How Did We Survive the 90s?

Chuck E cheese is still in business but it sucks now.

Also, at 16 I would regularly drive my 12 year old cousin 30 minutes to gymnastics practice, then kill time with her two younger siblings. Shortly after I got my license we went to Walmart and I locked my keys in my car. I had to go to the service desk, ask for a phone book, find a locksmith and use the payphone to call someone. Paid him with a check and learned a life-lesson.

I didn’t want this episode to end

I blew my son's mind (class of 2018) when I told him we had a smoking section for students at my high school (class of 1987)

My sister (as an adult) was jumping on the trampoline with her kids and broke her tailbone! Ouch

My husband’s nephews would go buy their grandmother cigarettes & alcohol early 70’s. It’s crazy to think about that now

There are videos from my 5th birthday party in 1989 at Chuck E Cheese and all the adults are smoking. It's nuts.

I am so down with Glamour shots with my friends in perimenopause!

Soap on the trampoline...how I didn't break any bones!

Also happened before your generation. I'm a baby boomer and both parents worked. I was on my own until they came home from work.

My 3 kids jumped on their trampoline without a safety net for hours and never got injured. My grandson has a trampoline with the safety net and broke his arm because he was on the outside of the net. So much for safety.

The Mud Wrestling....I grew up in NJ and my HS did this too, but it might have been in pudding or something and not mud. But one thing I remember is in 1994, we had Senior Servant Day. You basically bid on the seniors and if you won, they had to do whatever you wanted them to do for the day. So we made one of the guys wear a prom dress and he was handcuffed to a person and if his name was said, he had to sing the Mickey Mouse Club theme!

in 1996, my friend offered to drive me (she just got her license) to visit my boyfriend who lived in PA, about a 2 hour drive from us. We didn't tell our parents. My friends dropped me off at my boyfriend and went to King of Prussia mall where they proceeded to get high on cigarettes laced with LSD and stole over $1000 of stuff from the mall. I wound up calling my mom in tears and asking her to drive to my bf's house to get me because my friends were high and I didn't want to get in the car with them.

in 1995, I went to an overnight party with strangers I met on a BBS chat board. My friend was supposed to go, but her mom said no. I didn't tell my mom she wasn't going. I got in a car with 2 older boys, went to a drinking party, and slept on the basement floor between 2 boys I didn't know. My mom never knew.

So get a new track that difficult but with some decent straights for passing. Doesnt have to be Monaco.

My son met a girl at camp when he was 16, he asked if he could across the country with her for the summer, told him he would have to get a job to earn his keep while staying with the girl and her family. He came home in time for school, he lasted a month in school as he had become a man that summer, he applied for a job working at a resort on the other side of the country, a job which paid him to go to trade school he graduated trade school when his peers back home were graduating high school. He now makes the most money of his friend's group from school, first to buy a house and mentored some of them in business and will be able to retire 10-20 years before most of his peers.

The frontal lobe makes one more likely to jump off the bridge with the peers, not to say that younger folks today don't blindly follow others but that is conditioning from being told they are too stupid to think for themselves. Frontal lobe is actually a middle aged brain, remember life expectancy used to only be 50. If you look at Nazi Germany, the biggest opposition the Nazi party had were those under 22 years ago who went to university, a place at the time which encouraged critical thinking. Frontal lobe design was to make life mentally easier for geriatrics whose bodies were slowing down and could no longer be the leaders in hunting parties, having a followers brain rather than a leader brain. Last examples most hippies sold out to The Man, when they turned 25.

My parents let me and a classmate fly overseas from Alabama to Madrid, Spain to visit a girl who had been an exchange student the previous year. We were in 9th grade 😳😳😳 seriously. Put us on a plane in Montgomery (of course they could walk us to the gate back then) and we flew to New York and then to Spain. No phone call home until about 36 hours later. 14 years old. Needless to say, I’m with Penn. If any of my kids ask to do things like that, I let them. I loved every minute of the independence and adventure. I still love new travel experiences. It really makes me respect my parents for overcoming the fears I’m sure they had but also, we have to agree that the expectations were just different then. They didn’t expect me to call because really that was so much harder and calling was often left for when there was a problem. Loved this episode and all the memories.

I remember one flight in the 80’s where I was in the first row of non-smoking in front of the smoking section. How’s that for meaningless?? 🤦🏻

Jello wrestling at school, womanless beauty pageant, mock wedding in Record-keeping Class…..The 90s were the best!❤

HS class of 91 here. During my senior year, our law studies teacher took us on a field trip to the sheriffs office shooting range. We were told to bring an empty milk jug to fill with water and shoot at because it mimics bullets hitting a body. We were allowed to shoot a variety of guns. The ones I remember shooting that day were an M16 and an Uzi. Try that one today. We did so many things that would never have flown with my own kids.

I will say that my wife and I have put in our will that our funeral slideshows will not exceed 20 minutes-- because we have THOUSANDS of pictures, and hundreds of them are great (because we can just keep taking them until we get it right!).

Someone gave my sister in-law Glamour Shots as a gift when she was in high school, she broke out from the make-up because they used the same make-up for everyone

I grew up in 70s…. We didn’t need notes from parents to buy them cigarettes. I also used to mix my parents’ nightcap when I was under 10.

Snack= All that & a bag of chips???

