User Panel
Posted: 1/25/2021 5:24:06 PM EDT
I grew up in Fairfax County VA in the DC suburbs. It was transitioning from rural small farms to bedroom communities. Pretty wide swing of demographics. I would say about 80% white. Since Virginia was tobacco country, there were student smoking lounges. I think they were technically supposed to be for seniors who might be 18 before they graduated but everyone from freshmen on up used them openly. Before school, during lunch, and between classes they were hives of activity. They were at times open air drug markets. Lots of pot, hash, mushrooms, prescription pills. Acid from time to time. No opiates and coke was just coming around. With all that, academic scores were high, and the sports and service organizations were always very active. There were programs that allowed you to work a part time job and leave school early which is how I got into cars and sheet metal work. Lots of boys openly carried knives on their belts and even had guns in their cars during hunting season. We had a rifle team. Lots of kids drove to school, there was always a constant flow of kids leaving campus all day. There was a lot more truancy, and I think you were allowed 13 unexcused absences. One thing there wasn't is violence, and for the most part everybody just got along. A lot of overlap between the Freaks and the Jocks. Sure there were fistfights, but a stabbing was unheard of.
Fairfax County schools are now a hive of regimented PC bullshit. When did you graduate, and what was your school like? |
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OP, i could've wrote that, across the river though.
Had a 67 Camaro and a 68 Chevelle in HS. Car culture was STRONG. Hunting too. Ran trapline before school. Drugs everywhere, and beer even more so. |
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We are the same age.
The movie Dazed and Confused is considered a documentary where I grew up in Texas. |
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Class of '85 in SW OK. We smoked in school, had a designated smoking area. Dipped and chewed in class as long as you didn't spit.
Our pickups had gun racks in the back window and most of them had a shotgun or rifle. We had a welding and metal working class as well as a wood working class. In wood shop we all made gun cabinets. Our teacher let us bring in guns and redo the stocks on them. He taught us how to sand the wood down, steam dents out and oil or stain the stocks and apply wax. |
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The town I grew up in was kinda working collar conservative until it got taken over by rich yuppies because of the good school system. Now its like you died and grew up in progressive heaven. |
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Early 2000s, a handful of kids died from opiates, a handful went to jail for meth, and a handful literally turned themselves into retards from overdoses
Some of the dumbest crimes I've ever heard of were 16 year old kids trying to support some rough drug habits One kid just disappeared. I found out years later he was shooting up morphine before I even understood what that was The funny part is, everything was a lot stricter on campus |
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We shot trap behind the school. The rules that pretty much no one followed were that you took your shotgun into the principal's office for the day, then got it after school. My friend had a beautiful o/u of some sort. We caught the principal shooting it during 7th period. My kids think I'm lying when I tell every single part of that story. |
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Went to Belle View Elementary in Fairfax, OP. Graduated high school in 1980, but we moved to NC when I was ten.
My high school was fed by two hugely different communities...one very wealthy, and one very lower middle class. Good sprinkle of racial tension, to boot. Made for an interesting mix. |
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By the time I was in high school, the smoking lounge for seniors was gone
We had to smoke in the bathrooms like deviants. Speed |
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Heavy Metal Parking Lot teaser (1986) |
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My HS was like in the 70's in central Indiana. EVERYBODY was smokin' dope. Man a $20 bag would last forever.
What happened? Just Say No campaign Helicopter moms Socially competitive entitled kids |
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Class of '81. Rural SE Ohio. Graduation class started with 72 students, I think 48 of us graduated. (Oddly enough, about the same number and graduation rate as my platoon in Parris Island later that year).
Full gun racks in the trucks in the student parking during and after hunting season. Nobody died. Weekend fun (outside of semi-monthly school dances) consisted of finding someplace (or somebody) to buy cases of 3.2% beer and/or Boone's Farm, and driving around our tiny little downtown area all night while drinking. Nobody died. REO Speedwagon and Air Supply ruled the airwaves, AC/DC and VH ruled the (mostly 8-track) tape decks. Disco had recently been proven to suck at that point. Nobody died. Had a '69 SS 396 with 19k miles that I worked two summers cutting and selling firewood to pay for, and then blew it up by not checking the oil. I wanted to die. |
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Quoted: I grew up in Fairfax County VA in the DC suburbs. It was transitioning from rural small farms to bedroom communities. Pretty wide swing of demographics. I would say about 80% white. Since Virginia was tobacco country, there were student smoking lounges. I think they were technically supposed to be for seniors who might be 18 before they graduated but everyone from freshmen on up used them openly. Before school, during lunch, and between classes they were hives of activity. They were at times open air drug markets. Lots of pot, hash, mushrooms, prescription pills. Acid from time to time. No opiates and coke was just coming around. With all that, academic scores were high, and the sports and service organizations were always very active. There were programs that allowed you to work a part time job and leave school early which is how I got into cars and sheet metal work. Lots of boys openly carried knives on their belts and even had guns in their cars during hunting season. We had a rifle team. Lots of kids drove to school, there was always a constant flow of kids leaving campus all day. There was a lot more truancy, and I think you were allowed 13 unexcused absences. One thing there wasn't is violence, and for the most part everybody just got along. A lot of overlap between the Freaks and the Jocks. Sure there were fistfights, but a stabbing was unheard of. Fairfax County schools are now a hive of regimented PC bullshit. When did you graduate, and what was your school like? View Quote Just change fairfax county to montgomery county md. and it was the same. Good times graduated same year. |
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We brought guns to school and kept them in the principles office, with the ammo in our lockers. Nobody cared less.
