Some things growing up in slow time weren’t better or worse. They were just slower, and that slowness had a texture that’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t lived it.
There was more empty space these days. Whole afternoons without a schedule. Small joys came from this emptiness, from boredom and waiting and the absence of a screen to fill every crevice. Looking back, the gaps were where most of the good stuff actually happened.
Here are some of those little joys.
1. A whole day without anything planned
Summer mornings stretched out with no schedule, no booked activities, nothing to be at.
You woke up and the day was just a blank space waiting to be filled as you wish. No camps, no lessons piled on top of each other, no parents shuttling you between commitments. The boredom that came with it was uncomfortable for about an hour and then turned into the best part.
You make up a game, you build something, you wander down the street to see who’s around. In that open, unstructured time, imagination really lived. Children today are so tightly scheduled that an empty day has almost disappeared.
2. Riding bikes until the lights come on
The only rule was simple: be home when the lights come on. Until then you were free.
You would disappear on your bike for hours, traversing a piece of the neighborhood that none of the adults were watching. No one had a phone. No one knew exactly where you were, and somehow that felt good. The streetlights flickering in the twilight were the closest signal anyone used to a clock. Such freedom has become more difficult to obtain. You belonged to the south and your friends, and the world trusted you to find your way back to the darkness.
3. A mixtape made just for you
Someone sat for hours at the radio or record player, recording song after song on one cassette. The creation of the tape required time and attention. You had to catch a song at the right moment, get the order right, sometimes handwrite the tracklist on a small slip of paper. When someone gave you one, you knew they had spent the day thinking about you. This meant that a playlist clicked together in thirty seconds couldn’t quite match.
The effort was the message. You played it until the tape peeled off and you couldn’t remember exactly who gave it to you.
4. Wait for one show all week
Your favorite program came on once a week at a certain time, and you organized your entire week around it.
You couldn’t drink. It was impossible to watch when the mood was rising. So the wait built up for seven days, and when night finally came, you were seated in front of the set early so you wouldn’t miss the opening. To miss it was to miss it, period, until then. This expectation created a sense of the thing itself as an event. The next day, everyone saw the same episode at the same time, and you could talk to anyone about it.
5. Reading a box of cereal for breakfast
When there was nothing else to look at at breakfast, the cereal box became exciting. You will read the back a hundred times. Puzzles, a cartoon mascot, a power bar you didn’t understand or care about. There was no phone leaning against a milk jug, no screen vying for your eyes.
So your attention was fixed on what was in front of you, and somehow the most ordinary item in the kitchen held you. It sounds like nothing. But that leisurely breakfast with no distractions, just you, your thoughts and a box of cereal is the kind of morning many days have lost.
6. Hearing the ice cream truck two streets away
At first the chimes were weak and you had about ninety seconds to find the money and get to the curb. This sound can empty the yard faster than anything else. You scrambled around the house looking for coins, ran out the front and hoped he hadn’t turned the corner yet. When you did succeed, the choice took forever, the same options you’d chosen a hundred times before somehow still requiring complete thought. The whole ritual lasted five minutes.
But the combination of the chase, the heat and the cold finally in your hands gave the little summer afternoon more shape than most scheduled events. I’m glad that I arrived on a schedule not controlled by anyone.
7. A long, boring car ride
Traveling meant hours in the back seat with no screen, just the window and your own imagination. You watched the landscape sweep by. You played games you could play with whatever was there, counted things, made up stories about the houses you passed, fought with your sibling over the invisible line down the middle of the seat. Boredom forced you in and out at the same time.
These long journeys, with nothing to do but look, think and talk, were, ironically, some of the most fulfilling hours of childhood. Dead time turned out not to be dead at all.
8. Knowing everyone on the street
The neighborhood was a web of familiar faces and you knew which door to knock on to get just about anything.
You knew whose mom kept good snacks, which yard you could cut, which neighbor would wave to help you with something and slip you a few bucks.
The children moved freely between the houses, and the adults did not seem to pay attention to the whole flock. Safety was in the fact that dozens of adults recognized you within a few minutes of walking. The street was a common place, not a row of strangers, and the child grew up feeling that he was held by more than four walls.
The slower time was not better in every way. In many ways it was harder and most of us wouldn’t give up what we have now to go back.
Moreover, some of these small pleasures were repressed, so that no one chose to let them go. If a couple of them are shocked by something, the unplanned afternoon still exists. It just waits to be left alone.
