If you could grow up..

[AUChase]

I was born in 1989 and was a 90's kid and a 2000's teen. It really hit me that I'm getting older, recently. I'm starting to see those child stars go off the deep end and musical legends I grew up listening to with my parents passing away. I'm also starting to get that sense of "kids these days wouldn't know how to act if they had what we had growing up".

There seems to be a significant generation gap between some OSers.

It shows up in the sports forums when debating about specific players, in the musical interest threads, and here in the neighborhood where we're often talking about topics that relate to our personal lives.

If you could pick any decade to have grown up in, which would it be ? By growing up, I mean which decade would you have liked to have been a kid in high school. I say that because most of us did the majority of our growing up in high school, even if we didn't completely mature until after.


I think I would choose the very early 1980's. The 1970's would have still been fresh and the music industry would have been at the very top of it's game. People as a whole would seem to have a much more relaxed outlook on life from the perspective of punishment.

I would have hated to not have the NES or SNES yet, but I would have more respect for how important the Atari was.

Family would still be very important in the average household too.

People would have been more personable maybe and not afraid to have an actual conversation that didn't involve typing something out.

I'm fairly young still and I loved when I grew up, but now that I'm getting older I just hate the direction a lot of things are going. Don't get me wrong, I embrace technology and love OS, Twitter, etc.

A lot of this comes from watching TV shows like Freaks and Geeks and seeing the struggles that kids from that time frame had opposed to now, where some spoiled brat is mad that they aren't getting the newest iPhone for Christmas.

Even from an adult's perspective, parents wouldn't flip out when a teacher or another adult "punished" their child for being dis respectful or doing wrong. Even in my time period, if the principal had to call my mother she would have told him to go ahead and give me a paddling.

So, for any of you that had to force your way through my random ramblings at work, which decade would you choose ?

[areobee401]

Re: If you could grow up..

I'm more than happy to have grown up in the 80's and 90's.

But who wouldn't want to grow up in the present time? Kids today have better stuff. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Never did understand those who say they wish they had grown up any time before they actually did.

[AUChase]

Re: If you could grow up..

I enjoyed my childhood a lot, don't get me wrong. I just think its cool to think about what life would have been like growing up in a different time period.

[bigeastbumrush]

Re: If you could grow up..

I'm more than happy to have grown up in the 80's and 90's.

But who wouldn't want to grow up in the present time? Kids today have better stuff. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Never did understand those who say they wish they had grown up any time before they actually did.

Growing up in the 80s, you could play outside until it got dark.

I'd want no parts of that in this day and age.

80s & 90s>>>>>>>>>>

[Segagendude]

Re: If you could grow up..

The 50's. An innocent time....the music.... The cars! (I was born in 67)

Unfortunately there were some negatives, such as segregation. But whenever I watch shows like Andy Griffith, I think "how cool was it to sleep with unlocked doors, people actually respected the law, and schools didnt need metal detectors or security guards"?

Not to mention Saturday nights consisting of sock hops and ice cream socials, not clubbing and ecstasy use. Like I said, innocent....

[Gotmadskillzson]

Re: If you could grow up..

I'm more than happy to have grown up in the 80's and 90's.

But who wouldn't want to grow up in the present time? Kids today have better stuff. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Never did understand those who say they wish they had grown up any time before they actually did.

I would hate to be a kid today. I grew up poor as dirt, so no way in the world would I have had an Xbox 360 and all the games & tech gadgets I have now. Hell I wouldn't even had a cell phone or broadband.

So yeah if I was a kid today, I would have been mega depressed knowing it was so many cool things out there that I didn't have. When I was a child my parents thought a $150 NES and Sega Genesis was too much money. And that a $40 game cost too damn much. Hell I only got 2 games a year as a child, one for my birthday and one for christmas. I know damn well my parents wouldn't have spent $400 on a console or $60 on a game.

Only kids that got it easy today are the ones who have parents that could afford all this luxury of technology. If I grew up today, I would have been the kid still going to the library in 2013 because my parents couldn't afford a PC or broadband internet.

So in a way I am glad I grew up in the 1980s. It was a lot less expensive stuff and pressure. Now, you have around 10 games that come out every month. When I was a child, games pretty much only came out during christmas season.

[longshadow11]

Re: If you could grow up..

I think today is a good time to grow up except for there being too much info, social networking, all that facebook type crap. Too many kids aren't living. In the 70s and 80s we played outside...all day long and well into the evening. Parents yelled out their door for kids to come eat supper. I have not heard that in years. I grew up next to a cottonfield with a sort of woods, scrubby area behind my house. I killed many indians, nazis, and stormtroopers back there. My favorite toy was a stick. It could be a machine gun, a sword, a laser rifle. I had a longer stick that was a great musket like they used in the American Revolution. We used our imaginations. Honestly, it was ten times more fun than videogames. I think this is also why you didn't hear about as many high school football players dying from heat stroke...we had been conditioned to heat all our lives. When my dad came home from work, if I wasn't outside playing, I was shown the front door. "Go play." Young people today are overall better athletes than we were, but we were a lot tougher.