You need to do a part 2 of this topic

My 17 year old son, his 17 year old GF, and a group of friends who all just finished 11th grade are driving to So CA in a couple weeks. We live in Vegas. There will be a couple parents when they arrive there, but I trust them to get there OK. That being said, my mom wouldn’t have allowed it. So this is the reverse type of permission of the road trip story the lady told. Lol.

I still drink Shasta!😮

My dad rolled a joint in the car while we were on the freeway.

I lived a really not-normal life growing up in many ways but I remember traveling across the country every year in an airplane to visit my grandparents during the summer, by myself, starting when I was 7. At least two transfers in big cities. Would that still happen today? Not sure. The "stuardesses" would often seem like they didn't see me as a living person and drag me around like I was a suitcase.

Oh, the days of just sticking to the plan! Is that what texting has done to us?!?! Because I can almost never get anyone to just commit to a time anymore!

I'm the oldest and had left for college already. My 5yo sister was sent into King Soopers (grocery store) with a blank check to get Breyer's Ice Cream for my mom. 🤣 She would go to the checker and just hand her the blank check. (signed of course) Both my sister and I look at our mom now and ask her WTH was she thinking?

I was born in the 90s Raised up as a kid in the 2000s these kids these days didn’t know what we’ve been through back then they are always stuck on their electronics N their phones these parents these days don’t know really how to parent them. They need parenting classes for these generation of parenting. Even though we had electronics and Internet somewhat, but not really we still played outside and hanged out with our friends not like these kids of today they like to be on their phones and stuck inside

This made me laugh. The note for cigarettes was a routine thing when I was a kid in the mid-70's. Dad's add-on was a Playboy, for real. Chicago wasn't so scary back then.

Here’s my theory of what makes a helicopter mom:
1. Being told at an early age ( because we walked alone!) how to escape and evade a roadside kidnapper perv
2. Actually having to do
so more than once under age 8
3. Seeing the photo reminders, of the kids who didn’t make it, on the side of the milk carton at every breakfast

Loved this episode! I have a story about airplane smoking. In the mid-90s my sister and I took a British Airways flight to London. We requested non-smoking. We were in the window and middle seat and a fairly young guy (our age) from Australia was in the aisle seat. After we were in the air, he starts smoking a cigarette. And I politely said "this is non smoking." And he pointed to his armrest that had a smoking label indicating it was a smoking seat. With no hate at all, we asked the flight attendant and she explained he was in a smoking SEAT, and we were in non-smoking SEATS. So basically that meant, if we were smokers we wouldn't be allowed to light up. We actually lost privileges and were forced to inhale second hand smoke all around us! The Aussie was really nice and when he wanted a smoke he got up and smoked by the lavatory. So until British Airways became all non-smoking (they were slower on this than U.S. airlines), I would put on the note on my ticket that I had asthma so I would be in a totally non smoking cabin.

Using an old piece of wood over a log to make a ramp to jump your bike on. 😂 Riding said bike miles away from home to go to a park or school event.

Did Penn get a tattoo of a wedding ring?

First time watching Laugh Lines and this is being shared with everyone in Iowa!

Yes…we had a men’s beauty pageant! 😅 Class of ‘96.
While it did include swimwear, there was also a talent and formal wear aspect to the competition.

We used to lay down along the back window of the car above the back seat headrests. If the brakes were hit, you’d just be flung out into the back of the drivers seat. Lucky to be alive.

I so love watching and listening to you guys!!! You are the best and the ADHD is so close to home. My son who ended up playing NBA basketball for 13 years was a true ADHD child and we went through it all!!! Love you all!!!

1988 high school grad and YES, we had a student smoking area outside, WITH A ROOF so we wouldn't get wet!! As a twin, my folks figured since there were two of us, we would be fine!! If they only knew!!

Best show yet!

I survived the 70 and 80

so happy for this!!!!!!

When i was 22 in 1992, I went to the Red Onion in Burbank, and we danced until 2 am. My best friend met a guy and we went back to his house. I crashed in a spare bedroom, and when I got up in the morning to go to work, I noticed a lovely 😮 Boa constrictor in the bed next to me. When I told his owner that I would have loved a warning, he said "oh it's fine, he just ate this morning"!! 😅
I'm very glad it was a snake and not a big spider. Because those are terrifying, and I guess it's a one night stand that didn't have consequences!! 🤷‍♀️

Oh boy do I wish you’d do this for the 80s. We smoked on the plane! I still wonder how we didn’t choke each other out. 😂

I did road trips across state lines in the 90s as a teenager with no cell phone. Today’s parents are too overprotective!

loved the ad for how to get rid of stuck poop

I just found footage of us kids snow tubing off of a house roof, no parents 😂

The American diet was absolutely horrific when I was growing up. It was not uncommon to have Super Sugar Crisp cereal, Frosted Flakes, Fizzies, Hamburger Helper, Soda (Shasta, Coke, Dr. Pepper, etc.), Rice a Roni, TV dinners, Kentucky Fried Chicken, canned veggies, etc., the list goes on and on. 😜🤢😵

“It hasta be Shasta!” We loved it because my uncle had a boat shop near Lake Shasta (northern California), and we’d drink Shasta sodas each and every day of our week’s vacation water skiing, with my aunt driving the boat. My cousin was a solid water skier, too. Every summer Shasta was our mountain, our lake, and our soda!