23 Comments

Hearing this made me smile and feel like I stumbled upon a time machine that could take me back to the summer I was 12 - 41 years ago too! - just for a little while. I had forgotten about laying on the hot ground to warm up after the cold pool and I still miss my Hypercolor shirt and the time when, as peers, it was ok to innocently reach for each other to watch the colour change. I love this so much - and love that a kid in Easter. Canada experienced the exact same delights that a kid in Montana did without ever connecting and sharing 1000 pictures and selfies of it online. How incredible is that? Thank you, Tyler for the Sunday morning walk down memory lane! 💗

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Whoa! I think this is one of the best you have ever written…. Reading this, I could relive, see, sense, smell , taste each moment!

Thank you honey for really living your moments as you grew…. This warms my being!!!!

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founding

I was 41 last month, so this was my childhood, too. I have a stuffed Luigi in bed next to me right now. I wasn’t ever any good at Mario Bros tho.

This trip down memory lane was nice, it was, but when it ended I was still here, in 2022, depressed as hell.

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What a blast from the past!! My youth spent growing up in Fort Collins, Colorado was remarkably similar. We did live in simpler times then, and I share your nostalgia and yearning for what was. At least we have the memories and how they shaped us into who we are today…

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Yes to all of this, …

That feeling of ache before you heard the three words of “ you’ve got mail”, Montana as a pre-teen-teen running around the forest cause it was safe, our mothers knowing in theory where we were , slipping over the Canadian border cause they was no fence or inhibitors, taking horses down the street to friends house cause well why not, right?…requesting songs on the radio simply to record it with your superior boom box with recording capabilities and finally have a copy of that one song that you can’t live without hearing once a day….

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Love this more than you know. I miss this. I will continue to do my best to find opportunities to give similar childhood memories to my kids. It’s getting more difficult to do as the days go by, but still I try. ♥️

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The best yet Tyler. I'm a little bit older, but I long for those simpler days. Maybe not as an adult, but to live them as a kid again. I find myself getting stuck in the nostalgia at times. Primarily to have my family whole again, and to be carefree, with my biggest worry being where I left my other roller skate. I will keep this story close and read it again and again. ❤️

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"I know, I know, all you older than me (I’ll be 41 this Summer, which is insane to me, as I feel like I’m stuck at 12 in so many ways) will say that your times were even simpler, and that may be, but I’ll be damned if they were as Rad as mine."

Oh, my friend, not so much. As a precocious teen, keenly aware of things like the rest of the world (which put me ahead of 95% of the country who tuned all that stuff out much like they've tuned out the pandemic), 1979-1983 were neither simpler nor kinder then 1989-1993. I was very well aware of the sword of Democles there. Hard times.

No need to trust me on this: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/aa83/2018-11-05/soviet-side-1983-war-scare

https://www.history.com/news/5-cold-war-close-calls

(Everybody owes Colonel Petrov a tip of the hat.)

After 1988, things got better.

elm

besides, i got to run up the all time high score on the donkey kong machine in the pizza hut when the game was new 😝

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I'm 10 years older than you - I'll be 51 in a couple weeks - but many of your memories mirror mine. Life WAS simpler. The stretched coiled phone cord, pulled into the bathroom from the phone on the wall in the hallway just to have a few minutes of privacy for a chat with a friend in need of an ear, likewise stretching their phone cord to it's full length on the other end. Tent "camping" in the back yard with neighborhood kids made for the best sleepovers. We spent time outside, not glued to a phone, iPad or computer screen. We learned to respect ourselves and others the hard way - there was no keyboard to hide behind when you said something rude or insulting - if you mouthed off to someone, you'd get your ass kicked. Life was simpler then, and I'll even dare to say kinder. There are still plenty of amazing people in today's world as is proven by the Signal Fire community here, but we've become a world where things are no longer taken at face value. It's sad, really.

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We were so lucky. I am not saying growing up then was easy, because I don’t think it ever is or was, but it was certainly easier.

The freedom of living without someone potentially recording it and posting it online for the world to see… games that came out of our imagination… real connections… buying magazines to swoon over our celebrity idols instead of just Googling them!

I am so grateful to have grown up in the 80’s and 90’s with my crimped hair and bubblegum jeans and fluorescent outfits and bubble skirts, and knocking on friends doors hoping they will be home, and special trips to the video shop to hire a movie to watch on a Friday night, and only 2 channels of TV to choose from so more often than not we read books or played games instead, and the privacy and the freedom, and the pure joy and wonder of looking out and up instead of down at a screen.

Thank you Tyler for this walk down memory lane. I’m 100% positive that if I could take my own kids back to those years in a time machine, they would not want to stay, but I will keep trying to bring some of the good stuff from those times into our lives here and now.

❤️❤️❤️

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I am late to reading this...but oh my goodness I finished reading this and realized I'd had a giant smile on my face for half of it! What a rich description...what a beautiful nostalgia. Agree agree agree. I will miss those simpler times FOREVER.

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I found your Signal Fire heartwarming. Still, we should remember that "today" has its own simplicities.

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