When I was in 6th grade, my school was a couple of miles from home. I was a latchkey kid, so I'd walk there and back unsupervised every day, and then be left to my own devices until my mom got off work
On some episode of Waypoint, Rob Zacny described a similar childhood as "benign neglect" and I like that phrase and found it apt
The Internet was basically my introduction to that world. None of the real stuff though, just whatever I could find on a particular site named after a FF7 spoiler. I even remember the exact picture that was my favorite.
We had a Subaru Brat. Hated being in that rear facing backseat in the rain with maybe a garbage bag "raincoat", people in the cars behind us making way too much eye contact.
I can't stop laughing at this post.
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Hi I'm Vee!Formerly VH; She/Her; Is an E X P E R I E N C ERegistered Userregular
I remember when I was 14 or 15 I had printed out a picture I found on the internet of a lady measuring her naked bust. I don't remember if it was supposed to be porn or educational or whatever, but it didn't matter to me. Anyway, my dad found it, and his response was, "Why don't you just shoplift a Playboy or something like everybody else did at your age, you dumb fuck?"
I did not know what to make of that.
I used to get the women's underwear ads from the newspaper, or a Victoria's Secret if I was lucky, and carefully cut out the bra and panties from the picture, because that made it easier for me to imagine the ladies naked.
That was an awkward thing to explain to my father when he walked in on me one time.
My mom decided to be a stay-at-home mom after I was born, but she's a pretty driven person so that just meant she volunteered all over town. One of her hats was leading an effort to fund-raise, plan, and build not one, but two playgrounds. The first one I remember watching from atop a huge mountain of gravel as a bulldozer cleared the land and the other volunteers put up the equipment. The second one I was old-enough to volunteer myself so I helped direct the mapping and painting of a giant US map on part of the concrete play area so teachers at the school next door could play name-the-states games with their students. That one had a "space trolley" (a zipline on a rail so it wasn't quite as chaotic) and all kinds of hanging bars and stuff.
Practically all of that is gone now and replaced. The passage of time sucks.
I got bored playing outside as a kid but I was also in the generation of "just go outside for a few hours/let me know where you're going". Riding bikes across town, finding porn in wooded areas and quarries, and getting chased out of graveyards for using the paved paths as race courses. Given the option, I still preferred playing on my NES or Genesis instead. It had more variation and eventually you do everything you can get away with in a small town without getting into serious trouble. There was always someone's mom that would rat you out for cutting through private property or walking on the train tracks or something.
Also what the fuck is the deal with forest porno? Who is leaving all the porno in the forest?!
You were supposed to once you were an adult, but now you've broken the chain and little Jimmy has to make do with the vast reaches of the Internet rather than a Playboy.
You've doomed him.
Look, every one of my nephews has a phone with a broadband connection capable of accessing heretofore unimagined quantities of pornography.
It seems like leaving out forest porn is kind of redundant anymore.
Like, I can just picture young Sklyer and his soccer buddies out and coming across a cache of old playboys, then shrugging and pulling up Jakib's Dad's subscription to Kink on their phones and watching [censored for the good of the forum] five at a time [censored for the good of the forums] And then walking off without taking the leash off.
It's an unjust world that has stolen the magic of forest porn from the youth.
Wish I could take a time machine back and inform little me how much childcare costs would eventually increase, so he could price himself accordingly. "Look, you'll have performed roughly $150,000 in free services for these people watching your brother on summers by the time you're done, tell King Cheapskate over there he can spring for the large Lego castle, or you've suddenly realized a nine year old shouldn't be responsible for a four year old"
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
God, looking at porn before internet was so ubiquitous and in every room in the house.
Looks like Cinemax is slightly less fuzzy! Time to maybe see some boobs at 2 AM!
My house had Cinemax and HBO
When my brother and I discovered the softcore that played late night it was like a new, magical world had opened before us
when you go back and watch that stuff now it's just like "this is the most boring thing imaginable"
Once I think back in 2006 me and my two best friends were at my house and we were flipping through channels and at one point we stopped on Cinemax on an episode of red shoe diaries or some shit.
Me and my best friend both went "Oh, this is a boring episode" and proceeded to change the channel.
