As kids growing up in the 80s in New Jersey, we did it a bit differently than kids do it today. Now, first, this isn’t a ‘get off my lawn’ post, but more of just explaining how things were in a time that time has pretty much been forgotten.
Life in New Jersey and America has changed in the past 30-40 years. It always does. As kids in the 80s, we thought, like kids today, that things are never going to change, and they’ll always be the same, no matter what happens.
Except for the Rubix Cube
Gone are the parachute pants, neon leg warmers, big hair, mullets (in most areas), BMX tracks, and Cabbage Patch Kids
Here are things we did in the 80s that can’t, shouldn’t or wouldn’t be done today:
7 Digit Phone Numbers
Unless you were calling somebody out of your area code, you used to just be able to pick up a phone and dial 7 digits. You also had to memorize your friends’ numbers or carry around a “little black book
Little black books came with some inherent problems we can go into in its own article. Yah, guys, you know what we mean.
Now, you have to dial the area code for all phone calls, but the good thing is you just have to press one button to do it unless you’re still one of those 80s kids still holding on to their flip phone.
The dreaded rotary dial. For some reason, many of our parents kept rotary dial phones long after push-button phones were mainstream.
New Jersey had two area codes, 201 and 609. Then came 908, 732 and the floodgates soon opened.
Here’s another 80s phone tidbit. When you moved homes, you lost your phone number and had to get a new one. Oh, the horror! In the 80s there was no caller ID, of course and when the phone rang, you had no idea who it was…and everyone used to rush to the phone to be the first to answer it.
Today, we do the opposite, we usually let the phone ring and don’t want to answer it.
Riding in the Back of a Pickup Truck
Sure, it’s done today in casual environments, in parks, at the beach, etc., but back in the 80s, it was done on the highway, the neighborhood roads, and pretty much everywhere you need to fit a bunch of people into the back of a pickup truck to get to the beach, a concert, a movie, whatever.
Now, riding in the back of a pickup truck can result in a rather large fine and points on your license unless you live in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Those states have no laws against riding in the back of a pickup truck.
We all made it through alive.
Supermarket Black Lists
This next one is right out of how to trigger the politically correct. It wasn’t uncommon to go to a supermarket checkout in the 80s and see a large sign at the cash register that read “Do Not Accept Checks From These People”, with a long list of local deadbeats who habitually bounced checks at the store. On top of that, there was also a credit card book in many stores with a list of people who passed bad credit cards since it was all done manually back then. Today, this public shaming would not sit with the modern liberal left.
Knocking on a Stranger’s Door and Asking to Use Their Phone
In a time before cell phones and in areas without pay phones, if you had an emergency and needed to make a phone call, your only option was just to knock on a random door and ask to use your phone. This was a much more acceptable thing to do in the 60s and 70s but by the 80s it was still happening; you just had to be more selective in predetermining which house was the one without the mass murderer or pedophile before knocking. That can be done by looking at the vehicle in their driveway, how well-manicured the front garden was, and of course, a quick sneak peek into the family room window before knocking.
Yes, profiling was a completely legitimate form of investigation required back in the 80s.
Imagine if somebody knocked on your door in the middle of the night asking to use your phone. Talk about a time warp.
Having Your Kids Buy Your Cigarettes
It was totally acceptable to send your child, even those under 10, to the corner store to grab you a few packs of smokes, a gallon of milk, and a few lottery tickets.
No questions were asked, and it was not frowned upon by anyone. Regardless of how old you are, you’re usually asked for ID to buy cigarettes. In the 80s there were also cigarette vending machines and it was nothing at the bowling alley to send your kids with a couple of dollars to get you a fresh pack of smokes from the cigarette vending machines. At the same time, you bowl yourself into mediocrity every Friday and Saturday night.
Smoking and Drinking in School and Work
The hallway near the teacher’s lounge was the one most students dreaded walking by.
If luck wasn’t on your side, as you passed, the door would open, and the stench of air saturated with a thick cloud of Camels, Marlboros, and Chesterfields would ooze out of the lounge like mustard gas through the trenches of a World War I battlefield.
We only imagined the levels of debauchery and bad decisions being made behind those closed doors.
It was also known that booze often flowed freely in the teacher’s lounge. Some teachers even kept a flask in their top drawers for a between-class swig.
You can’t really blame them, can you?
On the work front, smoking in your office was not just normal; there was absolutely nothing at all wrong with it. Even into the 90s many businesses permitted smoking in the office and at your desk. Today, smoking is not only frowned upon inside schools and office buildings, it’s often relegated to one small spot far removed from humanity in the form of the “designated smoking area”.
