Things that were better as a kid

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by JBR

Calgary Flames

Having started following hockey in 1990 we must have had VASTLY different childhoods.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Wormius

University was the best. No real responsibilities but with all the perks of being an adult. I got student loans, so I think that helped with being able to just take a 4 month holiday and not do anything I didn't want to. I had a good job after university, so paying them all back wasn't a tremendous burden.

I took two years off after high school before going to university. The day after I turned 18 I moved to Lake Louise and lived in staff accommodation. That was truly no responsibilities. You work an easy job and snowboard every day. All bills are deducted from your paycheque, so you don't even have to budget. You just need beer money. It was living in a ski movie for six months. Best experience ever and more fun/less responsibilities than university.

[edn88]

Hockey - we got trophies for winning, player of the game for the best kid on the ice.
Video Games - Pac-Man, Defender, Moon Patrol, Galaga...
Comic Books - John Romita's Amazing Spiderman, Walt Simson's Thor, John Byrne's Fantastic Four, Chris Claremont's X-Men, Secret Wars
Lego - you had to actually make things with your imagination
Star Wars (the movies, the toys)
Hockey Night in Canada - sure it was in low res and you only got one game a week, but you were amped up for the game. And NHL playoffs...

[JBR]

Originally Posted by Maritime Q-Scout

Having started following hockey in 1990 we must have had VASTLY different childhoods.

Flames faithful since 1980..

[taco.vidal]

Lots of fckers here seem like you are miserable. Sure adult life has responsibities but it also has many freedoms especiialy when you live in a country like Canada. I think people often dont realize how much control they have over their own lives. Often the things that are making you miserable are of your own choosing. You choose where you work, where you live, who you live with, what you do with your free time, etc. Yes, those decisions all have consequences but you have control over your life. Lots of people work jobs they hate, live in neighbourhoods they dont care for that give them long commutes, live with spouses they dont love, live in sexless relationships, have no free time or no spare money to do their hobbies. As a kid, you always tried to do what you wanted but usually your parents had some control over your time and you usually had limitied funds. As an adult, people seem to just give up and not even try to do the things they want or the things that make them happy.

[Puppet Guy]

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

[D as in David]

The NBA.

I’m not sure whether it was the implementation of the three point line or the abolition of the traveling call but I find the game completely unwatchable now.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Wormius

University was the best. No real responsibilities but with all the perks of being an adult. I got student loans, so I think that helped with being able to just take a 4 month holiday and not do anything I didn't want to. I had a good job after university, so paying them all back wasn't a tremendous burden.

University can be very stressful for some students. Pressure to succeed, deadlines, social problems, financial stress. I still have "exam" dreams - dreams where I am unprepared for an exam, and can't find the class room on time.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/one-in...rvey-1.3063548

46.9 per cent of students considered themselves to be “flourishing,” meaning they were experiencing positive mental health.

But others were struggling with mental health:

• 18.4 per cent of respondents reported having been diagnosed or treated for anxiety in the last year
• 14.7 per cent had been diagnosed or treated for depression
• 13.0 per cent of students reported seriously considering suicide within the last 12 months.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by troutman

University can be very stressful for some students. Pressure to succeed, deadlines, social problems, financial stress. I still have "exam" dreams - dreams where I am unprepared for an exam, and can't find the class room on time.

For carefree living as a young adult, having a regular labouring job and your own place beats the hell out of going to university. The downside is far less opportunity for social contact with the opposite sex.

Originally Posted by troutman

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/one-in...rvey-1.3063548

46.9 per cent of students considered themselves to be “flourishing,” meaning they were experiencing positive mental health.

But others were struggling with mental health:

• 18.4 per cent of respondents reported having been diagnosed or treated for anxiety in the last year
• 14.7 per cent had been diagnosed or treated for depression
• 13.0 per cent of students reported seriously considering suicide within the last 12 months.

I don't see how meaningful those stats are without a comparison to 18-24 year olds who aren't in university, and to the population as a whole.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by taco.vidal

Lots of fckers here seem like you are miserable. Sure adult life has responsibities but it also has many freedoms especiialy when you live in a country like Canada. I think people often dont realize how much control they have over their own lives. Often the things that are making you miserable are of your own choosing. You choose where you work, where you live, who you live with, what you do with your free time, etc. Yes, those decisions all have consequences but you have control over your life. Lots of people work jobs they hate, live in neighbourhoods they dont care for that give them long commutes, live with spouses they dont love, live in sexless relationships, have no free time or no spare money to do their hobbies. As a kid, you always tried to do what you wanted but usually your parents had some control over your time and you usually had limitied funds. As an adult, people seem to just give up and not even try to do the things they want or the things that make them happy.

lol.

The only post in this thread that seems miserable is yours.

[Flamenspiel]

Nothing was better, although I'd redo my 30s.

[bob-loblaw]

Every Tuesday my mom would pick up my sister and me from school and we'd go to Woodward's for $1.44 day. I'd always wind up getting some toy that I'd play with for a couple days and then never again.
After that we'd venture off to Consumers Distributing. That was always interesting browsing through the catalogue, picking something, and then find out it wasn't available. It was always painful waiting for your stuff to be brought from the back too. I remember getting a lot of Star Wars action figures and Lego from there.

[djsFlames]

Everything in the 90s felt more fun. Technology felt like a luxury cause it didn't dominate everything. Going to the movies felt like the best time ever.

