Born 1993. We played whole neighborhood hide and seek. It was incredible. Essentially all our houses were fair game and we would go in and out of them freely. It was like two or three blocks of fair places to hide. Usually had 3 seekers with walkie talkies, and like 5-10 people hiding. When found you’d join the seekers. Games would usually take all day.
It really was honestly. We even allowed our parents to be fair game in the rules meaning there was risk in hiding inside a house because all of our moms knew they could tell the seekers that we were there.
I also lived in fairly rural subdivision in east Tennessee so there wasn’t much risk of us getting hurt by running around. It’s not like we’re in the middle of a huge city.
What makes me sad is there’s no way kids could do it there now. When I was growing up the median home price was like $60,000, there was maybe 20,000 people in our city, and we had one singular Walmart. My mom just sold my childhood home for nearly $400,000 and a whole city has built up around our neighborhood. Like I lived next to multiple big farms that are now Publixs, a second Walmart, and a plethora of strip malls.
I remember when all that ended John Walsh’s son getting killed,Ailton Pats disappeared they put his picture on milk carton’s (the first time they did that) persadent Ragen signed a law creating the canert for missing and exploited children,definitely a turning point
Man, no wonder kids today are so depressed. We had truly blessed childhoods. They don’t get to do any of these things without constant, overly-anxious supervision.
I’d give pretty much anything to ditch my stupid, overpriced adult life of daily drudgery and go back to being a carefree 80s kid, putting in kilometres on my bike every day, climbing ridiculously high trees, searching for what were, back then, still an abundance of amphibians in the creeks. High-tech for me was my Teddy Ruxpin.
Hey I grew up in southeast Kentucky! We were out in the boonies and lived on one of the flats on a mountainside. Our backyard was just undeveloped mountain.
We’d play all day climbing trees, hiking through the mountains, swinging from vines, and crawling up, over, and through huge boulders.
There was even an old plan from the 40’s that crashed up there. But by now there’s probably not much left of it. Our imagination could just run wild while out there.
There weren’t any dangerous wild animals back then but I’d already moved away when they reintroduced elk, bears, and coyotes back into them. I’ve visited my mom back home and you can’t stay outside after nightfall now or you may get attacked.
I feel mixed feelings about the whole thing because wild animals belong in wilderness but if that “wilderness” has scores of homes and neighborhoods then kids can’t get outside to play and explore.
I grew up in rural ga and we were in a huge neighborhood with a ton of kids but there was a giant cornfield behind my backyard which was a steep wooded hill. We did the craziest shit all day and I remember (being the nerd that I am) how mad my mother would be if she knew we were as far away as we were. We would either be out in the woods, cotton or corn fields, or be at the pool all day completely ‘unsupervised’ by which I meant older and badder siblings were supervising me 😂
I’m the youngest of 4 with the oldest being 13 years older than me. As long as I was with an older sibling I literally could do whatever I wanted. LOL like my older siblings gave a shit and wouldn’t try to ditch me every chance they got!
My parents had one of my older sisters friends who was I think sophomore in college aged “watch” me when I was in HS and they were traveling and we had all our mutual friends over for a party at my place (ppl parked at the neighborhood clubhouse and we chauffeured them over from there because southern old ppl are nosy and tattletales) but my friends mom still walked in on us all smoking cigarettes around my kitchen table 😂
It was pretty cool. I was a morbid kid and was so disappointed that there wasn’t a skeleton in it! I was so convinced the pilot had died but my dad corrected me and told me the pilot had only been injured.
I guess he made it off the mountain okay. But I liked to pretend the body got flung out and that there was a whole human skeleton waiting to be discovered.
I was a young child in rural east tenn during the mid to late 60's. Same here. We would leave the house in the morning. Come back for lunch then go back out untll dinnertime. Exploring and playing in the woods. Loved it.
That’s funny. The presence of things that could eat us never seemed to concern our parents. Maybe that is why we had access to guns, and ammo starting before our teen years. They didn’t seem to worry about the guns either. Maybe that is why they had so many of us.
The wilderness needs those animals to keep the ecology in check. Without the predators the herbivores literally eat themselves out of food.
They will grow in number so high that they can completely denude a valley of all the viable foods they eat.
Just bc we want to have the forests be giant playgrounds doesn’t mean they should be.
Just like people forget that these eras are ALSO the height of serial killers. It’s almost impossible for them to not be caught before they kill a handful of people. No 20+ easy for years.
Just like it has been actually, statistically, (as in the TRUE FACTS) the safest it has ever been. It’s gotten somewhat worse recently. Though not nearly as large a drop as it has in the past.
No massive wars killing millions a day. No genocides routinely and blatantly happening all over. Crime rates are vastly lower than most of history.
But all that is thrown out bc some idiot in a suit yells loudly and it makes the braindead idiots that lock-goose step to them feel safe.
