about them. I love all the generations and I don’t believe one is better than the other. ❤"
I think "created" might be too strong of a word in this context. I mean, think about how much control or influence we actually have over the upbringing of our children. Sure it is almost absolute during their most formative years, while they are learning to crawl, walk, talk and read and write. But think about how quickly that parental control and influence evaporates from then on and how exponential the external influences (from outside the family) increase from junior high school on, especially if you send them off to college.
I noticed the biggest change beyond my influence when our youngin graduated from college. While she credits me for teaching her to be independent and think for herself I noticed that after college she is far more conformist and dependent on authorities of all kinds and on being politically correct at all times than I ever raised her to be. She basically believes everything the mainstream media tells her and relies on social media and the internet for the "official" answer to everything but only from trusted Big Tech curated sources ofcourse. I never taught her anything like that. None of that shit. And I think that shit is what has fucked them all up.
I agree with you on the arbitrary social construct of generations though I do think that like most social constructs it can serve a useful purpose. Each generation represents a period of time in which a large number of youth all share the same slice of history, the same major events, celebs, musicians, movies, etc. influenced them. I think of the generations as being like those people at the end of the movie Fahrenheit 451, the book people. Each book person was a living representation of a certain book they memorized. In a similar manner a whole 'generation' of youth become imprinted with the zeitgeist of their brief childhood which is then carried into all the eras which follow providing a unique perspective on everything from each generation's different point of view.
@@nidgrim I was born in the 50's. If people's souls were not locked onto their phone, they might be able to think on their own.
I absolutely agree that we (Genx) created the failed GenZ, but I disagree that no generation is better than another.
Proof is in the pudding.
I broke my arm on a skateboard. I got yelled at for interrupting my mom’s day!!!
The Gen X survivors are the most independent, crafty and stoic generation. We know a thing or two because we’ve experienced a thing or two.
Most of our "note foraging" was perfected by high school!!!
My mom would be in a hurry in the morning and have ME write my own late note and sign HER name. lol. Yeah, I was good.
Absolutely!😂
That's how some of us figured cursive writing out. Or at least got better.
❤️🇺🇲❤️'68
I could sign my dad’s signature better than him 😂
I had my mom's signature down pat!
Gen X here, despite any problems, I wouldn't change my childhood at all. I loved the independence and the outside and the game consoles and being feral.
Loved everything but the molestation! But every generation has that….ice ball fights. Glad no one hit me with one of those. Playing near railroad tracks but being smart enough not to play on them except to put pennies on then to retrieve after the train rolled over them.
Gen X’er here and of course our parents cared. They loved us very much and because they loved us they understood they we needed to be outside in the fresh air, learn how to use our imaginations, form friendships and learn that sometimes the world can be less than perfect and injury or emotional hurt is a part of life. They prepared as for the real world by letting us learn from mistakes, recover from failure and put in the work if we wanted something, from good grades to the trendy but unnecessary clothes or items. We valued what we had a lot more than those after us. We had the tools & skills to make it through university or technical training, we knew how to get and keep a job, what makes a good employee and a good friend. We all could handle basic first aide, kept supplies at home and could easily figure out when medical help was required. We were prepared to survive our first dorm / apartment (we actually moved out of our parents homes, we loved them too but learned independence and couldn’t wait to give it a go), we learned on our own to figure out red flags in job interviews and in relationships and how to quit both professionally and safely if the flags were hidden at first. We preferred to be left alone at our practices / lessons / classes so that we had no external pressure and were able to both discover if we really liked it and if so could make mistakes without fear during the learning process. When we learned enough to put something we could be proud of together (game / performance / recital) our parents were there thrilled and proud of our accomplishments and praised us for sticking with it and figuring it out. If we cared out something, so did they on our behalf they just wanted us to learn the right lessons, the most important being there will always be winners & losers and that’s okay, if you love it just keep playing for yourself. Also, it takes more than participation to get a trophy but trophies aren’t what matters most if you’re doing something you enjoy. We learned about the actual real world and how to survive and thrive, lessons my nephews, nieces (brothers & sister 15-20 years older, boomers) and friends kids never did. They range from their 20’s to 40’s now and in the entire bunch only two have the skills to survive and five are in their 30’s and still live at home, three are unemployed and have never lasted even a year at any job. Gen X’ers have to start taking over governments so that the planet doesn’t grind to a halt when the boomers dementia fully kicks in.