My other friend was apoplectic.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
+9
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
There were a couple of neighbor girls who were my babysitters for a few years there. I barely remember them, honestly, but they were around intermittently in my young life, and thinking back on it I always wonder how old they were at the time. I perceived them as being both significantly older and like, still sort of peers, not full adults or whatever, but I'm not even entirely sure how old I was in the scant memories I have of them.
When I was in 6th grade, my school was a couple of miles from home. I was a latchkey kid, so I'd walk there and back unsupervised every day, and then be left to my own devices until my mom got off work
On some episode of Waypoint, Rob Zacny described a similar childhood as "benign neglect" and I like that phrase and found it apt
When I was four I was allowed to ride my little training-wheeled bike around the block as long as I took a walky talky with me
When I was nine I could bike to school on my own if I stayed off main roads
And then when I was 11 we moved to a house on the edge of the bush, right next to a huge quarry absolutely ripe for dangerous shenanigans, at which point my parents basically gave up keeping track of either me or my sister, and figured we'd turn up when we got hungry.
Both my parents worked so from around age 9 if I didn't have after school activities I was left alone or babysitting my sister until at least six-ish, I remember sometimes my mother would come home early from work and I found that very affronting. This was supposed to be me-time, goddammit.
I wasn't allowed to walk to school but that was due to Medical Stuff and not like, parental helicoptering; the few times I did due to missing the bus or whatnot was like, why do people do this
In Grade 12 the high school determined I was too close to the school to catch the bus, but there was one for grandfathered in students who had a bus before that policy three houses over, so I pulled the old Pretend You're Supposed To Be There Grift and the driver never questioned it or ran attendance
I was still allowed to ride my bike 20 minutes to the Beckers convenience store to buy candy or to the Blockbuster like half an hour away, though! Less likely for me to die in the snow in biking weather I guess??
I walked to school every day since 2nd or 3rd grade until my sister got her license, with distances varying from 5 minutes to 15-20 minutes.
now my mother is part of some community org thing and is trying to get more kids to walk/bike to school. they want to do like events and incentives and stuff and I told her it would be better to just make biking to school easier than riding the bus with something like bike shares at bus stops.
I remember when I was 14 or 15 I had printed out a picture I found on the internet of a lady measuring her naked bust. I don't remember if it was supposed to be porn or educational or whatever, but it didn't matter to me. Anyway, my dad found it, and his response was, "Why don't you just shoplift a Playboy or something like everybody else did at your age, you dumb fuck?"
I did not know what to make of that.
Story time!
So when I was like...12? 13 maybe? My mom discovered how to check internet search history. Turns out my older sister had been looking at adult images, but when my mom asked her she said it wasn't her. So my mom just assumed she was telling the truth as a 15 year old and I must be looking up pictures of naked dudes and had a panic. Her and my dad bought me a bunch of playboys and were like "Here are ladies look at these"
I mean, I didn't complain or anything about getting free smut.
You know I just remembered how my friends and I got the swings banned from recess at our school. We would make a game out of who can jump the farthest, like you do. Our goal was to try and make it out of the box of wood chips that hurt like hell when you landed on them wrong. The catch to that is there was maybe a foot of grass until you hit the asphalt black top that was the basket ball area. 2 other kids and myself began reliably making it to that area and suddenly everyone freaked out for some reason. Probably something about not wanting to explain how kids were jumping 8-10 feet off the swings to suddenly get injured. They eventually forgot and we started launching ourselves the other way towards the fence. Our goal was to clear the fence, but we never got there.
Man I did so many stupid things on those swings. Hang underneath it, stand up on it, switch to another swing while in motion, and so much shit I probably forgot. It really makes me wonder how humans have managed to survive as a species.
The neighborhood yooths and me created a boxing tournament in my front yard while my slightly older cousin-babysitter helplessly looked on
We used random crap from the garage to line out a ring, then got in in pairs and just started wailing on each other’s faces
All good nobody got too hurt physically, though I was definitely embarrassed because it was while discussing first round matchups that I learned I was considered the “neighborhood nerd” and was locked in as the lowest (worst) seed
+11
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
I remember the first time I thought to look for boobs on the internet. But because the internet and I were both young, I figured the best way to do it would be to do an eXcite search for "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit"
God, looking at porn before internet was so ubiquitous and in every room in the house.
