Real movie theaters. 1500-2000 seats with giant screens and ushers. And once you bought a ticket you could stay and watch over and over.

I was 12th in line for Star Wars at The Grauman's Chinese Theatre. A buddy's dad was a lawyer for Universal. He came home one day and said: "Boys, you need to ditch school and go see this movie on opening day." We got there at 7:30 am. We watched it three times in a row.

Best Legal Advice EVAR! 

As your lawyer I advise you to ditch school. 

Fox Jeffworthy said:

Back in my day...
it was perfectly acceptable for the entire school to get together, tie messages to balloons, and release them all into the air to drift off to who knows where.

now it's "littering"

I did this as a kid in CT, no one wrote me back. Bitches!

One kid did get a letter back and I remember a few exchanges between him and his pedofile but nothing spectacular went down due this this exercise. 

He was the coolest Dad I had ever met at the time. I had never heard an adult say it was OK to ditch school before. 

Real movie theaters. 1500-2000 seats with giant screens and ushers. And once you bought a ticket you could stay and watch over and over.

I was 12th in line for Star Wars at The Grauman's Chinese Theatre. A buddy's dad was a lawyer for Universal. He came home one day and said: "Boys, you need to ditch school and go see this movie on opening day." We got there at 7:30 am. We watched it three times in a row.

Best Legal Advice EVAR!

I am in serious awe right now.
Seriously, what have I done with my life! 

aw shit.. when Star Wars opened I was with the family on vacation out in the country. I begged and begged dad to take us to see it but the nearest theater showing it was 60 miles away. It was almost two weeks before I got to see it. I kept seeing the trailers for it on the fuzzy-pictured 12" black and white TV we had at the cabin. 

first job, Macdonalds for $0.65 per hour. Needed a work permit if you were 14-16 and limited to 20 hrs per week.
MLK was killed. James Brown played Boston Garden and stoped the riot before it happened. Black gloves raised high at the Olympics.
VietNam hot and heavy, my best friend's older brother joined the National Guard to avoid it and got called up anyway. He died there.
Bobby Kennedy also died that year. Sirhan Sirhan killed the dream and nothing has been the same since.
Red Sox games were 50 cents - lots of seats available in the bleachers. Allman Bros Band, first at the Boston Tea Party (a club) in the summer, then on Boston Common for free, sitting on the hill catching a buzz. ($2.50 for a seat on the ballfield, up close). 

Vietnam footage on the news, the real footage.

Been said before but disappearing in the morning and not coming home till well after dark and your parents not saying a word about it.

Taking $2 to Taco Bell and eating tacos till I couldn't eat anymore.

Getting in a fight at high school that ended up with 32 stitches between us with no suspensions or any other penalties. This happened multiple times actually with various injuries each time.

Teachers asking the class for a knife to open something and getting 20 offered.

Having a full beard my whole senior year.

Getting caught joyriding in a friends parents car at 3:00 AM and having the cop only take you home, not send you away for a dime in the big house.

School sponsored Senior Ditch Days that always involved kegs of beer that the teachers came and shared after school got out. 

^ wow. This is a little depressing. My generation has seriously missed out!
The Cold War is always considered the period of fear and paranoia in America, but there is far more mass-hysteria about everything today. Shit.

Back in my day, My family huddled around the TV to watch September Eleventh unfold.
I remember I was over and hour late for elementary school, and when I arrived, barely anyone was there, and the doors were still locked. The teachers and bus drivers all arrived about an hour after that.

Now I wish I had been born 35 years earlier. 

I was in middle school in 2001. On September Eleventh I was one of the few kids who stayed home that day. 

You got your ass beat when you messed up and no one called 911 or family & children services on your parents.

You also didn't get a gun and shoot the other kid. 

Kids do that? 

Now I wish I had been born 35 years earlier.

It's worse. You have a much clearer picture of how fucked up things are now. 

Back in my day...

We watched the original V.
Witnessed the invention of the Kung-Fu grip action figure.
Sunglasses came in one style, Wayfarer.
Chicks had big bangs (the bigger the better like always)
Fights were settled with fists (at least until the mid 90s)
A rifle in the back of a pickup truck window in the parking lot at school was common.
Spent all our money at the arcade.

And you could get strawberry big league chew. 

I grew up in 90s and things are way more fucked up now then 15 years ago. 

Back in my day my brother and I would create bios for superheros we had dreamt up... On a Tandy 1000.

Yeah, I'm young, but it still feels like forever ago. 