As a genxer myself I can tell you that we simply understand the reality of the world. We have a thick skin and love a good diss. So it’s hard to hurt our feelings. We would attempt to “burn” each other endlessly. We did things like BB gun wars and cliff jumping for fun. We did have many many injuries. We did have some losses along the way. We fought a lot and hugged it out after. We were build different. But we do care. We care more than most I think. We simply do not care about silly things like feelings over reality.
“Your Star Wars has Jar Jar Binks in it” is a fatality.
💯😂
my Star Wars had a twin kiss her brother then run off to shag a pirate.
😂😂😂
I love her! As a fellow Gen X'r, everything she says is right, and I believe it benefited us. I had parents who were tough on my grades because college was my only option after high school graduation.
I'm glad I was born in 1970. Loved my childhood in the 70s and my teenage years in the 80s. Best time to grow up!!!
The sound of the red rubber ball hitting my face in Dodgeball still resonates! "PING!"
I’m a later gen x er. Probably the last to learn how to pee in a pop bottle in the back seat of a moving car on the highway because my dad didn’t want to stop. And there weren’t rear seat belts until the mid-80s so we were just sliding around in the back of my dad’s 78 Buick.
I remember when grocery stores had ashtrays installed on the carts.
And college classrooms had built in ash trays in the desks, trains and planes also had built in ash trays, and all teachers smoked in the classrooms during lunch.
Then we went home to a smoked filled house.
I'm pretty sure you could smoke in the hospital too.
The first time I smoked a cigarette in front of my mother was inside a hospital.
@@molexeightysix I think they had my grandfather on a respirator, we all smoked, he wanted one too! He had effing lung cancer. Oh I was 13 or 14 at the time.
And airplanes had smoking and non-smoking sections, as if the smoke knew to contain itself to one section!
That was hilarious! I’m a Gen Xer and she speaks the truth. I was a “goody goody” so I didn’t get into the fights, but they definitely happened. I was more into riding bikes and roller skating everywhere. We used to roller skate to the store and get cigarettes for my friend’s mom all the time 😂 Your question about whether being brought up that way was actually better was interesting. I think it definitely made us strong and independent. Most Gen Xers I know have a great sense of humor (you have to laugh at this stuff or it would be too traumatic), but I think you can tell how we feel about being raised that way by looking at how Gen Xers have raised their own kids. Gramted, technology changed a lot of it, but most Gen Xers don’t talk to their kids the way we were or expect their kids to take on these grown up roles the way we had to. I think that says a lot about how we feel children should be treated and brought up.
Gen X here. Does anyone remember Mercurochrome? They put it on our open scrapes. It is banned now because of the mercury content but somehow we all survived to laugh at these jokes.
yes, but it was better than the iodine alternative. hahaha
Is that anything like merthiolate-it dyed your skin red and it stung worse than the injury itself? I learned quickly to stop complaining whenever I got hurt because I knew Grandma would likely get out that damn merthiolate! 😱😝
My God! Was that the red one that burned? I remember my Mom coming at me with it and (being a little girl), I'd start screaming "not the burny one, not the burny one." Her blowing on it didn't help at all.
I remember that in the downstairs bathroom medicine cabinet.
100% mercurochrome built character. It hurt worse than the actual hurt, my mother would tell me to stand quiet and let her “treat” it and she would not have us let out a whisper: “stand quiet and swallow the crying, it is your fault you got hurt, if you cry I will give you a reason to cry”.
We didn't have air bags, anti-lock brakes, traction control, etc.
I was born in 64, technically a Boomer, but raised Gen-X. Any more than 3 pumps on the BB gun, the BB went too deep into the person to squeeze it out like a pimple!!!!! Any deeper & you had to either go to the hospital to get it removed, or carry it around inside you, like shrapnel!!! Had a cyst removed from my shoulder blade years ago, they sent it off to be tested, & when they called the doctor asked me why I'd never mentioned being shot!!! Ask him what he was talking about, he said they found 1 shotgun pellet inside the cyst!!! It was a BB we couldn't get out!!!
@brianoliver4334 - Now that you mention it, I wonder if that's what is in my arm!?!
Totally beneficial..looking back, it was rough but most Gen X are tough and independent. We knew the consequences and went with it.
i didn't think it was rough. it was freedom
We didn't need to go to a store for cigarettes. There were vending machines everywhere that you could buy them from.