Looks like Cinemax is slightly less fuzzy! Time to maybe see some boobs at 2 AM!
My house had Cinemax and HBO
When my brother and I discovered the softcore that played late night it was like a new, magical world had opened before us
when you go back and watch that stuff now it's just like "this is the most boring thing imaginable"
I used it find it a quaint alternative to the extremely graphic stuff that is literally everywhere on the internet, but apparently internet porn killed that industry and they apparently don't air very much, if any, smut on the premium channels anymore.
I'm sure I told this story before, but when I was about 13 or 14, I was throwing a lawn dart straight into the air and running for cover, enjoying the solid thunk when it hit the ground. I slipped on a patch of wet grass on my last throw and went down flat on my back. The lawn dart came down in the crook of my elbow, probably 4 inches from either my chest or my bicep. I pulled the dart out of the ground, packed it up in its box, and went back to the backyard barbecue. Every time I think about it, I wonder if the last 30 years have just been my imagination going wild whilst I die, pinned to the grass by a toy.
I always feel so boring in threads like this, I never went outside for shit, never found random porn, never got in big fights
Ah, the indoor kids. If it makes you feel more interesting, all the outdoor kids figured you were living like the people under the stairs and were afraid to visit.
I'm sure I told this story before, but when I was about 13 or 14, I was throwing a lawn dart straight into the air and running for cover, enjoying the solid thunk when it hit the ground. I slipped on a patch of wet grass on my last throw and went down flat on my back. The lawn dart came down in the crook of my elbow, probably 4 inches from either my chest or my bicep. I pulled the dart out of the ground, packed it up in its box, and went back to the backyard barbecue. Every time I think about it, I wonder if the last 30 years have just been my imagination going wild whilst I die, pinned to the grass by a toy.
Death has gotten lazy, I’ve seen the documentary Final Destination and I’m surprised like a piano hasn’t fallen on your head to make the universe right
+2
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
Our playground had, in addition to the standard climbing bits and slide,
-swingsets with the long chain so you could swing yourself up 10-15 feet and then go flying off
-instead of gravel, wood chips as a play base
-a log cabin, sans roof. Kids peed in here all the time
-a wooden boat, complete with cabin. God knows where it came from. Exposed nails, rodent nests, and of course kids peed in there too
-a tetherball pole which was largely used for smacking each other in the face with the ball
***
We did not have forest porn but we had access to the bus garage and would just nick whatever we wanted from the mechanics stash
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
+4
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Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
One of the parks by my house had a fucking sweet jungle gym shaped like a rocket ship that was like two stories tall.
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
Also when I was in my 20s I worked at a paper mill. One summer I got to work in the recycling plant and it was always a source of amusement seeing which coworkers and bosses would randomly drop in to say hello and surreptitiously check out the dedicated stash where all the porn mags ended up
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Also what the fuck is the deal with forest porno? Who is leaving all the porno in the forest?!
In my area: Teens.
yeah it's the sweet spot of "i am bold enough to acquire porno" and "i am absolutely not bold enough to leave it somewhere where there is remotely a chance my parents will see"
It's funny, I just finished up Mafia III a couple weeks ago and that series has a weird tie-in with Playboy of all things. Finding the magazines is one of the collectables in the game. Most give you a few photos from an issue from that era (in this case, around 1967-68), sometimes an article. Turned out surprisingly interesting at times and even though the nudity was fairly tame compared to the internet porn I'm used to, I was taken aback by how well photographed and lit it all was.
Pretty fun that I recognized where at least a couple of the (clothed) outdoor photos were taken.
Hard to believe that anyone could get through childhood without one wild outdoor random porn fight.
I just heard the Pokemon fight intro music go through my head when I read this post.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
+7
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
edited May 2021
I got exposed to porn by looking in my dad's closet. I discovered a small collection of Betamax tapes from the early 80's containing such classics as I Like to Watch, San Fernando Valley Girls, and the Filling Station (which featured a thin Ron Jeremy blowing himself).
Along with the moving pictures, there was also a trove of Playboys from a very specific time frame, September of 1981-December of 1982 and featured such luminaries as Bo Derek, Sean Young, and Farrah Fawcett (egads are her nipples frightening).
