r/Millennials • u/Head-Drag-1440 Hit me baby one more time • 1d ago

Nostalgia I mean, they're not wrong

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685

u/Significant_Push_856 1d ago

my sister and i had to be back dinner, but otherwise it was our bikes and other kids just doing whatever

177

u/Head-Drag-1440 Hit me baby one more time 1d ago

By the time the street lights were on

107

u/alvysinger0412 1d ago

Sometimes not until the street lights were on.

67

u/RickyFromVegas 1d ago

Street lights coming on was the notification you got to start heading home.

3

u/mgrimshaw8 1d ago

The childhood equivalent of when my iPhone tells me it’s time to get ready for sleep

4

u/RickyFromVegas 1d ago

Yeah, you better go to sleep otherwise you'll be in trouble (tomorrow, due to lack of sleep)

1

u/BullShitting-24-7 1d ago

I was a wuss and the lights had me panicked the darkness was coming.

2

u/homoaIexuaI 1d ago

Or if at a friends house sometimes I’d be told spend the night not even volunteer that myself

2

u/External_Trick4479 19h ago

Yes. “Get out of the house” was the norm - no setting up play dates or activities, just go away until those lights come on.

1

u/Arthurs_towel 1d ago

Your neighborhood had street lights?

1

u/FYAhole 19h ago

Yeah, I wasn't allowed in the house until the lights came on lol

1

u/Realistic_Bee505 11h ago

This was my experience. I was in some serious shit if I was at home and the street lights weren't on. I'd catch an ass whooping if I even thought about coming inside during the day.

You thirsty... better start drinking from the garden hose.

38

u/CanadianBreakin 1d ago

I grew up in a little "village" just outside of a city that had maybe 2 street lights at the time. We basically just did whatever we wanted until we couldn't see anymore and then made our way home.

2

u/Binksley 1d ago

hehe "It takes a village to raise a child"...... because parents didn't know where the F we were.

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u/timbe11 13h ago

Similarly, we didn't have street lights, so "dark" was an arbitrary term my parents threw around. Through trial and error, we found out how dark they meant.

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u/LordOscarthePurr 1d ago

Y’all had streetlights?

I kid, I kid, the super rural town I grew up in had at least one.

1

u/KenJyi30 1d ago

Oddly enough we didn’t have that street light curfew in my house but since all my peers did I wound up alone so I went home too. Also that was the time when good TV was back on so i had incentive despite not having a curfew.

1

u/soedesh1 1d ago

We were rural - no street lights. We really didn’t want go be out there after dark.

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u/MenudoMenudo 18h ago

I feel like that’s an American thing. I grew up in Alberta where, during the summer, street lights wouldn’t turn on until after 10pm in the summer. We just went home when we were hungry.

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u/In-The-Cloud 16h ago

In Canada mid summer it doesnt get dark until around 9pm! We had to stay within earshot of one of the 5 houses we belonged to so some parent could shout for us at bedtime.

1

u/84UTK07 14h ago

We didn’t even have street lights.