And they only cost 95 cents
@@Inmatesixdoublefive321 LOL. .50 at store and .75 in the machine. Carton for $2.50. That was for Marlboro
@@HybridCultureDaveby the time I got there they were .95. I remember my dad saying “When they go up to a dollar, I’m quitting!” 😂
20:42 You would have no phone, no internet, three television stations, and two of them had no programming on in the afternoons.
“What’s cursive” - case in point.
Benefit!!! We were free range kids. Living life to the fullest
Ditto!!
When we were younger we did not have airbags
Nope.. just my mom or dad's arm reaching across me every time we stopped short
Didnt airbags only really start coming around in the 80's?
One of mine and my friends favorite games was standing in a circle while one of us heaved a lawn dart high in the air. The concept of this game was basically “chicken”, everyone stays in place or scatters for their life. The one still standing nearest to where the dart was thrown was the winner.
Gen X here and I loved it!!!! Literally had the best childhood!!!😁
Despite some flaws, it was a fantastic time to grow up. Kids after our generation missed out on so many life lessons and it shows.
Every childhood birthday picture is me blowing out candles on a cake, with an ashtray right next to it, usually with a lit cigarette going. Woooo!!
I have some of those, too! In one, my aunt is looking at a Barbie I just got, and she’s holding a lit cigarette in the same hand. 😂
Grandpa holding your baby brother in one hand and a cigarette in the other
lol 😂 missing kids on milk cartons ❤at some point the adults were like I guess we should probably try and find some of them 😂
We threw rocks at each other one day when we couldn't find a ball, and we had heard that was a good substitute. So I threw one at a girl (who was younger than me by 3 years), not meaning to hurt her at all, but I did. Did you know that a head would, no matter how NOT bad it is, bleeds like you are dying? It does. Her mother (like a 2nd mother to me) was SO MAD at me for that, I think we were banned from playing together for the rest of the summer...and that REALLY sucked because they had the pool...so me and my sister would stare at them swimming over the fence with huge puppy dog eyes...tragic in more ways than one :)
I was born in 1967. When I was around age 10, there was a major regional shopping center being built about a block from our house. When the workers weren't there, me and my friends would go to the construction site and crawl through the massive sewer tunnels they were building, climb up huge mounds of dirt, have dirt clog fights, and sometimes play on the construction equipment. Our parents knew. They would say, "Don't get hurt, and be home for supper." Those were their rules. Thinking back, that was nuts! But we certainly had a blast, lol!
My mom was 30 when she had me. I was 30 when I had my son. All through his life I would think, "at his age I was allowed to ... " and then I would look at my small child and think, "Oh, helllll, no." LOL
Fellow 67er here, same for me. Dirt clod fights were the norm if there was a foundation dig for a house. Our bikes were freedom! Just be home when the streetlights came on.
To be fair, our parents didnt mind because they knew we wouldnt vandalize everything like todays kids would. We respected property.
@@ejtappan1802 Truth!!! LOL!
Im a Gen X. What's ironic is that Gen Z are generally our kids. I hate that we crap all over them. It's what Boomers did to us. Apparently, II was a "slacker", despite going to school, holding a part time job, and taking care of my siblings on a regular basis. We raised Gen Z - and I think sometimes we over compensated for what our parents did to us. That being said, rubbing some dirt on it from time to time just has to be done! 😊
It's not that we overcompensated. We respected the health and safety laws, the child protection laws and every other law that came out that prevent led us from raising our kids the way we were. Everything was illegal and classed as abuse or dangerous or destructive and our kids would come home from school being the new expert on what was acceptable. They were banned from every fun game we played like bulldog, marbles, two balls, skipping,and hot rice. They couldn't run, talk loudly, hold hands, play wrestling. They couldn't play with a normal ball and had to use sponge balls. They couldn't learn to cook until older because if anyone knew you put a child near a stove or gave them a knife to cut something you risked the child saying something at school and being reported for abuse.
It's not just the parents. The law and the do gooders or busy bodies ruined childhood for younger generations. Gen X was thrown into the position of raising kids in a new way without any knowledge because how they knew was no longer allowed. They did it with one hand tied behind their backs
@currentlynoname7499 very good points! Plus, we were also exposed to increased media, which could "scare" us into being more cautious.
Hearing stories from my mom (she says she's a Xennial, but she still has a similar experience to the youngest gen Xers) where she would sneak out to my dad's house or went to a concert with a rando she met on the internet was fucking wild. I told her that was so incredibly irresponsible and I had the realization that I was lame and her teenage self would think so too😭.
