20 Ways Your Friday Night Was Different 20 Years Ago
Friday night tykes.
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Going out on Friday night in your twenties is pretty much the greatest. Even if you’re not a young, sexy person, you're surrounded by young, sexy people who make you feel young and sexy. Over beers and cocktails you make the memories that you will recall oh so fondly when you graduate into the drudgery of the workday. These are, as they say, the best years of your life.
But, are they? When you were younger, all you could think about was getting older: when you were six, the nine year-olds were the coolest, when you were nine, the twelve year-olds were the coolest and so on. Looking back on it, we might have actually had it the best when we were focused more on finger painting and juice boxes than skirt chasing and bottle service. With adult interests like drinking and getting laid come worries like being able to afford drinking and paying for the dating that (hopefully) leads to getting laid. We’re not saying that life as an eight-year-old was always better than it is now, but we wouldn’t mind spending a few weeks in our younger shoes. We’ll let you be the judge. Here are 20 Ways Your Friday Night Was Different 20 Years Ago.
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You Never Had to Work Late Unexpectedly
Nothing brings down an evening like being forced to stay late at work. Even if you are hourly, every so often you'll have that age-old conversation with your boss. "Hey there, bud. Looks like we're extra swamped here today. Would you mind terribly if you stuck around a little bit later than normal? I'd really appreciate it." Your going out clothes languish in your work locker or closet for another several hours as you do tasks that could easily wait until Monday. For all the terrible things about school, at least it ended at the same time everyday. Your teacher's profits were not increased by keeping you late. You couldn't stay late or your teacher would have to deal with some angry bus drivers. In the working world, labor laws have made it so that it is exceedingly difficult for employers to screw you out of money, so they do the best they can to screw your out of time.
Your Belt Didn't Have to Match Your Shoes
Much love to the gentlemen over at Four Pins, but for most men, the day girls started caring about what you wore was the worst day of your young life. As a guy who sported an oversized Ultimate Warrior t-shirt and had a mullet for his first school picture, it was certainly a rude awakening. Don't get us wrong, women don't expect much. We merely have to match our belt and our shoes, and make sure we don't wear a shirt the exact same color as our pants. Despite the low bar set for us, we still pine for the days when we could wear anything we wanted without social consequence. We also wish that we didn't need a dumb excuse like a theme party to dress up in costume, but if we wanted to walk around in costumes that badly, we could just go to ComicCon.
A Night Spent In Front of the TV Was the Best Case Scenario
No matter how much your friends love television, no one wants to admit that they spent their Friday night emptying out their Netflix queue. Even watching critical darlings like Arrested Development and Breaking Bad won't make your Friday night look cool. When you were younger, you wanted nothing more to stay up late and watch TV. If you could go to school on Monday and tell your friends that you were up until ten watching South Park or The Simpsons re-runs, you were basically a god. We are all for a return to this formula of coolness for adults. Our plea to the world: judge us not by the content of our martini glasses, but by the shows on our Netflix queue.
You Had the Dopest Ride on the Block
Do you yearn for the days when TLC's "No Scrubs" didn't apply to you? There was no need to be "Hangin' out the passenger side of your best friends ride" trying to holler because whether you had a big wheel or crazy coupe, you had the hottest ride in town. When you get older, you are introduced to the harsh realities of the free market. Some people at the club have jobs where they steal money from people, and you have one of those jobs where you get money stolen from you. As a result, you are rolling mom's minivan while the next guy pulls up in a Benz. Life was never fair, but it has sure gotten a lot more unfair in the last several decades.
You Always Had A Designated Driver
It's too bad you weren't allowed to get drunk when you were eight years old. Even though you are old enough to drink, you are also responsible for arranging your own ride home. In cities that lack decent public transportation (pretty much all of them), someone has to miss out on the fun or you have to fork over the cash for a cab. Even though your drink options were limited to juice boxes and juice pouches back in the day, you always knew you had a ride home no matter how much you've had to drink. "Yes, I'll have another Capri Sun. Hell, I'm not driving."
No One Brought Up Politics or Religion
Okay, so this little guy might be the exception to the rule, but back in the day no one gave a damn about politics or religion. Don't get us wrong, there are precious few subjects as important to discuss as the state of our state and the nature of being, but how many nights have you had ruined by these two toxic topics? We can all remember an evening when things were going well with a lady and then she let slip a line like "Only lazy people are on welfare" or "I believe in traditional marriage." You hear that needle scratch in your head and ask yourself exactly how much philosophical abuse you're willing to take in hopes of a physical reward. Of course, the worst thing she can say is "I don't believe in contraception," because you immediately have both ideological and practical concerns.
