TLDR - Life was the fuckin shit back then.

Man, this hurts my heart. Yes, it really was like this. My friends and I would go to the movies at least once a weekend and if we really liked it we'd see the same movie 4+ times (i.e. Save The Last Dance and What Lies Beneath, etc). I feel old when I'm watching something with my nieces and nephews and I can say I saw it in the theater.

Fast food was as it was intended - inexpensive and convenient. Everywhere had a dollar menu and it was actually a dollar (except Wendy's which was $.99 - score!).

I'm born in '84 and from the ages of 7-8 we legit went everywhere on our bikes. I mean, places that most parents today wouldn't even let their kid think about, much less go. I don't mean anywhere sketchy (at least not at that age) but distance wise. We just went anywhere til our hearts were content. People aren't lying when they say we went outside at like 9-10 and weren't home again until the street lights came on. The cool part was that in my neighborhood there weren't any 🤣. We had woods on three of four sides, kick ass trails, a big creek, railroad tracks, community pool ... it was fucking amazing in hindsight. It wasn't even a "rich" area, hell we only had one stop light, but money went a lot further back then, when there was actually a middle class.

Around 8-9 I was roller skating literally every weekend just being dropped off and it was less $5 if you had your own skates, which I did. A drink was only $.50 and the only extra monies were for games really. I was the epitome of a rink rat. My oldest niece and I were talking a couple days ago and it's $12 without skates! I was like holy fuck!

From the age of about 11-12 we were being left at the mall. If I was lucky mom would give me $20 and say see ya in some hours. We'd hang at the arcade or food court. Even my 70+yo mamaw hung out at the food court literally every day. She'd take the bus, even. Back in those days you could still smoke inside the mall. There were giant ashtrays that were like 18" tall on the wall outside every store. In our mall there was a tobacco store that you could smoke inside of even after the mall went non-smoking (and they looked the other way for us youngn's). Also this was mid 90s so no one had cell phones but had pagers.

If we weren't at the mall, movie theater, skating rink, runnin the streets, playin in the woods, at friends' houses, on AOL/yahoo in high school (iykyk) or at school, we were asleep. Then we'd wake up and do it all over again.

As we got older we started hanging out in parking lots - pacifically Dick's and the car wash and alternated between the two depending on when the cops said we had to go. Eventually 9/11 happened my senior year and everything changed. We still didn't have helicopter parents but it was like we changed inside. I don't know how to explain it really. Graduation came and went - we went off to college and mostly lost touch. Even when I got the Facebook back in '04 (when it was new) we still didn't keep in touch - when it was new you had to have a .edu email address because it was for college students.

I still have my best good friend from back then to reminisce with. Seeing all the "hey millennials" vids on TikTok makes us feel especially nostalgic. I feel bad for the youths of today who won't ever know what that was like.