Did you grow up in the 80s and 90s? Remember we are…
... played gumtwist, hide-and-seek, between two fires, rode rollerblades, spun a hula hoop, played with plastic guns, drew on the asphalt...
They let us play all day long, on one condition - to come back for lunch or dinner, or to be home as soon as it gets dark.
We often asked our parents to spread a piece of bread for us instead of lunch, which we ate with dirty hands, but no one bothered.
We rode bicycles, played in the sandbox, threw marbles... We played in yards, on the street, in nature, not in front of the computer.
We fell, got hurt, broke bones, lost a tooth, but there were never any complaints. It was no one else's fault. Only us, and because of that we sometimes got "one educational" after the last one, even though we were not guilty of anything.
We went to a friend's house by bike or on foot, rang the doorbell, or simply walked in unannounced. The house door was not locked, even at night we could return home without fear.
We collected badges, napkins, figures from chewing gum, Animal Kingdom, figurines from Kinder eggs, Pez candies, chocolate wrappers, which we then exchanged with our friends for those we were missing.
We played in yards, on the street, in nature, not in front of the computer.When we rode our bikes, we didn't have helmets, nor did we have knee or elbow pads.
We drank water from the tap or where we found it - there was no water bottle.
We spent several hours making cars from boxes, boards and pipes. You were lucky if you had a friend who had a bike to pull you up the hill where we remembered we had no brakes! After a few falls, we found a solution to the problem - we stopped by hitting a tree or a pile of dirt. There was no heavy traffic at that time.
We ate everything we could get our hands on. We drank sugary juices but had no weight problems because we spent our days running and playing.
We all shared one Coca-Cola (when we had enough money, we could buy a liter bottle) and drank from the same bottle, and no one died.
We didn't have mobile phones, letters were sent by post. We met in person, not virtually.
We didn't have game consoles, mp3 players, Nintendo 64s, Xboxes, video games, many channels on TV, home cinema, chat rooms, digital cameras, the Internet, Instagram and Facebook...
Letters and postcards were sent by post, and taking pictures was a special event. We put on our prettiest dresses and new sandals that day, then waited two weeks for the pictures to develop.
The beauty was in the uncertainty, in the anticipation. The modern possibility of erasing photos allows us to select the smile in the photo and discard everything else. Why? After all, the other moments are also precious.
We had real friends. Some had poor academic performance and simply had to repeat a class if they did not study enough. Nobody went to a psychologist or a teacher. The year turned around and everyone got a new chance.
We had the freedom to succeed and fail, the responsibility. And we learned to choose. We had so "little", but we were so very happy!