You Never Got Kicked Out, No Matter How Rowdy You Got
Parents, it turns out, have far more patience than bouncers. It takes even the most poorly behaved children roughly eighteen years to get kicked out of their house, while it can take you less than eight seconds to get kicked out of the bar. Apparently, if you call a guy an asshole, and that asshole happens to own the bar, you are no longer welcome in the bar. We thought this was America, damn it! If that gets you kicked out of a bar, we imagine what splattering finger paint on the bar stools or rolling a garbage can down the stairs would certainly get you eighty-sixed. Sure, there were punishments in childhood, but the worst punishment parents who weren't into corporal punishment could come up with was forcing you to stay in the house.
You Could Pass Out Before 9 PM and Not Wake Up With Sharpie All Over You
You still have St. Patrick's Day, your birthday, and tailgating sporting events, but generally speaking, falling asleep early on in the night is not a good look. One of the cruelest of life's ironies is that when we are young we want nothing more than to be allowed to stay up late, while when we get older, we would do anything for more sleep. Even if you want to get a good night's sleep on a Friday night in adulthood, you will be dragged out on the town. There is invariably some kind of happy hour or house party that you will be forced to attend. Also, somehow, on every Friday night it is some aquaintance's birthday, so you'll feel guilty if you go home and watch Netflix. If you fall asleep at a party or at the bar, you are introduced to a whole new world of shame. There truly is no rest for the weary.
Dancing Wasn't So Stressful
The politics of dancing in adulthood are enough to intimidate even the most confident men around. How do you know she's not just in the club to "dance with her girls?" Where do you put your hands? How much ass shaking is the correct amount? These and dozens of other questions zip through our minds every time we hit the dance floor. If you let those doubting voices in your head get to you, you'll likely end up a sweaty palmed, rigid mess instead of the smooth dance operator you know you can be. Next time you find yourself under the pulsing lights of the club, channel your inner eight year old and dance like no one's watching. Actually, no, we just thought about what that might look like, so, on second thought, continue standing awkwardly against the wall and waiting for your girl to get tired.
More Food Came Sliced Than Just Pizza
We haven't seen the numbers crunched, but we firmly believe that there is a correlation between adulthood weight gain and a lack of bite-sized foods. Parents used to go to great lengths to get you to eat food, particularly vegetables. They would cut food into bits, hide it under more appealing foods, and even cut it into the shape of dinosaurs. At a certain point in your teenage years, they just gave up. Once a child turns sixteen or so, the world collectively says, "Fuck it. If they aren't eating right by now, they aren't going to start." Then you proceed to eat pizza and drink soda for every meal until your twenty-something metabolism slows to a halt and you gain five pounds by merely eating a donut. If our foods were sliced for us and restaurants hid vegetables in our burgers, would we eat better? Probably not, but it might be worth a shot.
Your Parents Showing Up Was a Good Thing
If you are past college age, it would be pretty strange if you ran into your parents on a night out. During high school and college, if your parents showed up at a house party it meant trouble. Either you had been busted for turning their suburban home into a den of sin or you called on them to help get you out of a bad situation.
There was a time when parents would encourage the fun of you and your friends with Bagel Bites and chocolate chip cookies rather than only showing up to shut things down. That gives us an idea. If we started a delivery service where people dressed like parents delivered Bagel Bites and chicken nuggets to the bar, we could be millionaires. Don't think about taking our idea. By the time you've read this, we'll already have trademarked DaddyDelivery [Editor's Note: Author was asked to come up with a better name and was unable to.]
You Could Enjoy Cartoons Without Getting High
Nothing illustrates the way our capacity for joy diminishes over time quite like cartoons. Sure, we can still appreciate the sophisticated statements provided by The Simpsons as we age, but to enjoy the simple pleasures of Yo Gabba Gabba, we need a little help from the stickiest of the icky. There was a time when you didn't have to smoke trees to throw yourself wholeheartedly into Blue's searches on Blue's Clues. When you found that blue paw print hidden deep in the background of the crudely rendered living room, you were high on life, damn it.
Purple Drank Meant Something Very Different
Then, as now, you were into different drinks. Colorful juices, fizzy sodas, and the like are some of the greatest gifts you can give a child. As an adult, you're still easily seduced by the lure of gimmicky libations, but they have to contain a drug of some sort. Those of you who aren't about that robo-tripping life probably prefer alcohol. As long as there's alcohol involved, you'll drink out of a fish bowl or comically-sized glass boot. Think back for a moment to a far simpler time when you took joy in zany colors and containers without needed the excuse of sweet, sweet booze inside.