In college I talked with him about why just those 15 issues and no others. It was then explained to me that after a couple of miscarriages before my mom got pregnant with me her cervix was severely weakened and it would be dicey for her to try and carry me to term without medical help. So a Teflon cerclage was sewed in to support and prevent premature labor. My mom had been trying to have a boy for almost 15 years and with 2 separate husbands, and she was dedicated to making sure I made it into this world, even if she had to go out herself to make it happen.
After the cerclage was applied she was put on light duty at work and was told no playing with the vajayjay either alone of with my dad. As a compromise she let my dad go buckwild on buying and using porn (a major step for her as she's very straight laced when it comes to stuff like that) to get his frustrations/stress out in a manner that didn't put her or me at risk. Once she successfully had me (i was still nearly a month prematue, even with all the precautions) she underwent a hysterectomy at 32 and there was another 8 weeks of no horse play allowed, so the sub to Playboy kept going.
That year long open relationship with his left and right is the closest my dad has come to being unfaithful and I'm unceasingly grateful to the both of them for making sure I was able to grace the universe with my existence
BlackDragon480 on
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
It's amazing the things a person can get exposed to down at the creek you got your lyme disease your mildewy porno your stranglers, listeria, toe biters, haints, etc.
Posts
My house had Cinemax and HBO
When my brother and I discovered the softcore that played late night it was like a new, magical world had opened before us
On some episode of Waypoint, Rob Zacny described a similar childhood as "benign neglect" and I like that phrase and found it apt
I can't stop laughing at this post.
I used to get the women's underwear ads from the newspaper, or a Victoria's Secret if I was lucky, and carefully cut out the bra and panties from the picture, because that made it easier for me to imagine the ladies naked.
That was an awkward thing to explain to my father when he walked in on me one time.
Practically all of that is gone now and replaced. The passage of time sucks.
I got bored playing outside as a kid but I was also in the generation of "just go outside for a few hours/let me know where you're going". Riding bikes across town, finding porn in wooded areas and quarries, and getting chased out of graveyards for using the paved paths as race courses. Given the option, I still preferred playing on my NES or Genesis instead. It had more variation and eventually you do everything you can get away with in a small town without getting into serious trouble. There was always someone's mom that would rat you out for cutting through private property or walking on the train tracks or something.
Look, every one of my nephews has a phone with a broadband connection capable of accessing heretofore unimagined quantities of pornography.
It seems like leaving out forest porn is kind of redundant anymore.
Like, I can just picture young Sklyer and his soccer buddies out and coming across a cache of old playboys, then shrugging and pulling up Jakib's Dad's subscription to Kink on their phones and watching [censored for the good of the forum] five at a time [censored for the good of the forums] And then walking off without taking the leash off.
It's an unjust world that has stolen the magic of forest porn from the youth.
when you go back and watch that stuff now it's just like "this is the most boring thing imaginable"
Once I think back in 2006 me and my two best friends were at my house and we were flipping through channels and at one point we stopped on Cinemax on an episode of red shoe diaries or some shit.
Me and my best friend both went "Oh, this is a boring episode" and proceeded to change the channel.
My other friend was apoplectic.
Ted Cruz has admitted to accepting bribes in a WSJ op-ed, and twitter.
What a very smart, shrewd man he is.
When I was four I was allowed to ride my little training-wheeled bike around the block as long as I took a walky talky with me
When I was nine I could bike to school on my own if I stayed off main roads
And then when I was 11 we moved to a house on the edge of the bush, right next to a huge quarry absolutely ripe for dangerous shenanigans, at which point my parents basically gave up keeping track of either me or my sister, and figured we'd turn up when we got hungry.
Both my parents worked so from around age 9 if I didn't have after school activities I was left alone or babysitting my sister until at least six-ish, I remember sometimes my mother would come home early from work and I found that very affronting. This was supposed to be me-time, goddammit.
In Grade 12 the high school determined I was too close to the school to catch the bus, but there was one for grandfathered in students who had a bus before that policy three houses over, so I pulled the old Pretend You're Supposed To Be There Grift and the driver never questioned it or ran attendance
I was still allowed to ride my bike 20 minutes to the Beckers convenience store to buy candy or to the Blockbuster like half an hour away, though! Less likely for me to die in the snow in biking weather I guess??
