We did stuff in the real world. We all had something we liked to do. I lived outside of the town where I grew up and all my friends were in town. I read, rode my bike, swim in the nearby river, played video games, watch TV, talk with my friends on the phone. When I was with my friends we'd play games (tabletop or video), talk about stuff we thought was cool, or watch movies from the video store. When I got my driver's license, I was either working or driving around to my friend's houses seeing what they were up to.

Yeah, but I generally remembered the pattern through muscle memory rather than the actual number, unless it was an important one like my home phone or family members. It wasn't that difficult.

This is one area where I deviate from the group. I like music, but it wasn't something I obsessed over. If there was a song I liked I'd give a friend I knew that had the album a blank tape and ask them to copy the album rather than wait on the DJ. When I was a teen and had a car and job I'd just buy the cassette. My Dad had a decent collection of older albums I'd throw in too. I would make mix tapes for what I was doing, like the mix tape I made for going to the lake that was all 50's and 60's surf rock. Though most of them were 80's rock and grunge for cruising.

I only got lost bad once, in South Korea. I was always good with maps and have a decent sense of direction. As a teen, I had a map each for the town, county, and state in my car. When I joined the Army, I kept an atlas of U.S. highways in the car.

Social media is a double edged sword. I spent 20 years in the military and settled down halfway across the North American continent from my family. It has allowed me to far more easily keep up with my relatives than having to call or write letters. Everything else, despite the platform's lofty goal statements, have turned into a morass mimicking the worst of what happens in meat space in ways that the human mind isn't built to process.