Things Gen X Women Did in the ’80s That Would Cause a Congressional Hearing Today

If you were a girl growing up in the ’80s, congratulations. We made it.

And when you really think about how we grew up, that feels like more of an accomplishment than it probably should.

There were no tracking devices, no cell phones, no Stanley cups full of carefully filtered water, and not nearly as much adult supervision as anyone would admit to today. Our parents basically opened the front door in the morning and released us into the neighborhood with instructions to be home when the streetlights came on.

That was the plan.

Nobody was checking our location. Nobody was texting, “Where are you?” every 20 minutes. If your mother wanted you, she stood on the front porch and yelled your name loud enough for three subdivisions to hear.

And somehow, somebody would find you and say, “Your mom is calling you.”

It was basically the original Find My Friends.

Looking back, our childhoods were fun, free and probably just dangerous enough that half of what we did would result in a congressional hearing today.

We Drank Out of the Garden Hose

This is one of those things younger generations hear and look at us like we’re describing life during the Great Depression.

Yes, we really drank out of the hose.

We’d spend hours outside riding bikes, climbing trees, playing kickball and wandering around doing things our parents knew absolutely nothing about. Eventually, somebody would get thirsty, and instead of going inside for a bottle of purified spring water with added electrolytes, we turned on the hose.

Of course, you had to let it run first because the first blast of water had been sitting inside a black rubber hose in the July sun and was approximately the temperature of soup.

Once it cooled down, though? Perfect.

Did it taste a little like metal and rubber?

Absolutely.

Did we care?

Not even a little.

Now I have a filtered water pitcher, bottled water in the refrigerator and a reusable cup that keeps ice frozen for eleven days.

Apparently, my standards have changed.

Cars Were Basically Moving Playrooms

Car safety in the ’80s was a little more… relaxed.

Yes, there were seat belts, but whether anyone actually used them seemed to depend on how many people were crammed into the car.

If there were too many kids in the back seat, someone squeezed in the middle. If there were still too many, somebody ended up sitting on somebody else’s lab.

And if your family had a station wagon, you hit the jackpot.

You could ride all the way in the back facing the cars behind you, waving at strangers like you were in a parade. Sometimes kids even stretched across that little ledge under the back window, which, looking back, was less of a seating arrangement and more of a physics experiment.

Nobody was asking, “Is everyone properly restrained?”

It was more like, “Everybody in?”

Yep.

“Okay, let’s go.”

Today there would be police, citations and probably a six-part Netflix documentary.

Bike Helmets Were Apparently for Professional Athletes

I do not remember owning a bike helmet.

I don’t remember my friends owning bike helmets either.

We rode everywhere. Down hills. Through gravel. Over homemade ramps built by neighborhood boys who had absolutely no engineering qualifications.

And we did it all with our heads completely unprotected.

If you crashed, the first thing you did was look around to see if anyone saw you. Then you checked for blood.

If there wasn’t much blood, you got back on the bike.

If there was a lot of blood, somebody’s mom came outside with Bactine.

And if you know, you know.

“It might sting a little.”

A little?

Ma’am, my entire leg is on fire.

Forget the bike accident. I’m now fighting for my life because somebody sprayed Bactine directly into an open wound.

We Were Left Home Alone and Nobody Thought This Was Strange

A lot of Gen X kids were latchkey kids. We came home from school, let ourselves into the house and just… lived there alone for a while.

Maybe there was a note on the counter.

“Snack in the fridge. Do your homework. Don’t answer the door.”

That was our security system.

We made food. We watched TV. We fought with our siblings. Some of us used the stove.

There might have been an emergency number written beside the phone, but usually the emergency plan was simply:

Call Grandma.

And none of this felt unusual.

Today, parents can get an alert when their kid leaves school, arrives home or apparently breathes near a Starbucks.

We were home alone making grilled cheese over an open flame.

We Put Baby Oil on Our Bodies and Sat in the Sun

Now this one really does deserve a congressional subcommittee.

Somewhere in the ’70s, women collectively decided that sunscreen was for people who didn’t want a tan.

We wanted a tan.

Actually, we wanted to look like we had just returned from six months in the Caribbean, even if we had spent the entire summer in somebody’s backyard.

So we used baby oil.

Some people added iodine.

Some people used those reflective foil things to direct even more sunlight onto their faces, because apparently the actual sun was not working fast enough.

If sunscreen showed up at all, it was something like SPF 4.

Four.

At that point, just hold up a piece of notebook paper.