I always thought the teenagers sneaking out to parties or being left alone all the time in T.V. shows around that time were classically Hollywood exaggerated, but apparently it was based in the reality of latchkey kids. It's so insane to me how little freedom I have in comparison to my parents. I don't have an issue with it, but I suppose I've never known anything else, so what do I know lol.
I don't quite understand what the vast majority of gen x's issue is with us, I suppose we just lead incredibly different lives than a lot of them did. The ones that post videos online aren't the kind of people I take critique from anyway, and I think most gen x people I've actually met have been pretty cool people and not at all the kind of people who insult me just because of my generation.
@jellynear-tears3775 you guys aren't that different from Gen X - suck right behind a huge group (Millenials) that will suck up all the resources you guys will need. It's the loud, obnoxious Gen Z's that annoy Gen X'ers - but that's just those who post their lives on Tik Tok etc. The majority of the Gen z's I know just want to be able to have a job, house and family one day. They work and try very hard.... I personally refuse to label an entire generation based off social media. BTW - Gen X is sorry for inventing that crap. Our bad 😆 🤣
The thing with doing stuff on your own -- we weren't stupid, when we did something that got us hurt, we didn't do that again.
We learned where the line between actually stupid amd "yeah, I can do that" actually was. We took risks, we pushed boundaries... but as we got older and had learned the hard way we got very good at accurately judging a situation so we could take those risks and be reasonably sure to remain safe. We were very quick learners out of necessity.
Sometimes when I tell my teens stories from my youth, they tell me they’re jealous. I feel proud & sad all in one moment. I had an amazing childhood of dirt lots, sliding down palm trees, watching my sister get ready & head down to the Sunset Strip, climbing & running on car dealerships roofs & the fear that I truly wasn’t going to make it home, before the street lights came on. It was great…scary lol but great #1973 genx
You know what Jayflex, I just appreciate that you are taking time to learn a few things about at least one generation that came before you and appreciating them, a lot of people your age just want to hate on older generations and say they don’t know or understand anything but we were all young once and experience is an excellent teacher.
"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I was 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in 7 years." ( Mark Twain)
we learned conflict resolution, and you knew the order... Family, Friends, Neiborhood, school, town... what color you were what nationality you were didnt matter at all... at all.. everyone was judged on their personality.. and when someone said they would do something they did it..
This. Anyone could hang out and play as long as they weren't an asshole. That was line the only rule.
Yeah we didn't have seatbelts but we also had cars made of metal. You could hit a power pole and just dent your bumper.
I 100% am happy that I was raised that way. It made me who I am. While I can't in good conscience raise my own kids this way, I know that I benefitted from it. And it was fun as hell!
I’m a Boomer who experienced everything this woman was speaking about as a Gen X. If there was a Zombie Apocalypse, would you want to be on Team Boomer/Gen X or Team Millennial/Gen Z? Hint: there won’t be any participation trophies involved.
well, maybe zombies will make participation trophies with their heads
How about we do team Genx/GenZ against team boomer/team millennial?
@@alheno5423 keep ya team, us Gen X will do it on our own
Gen X is it's own team. I know the world doesn't know what we can do yet - but just wait. We're not the gen to let those stupid idiots run things and keep carrying on with this corruption shite. We're the first computer coders and many of us buıilt the game so when it all comes crashing down - you won't even know who did it. Probably some username like DarkShadowLordII - haahahaha. They'll hack the robots and order them around from their basement rooms while drinking Shasta and eating grilled cheese.
@@alheno5423 team with what ?????
Net positive!! (Gen X non-raising)
Concerning the fights, it taught us respect actually. Knowing that if you go too far the other person will go too far on you...same action observed in a well armed population leading to a very polite population.
Gen x did care. THEY RAISED the older millennials they gave us more care then boomer parents. You want to know why we messed up.... our parents were our teenage siblings TRYING their best to raise us right.
WE salute you Gen X.
Yeah, deep down, we really care too much. We are the ones that coddled and sheltered the kids of today into being the often useless, entitled, lumps they are.
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Man. This hit me hard.
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Yes, if we Gen-X folks were treated differently, then we would be much different’ we’d be Millennials. I actually applaud you for covering this topic and trying to get a grasp of the differences in generations. But honestly, i wouldn’t have wanted to grow up any other way. It forced me to be independent, take my licks, and figure stuff out on my own. The problem with Gen-Xers is that they produced Millennials and softened things up too much because we didn’t want them growing up like us…THIS was our one MASSIVE mistake.
