My wife passed away in 1986 leaving me with two sons ages 7 and 11 to raise. A few weeks later thinking how will I raise these boys while working and a single father. Then the thought came. I screamed diwn the hall. "Platoon 394 get out on the road". They ran down the hallway stood at attention in the middle of the living room with two bright smiles. I told them we going to run this house like a Marine Corp barracks. Gave them a list of shores, told them they will stay in school until they graduate high schools, play sports, stay in the Scouts and church. Instructored them if they any problems come to me and I would help them. 11 years later my sons took me out for a steak dinner on Mother's Day. After the meal the oldest motioned to the waitress. She came out with a cake and one candle lite. On the cake "Happy Mothers Day, Dad". They gave me a card. Inside signed by both sons. "Mom would be proud of you Dad. Happy Mothers Day". We still very close to this day.

I was raised by a single parent. I came home to an empty house every day after school. I was expected to clean, cook dinner for me and my brother, do my homework and stay out of trouble. I was not allowed to call my mother at work unless we were bleeding or the house was on fire. I had to grow up really fast, but now I’m grateful for it, because I can handle being an adult and I can take care of myself.

"It's 10pm. Do you know where your children are?" Homer: "I told you last night, NO."

When I grew up. We literallly ate breakfast and went outside to play only coming back to eat or use the bathroom. The rule was to come home when the street lights were on and no, my parents didn't know where we were playing. We'd ride our bikes where ever, play in fields and playgrounds. Oh, there was an exception. if we were going into a friends house, we always had to go home and ask permission.

So after my Sicilian grandma told a little boy to go home for dinner, he peed on our driveway (in front of her). She smacked him so hard. He went and told his grandma (who was my grandmas friend) Then his grandma whacked him and made him come back and apologize. The year 1983.

The lack of supervision was parental neglect for sure, but looking back, I'm glad we had such incredible freedoms to explore and play. I'm also very glad our mistakes weren't recorded on iphones and then uploaded to the internet.

Adults cut us zero slack in the 70's. I remember at recess the teachers would all stand around smoking cigarettes and laughing at us while we played 'Kill the Man with the Ball'. Playgrounds were all metal on black asphalt, and at least 3 or 4 kids lost a tooth every year playing teether ball. Good times.

I was born in early 1990, so this sounds a lot like my childhood too. Did anyone else have the experience of crying in a Wal-Mart shopping cart basket and their Mom leaning in and getting an inch away from their face and saying "IF YOU DON'T STOP CRYING, I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT!!"

Our parents may not have been home, but there was a network of spies in every neighborhood that were better at keeping track of what was going on than any Ring Doorbell Cam. They knew who we belonged to; whether or not we belonged in that neighborhood; every move we made; had the work and home numbers of every person within a 6 block radius; and could give a detailed report on everything that went in each neighborhood 24/7. We may have thought we were getting away with something, but when our parents got home and the phone rang, we knew we were f’d. 😂🤣

The funny thing about the encyclopedias is, I remember a salesman coming over and my parents made payments on a set lmao…we used them a lot though. The 80’s ruled!

If another parent punished you, you took it alone because if your own parents found out, you'd get it again. 😂

My best friend was Asian...her father made he read the encyclopedias and the dictionary. She made a perfect score on her SAT.

I was born in 1958 and I promise you a lot of this stuff happened way before the 80's!!

That encyclopedia joke was on point 😂 my grandparents had a set when I was young I knew we made it 😂😂

As a teeny tiny kid growing up in Queens NY in the 80s-90s my parents had multiple jobs. Between my mom and step father they held 5 jobs. My siblings and I used to live off of canned food and ramen. We’d eat green peas straight out of the can and some times crushed up the ramen and ate them like chips. On more than one occasion I had to bring my younger brother to the dentist. In Manhattan. I was about 13 and he was 11. What were they thinking?! It amazes me how I survived.

