How We Used to Make Friends Without Planning, Permission, or Phones

I grew up in the 80s and was a teen in the 90’s – right when the world started it’s big shift towards life online. I was the last generation to play outside until the street lights came on and ride the neighbourhood flat with our gang of fellow wayward neighbours.

I lived in a valley on a dead end road that bordered a large open area of forest. We spent hours and hours riding our bikes, exploring the forest and catching tadpoles in the river. When I think back I don’t the little gang we formed every actually made friends or even really liked it other outside of the time we played together after school or over the weekends. We didn’t have play dates, weren’t invited to each others parties and when the older kids saw us in school they flat out ignored us and we did the same to the younger kids but we were still friends.

We didnt even ask if someone could play we kinda just rode our bikes around until someone saw us and joined or walked around gathering the troups. It was completely disorganised, we never had a plan or an idea of what we wanted to do – we would literally just raw dog it! We would see who showed up and then decide what the plan of action was – some days it was a cricket game, some days it was a forest exploration, some days a swim at someone’s house and other days it was a made up game of whatever the most creative ones could come up. It didn’t matter what we did, just that we were together.

It was socialisation at it’s purest – we were all different ages, different genders, different interests and different family dynamics but we made it work. Of course there were fights for hierarchy and arguments but we also knew that if we got ourselves alienated we would be at home cleaning, so we found solutions to our problems.

We also always had each others back. I grew up in a time where our parents would let us wander out of sight, sound and mind for hours. Maybe they intuitively (or ignorantly) knew we would be ok because we were together. But if someone got hurt, the gang rallied. If we got ourselves into a trick situation, the gang rallied. If we felt unsafe, the gang rallied.

We built connections that lasted until we all left school and for some of us they lasted much longer. I still have contact with the core gang – we are different parts of the world but those early relationships defined us and shaped us in many ways.

My kids never had this. I tried but our society is just not built that way anymore. We now live in a complex and my younger two kids do spend a lot of time with our neighbours but it is a lot more controlled. They play where we can see them which means we can also hear them and sometimes find ourselves intervening to solve problems we really should leave them to solve. There is also quite a big divide between age groups. I can’t imagine, even the nicest of teens, wanting to spend time with my kids the way the high schoolers used to roll with us.

Don’t get me wrong my children have not had a bad childhood, it is just different from mine and it has impacted their ability to form connections – real, lasting connections. I suppose a better way to say it would be that the connections they are building are different to allow them to exist in a different world.