Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I never owned a helmet

we never had central air even in our schools except for the teachers lounge and the cafeteria

worked summer jobs from age 16 on for college

just like sandlot we had a neighborhood baseball team

we used to break into the high school baseball park when it wasnt being used

sometimes the police would chase us away (we knew all of them by name and they knew all of us by name)

sometimes the police would just sit in their car and watch us

I alway wonder how much of this, plus the unlocked doors and whatnot, comes down to a sense of awareness about the world.

Like, our perspectives are smaller. Back then, we felt like the rest of the world was pretty far away. Now we feel like it's super close (well, not we, as I had web browsers when I was like 8).

I think about this and how it changes in a specific area with stranger danger in the 1980s. The world for a lot of people was not considerably more dangerous that in previous decades (at least a lot of people who got super afraid of strangers). But the threat of strangers to your kids felt so much more real, in part fueled by rabid consumption of cable TV. It's ironic because the chances of a stranger doing something terrible to your kid are far lower than you or a relative/trusted friend doing something terrible to them, but that's another story. 

Anyway, I dunno. I grew up in ... we'll call it a city. Certianly as dense as a place with building height limits could be. I was mostly allowed to walk around town with minimal oversight pretty early. Can't put an exact age on it. I'm sure some wouldn't be about that with the modest amount of homeless people around, but whatever. 

Ironically- I sit here in my back patio area, enjoying my morning coffee- writing this post on MY CELL PHONE.

Fine example you are

Driving home from an early morning visit to the gym the other day I passed six or seven bus stops. At the first one I saw a group of what appeared to be about six or seven middle school aged kids and just happened to notice that every single one of them was standing there just staring down at their cell phone. As I continued to drive home I started checking and I’ll be damned if the roughly 40 kids I saw weren’t 100% on their cell phones.

Now this isn’t anything new for any of us as we all see this all the time, especially if you go somewhere like an airport. But the stark reality of it hit me hard as I could not believe that not one of those children was socializing with another or playing or laughing- but just staring at their phone.

Heard on a morning radio show the story about a 7th grade drama teacher. He was trying to work with his students and set up a scene for them to work in where they were passing notes in class...

They were very confused and it took a lot of time until he figured out why: they don't have to do that in the days of cell phones. They literally didn't understand the concept.

Yup only girls passed notes in my schools.

My neighbor told me he left for six weeks once and forgot to lock his door.

You're missing the point. Boys still understood the cultural idea of "passing notes" even if it was mostly a "girl thing".

I wasn't a note passer when I was a kid.

Only during test time - I could put the Encyclopedia Brittanica on the inside of a match book cover