" hold the line", like we're braveheart" 😂😂

As a product of the 70s and 80s, I can definitely relate to all of this!!! And it brought back a lot of memories! And made me laugh at the same time, was an absolute awesome time to grow up! Friends, sports, school, and girls, that's what my life revolved around, wouldn't trade any of it.

I loved the 80’s. Latch key kids everywhere. Had to be home by dark, and don’t talk to strangers. Easy rules💁🏼‍♀️

We rode our bicycles everywhere - even the three miles along very busy roads in a large metropolitan area to get to the closest shopping mall. Parents didn’t know. We lived in a fairly new subdivision and spent a lot of time exploring the houses that were under construction and playing in the woods along a small creek that ran behind our houses. We played “kick the can” or “ghost in the graveyard” outside with 8 to 10 other neighborhood kids. My brother and I also spent many hours in the summer home alone and unsupervised watching cartoon and other goofy shows on TV - Bugs Bunny, Popeye the Sailor, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, Little Rascals, Wild West, Adams Family, the Munsters, Ultraman, Battle of the Planets, The Space Giants, etc. This was years before Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon was still very very new.

I was an 80's mom!!!! Son born in 1977...loved the 80's and 90's!!! My best decades👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

This is why Gen X is tough as nails 😂

Laughing so hard. My sisters used to play Red Rover in the 60s. Boys and girls. One of the girls ran so hard that when she hit, ( it clotheslines her) she flipped and landed on her back and was knocked out. A full flip mind you, she was pretty small. She remembers coming to with all the kids leaning over her. Did they tell anyone? No. Did she go to the Dr to check for concession? No. What they did was went back to playing in the street while she "recovered" sitting on the sidewalk. Kids are tougher than we think. All of us survived and have grandkids now. Funny memories.

Smoking a Virginia slim and drinking a Tab😂

90s weren't much better. I was a latchkey kid, as well. Parents expectations with kids back then were so low, as long as we didn't burn down the house or kill the dog, it was a win.

An encyclopedia set was like a computer back in day.

Jo Koy is my heart. I adore him bc not only is he hysterical but he's got this great ability to make me watch his shows anytime I'm sad bc I will always feel better after.

The days when the vice principal slammed the idiots up against the locker and told them to knock it off. 😂 The smart ones knocked it off. The stupid ones got slammed against the locker the next week. God bless Mr. T. He died in one of the planes on 9/11 😢

I remember school teachers showing us the paddle they would hit you with if you acted up on the first day.

Grew up in the 80’s and 90’s. It is crazy how different everything is now. My kids can’t even fathom not having a pause button to use the restroom during a show and get annoyed having to watch a 5 second ad! They don’t even know how good they have it that they can bring their “tv” to the restroom with them!

I grew up through the 70s and 80s with corporal punishment at school, spanking at home, parents smoked, drank and generally we were left alone to do anything we wanted.....good times.

My Dad used to drop me off and say "cuff him if you need to"😅

I was born in '82 so I can definitely relate! 😂 I grew up in the country so the only difference was that we had to be home before the sun went down. There were no street lights where I lived. Lol

I was born in 86 and as such raised in the 90s (with a very over protective mother to boot), but the vast majority of the stuff mentioned here is very much relevant to my childhood. I think it's my own generation of parents that have gone mental in regards to things getting over the top.

80s were great and horrific at the same time. Kids were treated like 💩 and expected to turn out fine. But, the complete freedom made it all almost worth it.

😂 “hey, we should start looking for some of these guys..”😂😂

Recess! So true! I LITERALLY sustained a concussion at recess (because '70s playground), was sent back to class, reprimanded for being woozy and loopy, finished the day, sent to bed by the babysitter, reprimanded by my mother for not finishing my meal, and then sent to bed. I obviously did wake up in the morning, but no accounting for my brains.

