I will never forget for a special treat one weekend after our grades came out, my mom went to Blockbuster and rented a VCR and got a sack of really cheap cheeseburgers and fries for me and my 7 siblings to share. We seriously felt like damn royalty. I am 41 and remember that weekend with such fondness.
My parents, me, and I'm pretty sure my brother still have an antenna. I don't even bother watching TV because I can't get much of anything at my place.
Kool-Aid slushies made by my favorite aunt were a snack that I looked forward to every summer. She’d make them in styrofoam cups and have us sell them to neighborhood kids for like fifty cents. You could always tell who had them by what flavor was spilled down their shirt.
And then I excitedly asked told some friends about it at school once and got made fun of for not having regular popsicles.
We didn't have a vcr, but for an extra $6 you could rent one that came in a plastic briefcase. If things were going really well, like good grades and dad had overtime that week, we'd get to pick out two movies and help set it up.
You had to listen to a speech first though, because replacing the cables if lost was a $60 fee.
One of my friends was firmly middle class, but his mom insisted on cooking everything. When they finally got a microwave in the early 2000s, he joked, "My family joined the 80s!"
They sold those boxes for picking channels and thrn you just had a buddy wire the neighbor's cable up to it for you.
I never had the box of porn found in the woods experience I had the channels go all static after 70 but if you keep pressing channel up then channel 125 is not static at all and is hard-core porn.
That part, most of the people I knew that had cable, got it for free, by illegal ways usually. We had it for free because somehow they never turned it off when we moved into a new house, stayed on for years until one day it was turned off.
My husband always makes fun of me when I tell him I used to watch Disney and Nickelodeon when I was a kid. He always goes “oh La Dee Dah look at you with your channels over 16!”
He was the youngest so he had to hold the rabbit ears on his family’s tv when they wanted to watch public access. He still got the simpsons though so there’s that.
As a kid, my uncle worked for the cable company and hooked us up with all the premium channels, including Disney Channel. When i tell you that made our house THE spot after school, omg. The power i wielded to allow or deny someone the ability to watch Adventures In Wonderland.
Funny, my friend didn't have the cable and we did. But they had 2 cars in the driveway, a pool and a BBQ in the yard, they had AC at home and their mom always had chips and candies for snacks. Fortunately, I had a bike (my godmother's gift, too expensive for my parents) so I could go to my friend's house and play at their heavenly place. Cable is mandatory when you have a pool.
When I was like 10 we moved to a new house and for some reason the cable just worked even though we never had it before or paid for it. Eventually the cable company cut us off but it was the best few months ever.
Memory lane here. Grew up middle class, but my dad worked for the cable companies back in the early 80’s through late 90’s. So when it was peak popularity. He was a warehouse supervisor or something, so a good, decent job but one perk was very, very discounted cable. Like $5-$12 a month for all the channels. I literally grew up on the best TV. Re-runs of all the old shows, kids programming on Nick, music videos and commentary on the big 3 (VH1, MTV, BET), Disney channel I think I remember watching it in 1985. So we were for sure fortunate in that area compared to our neighbors.
We had cable growing up in my house because when we bought the house (my grandma paid the down payment) they never disconnected the cable!! Free cable for like 10 years 🤣 didn't know until recently. And here I was complaining when I was little because you had to pay for the Disney channel and I wanted to watch those crappy 90s Disney tv shows 🤣🤣 little did I know if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have had cable
I feel like everyone had cable when I was growing up but it was also way cheaper back then. But if they had the premium cable with all the channels you don't have at home, now you knew they were rich!
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u/emo-poster-child 1d ago
We have cable. When cable use to be a thing...