Before Wi-Fi, Before Worry: Growing Up in the 80s
I grew up in a small river town where childhood happened outside. We left after breakfast and didn’t come home until the sun said goodnight and the streetlights flickered on. Bikes were our freedom, carrying us from Main Street to muddy creeks, across farm fields that felt endless, down to riverbanks where time didn’t exist.
Summer meant scraped knees, wet shoes, and hands that were always dirty. We made adventures out of nothing, forts from fallen branches, courage from dares we never told our parents about.
Imagination did the rest.
When the heat or boredom finally won, we escaped into the little movie theater, sinking into worn seats while flickering screens showed us lives bigger than our own. Those movies taught us how to dream of leaving.
Our parents always knew where we were by whose yard our bikes were piled in. We drank from water hoses, fed arcade machines our last quarters, and learned quickly that in a small town, everything you did eventually made its way home.
Back when neighbors watched out for you and neighborhoods mattered.
There was a lot of time to be still, which meant there was a lot of room to dream. We talked about leaving like it was a promise, new cities, bigger lives, somewhere our names wouldn’t echo back at us. At night, I’d lie in bed with the radio low, imagining my life like a movie, windows down, horizons wide.
Back then, days felt endless. Friendships felt permanent. Problems were temporary. Hope came easy. Even boredom had a softness to it.
We didn’t know we were safe, we just were.
I left, of course. I chased noise and movement and the proof that I could be more than where I came from. Life got bigger, harder, louder. Dreams came true, then broke, then reshaped themselves.
But now, sometimes, I wish I could go back, not to stay, but to feel it again.
The simplicity.
The certainty that tomorrow would look a lot like today, and that was okay.
The way the world hadn’t asked so much of us yet.
The quiet we couldn’t wait to escape.
Turns out, that small town didn’t trap us.
It held us.
And somehow, I carry it with me everywhere I go.
My God, My Music, My Life 