99% of what she said was true. Parents kicked us out the house all day, so we relied on one another for survival. If someone got shot in the face, the group would come down on the person who did it. The rules of the games were peer enforced because no one wanted to go home and explain an injury to their parents. Because if you got hurt YOU were the one in trouble. Because you didn't follow the rules. And that carried over into everything else, and for that reason we have a lot of survival and handyman skills.
I walked to school at 6 or 7 years old rain or shine. This included crossing a major street with no crossing guard. And I came home to an empty home, unlocking the door myself since both parents worked.
We knew our neighbors intimately, and not just the next door ones, but the entire block including the street behind us.
If we rode bikes, at any point we could be MILES away from home, and no one asked where we had been as long as we got back home unhurt, by the time the street lights turn on.
It sounds like a tragic life, but to be perfectly honest it taught all of us independence, self reliance, teamwork, the value of friendship, and responsibility.
Of course we tested our limits quite a few times and had several close calls, and even hid some injuries from our parents to avoid getting in trouble. But we learned.
I mostly raised my son the same way, though I also made sure to take an interest in his interest. But I let him make his mistakes and learn his lessons. He's 26 now and I'm very proud of the man he's become. Personally I think it was the best way to grow up, since most of the kids I see these days are far too dependent on the most basic things and lack what I feel is basic knowledge.
Also, to be honest we actually don't care about being forgotten in the generational debate because the only generation we care about is our fellow Gen X's. As long as we recognize one another we are happy. If you want to see a Gen X smile, go outside wearing a "Big Trouble in Little China" shirt, and I promise you someone will comment haha.
My cousins and I got lost in the woods one summer day and came home at 9 pm. Our parents told us dinner was in the oven and went back to their wine and cards.
Hahaha, I was an urban kid but that sounds about right.
@@JadeDeCostaurban was the same, the jungle just looks different. Same rules applied though.
LOL, I forgot about dirt clod fights. When I had beef with my friend and neighbor we started off with dirts clods, escalated to rocks, but a majority was unripened fruit. Peaches, apricots and plums. LOLOLOL.
How many kids did you know in school that had their teeth knocked out, had stitches in their head, wore casts? One of our worst traits is we were relentless at teasing other kids. To the point where I think some kids from elementary school were scarred for life.
Gen X here. I'm from Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. We had the worst blizzard in the winter of 1977. I was 7 yrs old, in grade one. The snow was falling at such a high level & speed that the school decided to close and send the kids home. I walked home by myself - 1.3 km. I was terrified! Every step I took with my short legs made me sink into the deep snow. It was freezing cold with high winds blowing the snow around, decreasing visibility. There was a snow plow coming up beside me on the road to clear it for the vehicles. I was so scared that the driver wouldn't be able to see me, then bury me with the snow he plowed from the street b/c it would end up on the sidewalk where I was! Thankfully he saw me & this didn't happen. But talk about being on your own & fending for yourself!!! The whole region was ground to a halt for several days. People were stranded in their cars. Many died!
Edit: Just realized I didn't turn 7 until the end of Oct. The blizzard took place in Jan. I was SIX!!! 🤯
I remember this!! I was also 7 in 1977, but I was in Brooklyn, NY. I’m sure the snow wasn’t as bad but bad enough to close schools-a rarity in NYC. And I was a tiny thing, walking home, stomping through snow that was above my knees-waist high by the next day. It was scary but also kind of magical. (My family immigrated the year before and snow was something I looked forward to.)
My mom was a teacher and her school board for her school didn't make the call to send kids home early enough. The blizzard came in on a Friday and she was stranded at the school until Sunday or Monday. I was only a toddler when this happened, but it created a strong enough memory for me to remember flashes of watching out the living room window at the snow, hanging with dad and asking when mom would be home. It was crazy. Mom and the rest of the teachers and students were all okay, a bunch of people in the school vicinity (it was a rural school...we lived nowhere near the school, and neither did the bulk of the students) brought in food and blankets on snowmobiles. It was crazy.
Upside...the school board was a lot quicker to call for snow days for quite a while after that in order to avoid this ever happening again, so I benefitted from that a few times while I was at school!
@@princess20-sideddie95 I remember that storm, I was 9. The snow covered our back door to the house. I dug a tunnel to get out through the back door about 20 feet long, it was fun to play in, but no one could go anywhere
Cursive is what you would call in the UK joined-up writing.