" I do n’t ever remember being bored , to be honest . There was always something to do . "
Members of theBuzzFeed Community sharedhow they passed the time before the internet, and the response was overwhelming and VERY nostalgic. Here are some of the best replies:
1.“Our group of friends would meet up in a coffee shop and just hang out for hours. I remember being busted for being out when I was supposed to be at a friend’s place. My mom tracked me down at the 24-hour donut shop and was shocked to find me sitting there with 10 other kids drinking coffee and eating day-old donuts. She assumed that I was out drinking and doing drugs. The good news was my curfew was lifted after that.”
2.“Listening to cassette tapes (and wearing them out — Prince’sPurple Rain, I’m talking about you!). When I wasn’t doing that, I was with mybest friends, driving around the neighboring towns looking for all the cute boys, while playing the radio or cassettes in my car. So much fun!”
3.“I spent hours just hanging out at the mall with my friends, buying hardly anything, just walking around and going in stores, drinking sodas or eating hot pretzels, and bumping into other kids we knew from school. There was a movie theater nearby, so sometimes we’d check out a movie, sometimes we even managed to buy a ticket to a rated R movie, but sometimes the ticket taker would card us and we were denied (we were crushed that we couldn’t get in to seeTheSerpent and theRainbow!).”
4.“I made collages with my leftover magazines. I did it on a bulletin board that was over my stereo so I could keep changing the collage when I got bored with it.”
5.“I worked from age 14 on, so at least three nights a week, I was bussing tables, but my sister and our best friend also worked at the same restaurant, so it was usually pretty fun. And the hard work was totally worth it when I was able to buy my first car and have my freedom!”
6.“I’m in my late 30s, so I grew up with dial-up internet. My childhood memories were filled with sleepovers at the neighbors' playing video games until the sun came up. They’re filled with walks to the nearest neighborhood store to get the latest comics. They’re filled with playing badminton with the neighbor next door using the fence as the ‘net.'”
7.“If I was in my room, I was either reading, talking on the phone, or performing my parents’ comedy albums in front of a mirror. I must have listened toSteve Martin’sLet’s Get Small50 times.”
8.“I’m more bored now than I was then. As a teen, I used to read entire book series (I sometimes finished a 300-page book over a weekend), rollerblade, practice, music (I was a singer), and write in journals. As a younger kid, I played outside, had sleepovers, played board games, and did puzzles and Legos.”
9.“In the ’70s and early ’80s, it was all about the rollerskating. It was a mostly socially acceptable way for a peculiar boy like me to be graceful.”
10.“Sometimes my friends and I would get together and go downtown to visit museums on free days, or we’d head out to the mall and wander around for hours. I don’t ever remember being bored, to be honest. There was always something to do.”
11.“We had one TV, one phone line, and much later, one computer. I was ‘grounded’ a lot as a kid, so I read in my room a ton. The Scholastic Book Fair was myDisneyWorld. I got so many free personal pan pizzas as a kid. I started writing as a teenager, too.”
12.“When I was in elementary school, I used to build model warships. Then when I was in the seventh grade, I took those ships, placed them in our pool with some lighter fluid and a firecracker or two, and had an instant WW2 naval battle! My parents were not amused.”
13.“Man, we used to ride bikes everywhere, all the time. It was freedom. You’d have lunch at a buddy’s house or maybe they’d have lunch at yours, and then you’d be gone exploring until it got dark.”
14.“I used to take my Barbie with long hair and practice hairstyles that I wanted to learn that my mom didn’t know how to do, such as a French braid. I also bought fabric scraps from a fair and made Barbie clothes with them, which helped improve my sewing skills. I would also use my dolls to help me write stories by having them in certain jobs or positions, which helped me with my creative writing class.”
15.“I grew up in NYC, so no driving around or malls, but going to bookstores and sitting around looking at magazines, walking up and down the street and looking at people, getting drunk or high in parks…that’s what my friends and I did without the internet!”
16.“We would go to Denny’s and order coffee and smoke cigarettes and talk all night. Inside the restaurant. No one ever kicked us out. Good times.”
17.“As a mall teen in the early ’90s, my friends and I would go to Windsor Fashions (tres chic) and try on the fancy dresses. I’m sure the sales associates hated us, but we were too young and dumb to care.”
18.“I used to embroider, or do beadwork, or draw while I listened to records or watched reruns of sitcoms on TV. And I would write letters. In the old days, you had to write words on paper and mail them to your friends who lived far away to stay in touch with them.”
19.“I grew up in a small town in the ’90s. I lived on a street packed with kids, so we were always outside doing something. We had a patch of woods at the end of our street, and built us an awesome fort. We walked around or biked around town with no shoes. A friend had a creek in their backyard, and their house was the place to go. We could go swimming, make s’mores by it, etc. Ahh memories.”
20.“I once coated our bathroom floor in Vaseline so I could pretend to ice skate like Michelle Kwan!”
21.“Magazines. So many magazines, reading them while playing my cassettes. Shopping even if we were broke. We’d try a load of stuff on, try all the testers we could, and maybe buy some chips to share if we pooled our cash.”
22.“One of my friends was given a video camera by our school’s football coach to film games. She often took it home, and my friends and I filmed ourselves doing little dances, talking, and just generally being silly. It was a little like TikTok before TikTok!
23.“Gas was way cheaper, so we would play the left/right game and see where we’d end up driving to. I also loved to mess with my clothes, so I spent time cutting, sewing, and redesigning some shirts.”
