Outside my bubble, the impossible is possible: Real things I used to think were fake

Originally published on Substack

As a 90s kid, I grew up on the 80s. I watched Happy Days, The Jeffersons, Full House , Good Times and daydreamed about wearing oversized sweatshirts, tights, and ballet flats. I read books featuring kids from the 80s and avidly followed their 80s neighborhood adventures.

Being a savvy reader, I knew not everything I saw or read was real. So you can excuse me, Dear Reader, for thinking the following list of activities was also fiction. I’ve discovered over time that these were very real activities that happened outside of my limited 90s-2000s suburban apartment life.

It’s funny to see the list but it makes me think: we each can live in our own little world, not realizing what’s possible. It’s so important to get out of that bubble to see our own impossible being achieved by others.

Things I used to think were invented for entertainment purposes:

• Basements - Texas homes don’t have basements so I didn’t fully realize their reality until visiting a friend’s home in Philadelphia and hanging out in their basement. Basements are so cool!

• Children riding a bike around town without adult supervision - Most of my outside time as a child had an adult nearby so I couldn’t imagine this

• Children walking to a friend’s house to play - I never lived by the kids I knew and you needed a car to go anywhere.

• Children asking to play with neighbor kid - We didn’t hang out with our neighbors so I had no idea who had a kid or not. Life is lived indoors in the suburbs.

• Cliques - I always thought this was an exaggerated stereotype of school. And then I grew up and discovered adults have way more intense cliques than children do.

• Neighbors greeting you and coming to say hi when you move in to the neighborhood - I have no memory of this happening when we move to a new place. Ever. And my family moved a lot. I’ve never seen it happen in the suburban neighborhoods I lived in, either.