I have always loved Bill Burr's comedy and always will.😂😂😂

I was poor, I didn’t have encyclopedias. I said, “Can you get me a set?” I was told, “You have one. It’s in the free library down the road.”😂

“They had to remind bitches they even had kids!” 😂😂🤣🤣

I grew up through the 70s and the 80s, and I can confirm what they say is true. We also would get whipped at school for being bad and then whipped when we got home by our parents for misbehaving. Awe, the good old days.😊

I love these people who rewrite their history. We didn't call them "safe spaces' but we absolutely had them. We all knew not to bring up the war or be too loud near uncle John if we wanted to live.

"He's got the Q!" 😂 I think I might have said that exact thing.

Comedy as therapy - this GenXer is here for it😂

12:47 - There were also no school shootings.

I still am traumatized from getting busted in the face playing dodgeball! 😂😂😂 BOOOOOOOFFF!!! 😳😳😳

Be home for dinner. And that was all the supervision we had.

It's ok gen x. You are loved and wanted. ❤

The whole neighborhood had the right to spank you. 😂😂😂 And the Principal had a paddle!!! 😂😂😂

Great memory trip. We had no social media yet were infinitely more social. Talk about modern failures.

Ah- 80s recess was definitely very Lord of the Flies. In 3rd grade, all of us were obsessed with a game we called “Suicide” which was a cross of dodgeball meets racquetball with a lacrosse ball. It was bananas because if you got pegged with the ball, you we’re definitely going to bleed. 😂

I got thrown out of French class twice, twice because the first time the teacher forgot to open the door and I was just slammed into it😂😂😂

I was born in 1964 , there was 5 of us, Mom and stepdad made us leave house in the morning jug of koolaid bag of peanut butter and jelly sandwich’s and we couldn’t come home till six. Parents had no idea where we were or what we were doing, me and my older sister were driving at 12 and 15. It was a different time for sure.

Looked up Nate's story, the kid lived. In fact several zoos rushed their antivenom to the children's hospital he was in after the one he stole from ran out. It took that much to save him.

Lol I chipped a tooth in the 80’s playing Red Rover. Lol

Fortune is 💯 correct! Recess in the 80's was the best 😅😊. Survival of the fittest!

In 80, I told my grandfather I was scared of the deep end of the pool. He walked over, picked me up, and tossed me in. I was soooo proud I didn't die, I felt invincible. When I was 6, I was eating a Snowball on the porch. My mother told me someone was gonna take my snack. Sure enough two Mexican brothers pushed me down and took my cupcake. I ran to my mother, crying. She slapped me and told me food stamps don't grow on trees. She told me to go take my stuff back. She even gave me fighting tips. I got destroyed,never got my cake back, but made two new friends. Cause thier mom saw what was happening, she said 2 against 1 wasn't fair and they had to apologize.

My dad's favorite quip was "go play in the traffic." And we did, all day long. The birthday game was dropping clothespins through the opening in the top of a glass milk bottle. Priceless.

Ohh, the dirty early 80's was a glorious time to be a kid! Sure, you were still playing with Star Wars figures in the backyard. Yet, you had a boom box next to you blasting AC/DC tapes you bought at K-MART!! Hence, why us GENX'ers are the coolest!😎

As a product of 1984 ; this was great 😂😂

My younger sister and I both grew up during the 70's and 80's answering the telephone without even knowing who was calling, and yet we somehow managed to survive into adulthood. The telephone was a primitive, large device that hung on the wall, and we had to know how to use the dial thingy on it to get it to work, which included dialing "O" to speak to the operator. Or we had to look up a number in something that used to be known as a telephone book. We also had to know how to look up things in encyclopedias without asking Google what something meant. We learned how to read paper maps without the internet helping us. And when we went to school back then, there was dangerous equipment like seesaws and a merry-go-round on it that we used to play on. And to get to the school, there was no bus monitor to tell you not to run out into traffic or let yourself get trapped under the huge bus wheel and get run over.

We all played outside and there were always a couple old people hanging outside that would let you know if you crossed a line.