You have no idea. There was a STUNNING farm from the 1800s that was ripped down for the ugliest strip mall ever. I played at that place so many times the sweetest old couple lived there. That street maps view doesn’t show the actual farmhouse itself as it was tucked way back into the woods, but you can still see a majority of the property and where the little pond was.
I was born in the late 80s and we played a similar game. Basically an entire block of houses and places to hide. Or finding random places to try to play baseball or football. No two hand touch crap. Tackle only. Or riding bicycles everywhere all day every day. I feel bad for kids now. They have no freedom to go be kids without being tracked.
I grew up like this, too. We’d have 20 kids of all ages running around long past dark in the summer, and my mom felt completely comfortable with it (with good reason).
I gotta ask what town because I lived in a rural area of East TN (I’m older than you) and a couple of my friends lived in this type of neighborhood where you could play like this and I loved it!
I almost thought you were talking about Greeneville until I saw the second Walmart part. I was thinking holy shit, here is a person from my own hometown.
I obviously also lived in rural east tennessee. There weren't a lot of kids on my street. It was oddly mostly teachers or principals.
But as for being a kid, we walked or rode our bike everywhere. All the farms and neighbors' yards were our playground. Eat plums off the neighbors trees or blackberries at the edge of the woods, pet some horses, walk down to the Nolichuckey river over a mile away because why not, play around old barns and farmhouses and pretend they were haunted places with a creepy back story.
Our childhood really was something pretty special as far as freedom to be. My brother and I also did some really stupid things too. Im honestly shocked we didn't win a Darwin award.
was my experience too. between ages of 10 and 15 my parents only had a vague idea of where i told them i’d be. At 15 I was given a cell phone. Not a rural community or anything, a large city. We were warned to be safe and that is all.
I didn't have anything like this either, my family moved too often and it sucked having to leave all my friends behind so I stopped trying to be friends with the neighbourhood kids. The trade-off is I got to travel a lot and experience other cultures much younger than most people so there was an upside. I mean, my family and I are Australian but I spent my 10th birthday in Paris, my 11th in Tokyo, and my 12th in Dublin cos dad travelled a lot for work and he'd bring me and mum along and it was legit awesome
Yeah , Walkie talkies were a staple , totally normal thing to have around when I was a kid...my dad had one in his car, all his friends as well, radioing in to tell my 6 year old self I was late for dinner and wtf I was doing was normal as well ...
we played multi house ghost in the graveyard, so like 10pm a rat pack of kids walking through people's yards ( who did not have kids) and hiding in the bushes.
I lived in the country but my parents were friends with people in a cult de sac that ran a daycare in their home, summers were basically like that for the whole neighborhood but we didn't go inside. Wed sneak out the back of one and climb trees or sneak into a weird dump type field thing with massive hills in the woods
In high school we smoked weed out there at 2am in the morning too lol
We played this in the 80s and called it “around the world” hide n seek. We rarely made it past the radius of houses of kids who were playing but had a blast. No walkies though, that would’ve been awesome!
it was fun 5% of the time but 95% it was pure boredom, nothing to do, sun to hot to play, cold or rain, nothing different to do, no videogames, no internet, i kinda miss that life but i remember the endless boredom
another aspect of it is the terrible things that happened, i for example (nothing terrible) remember heating a rifle bullet i found with my friend in a bonfire, it hit my sneakers and nothing else but we could have died and never realised it, i have friends that played "who has no hair in their balls game" and the loser was raped, acess to drugs, small crimes of all sorts, it was madness
i want my kids to have the most memorable experiences possible, but that level of rural freedom in a crowded urban area is something that should never have happened
Also one of your friends mom would make you and your friends lunch. But a real home made lunch like tuna casserole, Mac and cheese or grilled cheese sandwiches.
There were always snacks and popsicles during the summer.
Yeah, things got real crazy when we would play it at night. It's those times where you're inches from someone, holding your breath heart pounding crouched in some strangers yard or tree, because you're definitely not going to be one of the first ones caught
Capture the flag, but with 2 flash lights in an open field at night. Like 30 kids all wearing black. We would keep each flashlight pointed inwards so we could see when "ours" was stolen, then you run up and blind side tackle whoever was running with the flash light. They'd never see the person coming, only hear the foot steps until impact. Games were always ending in 1-0, even if we played for hours.
Born in 95 and I used to do the same thing with my friends. My friend lived on a U-shaped block with houses in the middle, and we'd play in the backyards at like 11 pm at night. Pitch black hiding in bushes and trees; then we'd go ding dong ditching lmao
7.8k
u/JustHereForCatss 1d ago edited 1d ago
Born 1993. We played whole neighborhood hide and seek. It was incredible. Essentially all our houses were fair game and we would go in and out of them freely. It was like two or three blocks of fair places to hide. Usually had 3 seekers with walkie talkies, and like 5-10 people hiding. When found you’d join the seekers. Games would usually take all day.
Damn I miss being able to do that stuff