I was born in 1971, so growing up in the 80s looked very different from the childhood my own kids experienced. We didn’t have cellphones in our pockets, computers in our homes, or the ability to watch whatever we wanted whenever we wanted it.
If we needed information, we looked it up in an encyclopedia. If we wanted to call a friend, we used the family phone. If we wanted something we couldn’t afford, we saved for it. And when we went outside to play, our parents couldn’t track our location or text us to come home.
Somehow, we survived.
Although when I think about a few of the things we did, I’m not entirely sure how. LOL.
Growing Up in the 80s Meant Learning to Wait
I think one of the biggest differences between growing up then and growing up now is that we had to wait.
We waited for everything.
If there was a television program we wanted to watch, we had to know what day and time it was on and be sitting in front of the television when it started. There was no pausing it because you needed to go to the bathroom. There was no starting it over because you missed the first ten minutes.
And binge-watching?
We waited an entire week for the next episode.
I remember how exciting it was when I got a television for my bedroom. It was black and white because color televisions were more expensive.
Try giving a kid today a black-and-white television for their bedroom and telling them how lucky they are.
Music required a little patience too.
We listened to cassette tapes, and we were excited when we were able to buy a boom box to listen to them on. If you wanted to hear a certain song again, you had to rewind the cassette and try to stop it in just the right place.
Even buying something you wanted usually meant waiting.
Credit cards weren’t part of everyday life the way they are now, which honestly wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. If there was something you really wanted, you saved your money until you could afford it.
I remember my mom using layaway quite often. A store would hold something for you while you made payments on it, but you didn’t get to take it home.
You had to wait until it was completely paid for.
I think there was something good about that. When you finally had enough money to buy something you’d been saving for, it really meant something.
Even taking pictures involved waiting.
We used cameras with rolls of film, and there wasn’t a little screen on the back showing us whether the picture turned out. You finished the roll, took it somewhere to be developed, and waited.
Only then did you discover that somebody had their eyes closed, the picture was blurry, or someone’s head was cut off.
There was no delete button and no taking 27 pictures until everyone finally looked good.
You got what you got.
When the Family Had One Telephone
My kids will never fully understand the complete lack of privacy that came with the family telephone.
There was no personal phone in your pocket. There was a phone in the house, and everyone shared it.
If you called a friend and someone at their house was already talking on the phone, you got a busy signal.
That was it.
You couldn’t text your friend and tell them to get off the phone because you were trying to call. You hung up and tried again later.
And no phone conversation was truly private.
You couldn’t talk to a boy without the whole family knowing what was going on.
Everyone knew when the phone rang. Everyone knew someone had called for you. And depending on where the telephone was located, everyone probably heard half of your conversation too.
We memorized phone numbers because we actually had to dial them. Today, I don’t even know some of the phone numbers stored in my own phone.
But not having a cellphone wasn’t always funny or nostalgic.
I remember one morning in high school when I was driving to school in really thick fog. I had to go over a bridge, and I was terrified.
Today, I could pull over, pick up my phone, and call my dad.
Back then, I couldn’t.
I managed to find the cemetery over the hill. I actually had to go inside and ask if I could borrow their telephone so I could call my dad for help.
That was what you did.
If you were away from home and needed to call someone, even in an emergency, you had to find a telephone. Sometimes that meant walking into a business or another place and asking a complete stranger if you could use theirs.
Our parents had to plan around not being reachable too.
When my parents went out on a date, they would tell us exactly where they were going to be and give us the phone number of the place they were going.
Think about that for a minute.
If we needed our parents while they were at a restaurant, we didn’t call them. We called the restaurant. Then we had to tell whoever answered that our parents were there and ask if we could speak to them.
Someone would actually have to go find them.
And that was completely normal.
When we went outside to play, our parents couldn’t track us on a map or send us a text asking where we were.
My dad had a much simpler system.
He whistled.
We could be outside somewhere in the neighborhood, and when we heard Dad’s whistle, we knew it was time to come home for the night.
It’s funny how something as simple as a whistle can stay in your memory all these years later.
We Played Outside, and Apparently Safety Was Different Then
We spent the majority of our time outside instead of sitting inside playing video games.
We rode our bikes everywhere.
Without helmets.
A lot of the time, without our hands.
My sister apparently decided riding without her hands wasn’t enough of a challenge because she would ride without her hands or her feet.
That worked great.
Until she crashed into our mailbox and got hurt.
Looking back now as a mom, there are quite a few things we did that make me wonder what on earth everyone was thinking.
We rode in the backs of pickup trucks.
On the freeway.
I look at that now and think, “What were we doing?”
Then there was hooky bobbing.