1st computer: TRS80
2nd Computer: Atari1200

1st real computer: Apple Quadra 610 250MB RAM, 250MB HD, 2400 BAUD Modem, 15" Display, HP Laser Printer - $8,000.00 

8 track tape players.

collecting the coins from Mallo cups and mailing them in for free stuff.

45 rpm records

Vinyl LP's

Writing my brother in Vietnam and mailing an envelope that had red and blue stripes on the edges

2 for a penny "red hot dollars"

this list could go on a long time... 

"Humpin' to Please" tractor trailer rigs with the sprinting camel on the side 

8 track tape players.

Still have my parents 8 tracks.
I even have a few old 4 tracks.
Man they suck! 

Man they suck!

"...I'm proud to be an Oakie...CH-CHUNK...from Miskogee..." 

Mallo Cups! Get the free box of 10 for $5.00 in coupon coins. Each cup had a coin card on the base. If you got one worth $5 you were golden.

First computer device, Pong, hooked to the TV set. First computer, Apple 128Kb Macintosh, about $2,600 I think. $450 dot matrix printer about the size of a large microwave, and just as heavy. Mac had a carry bag, so I could take it into work if I wanted to, about 20 lb portable, size of a large knapsack. 

Tyrsca said:

Vietnam footage on the news, the real footage.

Been said before but disappearing in the morning and not coming home till well after dark and your parents not saying a word about it.

Taking $2 to Taco Bell and eating tacos till I couldn't eat anymore.

Getting in a fight at high school that ended up with 32 stitches between us with no suspensions or any other penalties. This happened multiple times actually with various injuries each time.

Teachers asking the class for a knife to open something and getting 20 offered.

Having a full beard my whole senior year.

Getting caught joyriding in a friends parents car at 3:00 AM and having the cop only take you home, not send you away for a dime in the big house.

School sponsored Senior Ditch Days that always involved kegs of beer that the teachers came and shared after school got out.

ah growing up in montucky 

All that was a combination of Colorado and Montana so so it's actually Monrado 

I remember seeing these set up in Sears. 

That is where dad bought mine. I just sold it about 4 years ago. It was in mint condition. Got $400 on ebay. 

back in my day it fucking sucked and I don't want to talk about it. 

Oh man one of my friends had an ATARI computer. Tape decks and everything. We'd play Pacific Coast Highway (a frogger clone). 

M.U.L.E. was my favorite game.... and Zork 1.0. 

Back in my day... up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, start. 

Back in my day we had Jarts – deadly stainless steel tipped throwing darts. Death from above was considered a good thing. 

and Click Clacks aka Clackers

Toys were more fun when bodily injury was on the line. 

MisterZero said:

and Click Clacks aka Clackers

Toys were more fun when bodily injury was on the line.

Otherwise known as bolos of death. I used to wreak havoc on my sisters with those, until they beat me up and stuck me in my toybox and sat on the lid. 

I loved those effing Jarts 

Hell yeah. You were a pussy if you didn't stand next to your own circle on the ground. 

I miss snap bracelets. Those things we freakin sweet. 

CosmicMonkey said:

Back in my day... up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, start.

Fail sir!! No secret code for you. 

wasnt it select, start? or start, select? 

It was B, A, select start. 

aZZaZeLo said:

Hell yeah. You were a pussy if you didn't stand next to your own circle on the ground.

Who hasn't seen one hit a foot in their lifetime? Except the younger generations who missed this glory. 

back in my day, Nissans were called Datsuns. 

And Hyundais were called forklifts. 

G&S velcro bracelets 

The Monkees records on the back of Apple Jack's boxes.

They were square. 

aZZaZeLo said:

Hell yeah. You were a pussy if you didn't stand next to your own circle on the ground.

We used to put our hoops across the house from each other. One in the front yard and one in the back and chuck them over the house.
Safety? Pfft... What safety? 

LOL 

The movies were $4.25, leaving me with 3 quarters to use in TILT afterward.
When the newest Disney movie was released, it was a big deal.
Cici's Pizza was 2.99 All you can eat.
The Olive Garden was kinda nice. 

Today I got into a conversaton with a guys at the cgar shop.
We got on the topic of how different these kids are today.
We all concluded that the biggest problem with kids today is that they dont know what it's like to go out side and just play for hours and hours on end.
If it doesnt have anything to do with a cell phone or a social networking site then kids want nothing to do with it. 

Also, don't forget, that schools and societies are placing more homework and academic pressure on the kid's of today.
Sure, we played outside plenty when little.
But, the biggest reason why most of my friends and I didn't get outside alot after age 14, was because between school and work, we never had time to go outside for hours and hours on end. 

I appreciate that your criticisms of Youth culture are legitimate differences in upbringing.