"We'd go to the mall for a few hours, grab something to eat, walk across the street to the theater and see a movie, then have someone pick us up or take us to late-night bowling or roller skating. We were hardly home!"
Recently, members of the BuzzFeed Community shared how they had fun before the internet, and the responses were both wholesome and VERY nostalgic! So nostalgic, in fact, that they inspired even more people to share their experiences. Here are some of the best responses:
1. "Sitting by the radio for hours to wait for the ONE song I wanted to record on a cassette so I could listen to it on repeat. Hanging out at a bowling alley every Friday night to not even bowl (because no one had money) but just drink pop and hang out at the tables and cause a ruckus."
Shanina / Getty Images/iStockphoto
—tundra28
2. "Cosmic bowling, followed by Denny's until 1 or 2 a.m.! Or, because gas was so cheap, we'd just drive around for hours with the windows down, blasting the radio."
Fotografia Inc. / Getty Images
—karileah143
3. "I have I think 18 cousins on my mom's side alone, so we spent summers outside in our grandma's yard just going nuts. Wiffleball, kickball, frisbee, made-up games, picking cherry tomatoes and green beans from the garden, and picking honeysuckles and berries off bushes by the fence. On days we had to stay inside, there were a few board games we could play, but we mostly liked playing different versions of the alphabet game, or playing restaurant where we drew up all the menus ourselves...just like basic '90s kid stuff."
Maskot / Getty Images/Maskot
—purpletruck35
4. "Our greatest games included lawn ornament swaps where we’d find adjacent yards with lawn ornaments and switch them around, getting free pizzas by ordering Domino's then running the two blocks to the train tracks and completing the circuit so the lights would flash and the arms would go down, making the pizza delivery over 30 minutes, and the most fun one: there would be 5-6 of us walking down the street, we’d see a cop and just scatter in different directions. Inevitably, we would be chased because, obviously, kids who run are up to something. And we were. We were up to screwing with them because why not?"
Jena Ardell / Getty Images
—trishmcdermott
5. "I was a '70s kid, '80s teen. Lots of hanging out at the library reading everything, puzzle books, messing around at the park, reading the newspaper (comics! sports stats!), partying, going to concerts and plays, and honestly watching way too much TV (highlighting the TV Guide every week)."
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—shelleye
6. "My friend and I (and the three younger boys who lived next door to her) would spend every day in the woods around our subdivision. Our subdivision had been built on an old, ruined monastery, so we found a lot of religious paraphernalia (statues of angels, vials of holy water, crosses, etc.) but we liked finding animal bones. Further away was a river but going there meant dealing with a gang of wild turkeys. Their territory was an old rusted car, and they hated us getting near it. So we'd go there to pay our respects to our turkey lords but otherwise leave them alone."
Pekic / Getty Images
—lacjiba
7. "We would walk up and down this long downtown street that runs through three towns (including my hometown) and we would pop into stores, run into other friends, and flirt with boys we would meet, lol. And you could get away with your parents not really knowing where you were — all I had to do was have a quarter and I would call my mom from any random payphone to 'check in.'"
Jena Ardell / Getty Images
—cute-as-ducks419
8. "My best friend and I lived about two miles apart, so we'd call each other and agree on a time to start walking and eventually meet somewhere in the middle and figure out plans from there. We kept ourselves busy with stupid photo shoots on disposable cameras (and then wait a WEEK for the results), or if we were being really fancy, we'd beg her parents to drive us to Applebee's so we could go flirt with the cute boys that worked there. We explored vintage and thrift shops, once went horseback riding with some random kids we met, and countless other things our parents had zero idea we were doing. What a time to be alive!"
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—andreau
9. "One night in high school, my buddies and I bought a bunch of $1 tubs of cotton candy at Walmart and were eating them in the little park oval in the middle of our town. We saw a cop car drive by and dove under the benches like we would get caught for doing something illegal? Totally sober, just eating cotton candy at 1 a.m. in the old colonial village town park."
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—deutschenheimer
10. "The summer was all about the public pool. I spent hours there with my friends every day, picking up diving sticks, playing hide and seek, having handstand competitions, learning flips, eating at the snack shack, and playing tetherball."
