“Ha ha ha ha. You dumb bastard. It’s not a schooner… it’s a Sailboat”
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Does anyone else see this Wendy’s commercial and think to themselves for half a second ‘is that Cab? Nah, couldn’t be’
Could it?
My price estimate memory may have been accurate after all.
That’s very interesting. It’s one of the very early attacks on the LBS, where I think those bikes were priced higher.
This is perfect. Tool fans will appreciate.
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90s tech? A couple of misses in there, but nice try
Excuse me, but … weren’t The Linda Lindas in middle school, like … ten minutes ago?
They grow up SO FAST!!!
No stuff, but a walk down memory lane for those of us of a certain age.
The last few paragraphs sum it up.
If you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s drinking from the hose and disappearing until dark, you have something that can’t be replicated. Not because you were special, but because the conditions that created your childhood no longer exist. The neighborhoods aren’t the same. The expectations aren’t the same. The fear level isn’t the same.
You didn’t know at the time that you were part of the last generation to have this. You just thought that’s what childhood was. The realization comes later, usually when you watch your own kids or grandkids grow up inside something that looks like childhood but feels completely different.
It’s not that modern kids have it worse. They have it different. They’re safer in some ways, more prepared in others. But they’ll never know what it felt like to have a day that belonged entirely to them, with no adult knowing or caring where they were, free to succeed or fail on their own terms. That particular thing is gone.
The hardest thing to convey isn’t the freedom. It’s the trust. The assumption, built into every unsupervised hour, that you could handle it. That you didn’t need to be watched. That the world was yours to figure out.
That trust shaped something. It’s in the way you approach problems, the way you tolerate uncertainty, the way you don’t immediately look for someone to solve things for you. It’s not superiority. It’s just a different operating system, installed during a window that closed sometime in the 1980s and never reopened.
I think about my son, with his scheduled playdates and his tracked location and parents who always know where he is. He’s loved. He’s safe. He’s growing up in a world that’s trying very hard to protect him from everything. And I wonder if he’ll ever know what it felt like to be trusted the way we were trusted. Completely, carelessly, in a way that probably shouldn’t have worked but somehow did.
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The assumption, built into every unsupervised hour, that you could handle it. That you didn’t need to be watched. That the world was yours to figure out.
That trust shaped something. It’s in the way you approach problems, the way you tolerate uncertainty, the way you don’t immediately look for someone to solve things for you. It’s not superiority. It’s just a different operating system, installed during a window that closed sometime in the 1980s and never reopened.
This relates to something I shared at my mom’s funeral
Yeah, my mom & I weren’t the best, as I was the weirdo, but she was always there when I needed her
As I said, on her day, there were plenty of times when I was in a bind - late for a book report, or a science project, or some artwork I’d promised for someone else - and things weren’t working the way I’d planned
Mom would say “let’s just try this, and see what happens”
When I delivered that bullet point (my brother who went first stole all the others I’d written down), there were plenty of acknowledging nods, smiles, and some tears
Especially from D’Kid, who said afterwards “so you got ‘let’s try this…’ from Grandmom, and taught it to me”
Yep
That might be another aspect, too
Trust
You had Mom & Dad, but … could you really count on them?
I know that I couldn’t, so I/we (my brothers & I) always had to have a backup plan; especially as far as Dad was involved - he’s NOT gonna be there for you, in even the smallest things
Mom? She’s working two jobs b/c Dad’s alcoholism makes him unemployable
… don’t count on anyone to bail you out - if you fuck up, you’re on your own
Yup. Great band. My son and I are going to see them, in a few weeks, for the fourth time.
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Social Distortion playing in my back yard tonight.
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Patti, a girl I knew in HS, posted this
Patti: “Do you remember Pop Rocks?”
Rob: (hesitantly) “Yeah?”
Patti: “Do you know what would be funny?”
Rob: “What?”
Patti: “To put them in cat litter.”
You can see why I maintain these connections, decades afterwards
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That could be my three year old boy today. Same haircut, too.
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