We may have experienced many things that gave us beautiful childhood memories. But unfortunately, those things don’t exist now.
A user asked the forum, “What is something from your childhood that no longer exists now?” Here are the top responses.
TOYS-R-US
“Toys-R-Us. I miss that place. I remember my dad taking me, and I wandered through the aisles, amazed at all the toys. I got one of my childhood favorite Barbie dream houses there.”
TOYS IN THE CEREAL BOXES
“The toys you get from cereal boxes.”
PRIVACY
“Privacy. Mostly because we didn’t have big meta mining our data/location.”
ARCADES AND MALLS
“Arcades and Malls. They are just not the same.”
NICKELODEON
“Nickelodeon. It exists in some form, but it’s a dead network, far from the golden age of cartoons it was in the 90s.”
PHOTO ALBUMS
“Photo Albums. My mother has been cataloging some old photos she never got around to putting in albums. It is a different experience than looking through someone’s phone at curated pictures.
You would get the pictures back, and 90% of them would go in the album. No editing, no, my hair looks like a mess. You would find photos of yourself years later that you never knew existed.
When your grandparents die, you start looking through albums for their memorial and can reminisce. It is so nice.”
PUBLIC PHONE BOOTHS
“Public phone booths (at least where l live).”
BOREDOM
“Boredom. With a battery on your phone and preferably an internet connection. You can’t be bored like we used to be when a wet weekend meant being stuck in the house with only four channels. Two showing black and white movies that were just filler and the other two showing sport.”
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
“Affordable housing in my hometown. My hometown is a mess, but it’s also only 50 miles from a very trendy coastal city, so now it’s expensive stuff. I won’t be moving back there.”
SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS
“Saturday morning cartoons. Nothing beats the joy of waking up early on Saturday morning to watch five hours of your favorite cartoons, most of which were only on at that time on that day.”
THE HOUSE I GREW UP IN
“The house I grew up in. A tornado hit it in 1999, and my parents moved out of town. The people who bought the corner lot built the house facing the other street, so the address no longer exists.
That led to some fascinating confusion when I later had a job requiring a security clearance, and the investigator couldn’t find where I’d lived most of my life. No box was on the form for ‘house destroyed by the natural disaster.'”
THE SPECIALNESS OF GOING OUT WITH FAMILY ON THE WEEKEND
“The ‘specialness’ of going on a family outing on the weekend. The movies, a museum, the zoo, an outdoor festival. Nowadays, parents feel obligated to take their kids out/keep them entertained Friday through Sunday night (universe forbid these kids should have to entertain themselves.)
Not to mention all of the fancy birthday parties kids go to that are purely experiential/ take place at a specialty venue. The sheer volume of day trips makes none of them stand out to the kids.”
PLAYING OUTSIDE
“Playing outside with all of the neighborhood kids. Everyone had to be home when the streetlights came on.”
BLACK BOARDS
“Blackboards that use chalk. It’s whiteboards everywhere now.”
ZOOM
“The PBS show Zoom. I watched the original as a kid way back when. It got revived for a while in the 1990s to around 2005 as well.”
PHONE BOOK
“4-inch thick yellow pages phone book. The white pages were only about 1 and 1/2 inches thick.”
FREE RANGE KIDS
“Free range kids. We went everywhere but were always home for dinner.”
NERF FOOTBALLS
“Nerf footballs, hearing them whistle through the air nostalgic. You don’t see them anymore.”
RIDING BIKES OUTSIDE
“Riding bikes outside with your friends. I should clarify: you no longer see kids riding bikes on the streets with their friends. We used to do it every day when I was younger.”
PEOPLE MINDING THEIR OWN BUSINESS
“People minding their own business and not feeling like it’s required to document your whole life.”
CEREALS MADE WITH OAT FLOUR
“Cereals made with oat flour. Most cereals that used to be oat-based have switched to a corn-base that completely changes the flavor and texture profile.”
COLOR
“Color. Everyone keeps talking about how the world seems less colorful now that we’re older because it is. Ever is all about the boring gray, white, beige modernism. It’s sad. Just think of Mcdonalds then versus now.”
FREE STUFF
“Free stuff. From the gas station: books, glasses. Book clubs would give the first for free. You can order freebies by sending a letter to certain companies. A summer fair would give free Pepsi; you could get as many as you wanted. These days, Costco is the only place with samples, and it’s only at certain times of the day.”
UNDEVELOPED LAND
“Undeveloped land. When I was a kid, there were empty lots everywhere that we used to play and bike in. Now, the whole valley is filled in, and there are parks with ramps and bike/skating areas, but not as many as we need.
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This article was originally published on Mrs. Daaku Studio.