(image credit: getty images)
Time today seems condensed, and our leisure time feels like one of our most precious commodities. With the constant barrage of electronics, media, and advertisements demanding our attention, it’s easy to look back at the carefree days of our childhoods and reminisce about a simpler time when kids had all the time in the world to be well kids. If you have children now as I do, it can be disheartening to see how much time they want to spend on their phones or devices or exhausted by the number of planned extracurricular activities we bus them to throughout the week or weekend. I wanted to look back and reflect and appreciate some of the ways we spent our leisure time growing up in the 90s.
Hang Out At the Mall
Of course, this one might not be the most positive, but hanging out at the mall allowed us as kids to socialize with old and new friends in a reasonably safe (by today’s standards) community-like environment. During the 90s, suburban malls especially were in their heyday with the drastic increase in their numbers and amenities. We eventually graduated from being pulled along by the hand of our parents to being allowed to meet up with a friend at the food court or a favorite store. We eventually reached the pinnacle of independence by being allowed to be dropped off and picked up later. There wasn’t too much trouble we could get into (unless you were shoplifting), and we still had a healthy dose of stranger-danger awareness. The malls provided one of the safest ways to roam wild in a controlled setting.
Roller Skating
When I was a kid, I really thought I was going to be a roller-skating prodigy, if that was a thing. I roller-skated everywhere! Some of my core childhood memories are the roller-skating parties that my local rural school would host on weekend nights. It’s safe to say that kids from the 90s are so familiar with skating rinks that the songs that made them famous could be considered a genre themselves. Whether you were racing friends, playing arcade games, enjoying a snack bar treat, or holding sweaty hands to your first slow skate song, roller skating and rinks were a cornerstone of our childhoods.
Creating the Perfect Mix Tape
With Spotify and Apple Music, kids these days can’t possibly understand how working on creating a mix tape was an extreme sport. It could take you hours, days, or weeks to compile the perfect list of curated songs to express your innermost feelings. We would laze about in our rooms, waiting for our favorite tunes to come on the radio to record them on our cassette recorders. The act of gifting or receiving a mix tape was a big deal, something that took intention and a lot of thought. The thrill of creating a mix tape, the anticipation of waiting for the right song to come on the radio, and the joy of sharing it with a friend made the effort all the more worthwhile.
Camping in the Backyard
There are probably kids who still do this today, but growing up in the 90s, this was a favorite little getaway for both parents and kids. We would set up real or makeshift tents in our backyards, decorate them to our liking with all of our favorite things, have snacks delivered(!), and run inside if a storm approached or we just got too scared. I have a clear memory of being mad at my parents, telling them I was running away, but just going out to my usual camp spot, where, of course, my parents knew where I was, and they were able to enjoy some moments of respite before going to look for me.
Running Around the Neighborhood
The Sandlot)
This was peak summertime leisure activity, especially for those of us who grew up in towns or smaller communities, but of course, city kids did all the time as well. Both kids, parents, and the nosy neighbor knew everyone. If you got in trouble or hurt a few blocks down, best believe your parents would know about it. We would storm into our friends’ homes like we owned the place, help ourselves to our friends’ kitchen cupboards, and run out the doors together. We played in creeks, woods, playgrounds, basketball courts, tree forts, rode our bikes etc. We basically ran the streets, or so we thought. That is until the high pitch of our parent’s whistle or the sun setting had us scurry back home, our hearts still racing from the day’s adventures.
Blockbuster Movie Nights
There was very little instant gratification to be had years ago compared to today. Now, you remember a movie you’ve been waiting to watch, you can simply look to see which one of your several streaming services might have it, or if you want to shell out a few bucks, you just buy it off of Amazon Prime Videos. Growing up in the 90s, we got to experience the excitement of a trip to a Blockbuster store to rent a few movies or video games for the rest of the week/weekend. We would browse the shelves for too long and probably argue with our siblings over what to get. Often, if a new movie came out in theatres and you missed it, you would have to wait foreverrrr for it to come out on home movies, making the anticipation just that much greater. This activity has such a special place in our nostalgia mainly because the experience can’t be replicated in this day and age like others can. Today’s kids just don’t know about ‘Be kind, Rewind!’