Now we’re all buying retinol, vitamin C serum, moisturizers, eye creams and products with ingredients we can’t pronounce, trying to undo the summer of 1980.

Dermatologists everywhere should probably send our generation a thank-you note.

Our Playgrounds Were Built to Test Survival Skills

Have you seen playgrounds today?

Soft surfaces. Rounded edges. Safety features.

Lovely.

Our playgrounds were made out of metal and placed directly over asphalt.

The metal slide would sit in the July sun until it reached approximately the same temperature as the surface of Mercury, and then we’d climb right up and go down it in shorts.

You only made that mistake once.

And the merry-go-round?

Absolutely unhinged.

One group of kids would run around it as fast as humanly possible while everyone else hung on for dear life.

Eventually, someone flew off.

Did we stop?

No.

We laughed and yelled, “Are you okay?”

If they said yes, the ride continued.

Apparently our entire childhood safety policy was based on whether the injured person could still speak.

Our Parents Didn’t Know Where We Were, But We Didn’t Know Where They Were Either

People joke all the time that Gen X parents had no idea where their kids were.

True.

But in fairness, we didn’t know where our parents were either.

Dad was “at work.”

Mom was “running errands.”

That was enough information.

Nobody needed an itinerary.

If you wanted to find your friends, you went outside and looked for bikes in somebody’s yard. Or you knocked on the front door and asked, “Can Jennifer come out?”

That was it.

No playdate.

No parents comparing calendars.

No twelve-message text chain about pickup times and snacks.

Jennifer came outside, and off you went.

I’m not saying everything was better then.

But there was definitely less paperwork.

Calling Your Friend Was an Act of Courage

Remember when you had to call someone’s house?

Not their phone.

Their HOUSE.

You dialed the number and had absolutely no idea who was going to answer.

Maybe your friend.

Maybe her mother.

Maybe her father.

Maybe her older brother who thought he was hilarious and would torture you for three full minutes before finally handing over the phone.

You just had to take your chances.

“Hi, Mrs. Thompson. Is Lisa there?”

We were basically making cold calls at age eleven.

And yet now, when my phone rings unexpectedly, I stare at it like, “Why would someone DO this to me?”

There Was One Phone for the Whole Family

One phone.

Everybody shared it.

Usually it was attached to the kitchen wall, although some families had one of those extra-long cords that could stretch halfway across the house.

We thought that gave us privacy.

It did not.

You’d be in the middle of a deeply important teenage conversation when suddenly your mother would yell, “You’ve been on that phone for an hour!”

Or worse, someone would quietly pick up another receiver.

You could hear them breathing.

“DAD. HANG UP.”

Privacy was not a right.

It was something we were desperately trying to invent.

And if somebody was expecting a call?

Forget it.

The phone became government property.

We Used Enough Aqua Net to Change Weather Patterns

The hair in the ’80s was magnificent.

Completely ridiculous, but magnificent.

Nobody wanted flat hair. Flat hair meant you had given up.

You teased it, sprayed it, teased it some more and sprayed it again until your bangs were standing three or four inches above your forehead.

Aqua Net was less of a hairspray and more of a building material.

Once that hair was finished, it wasn’t moving.

Wind? No.

Humidity? No.

Natural disaster?

Probably still no.

There were bathrooms where you could practically see the hairspray hanging in the air, and yet nobody thought, “Maybe we should open a window.”

We just kept spraying.

Beauty required commitment.

And apparently very strong lungs.

Smoking and Non-Smoking Were Separated by a Fern

If you grew up in the ’80s, cigarette smoke was everywhere.

Restaurants. Cars. Malls. Family gatherings. Even airplanes for part of the decade.

Restaurants had smoking and non-smoking sections, which sounds reasonable until you remember the sections were often separated by nothing more than a waist-high partition and a decorative plant.

Apparently that fern had a very important job.

You could be sitting in the non-smoking section eating chicken fingers while six feet away someone was smoking a cigarette with their coffee.

Nobody even looked up.

It was just Tuesday.

We Ate Food Without Conducting an Investigation First

Our food was colorful.

And not “fresh berries” colorful.

I mean bright blue, electric red and a shade of orange that does not occur anywhere in nature.

We drank Kool-Aid. We ate Pop-Tarts. We ate fruit snacks that I’m fairly certain never met an actual piece of fruit.

Lunch could be bologna, American cheese, chips, a Little Debbie cake and something sugary to drink.

Nobody checked macros.

Nobody asked if it was organic.

Nobody talked about seed oils.

We ate the snack and moved on with our lives.