The 80's was the greatest decade ever. Ronald Reagan was the president, we had gigantic stereo boom boxes blasting Van Halen and Ozzy Osbourne, parents never knew what we were doing, stayed out all day until the street lights came on, having dirt clod and orange fights with the neighbor kids, digging dangerous underground tunnels and forts in the backyard, building and sleeping in treehouses without safety harnesses, riding illegal mini bikes all over town, sneeking my mom s station wagon for a spin around the block when we were 12 or 13, playing Smear the Queer and dodgeball when someone would inevitably get hurt (parents never found out), making black powder bombs and setting them off in the street, making calcium carbide cannons and using them to shoot tennis balls sky high so the neighbor kids could play 3 flies up, watching Six Million Dollar Man on TV, Saturday morning cartoons, going to the beach and having fire pits with hot dogs (they have ripped out all the fire pits at the beach) body surfing with no adults around, not to mention the decade produced some of the greatest music in history with some of the bands still pumping out music today My friends and I have nothing but the greatest memories of that wonderful time

I graduated high school in 83, my parents grew up in the depression and my siblings were all boomers. I was the oops baby. Life was rough and tumble, my sister's were just as rough as my brothers.

My 5th grade teacher had a delightful birthday tradition. If it was your birthday, the whole class would go outside and stand in line with their legs wide. As the lucky birthday boy or girl, you got to crawl between their legs on your hands and knees on the dirt and rocks while they each spanked you on your butt as hard as they possibly could. Typing this now, it seems impossible that this could have happened , but I still distinctly remember how hard I tried not to cry. It never even occurred to me to complain to my parents.

11:15 That Hungarian mum tho 😂😂😂 Hungarian here, perfect pronunciation and legit how it was.

😂😂😂 As A former feral child of the 70s and 80s, all of these are so relative. We need to bring back those times! I miss being a kid back then.

The encyclopedia thing got me lmao so true!!

Not sure if you know this but as a university instructor at an elite school, about 1-2x per year I had a parent call complaint about a student grade. This was unthinkable growing up. Teachers and professors graded. Grades aren’t perfectly reflective of learning, but agreement even among grad student TAs in great book essays is remarkably consistent and almost all courses have intitial and follow up grading meetings. When I was a student my parents never sided against a teacher on a poor grade. Less than excellent performance was 100% my fault. I would have faced a very high burden of proof to get my parents to side against a teacher and I had some bad ones, but never considered complaining to my parents. Also caught misbeving by another parent meant a harsh punishment for me. There is a medium where bad teachers and strange, probably uncommon incidents, of abusive parents harming other children occur, and should be checked. Principals, deans, PTA subgroups can enforce ameliorating norms. But from talks with highschool teachers it seems the pendulum had swung wild. Added: I never minded explaining to a parent why a student failed and saying what the student could do to improve learning and grades, but about half my calls were pleas for special treatment, usually extra-credit requests. As teachers know, these out of fairness have to be extended to the whole class and usually the poor students do a poor job or shirk it entirely and the top students end up with scores exceeding 100%.

I adore Margaret Cho, as does my 73 year old mother, oddly enough. 😂😆😜

OMG, my parents bought the encyclopedia set!!!

Born in 69. Every teacher in elementary school had a paddle and used it. The 6th grade teacher's paddle had holes drilled in it to make it hurt more. Then you'd get it when you got home! Crazy

Back when i was a kid we didn't have a babysitter...I was the oldest so i was the babysitter.

Grew up in the 70s. I was a kid who played outside all day until you had to come in when the street lights come on. You drank water from the outside hose, rode bikes at night, and spit watermelon seeds at each other. There was no Children Protective System, it was your responsibility to keep your house key around your necklace and start dinner without a microwave.

Let's not forget the drunken aunt and uncle who came to babysit. They took about $5 worth of nickels and threw them in the backyard and told us we could keep what we found. Kept us occupied for hours while they did their drinking.

We used to play dodgeball after school everyday waiting for our buses to come & some of those boys were ruthless. My principal started calling it blood ball and outlawed it. 😂

80s Comics were the best they kept it real

Weird we had no supervision yet respected adults. Now look.