It was also common to smoke on airplanes and in hospitals in the early 80s. You could also smoke on planes.
In reality there was no real difference between smoking and non-smoking areas since the second hand smoke dominated the room no matter where you were.
Just Showing Up at a Friend’s House
If you were sitting at home bored with nothing to do, it was an acceptable social practice just to get up and go to your friend’s house, knock on the door, and see what happens. Whether you ended up going inside and hanging out for the day watching tv, playing games or ending up going on some outdoor journey that ended in a few scrapes, bumps, and bruises, it was how things got done as a kid in the 80s. There were no playdates or organized activities by parents and their kids. In the 80s, it all just happened on the fly, with no pre-planning and no real purpose.
Oh, and there were definitely no playdates.
Let Your Kids Freely Roam the Neighborhood, Screaming their Names at Dinnertime
So in some areas, sure, kids still play outside, but let’s face it. If it was under 100 degrees, it wasn’t a torrential downpour, or less than twelve inches of snow were on the ground; your parents definitely weren’t letting you sit on the couch and do nothing.
They would force their kids outside and, in many cases, hope they didn’t come home until the street lights came on…and for your sake, if you weren’t home within a few minutes of the street lights coming on, you better be prepared (see spanking your children below).
The evening cattle call was commonplace in most neighborhoods in the 80s as kids forgot mom was home cooking dinner. The neighborhood screams started each night around 5 or 6 p.m. “Keeeevinn!”, “Jennnifffer”, “Richhhaaard!” Names rang through the neighborhood as children ran from the woods or front lawn they were playing in to get home before their mother crossed the threshold of a friendly reminder to a blatant disregard for her authority (again, see spanking your kids below).
Coming home as a kid in the 80s was a fine line. If you came home too early, your mother would give you the inquisition about why you’re home so soon…too late and, well, we all know what happened in that scenario.
And ya, let’s talk about the garden hose. We not only went out and played on hot summer days, we were exiled by our parents. Not allowed to go in and out of the house all day long to track up the house with dirt and let the airconditioned air out.
There’s a big thing on the internet about drinking out of the garden hose these days. Ya, we did it. It wasn’t by choice initially, it was by necessity. When you’re banished from your home until dark, you either drank out of the hose or stroked out from dehydration.
We eventually just got used to it and accepted it. We didn’t moan, whine or call the police on our parents.
Politically Incorrect Halloween Costumes
In the 80s pushing the limits on Halloween costumes was nothing out of the ordinary. That’s why so many middle-aged 80s kids today are getting themselves in trouble with their 80s costumes.
Blackface wasn’t frowned upon in the 80s. Neither was pushing racial, sexual, and provocative themes in Halloween costumes. Many Halloween costumes in the 80s, if wornk today, could get you into a bit of trouble, maybe losing your job, or worse, ending with your arrest for a hate crime.
Before we finish, check out our latest feature, 10 Halloween Costumes that will trigger your woke neighbors on Halloween
Hitchhiking
By the time the 80s ended and we became more aware that every other driver on a highway was seeking their next victim to rape or cannibalize, hitchhiking started going out of style.
At the start of the decade, for many, hitchhiking was your primary source of travel, especially in rural communities with no public transportation. As the decade rolled on, hitchhikers started becoming more suspicious of motorists and motorists started becoming more suspicious of hitchhikers. You can probably blame Hollywood for that for movies like The Hitcher and the HBO series The Hitchhiker.
Both aired in the mid-80s and most likely contributed to the downfall of hitchhiking in America.
Spanking your children in public
Many would argue that the moratorium on spanking your children imposed in the late 1990s has brought about the downfall of American civilization, but in the 80s, a public display of parental ass-whooping was commonplace. Nobody stared and gawked. Nobody called child services.
In fact, if you were in the supermarket with your parents and one of your peers was getting whooped in the aisle, your parents would react by telling you that’s what you have coming if you get out of line one more time. The two parents would then nod at each other in approval while passing.
Nobody judged. In fact, sometimes parents would give each other tips on how to discipline their unruly kids better. As a child, you never wanted to be on the wrong side of a public spanking, especially if your friends were around at the time. In America, disciplining children is something you do behind closed doors and with caution to make sure word doesn’t get out that you’re trying to raise respectful kids who know the difference between right and wrong. Today, some of the spankings we received could land parents in jail and lead to lengthy investigations by state child services.
That pretty much sums up 80s lifestyle…so next time you wonder why Gen X is the way we are, now you know.
Title Photo by Eric Nopanen on Unsplash