I grew up in a great time. We knew our neighbors. We weren't afraid of anything. Parents were respected, and most of my friends lived in houses in which both parents we still there. School was fun because when the teachers said to settle down, we settled down. Therefore, tons of rules weren't in place because we were able to handle ourselves.

70s and 80s were a great time to grow up.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Re: If you could grow up..

And to top it off.......to grow in Chicago NOW, compared to the 1980s and 1990s ? Oh hell no. Sure it was a hell of a lot of drive bys back then, but now it is just insane. Seems like nobody fist fight anymore. When I was growing up you had more fist fights then shootings. Now, seems like every weekend 40 people get shot in Chicago.

[Skyboxer]

Re: If you could grow up..

In the 70-80's like I did.
Otherwise it would have been during the late 40's into the 50's

[Lieutenant Dan]

Re: If you could grow up..

In the 70-80's like I did.
Otherwise it would have been during the late 40's into the 50's

Same here, for the most part.

I was born in 67 as well, so I was a 70's kid and 80's teen. MUCH less stressful times, and I'm all about as LITTLE stress as possible. Overall, I'm quite happy with when I grew up.

I would not have minded being a 50's teen at all, though.

But getting back to Chase's point, and reinforced by GMSS, I really dislike the direction things are going now. My stepdaughter has a 2 yr old son, and the family keeps giving him their phones and tablets to play with when he's cranky or bored and I fight to bite my tongue in time. For Christmas, I bought him a wooden train toy with blocks; you know, old-school and would work his imagination some. He loved it...for a while. What can compete with a ****ing iPad to a kid??

Society is becoming so enmeshed in technology these days that I feel like it's changing our youths, fundamentally. Well, that COUPLED with parents not being there for their kids due to working too much, or being divorced, or just too tired or not caring and letting the gadgets 'tech-sit' the kids.

I like the internet, but sometimes I feel if the web went down indefinitely and computers were relegated back to word processing and spreadsheets again the world would be better for it, in a generation or two.

Ultimately though....I know you can't go back.

But hell, at least you wouldn't hear anything about the Kardashians anymore.



What were we talking about again? Where's my pill....

[Redacted01]

Re: If you could grow up..

I would prefer to have grown up around the time I was born. Late 80's/early 90's. Finishing college before the internet was as big as it is now would have made it a lot easier. Sure, it is easier to get ahold of information, but at the same time, it is such a huge distraction, not to mention, getting a job in the mid-to-late 90's I imagine was quite a bit easier than it is now as well.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Re: If you could grow up..

Getting a job in the 1990s was literally, walk in, ask if they are hiring, fill out ONE PAGE of your work history and education background. There was no BS of answering 10 questions asked 8 different ways that it is now.

[Lieutenant Dan]

Re: If you could grow up..

Getting a job in the 1990s was literally, walk in, ask if they are hiring, fill out ONE PAGE of your work history and education background. There was no BS of answering 10 questions asked 8 different ways that it is now.

Uh huh...pretty much the same in the 80's. You could just find a place you'd like to work, walk in and ask. You get to make an impression straight away with someone and maybe even catch a break right then.

Now it's like HR depts are sequestered in concrete strongholds, accessible ONLY via internet through outdated Monster or job.com listings. The hiring process has lost a lot of humanity via the sterility of faceless pre-screening.

This topic really brings out my cranky. LOL

[Watson]

Re: If you could grow up..

I think today is a good time to grow up except for there being too much info, social networking, all that facebook type crap. Too many kids aren't living. In the 70s and 80s we played outside...all day long and well into the evening. Parents yelled out their door for kids to come eat supper. I have not heard that in years. I grew up next to a cottonfield with a sort of woods, scrubby area behind my house. I killed many indians, nazis, and stormtroopers back there. My favorite toy was a stick. It could be a machine gun, a sword, a laser rifle. I had a longer stick that was a great musket like they used in the American Revolution. We used our imaginations. Honestly, it was ten times more fun than videogames. I think this is also why you didn't hear about as many high school football players dying from heat stroke...we had been conditioned to heat all our lives. When my dad came home from work, if I wasn't outside playing, I was shown the front door. "Go play." Young people today are overall better athletes than we were, but we were a lot tougher.

I grew up in a great time. We knew our neighbors. We weren't afraid of anything. Parents were respected, and most of my friends lived in houses in which both parents we still there. School was fun because when the teachers said to settle down, we settled down. Therefore, tons of rules weren't in place because we were able to handle ourselves.

70s and 80s were a great time to grow up.

[Chrisksaint]

Re: If you could grow up..

Born in '93 and i'm more then happy with everything I grew up with.