Before the 1990s, what did you do all day?

 On the Reddit sub AskOldPeopleAdvice, someone asked "What did people do all day before the 90s? Was it more boring than today because of the lack of entertainment and the internet?"

I've seen many responses to questions like this, in memes across the Internet. This time I sat and thought for a bit, and then wrote my own response. Here's what we did before the 1990s:

We played board games with our friends and family.

We read good books. Then we recommended them to our friends, who also read them. We talked about what we had read, and even made up our own adventures, based on the books. Sometimes we looked forward to the movie version coming out.

Oh yeah: we went to movie theaters. Sometimes we would catch a double feature. We didn't go to the movies alone; either we went with our friends, or we met our friends there. Both boys and girls.

Oh, and if we didn't have the book, we would check it out from the public library. If it was already checked out, then we would reserve it, and they would call us or send us a postcard to tell us when it was available.

We rode our bikes everywhere.

We played with our friends outside until it got dark and the street lights came on. Even in the winter.

We had spontaneous parties with our friends. We played the latest records while we sat together and admired the artwork on the album cover.

We practiced piano, even if we didn't like it. Thanks, Mom. It paid dividends in later years.

We did chores to earn an allowance. When we got enough money, we rode our bicycles down to the 7-Eleven to buy candy and baseball cards. And Slurpees.

We dragged empty appliance boxes to vacant lots and built box forts. Then we had dirt-clod wars.

We climbed trees. We explored wooded lots, creeks and streams, and gravel pits. We built makeshift shelters and had campouts, where we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows on sticks, and drank soda and had burping contests.

When we wanted to talk to a friend, we went over to their house and rang the doorbell. Sometimes we phoned them first, to tell them we were coming over.

We had hobbies and loved doing them - hobbies that didn't require batteries, an operating system, or an internet connection.

We drew pictures. We painted. We wrote stories, with Bic pens on multiple sheets of notebook paper. We stapled the sheets together and passed the stories around. We were intent on becoming the next great author or artist, rather than an influencer.

We played sports - not the hyper-organized, adult-driven, peewee league stuff, but pickup games on the playground, in the park, or in the street. Think of the movie "The Sandlot", or maybe "Richie Rich", or the street hockey in "The Mighty Ducks 2".

It wasn't boring at all. What's boring is sitting around with a group of your friends, everybody glued to their smartphone and ignoring each other, watching the world go by on social media and not actively participating in it, not truly drinking it in.