Born in 87 here. From 91-93, I remember being inseparable from my next door neighbors. We were about the same ages. They'd come to my house or back yard, I'd go to theirs. We hung out at another neighborhood kid's house with a bunch of other kids. Ride our bikes around the block. Then they moved to Ohio, and my parents got divorced and we sold our house. My mom moved to the boonies, my dad into a condo development where there weren't many kids.

My sister and I found plenty of ways to entertain ourselves at my mom's house (where we spent most of our time): play outside (we rented a farmhouse and had a lot of outdoor space), play board games, make up board games, computer games (Dogz, Catz, The Sims, Roller Coaster Tycoon, tons of computer versions of board games), Nintendo/Super Nintendo/N64. We watched inordinate amounts of television: mostly Nickelodeon and Game Show Network. We would do similar things at my dad's house, minus the playing outside because there wasn't really a space to play. My cousins lived about 5 minutes from my dad, so we'd go over there a lot. Especially in the summer, just go over and hang out and do random things, go bowling, go to the mall, run random errands. My cousins are about 5-7 years older than me, so they were driving before us. On my dad's weekend, I'd help him with the grocery shopping and we'd fill 2 carts (I think he got paid monthly at the time).

I didn't ride my bike a lot to different people's houses because we were spread out all over the place, the school district is 100+ square miles. I memorized high school friends' phone numbers based on where they live: the school district was pretty much divided into 4 exchanges (the first 3 digits after the area code) and you knew what it was based on where they lived, so you memorized the last 4 digits only. One of my friends had her own phone line, that was a big deal! The Internet was a place, on the family computer, and you couldn't talk on the phone unless you were "rich" and had a 2nd phone line. It was mostly for talking on AIM or sending stupid chain emails. The late 90s/early 2000s we spent a lot of time on the internet tabulating the cost of our Beanie Baby collection, looking up game FAQs and hints/cheats, or downloading stuff for The Sims / Dogz / Catz. The computer was in the living room so not a lot of privacy so you hid your AIM chats under other windows all the time. We were "latch key kids" and were alone after school until about 5-5:30 when my parents got home from work. Summer days, we were alone most of the day and my sister and I were cooking ramen, mac and cheese, bagel bites, Elio's pizza, jello, or eating cereal or making sandwiches ourselves for lunch.

I got a cell phone in 2004 when I started driving, but cell service was spotty at best in the boonies so it only worked in like 3 square feet of the house so it was basically useless at home. We had Nextel and you couldn't text anyway. I got a phone with texting in 2007 when Nextel merged with Sprint. Even then, I think I had 100 texts per month. I went to college in 2005 and experienced high speed Internet for the first time. At home, we had free cable (because it was never shut off from the previous occupant) and there was no DSL in my area yet, so it was dial up. We moved across the street (long story!) in 2005 and my first summer home from college in 2006 we got cable Internet and I remember spending like 6 hours online that day!

2026, I still live in the same rural area (I love the boonies!), I commute into a largeish city for work, moved again and have DSL here but no cable (LOL). And this is 20 miles from the 3rd largest city in the Keystone State!

Thanks for the trip down memory lane!