also, yall are on bikes

Best old school perk is doing all your stupid kid shit at a time where cameras weren't ubiquitous.

Or at least not permanent.
I grew up in the early 2000s and while starting somewhere around 2005 cameras and the first social sites became a thing, nothing of that exists today. Myspace and SchülerVZ (German Facebook clone) were super popular, but don't exist anymore. Camera phones didn't have an easy way to export photos and most hard drives from back then just died at some point. There's hardly anything left. And that's a good thing.
I do feel bad about the younger generations of today. It seems like every part of their life is recorded or streamed now. I'm not sure how comfortable I would have been with that, when I was their age.

This is one thing I will always appreciate of growing up Gen-X. Our moms would kick us out of the house after breakfast and expected us to be gone until the street lights started to buzz. A pack of us on BMX bikes, adventuring, exploring abandoned buildings, jumping off cliffs and into rivers or the ocean, etc. It genuinely ruled ams and I fully appreciate that it did.

I’m on the cusp (xennial) and it’s kinda crazy in hindsight. I had the exact same experience you described, but when it got dark, I’d go home and play with the Commodore 64 or Atari.
- Same for me, but I guess I'm a little younger since my console was NES and, later, a Gateway 2000 computer.
  I'm so glad that I had those experiences and so sad that my son won't. I hope that I can give him enough of a similar experience that he can at least identify with Calvin and Hobbes.
- Atari! Yars' Revenge, Asteroids, Frogger and Space Invaders were my jam.
I was born in the mid-90's and I was also more or less raised that way (until a certain age). I remember being able to get home in time for dinner after a whole day of playing outside just because it "felt" like it was almost dinner time. We would go to the nearby "forest" where we built huts, climbed into trees, made wooden swords out of sticks, and sometimes had "battles" with rivaling groups about certain areas in the forest. We'd be there for hours even in the pouring rain. There was a whole economy around these wooden swords and other services like building a hut. It was better than any video game ever could be

The bikes are non negotiable. Also there's some sort of bully involved.

And a golden retriever
Bully becomes a friend at the end though
- That's absolute bullshit. I've never met anyone who turned their bully into a friend while they were still in school together.
- Not Henry Bowers
- Only after you kick his ass.

Or finding a dead body

Or kissing Wendy Peffercorn

Nostalgia is bittersweet & I love it as much as anyone but the bigger picture is this: capitalism grows like a weed or a vampire & every generation had freedom without cameras like that until gen-Xers, who were the last, which is why it feels like such magic now even tho then it was just life & being outside

I’m a millennial. I remember a time without cameras everywhere. I also grew up in the poorest part of WV and I’ve seen my own childhood home in like 10 documentaries on poverty so…
I agree for the most part, but as an early millennial, we had that freedom too. Society didn't truly go crazy until some time after 2000 in my opinion. I turned 16 that year.
- Early to mid mollenial here with the same experience. It all went downhill when Facebook and flip phones with cameras came out ie. around 2006.
I have repeatedly felt like taking some emery cloth to my neighbors ring door bell camera, which records me when ever I am in my front yard. There is an expense to replacing cameras and they seem like easy targets, if you go about it right.

When you're sold a version of nostalgia for something you never experienced.

anemoia

No... But I've been a 13 year old boy in the 1990's and had the same experience.

Same but 2000's
- Same but 80s and only discovered cannabis and motorbikes

You'll never be a middle-aged accountant in the 80s either, just fyi.

My grandfather was, but it does seem rather unlikely he'll be able to do it again now that you mention it.
- Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like banana.

Or on skateboards, running from rent-a-cops.

Hell yeah. Running from real cops too. This leads directly to the beginning of me becoming radicalized.
A cop came up while we were skating on an unused building's loading dock. He had his hands kinda up like hey I just want to talk to you guys.
He did. He threatened us. He said he was the boss and if we crossed him he'd take our boards, beat us up, and take us to jail. He brought out a paper pad and a pen, and I quote to the best of my memory- "This is my magic pen. Why is it magic? Because whatever I write with it is what happened."
- One of my most memorable experiences skating on "no skateboarding allowed" property in Jr. High, where a RAC came up and one of my friends said "Um, excuse me, suck my dick sir." I thought "omg we are fucked" and just ran.
  Another time in HS I wasn't even skating, I just had my skateboard with me, and had climbed up onto a wall outside a mall loading dock. I saw the RAC's coming and got worried they'd be dicks like always and ran into a Walgreens in the mall. I thought they weren't following me and I'd kill time, so I stopped to do my blood pressure check at the machine, then went to piss. On my way out an undercover RAC slammed me up against the wall and said into his radio "we got him!" Another RAC came and started patting me down, and when he got to the back of my Alternative Tentacles record company shirt, right where the words "Stop Skate Harassment" were printed, I looked back at him, and he said "yeah I see your shirt." They then said I was a cocaine dealer who had just gone and flushed my stash down the toilet. I was like 16, had never done drugs, and was like "whaaaat? Are you crazy?" They let me go but told me not to come back for 3 months. I worked in that mall though so I ignored them.
- Maybe I'm just well adjusted but at 30 years old I can't imagine deciding to lord my power over teenagers

Fine. I won't be that boy again.

That's all I did during summer breaks as a kid. My friends and I practically lived on our bikes.

True I was sitting inside by myself without friends before it was cool.

Just play Kids On Bikes, bout the closest you'll get.

It was fun and I feel sorry for anyone who didn't get to have that kind of childhood. But we almost died so many times. I still have flashbacks to times I was trapping in mud or climbing a huge cliff. I was so lucky I made it past 20

Bikes were, and still are involved. Revo-Lution

I don't get it

How old are you? Makes perfect sense to me but I think that's because of my age.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092005/
et al.
- Stand by Me was set in the 1950s though

Some words cut deeper and hurt more than others

Why is the chubby McDonald's window worker telling me this?

Suspected incel detected. What is it about this image that makes you think she's poor and overweight?
- I'm guessing they meant it as a joke and not about the person in the picture. Kind of like the "sir this is a Wendys" joke. But an overweight person working fast food looking down on people for being born in a different time and living a different life.
  Just my best guess.
  Edit: Or they are just a troll?