Jena Ardell / Getty Images
—lizk41ced1621
11. "During the day, there would always be a basketball game, baseball game, or football game being played somewhere in my small town. If there wasn’t, there was always riding bikes around the neighborhood or walking along the railroad tracks catching frogs. Then, at night, we would usually play hide-and-seek on our block until everyone had to go in when their parents yelled out the front door for them to come home."
Jena Ardell / Getty Images
—blueshield54
12. "I am in my late 60s, so we didn’t have internet or computers. After school, we would ride bikes and play in the canyons around our house. Lots of us would go down the canyon when it was raining and climb up the hillsides and go mud sliding all the way down to the bottom. We'd spend the whole afternoon doing that, it was a blast. We would go to the movies on Fridays, sometimes we would go to Ferrall's Ice Cream Parlor to eat ice cream and hang out."
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—awfulmeat26
13. "I had a cool neighborhood of over 10 kids. We would play ‘kick the can’ and touch football, riding our bikes for endless miles."
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—lisas4bb382393
14. "There were a lot of kids growing up in Sotel, California, a small neighborhood in West Los Angeles. When we were young, we’d hang out at the beach all summer, riding bikes, mopeds, or rollerblading. As we got older and had cars, we would meet up at the local gas station and jump into cars and go anywhere from the beaches, to Sunset Boulevard, to the Hollywood Hills. Lots of wild fun. Got into some trouble but I wouldn’t change it for the world."
Jena Ardell / Getty Images
—savoryorca28
15. "We had dial-up when I was a kid, but we barely used it because it was so slow. I lived in Florida, so we did lots of swimming. By high school, we had real internet but spent most of our time hanging out at the local Sonic in town or at someone’s kitchen table. On our wilder nights, we would go to Walmart and dig around for the best stuff in the $5 bins, or we’d play hide and seek in the store (which I’m now sure the employees hated)."
Jena Ardell / Getty Images
—runner1399
16. "As a teen in the mid-late 90s, the 'strip' of my small town was bumper-to-bumper traffic on Friday and Saturday nights! Every vehicle full of teenagers, just riding around town from a gas station at the city limits to the Dairy Queen and back! And only a few people had car phones at the time, so if u wanted to talk to someone in another vehicle, you would flash your lights or pump your brakes at their car to get their attention to pull over. Now, it's basically a ghost town after dark…gas being expensive doesn’t help matters either! Kinda sad, as some of my fondest memories were made just riding the strip."
Jerome Tisne / Getty Images
—georgiajaymes
17. "Before malls and rollerblading, I remember one local skating rink. Big nights were Friday and Saturday. Our parents would drop us off."
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—grumpydaredevil93
18. "Magazines, circling things in clothes catalogs, like Delia’s and J. Crew, and waiting six weeks for them to arrive. Fashion and brands weren’t available for kids who didn’t live in a big city. I talked to my friends on the landline for hours a day and memorized their numbers. I still know them as a 39-year-old."
Catherine Mcqueen / Getty Images
—princesscansuelabananahammock
19. "My teen years were like a study in geek chic. Nintendo while consuming mass quantities of Mountain Dew and Little Caesar’s; spending hours at the arcade in the basement of the mall; seeing the latest sci-fi movies and sneaking in snacks (I still have my ticket stubs from Stargate and Independence Day!); gathering at a friend’s house to watch Deep Space Nine or Voyager; playing Magic the Gathering until the wee hours of the morning; riding my bike EVERYWHERE. The internet is a good thing, for the most part, but I think kids are really missing out when it comes to childhood."
Imgorthand / Getty Images
—awkwardsmoothie20
20. "We would sit on the deck all night in high school with cigarettes, Diet Coke, and a package of Oreos. And let’s not forget, chili cheese Fritos! We would talk about everything and nothing. Also, a group of about 10 girls would get into this huge mud fight in the local lake they drained for electricity purposes in the winter. So fun, but so cold!"
Bernd Vogel / Getty Images
—bougielegend71
21. "We'd go to the mall for a few hours, grab something to eat, walk across the street to the theater and see a movie, then have someone pick us up or take us to late-night bowling or roller skating. We were hardly home!"
Kiwis / Getty Images
—friesfriesfries
How did you pass the time as a kid/teen before the internet? Share your story in the comments! Or, fill out this anonymous form. Your response could be featured in a future BuzzFeed Community post.
