“I felt a weird sort of sad, nostalgic pang.
You don’t hear that much anymore.”
It’s wild to think kids today will never share these core memories.
Here are a few that made me feel incredibly nostalgic.
“I was at work the other day when our department’s landline phone started ringing.
One of my coworkers (my age-ish, 30s) called out, ‘I’ll get it!’
I felt a weird sort of sad, nostalgic pang.
You don’t hear that much anymore.”
u/AussieDog87
“As kids, we would race to see who could answer the phone first.
Nowadays, I do everything possible to avoid answering my phone.”
u/mrglumdaddy
3.
“Downloading a song for two hours and finding out it’s a virus.”
“Waking up early on Saturday morning so you could watch the next episode of your favorite cartoon.”
u/Dr_Galio
5.
And then they say, ‘That depends, who’s calling?"
u/Lopsided_Platypus_51
7.
I watched that thing like an NBA draft."
“Driving to someplace new with an actual physical map.”
u/JimTheJerseyGuy
9.
“Going to the movie store.”
“Having to watch the nightly news with your parents because you only have one TV.”
u/Paparazzit23
11.
“Dial-up internet and AOL chat rooms.”
“Life without smartphones.”
u/Mountain_Ad938
“Before smartphones, there was no expectation for you to respond so fast and no location tracking.
You could just disappear for a bit and get back to them later.
Now the expectation is you just about always have your phone on you and are therefore reachable.”
u/DistinctPlantain2230
13.
“Being responsible for zero parental contact and simply needing to come home when the streetlights came on.”
u/inspiredguy40
15.
“Scheduling your television consumption around an ironclad TV schedule, pre-streaming and pre-TiVo/recording.
“The joy of going to school without social media.
I remember getting bullied in middle school and having a terrible time.
But all that could have been so much worse if smartphones and apps were a thing back then.
Kids today must be so stressed out just trying to tune it out.”
u/moenblast
17.
“Meeting family/friends at the gate at the airport instead of baggage claim or the curb.”
u/Infuryous
19.
20.“Exploration.
As kids, we played video games, but we also went outdoors, finding forest areas to investigate.
u/MyLandIsMyLand89
21.
“Developing a roll of film and all the pictures are bad.”
“Getting kicked off the internet because mom needs to make a call.”
u/gnomeybeard
23.
Kids today won’t ever experience that.”
“Snow on Christmas, at least most of the time.
It snows once or twice in December, and it melts in a day.
Twenty-five years ago, you were lucky if there wasn’t a blizzard on Halloween.”
u/Faust_8
25.
“Having a CD binder the size of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary for road trips.”
Note: Responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