In the winter, we would hold onto the backs of cars while they drove around the neighborhood and let them pull us through the snow.
Yes, we really did that.
And no, I’m definitely not recommending anyone bring that particular childhood tradition back.
Some things should probably stay in the past.
One of the biggest differences about growing up in the 80s was simply how much freedom we had to wander.
We didn’t have adults constantly planning activities for us. We went outside and figured out what to do.
We rode bikes, made up games, explored the neighborhood, found friends, and used our imaginations.
Although I should probably admit that I tried to spend as much time in my room reading as I possibly could.
Apparently even when everyone else was outside, I could still find a reason to stay inside with a book.
School Before Google Was a Whole Different World
Kids today can have an answer to almost any question in seconds.
We couldn’t.
When I had a paper to write for school, I used encyclopedias and dictionaries.
There was something about having an entire set of encyclopedias in the house that seemed important back then. If you needed information about something, you pulled out the right volume and started looking.
And if the encyclopedia didn’t have enough information, you went to the library.
Libraries didn’t have computers where you typed in a few words and instantly found the book you needed. There were card catalogs filled with little cards telling you which books the library had and where you could find them.
Card catalogs weren’t just something from my childhood either. They were how libraries organized and helped people find books for generations. The Library of Congress has a fascinating history of the card catalog and how people used it before online catalogs took over.
Research really meant research.
Once I finally found all of my information, I still had to write the paper.
I learned how to type on a typewriter.
I was still using a typewriter through my junior year of high school before our school finally got computers.
There was no clicking in the middle of a paragraph to add another sentence. You couldn’t highlight something and move it somewhere else. There was no spell-check quietly fixing your mistakes.
And then the computers finally arrived.
They were so slow you could practically go have lunch while you waited for them to do anything.
LOL.
Even communicating with friends at school required some creativity.
We passed notes.
Actual pieces of paper.
You wrote your message, folded it up, and somehow tried to get it across the classroom without the teacher catching you.
That was our version of texting.
Except if the teacher caught you, there was always the horrifying possibility that someone besides your friend was going to read what you’d written.
The Little Things I Remember About Growing Up in the 80s
I remember when we got our first microwave.
I was about 12 years old, and it was a big deal.
A microwave.
Today, we don’t even think about them. They’re just sitting there in our kitchens. But at the time, being able to put food into a machine and have it hot a couple of minutes later seemed pretty amazing.
I remember cassette tapes and boom boxes. Black-and-white televisions. Encyclopedias and dictionaries. Typewriters and those painfully slow first computers.
And, of course, I remember the funky outfits and hairstyles we wore in the 80s.
Then some of those same styles started coming back in the early 2000s, and I wanted absolutely nothing to do with them.
I’d already lived through them once.
There were so many things we did differently simply because there wasn’t another option.
If you were going somewhere you’d never been before, someone gave you directions. You wrote them down, tried to remember landmarks, and hoped you didn’t miss a turn.
There wasn’t a voice coming from your dashboard calmly telling you where to go.
If nobody answered the telephone, there wasn’t always a way to leave a message.
If you missed your favorite television show, you missed it.
If you wanted to know something, you looked it up or found someone who knew.
If you wanted something you couldn’t afford, you saved for it.
If you were bored, you figured out something to do.
And if you left the house, nobody could necessarily reach you.
I’m not going to pretend everything was better when I was growing up in the 80s. It wasn’t.
I’m very grateful for many of the things we have today.
Cellphones certainly would have been nice that morning when I was terrified to drive across a bridge in the fog.
GPS has saved me from getting lost more times than I’d probably like to admit.
And I’m pretty sure bicycle helmets were a good idea.
But looking back, I realize something.
We didn’t think we were growing up in “simpler times.”
We were just kids.
The black-and-white television wasn’t nostalgic. It was my television.
The boom box wasn’t vintage. It was how we listened to music.
The encyclopedia wasn’t something we displayed because it looked old-fashioned. It was how I found information for my homework.
And Dad’s whistle wasn’t a sweet memory yet.
It just meant it was time to come home.
That’s the funny thing about growing up in the 80s. So many of the things I remember most weren’t important at the time.
They were just the little things that made up our days.
Now they’re pieces of a world that doesn’t really exist anymore.
It reminds me of all the little things my own kids left behind as they grew up. Things like artwork, school papers, and birthday cards didn’t seem especially important at the time either, but years later they can bring back an entire season of family life.
Someday our kids will probably look back at things from their own childhood and try to explain them to their children and grandchildren.
And those kids will probably look at them like they’re crazy too.
What is something completely ordinary from your childhood that your kids or grandkids would have a hard time believing today? I’d love to hear what takes you right back to being a kid.
Making every house feel a little more like home.
