Gen X - Saving The World

[Not Really a Doc]

Smear the ***** or tackle football after school.

 

[Crazy Cotton]

Xer checking in. We were pretty much convinced we weren't going to live to adulthood, and if we did it would suck balls anyway. We got to hide under our desks and kiss our *** goodbye starting in 2nd grade as our elders told us to practice for the nuclear meltdown that was coming. Then they showed us The Day After to make sure we got the point. We got jettisoned out of ****** high schools into a bad economy full of greedy Gordon Gecko wannabee ******** shipping whole factories to China, and selling what they couldn't ship to the Saudis or Japanese, while the ******* boomers worked day and night to dismantle the social safety net and collective goods that allowed them to live a comfortable working class life in their blue collar jobs, insuring they would be the last generation to enjoy them. Wanna know our state of mind as young adults? Listen to a few Nirvana tunes to set the mood. We aren't prepared for this coronavirus so much as just not at all surprised that it finally showed up.

 

[IBleedMaroonDawg]

Fun fact... the tv movie "The Day After" about nuclear war in 1983 debuted with a 42 rating. For comparison, that's about what the Superbowl usually does.

I was 21 and getting married for the first time that year. I remember everyone discussing this and Reagan affected enough to renew talks with Russia.

It did not really portray what would really happen but the images of three nukes over KC still haunt me like the LA nuke in Terminator II.

 

[mstateglfr]

Yeah I’m kind of happy my daughter and the neighborhood kids still do these things. We have whiffleball and kickball games. We ride bikes. Play nerf wars and laser tag. They spend a lot of time on the screen, but so did I from PAC Man to Pitfall to Super Mario to Legend of Zelda to Tecmo Bowl to Mortal Kombat to NCAA Gamebreaker and so on. I miss Mississippi lightning bugs though, we don’t have a lot in the panhandle. But we still lay on the trampoline at night finding constellations, only difference is the SkyView app tells us what they are. I do get a kick out of people that complain about their kids and too much screen time, but post on here 30 times a day.

This. All this.
For PE today, my kids ran a mile then did a 3 mile bike ride. They are now outside playing because they only wanted to play minecraft for 30min while its nice out.

They absolutely veg out and watch shows or play games, but it isn't even close to the levels I used to at their ages.
Childhood for me and friends was a life of extremes- either a ton of travel sports, or hard/physical play outside like building dirt tracks in the woods and tackle football, or being a lump and playing video games for hours.
There was little middle ground.


I hear parents lamenting about how kids these days are in too many sports that take up too much time and how kids just play games and focus on electronics. I socially agree with it while quietly wondering how any of this is new to those people. Apparently their childhood was way different from mine.