There Was No Shame in Having An Accident
This is embarrassing to talk about, we know, but this is a safe digital space. We've all had some sort of drunken accident at one point or other. After you drink a certain amount, bodily fluids are going to come out of one end or another, whether you like it or not. When you were younger, you only had to worry about the immediate ramifications of your actions. How were you going to get yourself cleaned up? Thankfully, most of the time the answer was your parents. In adulthood, if you have an accident, you have to worry about shame that lingers long after the evidence has been disposed of. If your roommates, or, horror of horrors, your girl, find out about your shameful secret, you'll never live it down. If your crew discovers your drunken mishap, you can take solace in the fact that eventually everyone you know will be incontinent anyway and it won't matter.
There Were No Late-Night Texts to Regret
You probably weren't drunk when you were eight, unless you were a bad ass eight year-old. You also couldn't text anyone. There have been many advantages to modern technology, but there is a dark side to everything becoming so much easier. In the days of land lines, you had eight chances to go back on your decision to make an ill-advised phone call. If you wanted to send a teary e-mail to your ex, you had to contend with 56k modem's worth of contemplation before your foolish words were sent out into the ether. The forward march of progress is a wonderful thing, except when it allows us to march a little too fast in the wrong direction.
Your Boys Couldn't Abandon You
Phrases like "Bros before hoes" are for men who never get laid and aren't mature enough for a meaningful relationship. That being said, it never feels good when your boys abandon you in hopes of hooking up. Who hasn't gone out to the bar with a group of guys only to find himself alone hours before last call? In the days before driver's licenses, the only woman who could come between you and your boys was your mom. Now that the meaning of game has evolved far beyond Capture the Flag and Candyland, you're far more likely to end your night with no friendly faces in sight.
Taking Your Shirt Off Was Acceptable Behavior
Unless you are at a sporting event or a music festival, guys really can't get away with taking their shirt off in public. We fondly remember those simpler times when you could throw off your shirt whenever you wanted, indoors or outdoors, in public or in private. If you wanted to stage your own professional wrestling re-enactments or experiment with body painting, removing your shirt was a key component of success. Bar owners and security officers simply don't understand this. It is a shame that adulthood is pretty strictly "no shoes, no shirt, no service." Until we live in a world where the shirtless can at least get some service, we'll have to settle for the standard bro compromise and unbutton our shirts half way.
Incriminating Photos Ended Up In Your Family Photo Album
We pity the generation growing up today. Thankfully, very few photos from our childhood have made their way onto social media. Embarrassing Halloween costumes, lame family photos, and school pictures from that awkward period are safely tucked away in photo albums far from the Internet. We can't say the same for photos of us from college onward. Even if you've attempted to wipe your social media slate clean, there is likely some photo of you mid-beer bong on the Internet somewhere. No matter how hard you try, you continue to indulge in similarly embarrassing moments, and of course, someone is always waiting in the wings to Vine or Instagram your shame. We need to come to terms with the fact that every dumb thing we do will be preserved in amber Instagram filters for the rest of our lives. We should be thankful that as long as our parents don't learn how to use a scanner, photos from our past will remain forever locked in the attic.
You Always Woke Up In Your Own Bed
In adulthood, the best nights often lead to the most uncomfortable mornings. If you wake up in a stranger's bed, you should consider yourself lucky. Those of you who have woken up on a subway platform, a sidewalk, or a park bench know what there are far worse places to find yourself on a groggy morning. In childhood, no matter where you may have fallen asleep, loving parental hands were there to scoop you up and put you where you belonged. If only we had such assistance at the tail end of a bender. We have to give a couple points to adulthood though, as sometimes you wake up in your bed with a strange person in it, which is pretty dope.
Girls Had No Qualms About Coming Back to Your Place
Back in the day, the first time you hung out with a girl outside of daycare or school was at your place. You didn't have to worry about picking a restaurant or coffee shop as a location for that all-important first meeting. There was no cause to spend a good chunk of that paycheck on drinks as payment for the temporary rent of a table in the corner. Until a certain age, you didn't even have to ask a girl to come over: you had parents arrange (play) dates for you. We wish we had that kind of assistance with hookups today. Of course, now you get to (ideally) have sex when girls come through, which is way better than playing house or watching Aladdin. But, wouldn't it be great to have the best of both Whole New Worlds?