i was born in 97, so a lot of my formative memories occured between 2001-2008 - it was a really fun time and i have so much nostalgia for it. the town i grew up in was much smaller during that time and the things we had felt more fun and pure.
i was an only child so i spent a lot of time alone reading and drawing. i also loved cartoons of course, and would get small amounts of computer time that were mostly spent playing flash games. when i was 8 i got really into music and from that point i developed an interest in drumming and started collecting alternative emo rock cds you'd buy at hot topic, all thanks to my friend's older brother.
for years my best friends were the neighbor kids on my block. we'd walk to each others houses and yell over the fence or knock on the door to see if we could play. we'd ride bikes and play "ghost in the graveyard" (reverse hide and seek with a safe point, basically), and go to the pool during the summertime. we would use sticks as swords or lightsabers and bring our stuffed animals with us everywhere.
at my grandmas house in the mountains i would explore by myself as young as 7 or 8 years old.i remember many times being terrified i would get lost and die even though i could see her house. i would make kraft macaroni and cheese for lunch and read my dad's skateboarder and mad magazines from the 70s.
i'm thankful that the internet wasn't fully integrated into people's lives at that point, i know it's a common trope but having "the web" as they used to call it be a thing you could turn off/separate from was really underrated. the times you had to experience things like cartoonnetwork.com were really special and meant something. i'll never forget when my dad told me to fire it up after switching us to high speed internet from dial-up, that day forever changed my life (if you haven't heard the noise dial-up made when you'd log on - search it up that shit is bonkers). also seeing youtube get invented was crazy, before that we used to just watch flash videos on websites like newgrounds or albinoblacksheep, the original forms of brainrot
seeing technology advance was pretty crazy in general. we went from vhs tapes to dvds to on-demand all in the span of like 6 years. in that time we also went from cd players to ipods and saw the invention of the iphone.
cell phones used to be uncommon for people above a certain age and were actually quite devisive - my boomer ass parents had "no cell phones" stickers and i can still remember a time when i was out with my family around 2005 and my dad almost got an altercation with a random man for making a quip about him speaking on his cellphone as he walked past us (so out of pocket now that i look back on it jesus christ)
school was really weird because they were trying really hard to adapt to new technology and it was hard to keep up for a couple of years there - those who remember the transition from those 3M projector things to smartboards will understand
i obviously dont know what its like to be a kid now but it feels like it was easier then - i cant think of anyone who ever had "drip" before middle school, even rich kids - sometimes when i see kids wearing gucci im just like man what the fuck
also adults would hold your ass ACCOUNTABLE when you fucked up, no matter how little you were - i can remember being acosted by grown ass adults when i was maybe 4 or 5 years old and that was just totally normal. some adults were really nice and some were really fucking scary and that's just how it was.
mucho texto i know but man i miss it