When I was in first grade (in the 'the early '80s), we had an art teacher who for some reason, couldn't draw a line without shaking. He was very quiet and couldn't control a room full of six year olds. One day, he picked up my girlfriend up out of her chair and shook her in front of the whole class. I think she was just talking or something, nothing major. We all just went quiet. I don't think anybody ever talked about it again. He was the only adult in the room, so he basically, he got away with it.

As someone born in 2003, to this day my Hungarian mother screams that same shit at me. In some places things haven't changed 💕💕

I forgot about Red Rover!! Thanks for the reminder haha

I was born in 82. Latchkey sucked. I remember my Dad trying to drop my cousin and I off at daycare and i was screaming bloody murder like "nooo Dad!" 😂Both parents worked but I toughened up and stopped being such a princess bc i learned this is better bc now we dont have to share bath water and i can pick out the expensive clothes like whoa! To me the 80s and 90s were way better than now and i want to go back. 😂

This was awesome 😂 you’ve got to do a 70’s compilation!

My friends would take off running when they saw my Dad's ElCamino pulling up. They were not even doing anything wrong. Lol. They just thought he might spank or whip them for whatever. Haha

We played Red Rover, but we never yelled "hold the line" 😂

In the 1980's....If my mom didn't know where I was,she'd call another mom and they'd know. Did anyone elses' mom shout their name throughout the neighborhood and then the neighbor would tell you to go home and they'd call your mom......

Growing up in then 80s was the BEST

And, he is universally remembered, by bunches of celebrities, that really knew him.... as one of the kindest, most wonderful people they ever knew. 💕💕

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. My dad was the OG helicopter parent. He embarrassed me in a thousand ways. He did stuff like putting a big orange flag on a stick behind the seat of my new bike. That’s when I stopped riding bikes. If I got upset by something at school he went down to my school and raised hell with the principal. I was mortified to be “ that kid with the crazy dad.” Of course I was the only child in my home so I had no one to take the blame for me about anything or distract my parents’ attention- it was on me. I envied the kids in multiple-child families. But even then, my father being a man with random fears about my well-being, my parents let me run around after dark in random kids’ yards playing Ghost in the Graveyard and whatever other games we could come up with. My mom got me to come home by yelling my name from the back deck - we all were brought home the same way. You knew whose mom was whose by their yelling voices, and each of us hoped we weren’t the kid who had to go home first.

She was so right about the encyclopedias

It always annoys me when people my age are like "we grew up in the 80s" when we also grew up in the 90s. Like, I get "the 80s" sounds cool but if you were like 11 in 1990....you also grew up in the 90s!

I got clotheslined hard in red rover. Flipped right around and landed flat on my back. Red Rover still haunts me to this day. Lol And i still have those encyclopedias...i mean the page edges are gold guild plated :) lol

I’m an 80’s kid. I didn’t come home until it was dark (staying inside and watching tv was a big N.O) my parents never knew where I was. If I came home, it was for food or because I was bleeding. I grew up like that as all 80’s kids did. I moved out when I was 18, got married at 23 and had a kid at 24, went to college, and had a career in that time frame while taking care of the fam. My daughter is 18 and I have to get her baby chewable Tylenol because she can’t swallow normal size pills… I don’t know where I went wrong.

When my friends talk about the 80s they think of boom boxes... I had to stop them. That's just a stereo type.

My dog bit me in the face too! 🤣🤣

I adore Fortune, she's on point with Red Rover!

Red Rover- every day during recess. Me & my friend were the skinny ones, and the other line always zero'd in on our wimpy arms. We always held the line though - although we couldn't hold our pencils the rest of the day - it was worth it not being the weakest link.

90s here. There's a special magic in not having cell phones. Mom would say, "Where were you?" and I'd -lie- say out for a walk! With my friends! ...Avoiding your call

They banned Red Rover at our school in the early 90's because it got too violent 😂

In our house, we had one of the encyclopedia books, cause that's all we could afford. 😂 I can't remember what letter it was for the life of me though

Born in 71...we had an air horn. If it went off twice you knew you were going to be grounded!