Then we went outside and ran around for five hours.

I’m not saying this was nutritionally sound.

I’m just saying nobody made a TikTok about it.

The Diet Culture Was No Joke

This is one of those memories that’s funny right up until it isn’t.

Gen X women grew up during an era when being thin was treated like a full-time job.

Diet commercials were everywhere. Magazines constantly told women how to lose five pounds, ten pounds, dress thinner, eat less and somehow make themselves smaller.

Everything was low-fat.

We heard women complain about their bodies constantly, and a lot of us started doing the same thing before we were even old enough to understand why.

Now here we are in midlife with bodies that have gotten us through pregnancies, careers, illnesses, heartbreak, menopause, losses, celebrations and decades of living.

And maybe one of the best parts of getting older is finally being able to look back and think, “Wow. They really did a number on us.”

I spent enough years worrying about bread.

I’m eating it now.

Pass the butter.

We Had Questions and Sometimes We Just Never Got the Answer

Imagine this.

You wonder about something.

And you don’t immediately look it up.

That was our life.

There was no Google.

If you wanted to know who that actor was in a movie, you asked someone. If they didn’t know, that might be the end of it.

Maybe you looked it up in an encyclopedia.

The actual encyclopedia.

A whole shelf of books that your parents probably bought from a traveling salesman in 1979.

You could spend half an hour trying to find an answer and still come away knowing absolutely nothing.

And weirdly, we survived that too.

Sometimes not knowing something was just… allowed.

We Took Pictures and Then Waited Weeks to Find Out If They Were Terrible

You had 24 pictures on a roll.

Maybe 36 if you were feeling fancy.

That was it.

You didn’t take 47 pictures of the same pose and choose the one where everyone looked the thinnest.

You took one.

Maybe two.

Then you waited until the roll was finished, dropped it off at the drugstore and came back days later to see what you got.

Half the pictures had red eyes.

Someone was blinking.

Someone’s thumb was over the lens.

The lighting was terrible.

And we kept them all.

Those were the memories.

There was something kind of nice about not expecting every moment of your life to look perfect.

Although I could have done without photographic evidence of some of my hairstyles.

You Did Not Tell Your Mother You Were Bored

This was a rookie mistake.

“I’m bored.”

Every Gen X kid learned not to say those words.

Because your mother’s response was never, “Let’s find you something fun to do.”

It was more like, “Oh, you’re bored? Great. I have laundry that needs folding.”

Suddenly you discovered you were not bored at all.

You had interests.

You had dreams.

You had somewhere else to be.

So we went outside. We stared at the ceiling. We called a friend. We made up games.

Sometimes we did absolutely nothing.

And maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

We Disappeared for Hours and Somehow Found Our Way Back

This may be the biggest difference between childhood then and childhood now.

We had a lot of freedom.

Maybe too much sometimes.

We rode bikes all over the place. We went through the woods. We built forts. We walked to stores. We argued with friends and figured out how to work it out without an adult stepping in.

We made decisions.

Some were good.

Some were spectacularly stupid.

And then we lived with the consequences.

There was something valuable in having room to figure things out for ourselves.

There was also something extremely valuable about growing up before every stupid thing we did could be filmed and posted online.

Of all the gifts Gen X received, that might be the greatest.

And Now Somehow We’re the Responsible Adults

This is the plot twist I still haven’t adjusted to.

We’re the grown-ups.

We schedule doctor appointments, wear sunscreen, read labels and remind younger people to drink water.

Some of us have adult children.

Some of us have grandchildren.

Most of us own reading glasses and can never find them.

And a large percentage of us now make some sort of involuntary noise when getting up from the couch.

Yet somewhere inside, we’re still those girls riding our bikes through the neighborhood with feathered hair, no helmet, no phone and absolutely no idea where our mother was.

Was everything better back then?

No.

Plenty of things needed to change.

But there was something wonderful about it too.

We had freedom. We were resourceful. We entertained ourselves. We weren’t constantly connected or photographed or tracked.

Our childhood was a little messy, a little sunburned, occasionally questionable and completely unforgettable.

So here’s to the Gen X women.

We drank from garden hoses, survived metal playground equipment, cooked ourselves in baby oil and held our hairstyles together with enough Aqua Net to survive a hurricane.

We had one phone for the whole family.

Nobody knew where we were half the time.

And almost none of our bad decisions exist on video.

That last one alone deserves a margarita.

We turned out pretty well.

Mostly.

Cheers, Gen X. We earned this one. Peace, Love & Margaritas!