3DS Friend Code: 0216-0898-6512
Switch Friend Code: SW-7437-1538-7786
In my area: Teens.
now my mother is part of some community org thing and is trying to get more kids to walk/bike to school. they want to do like events and incentives and stuff and I told her it would be better to just make biking to school easier than riding the bus with something like bike shares at bus stops.
Story time!
So when I was like...12? 13 maybe? My mom discovered how to check internet search history. Turns out my older sister had been looking at adult images, but when my mom asked her she said it wasn't her. So my mom just assumed she was telling the truth as a 15 year old and I must be looking up pictures of naked dudes and had a panic. Her and my dad bought me a bunch of playboys and were like "Here are ladies look at these"
I mean, I didn't complain or anything about getting free smut.
Man, our buses would show up, and all the kids there would pile on, and then that was basically it
Ours had an attendance list and was supposed to at least check at the start of the year if not every so often
I recall a clipboard being part of the outfit
3DS Friend Code: 0216-0898-6512
Switch Friend Code: SW-7437-1538-7786
So it would drive away from my house and drop everyone else off and then drive back to my house and drop me off last.
Keeeewl.
Man I did so many stupid things on those swings. Hang underneath it, stand up on it, switch to another swing while in motion, and so much shit I probably forgot. It really makes me wonder how humans have managed to survive as a species.
We used random crap from the garage to line out a ring, then got in in pairs and just started wailing on each other’s faces
All good nobody got too hurt physically, though I was definitely embarrassed because it was while discussing first round matchups that I learned I was considered the “neighborhood nerd” and was locked in as the lowest (worst) seed
I used it find it a quaint alternative to the extremely graphic stuff that is literally everywhere on the internet, but apparently internet porn killed that industry and they apparently don't air very much, if any, smut on the premium channels anymore.
Ah, the indoor kids. If it makes you feel more interesting, all the outdoor kids figured you were living like the people under the stairs and were afraid to visit.
Death has gotten lazy, I’ve seen the documentary Final Destination and I’m surprised like a piano hasn’t fallen on your head to make the universe right
-swingsets with the long chain so you could swing yourself up 10-15 feet and then go flying off
-instead of gravel, wood chips as a play base
-a log cabin, sans roof. Kids peed in here all the time
-a wooden boat, complete with cabin. God knows where it came from. Exposed nails, rodent nests, and of course kids peed in there too
-a tetherball pole which was largely used for smacking each other in the face with the ball
***
We did not have forest porn but we had access to the bus garage and would just nick whatever we wanted from the mechanics stash
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
yeah it's the sweet spot of "i am bold enough to acquire porno" and "i am absolutely not bold enough to leave it somewhere where there is remotely a chance my parents will see"
Pretty fun that I recognized where at least a couple of the (clothed) outdoor photos were taken.
I just heard the Pokemon fight intro music go through my head when I read this post.
Along with the moving pictures, there was also a trove of Playboys from a very specific time frame, September of 1981-December of 1982 and featured such luminaries as Bo Derek, Sean Young, and Farrah Fawcett (egads are her nipples frightening).
In college I talked with him about why just those 15 issues and no others. It was then explained to me that after a couple of miscarriages before my mom got pregnant with me her cervix was severely weakened and it would be dicey for her to try and carry me to term without medical help. So a Teflon cerclage was sewed in to support and prevent premature labor. My mom had been trying to have a boy for almost 15 years and with 2 separate husbands, and she was dedicated to making sure I made it into this world, even if she had to go out herself to make it happen.
After the cerclage was applied she was put on light duty at work and was told no playing with the vajayjay either alone of with my dad. As a compromise she let my dad go buckwild on buying and using porn (a major step for her as she's very straight laced when it comes to stuff like that) to get his frustrations/stress out in a manner that didn't put her or me at risk. Once she successfully had me (i was still nearly a month prematue, even with all the precautions) she underwent a hysterectomy at 32 and there was another 8 weeks of no horse play allowed, so the sub to Playboy kept going.
That year long open relationship with his left and right is the closest my dad has come to being unfaithful and I'm unceasingly grateful to the both of them for making sure I was able to grace the universe with my existence
~ Buckaroo Banzai