25 Things We Could Get Away With in the ’80s and ’90s That We Couldn’t Today

For Gen Xers, life looked a lot different during the last century

Corey Levitan and Eric Spitznagel,

AARP

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Published March 05, 2026

a photo shows a brood of blonde kids leaning out the back of a station wagon, which is loaded up for a camping trip

Kids riding in the cargo area like unsecured luggage? The ’80s were basically one long liability waiver with a wood-panel finish.

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The world has changed. Some of it for the better, some of it for the worse, and a lot of it in ways that feel less like “progress” and more like a software update nobody asked for but everyone had to install anyway. The pre-internet age wasn’t a golden era, but it did run on a very different operating system, one with fewer alerts, fewer passwords and a much higher tolerance for winging it.

Here are 25 everyday things we used to get away with in the Before Times. Not as rebels or thrill seekers, but as regular people just going about their lives, never suspecting that one day this would all be retold as the kind of story that begins, “You won’t believe this, but we used to ...”

Welcome to the past. Please remove your shoes.

1. Getting on a plane without feeling like you were entering a low-security prison

You showed up, walked in and somehow ended up on a plane without taking off your shoes or proving your toothpaste wasn’t a threat to democracy.

2. Doing something unbelievably stupid and then denying it ever happened

You could make a complete fool of yourself in public and it probably wouldn’t follow you for the rest of your life. Because the entire world wasn’t walking around with tiny cameras, ready to make your bad decisions go viral. Stupidity could still be lost to history.

a photo shows a group of preteen boys on their bicycles, ready to ride down a dirt hill

We didn’t track steps. We tracked how far we could get before someone wiped out.

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3. Being unreachable

We weren’t all walking around with tiny supercomputers in our pockets, so it wasn’t considered unusual if we couldn’t be contacted at any time, for any reason. You could screen your calls and pretend you weren’t home, and then not return the call for days or even weeks if you were feeling particularly antisocial.

4. Not knowing something and being OK with it

How much does a panda weigh? Can bald people get dandruff? Is Abe Vigoda still alive? We had so many questions. But in a Google-less world, you had to be fine not knowing. It was that or go to a library, and who had that kind of time?

5. Making plans with no way to update them

You said, “Meet you at the mall at 7,” and that was it. If someone was late, you just stood there, slowly aging like a forgotten extra in a movie.

6. The pop-in

The ’80s and ’90s were still the ’50s in many regards. It was not yet considered stalkerish to show up on a friend’s doorstep with zero notice. After all, he never returned that answering machine message you left him last week.

7. Having a completely different personality at work than on weekends

Before social media turned everyone’s entire existence into a personal brand, what you did on Saturday night was genuinely nobody’s business on Monday morning.

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a photo shows a young girl watching a TV with rabbit ears

Our babysitters had rabbit ears and terrible reception.

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8. Paying with a check — anywhere, for anything

Grocery stores, restaurants, the guy selling bootleg concert tees outside the arena. You could hand a stranger a paper rectangle with your home address and banking information printed on it, and everyone acted like this was a perfectly reasonable transaction.

9. Ordering just ‘a coffee’

Before upscale chains made ordering coffee a $6 exercise in self-expression, you could utter two syllables and someone who knew exactly what you wanted would serve you a cup, along with change for your dollar.

10. Letting the TV raise you after school

You got home, turned on the television and stayed there until a parent appeared or hunger forced you into the kitchen like a raccoon. Entire afternoons were sponsored by syndicated sitcoms and toy commercials and you probably filled up on latchkey-kid snacks, too.

11. Being bored in a way that felt geological

Not “scrolling while sighing” bored. Real bored. The kind where you stared at the wall and considered rearranging your entire room.

12. Recording songs off the radio for your mixtape

Half the track had a DJ talking over it, the timing was always slightly off, and you were still incredibly proud of it. This was artisanal piracy.

13. Reading an entire newspaper every day

Not skimming headlines. Actually reading it. Front to back. Including parts about city council meetings in towns you did not live in. Unusually active police blotters were a bonus.

14. Not documenting your meals

You ordered food, it arrived and you ate it while it was still hot. Nobody was pulling out a camera to photograph the linguine before anyone touched it. The experience belonged entirely to the people sitting at the table, and whatever happened between you and that pasta stayed between you and that pasta.

15. Losing touch with people completely and forever

Friends moved away and quietly faded out of your life the way characters disappear between seasons of a TV show. Years later, you’d still catch yourself wondering whatever happened to them, with no easy way to find out and no expectation that you ever would.

16. Driving without GPS and just sort of ... figuring it out

You got lost. You asked for directions. Sometimes you never truly knew where you were, but you eventually arrived somewhere, and that felt like victory. It was between you and your MapQuest printouts.

a graphic illustration shows a 90s mixtape

You haven’t truly loved music until you’ve had to save it by performing minor surgery with a pencil.

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17. Riding in the cargo bed of a pickup ⁠— on the freeway

Because nothing said freedom like when the driver gunned the gas, wind swooshed through your hair and you briefly got a taste of danger (or was that exhaust?). If you did ride in the vehicle, you probably also skipped the seat belt, too. Now we know better.

18. Hitchhiking

Sticking your thumb out to convince a complete stranger to pull over and let you into their car was once considered a totally cool way to get where you needed to go. It took an entire “Stranger Danger” campaign and multiple horror films to change our minds.

19. Leaving your car unlocked — everywhere

Not just in your driveway. In parking lots and even downtown. The logic being that if someone wanted your 1987 Dodge Aries badly enough to steal it, honestly, good for them. You probably also never locked your front door.

20. Buying cold medicine without showing ID

You could walk into any drugstore and purchase an entire shelf’s worth of decongestants with “the good stuff,” aka pseudoephedrine, without a pharmacist studying your face like you were applying for security clearance.

21. Allowing children to be unsupervised

The rules were simple: Be home when the streetlights came on. Everything in between was your own adventure to figure out. Parents were so chill about it, they had to create newscasters to ask “Do you know where your children are?” as a public service announcement that was widespread from the late 1960s through the late 1980s.

22. Having designated smoking sections

It seemed like nearly every high school in America had a courtyard designated for smoking, as if nicotine addiction were just another extracurricular activity. There was also an invisible wall in most restaurants for smokers and nonsmokers, much to the dismay of those who didn’t appreciate smelling like old smoke days after hitting up Denny’s.

23. Learning things exclusively from older kids who were often wrong

This is how myths were born. This is also how you learned at least three “facts” that were aggressively untrue.

24. Seeing your favorite musician for $20

In 1994, the average concert ticket price was approximately $25. Today, those prices can reach over $100 or much more. Plus, your ticket costs rise with each terrible fee.

25. Playing on dangerous playground equipment

The metal slide was lava-hot, the swing set was half-rusted, and if you fell, you had to remove the embedded gravel from your knee. Today’s kids have soft corners and age-appropriate equipment.

Editor’s note: This story ran previously in The Arrow, AARP’s former online magazine for Gen X men.

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