Wasn't a kid for all of it but the 2000s were still a lot of fun. For those that enjoyed rock music, it was a good time obviously. Social media in particular was a much more enjoyable experience for reasons I can't really pin point (the fresh-ness of it?) but maybe because people didn't have that online etiquette yet to where we would filter everything and would simply communicate. I found gaming in general more fun cause it was more about substance than cutting edge visuals / realism and it was a lot cheaper and easier to play too.

The emergence and subsequent reliance on smartphones for a lot of things in the decade since, and the rapid expansion of popular apps aimed at addicting people by injecting them with dopamine for likes/views etc and the prevalence of advertising in everything has sucked a lot of fun out of things in general and become too large a part of every day life to where human connection has taken a hit. All these developers have mastered luring people into wasting time in exchange for a false sense of fulfillment. No need to mention how music has gone off a cliff.. With a slight improvement only in these past couple years.

[activeStick]

I loved going on car rides in the back seat with my mum and dad in the front. The various creeks from the car you'd hear depending on the turn my father would make or the bump the car would go over. And in the evening, the dark sky around us as my dad drove, trying to listen to Peter Maher's voice on QR77 doing the play by play and then in later years, 66CFR, over the voices of my parents talking to each other.

[Nufy]

Originally Posted by bob-loblaw

Every Tuesday my mom would pick up my sister and me from school and we'd go to Woodward's for $1.44 day. I'd always wind up getting some toy that I'd play with for a couple days and then never again.
After that we'd venture off to Consumers Distributing. That was always interesting browsing through the catalogue, picking something, and then find out it wasn't available. It was always painful waiting for your stuff to be brought from the back too. I remember getting a lot of Star Wars action figures and Lego from there.

I still have the baseball glove my parents bought me for my 8th birthday...

At Consumers Distributing.

Its in pretty good shape still. Hopefully I can give it to a grandkid some day...

[Buff]

MuchMusic. Now, I'll find myself just sitting and watching music videos on StingRay Retro, or whatever it is called (113 on Shaw) and remembering good times when I was a teenager and MuchMusic was the go to channel for me and my friends.

Sports cards, just before and even during the big sports card boom of the early 90s.

Skateboarding. At least for me it was. We didn't have skate parks here in Lethbridge, but two people on my street had built half-pipes, and I knew of three other places within a 15 minute skate that also built a half-pipe. Now we have skate parks, one is full of the rude and disrespectful teens because it his hidden out of place. The other is full of little kids on their scooters who have no peripheral vision and they can't see anybody else on the course so they cut everybody off.

Dirt hills! There was also a couple of dirt hills within a 5 minute bike ride from my house. We'd spend hours riding our bikes through the courses. I don't know how they were formed, but they were perfect for riding bikes on. We'd get into trouble there, but never be caught because there were never any adults around.

Street Hockey. Come home from school and go play street hockey. Every. Single. Day. Get bored of that? Go a couple blocks away and crash somebody else's street hockey game. We'd go to other neighbourhoods and challenge that street to a game. We were bad news to a couple of streets, and of course we had other streets that we wanted to avoid or hoped they wouldn't come to our game because we thought they were bad news.

Toys R' Us. It used to be set up so that you had to walk through every single aisle in order to get to the cashier. It was fun to go through and look at all the toys, although it was like a mad dash to get past the baby toys and the girls toys.

We had our own version of Online Shopping back then. People talked about Sears and Woodwards catalogs, but what about Consumers Distributing? You would look at their catalogs, dream about what you wanted, and then you would go to the store, fill out a card and they would either go to the back and bring it out to you, or they would order it and call you when it came in. I guess Amazon is much more effective to never have to leave the house but I also feel like the quality of stuff you bought back then was better.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Nufy

I still have the baseball glove my parents bought me for my 8th birthday...

At Consumers Distributing.

Its in pretty good shape still. Hopefully I can give it to a grandkid some day...

This explains so much about why you were such a terrible outfielder.

Use an Adult glove man....come on! You're letting down the team!

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by taco.vidal

Lots of fckers here seem like you are miserable. Sure adult life has responsibities but it also has many freedoms especiialy when you live in a country like Canada. I think people often dont realize how much control they have over their own lives. Often the things that are making you miserable are of your own choosing. You choose where you work, where you live, who you live with, what you do with your free time, etc. Yes, those decisions all have consequences but you have control over your life. Lots of people work jobs they hate, live in neighbourhoods they dont care for that give them long commutes, live with spouses they dont love, live in sexless relationships, have no free time or no spare money to do their hobbies. As a kid, you always tried to do what you wanted but usually your parents had some control over your time and you usually had limitied funds. As an adult, people seem to just give up and not even try to do the things they want or the things that make them happy.

Man, that's a bitter take on adult life. There's tons of stuff I enjoy now more as an adult than I did as a kid. I think you misinterpreted the tone of this thread. It's about things that you enjoyed as a kid that you find it less enjoyable now that you do it as an adult.

Like freezies and ring pops. They tasted awesome as a kid, but now as an adult, they actually taste artificial to me. Corn Pops and CT Crunch, however, still taste fantastic.

[Shin Pad]

As someone who is retired, fit and healthy, I don't miss much about the past. I'm happy with my life now - no stress, just enjoying life.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

That's just weird, the bra section was the first thing I looked at.

The guy living next door would sometimes give me his old Penthouse magazines