There was a smoking lounge and all kinds of other stuff. Nobody died but there were some mild fights here and there. Oh and music, cars and fun were over the top without a fear in the world. Never locked our cars either. |
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I graduated in '78 from an ACE Christian school in New Mexico.
I missed out on a lot of science and literature because it wasn't "biblical." I was not prepared for life or normal relationships because of the backward fundamental teachings. It took me a couple of years to realize what a bunch of ignorant, simple-minded hicks those people all were. We weren't allowed to listen to rock music because it was from the devil. We did anyway. Thank you Mexico for XROK 80! We weren't allowed to have premarital sex. Preacher's daughter did anyway. I swear the stereotype was true, she ended up pregnant at 18. We weren't allowed to go to movies. First movie I saw in a theater was Star Wars because my boss where I worked said, "Go see Star Wars, we're having a slow day." |
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Stoughton, WI Class of '79. Guys brought their Browning 12 gauges to school during hunting season, the rest of OP's story is the same, one kid's dad bought him a Superbird that he drove to school daily.
The hots girls all wore the skimpiest clothing available. Drunk driving was very common and merely winked at by the cops. What a great time to be young! |
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Quoted: I grew up in Fairfax County VA in the DC suburbs. It was transitioning from rural small farms to bedroom communities. Pretty wide swing of demographics. I would say about 80% white. Since Virginia was tobacco country, there were student smoking lounges. I think they were technically supposed to be for seniors who might be 18 before they graduated but everyone from freshmen on up used them openly. Before school, during lunch, and between classes they were hives of activity. They were at times open air drug markets. Lots of pot, hash, mushrooms, prescription pills. Acid from time to time. No opiates and coke was just coming around. With all that, academic scores were high, and the sports and service organizations were always very active. There were programs that allowed you to work a part time job and leave school early which is how I got into cars and sheet metal work. Lots of boys openly carried knives on their belts and even had guns in their cars during hunting season. We had a rifle team. Lots of kids drove to school, there was always a constant flow of kids leaving campus all day. There was a lot more truancy, and I think you were allowed 13 unexcused absences. One thing there wasn't is violence, and for the most part everybody just got along. A lot of overlap between the Freaks and the Jocks. Sure there were fistfights, but a stabbing was unheard of. Fairfax County schools are now a hive of regimented PC bullshit. When did you graduate, and what was your school like? View Quote 1979. From Hayfield. Where were you? Edison, Fort Hunt, etc? Sounds like Hayfield. |
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Year away from a federal desegregation case that would last 35 years. Moving targets. Imagine that people move to an area with good schools and out of areas with shit ones.
Imagine that the US government trying to hit a moving target year after year after year. What a clusterfuck, till everyone just moved out of that area across the river and out of that school system entirely. |
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GED class of 90. I was supposed to graduate in 91. Life was good.
Things totally suck now. |
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Class of 14.
Everything still seemed normal to me. So yeah just in the last 7 years a lot has changed. Liberals... |
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Class of ‘87. We still had rifle racks in our trucks WITH rifles, in the parking lot. You could stand by the outer edge of the parking lot to smoke/dip.
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View Quote One of my all-time favorite internet videos. It's like time travel. Brown muscle cars. The freedom is palpable. I can almost smell the tobacco smoke outdoors on a sticky MD summer evening. Also note that those people are clearly not athletes lol. Almost no fat people and most of those dudes are more fit than many people today who consider themselves "athletic". For those that have never seen it or - gasp - never got to live through the 80s, here is the full version: Heavy Metal Parking Lot |
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There were 24 in my graduating class. Not much drug use, a little pot here and there but we certainly were a bunch of drunks.
Mean as hell Full of wine We are the class of '79 |
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My wife grew up in what was once rural Prince William County and graduated in 97. When we were married in 03, Haymarket was still pretty rural, with only a grocery store, a sheetz, and a few subdivisions. Today, there are subdivisions everywhere, tons of traffic and sprawl surrounding their family farm. I can only imagine what it was like back in the 80's in that area.
I graduated in 96, and we still had lots of shop classes and guns in truck racks back then. |
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Back in 1986 we had a Halloween dress up day and one of my classmates depressed up as a soldier and brought his AR15 to school, no mag though. We didn’t give it any thought back then but try doing it now
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Jocks, drug dealers, tweakers, goths, etards, gang bangers and regular students is all i remember. Continuation school was drug dealers, drug users, gang bangers, people getting robbed in the bathroom, stabbings lol.
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Quoted: They wrote this movie about it. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/257492/C0C6692D-3C90-4EA6-908D-FDE02BCB8DF0_jpe-1796547.JPG View Quote Pretty close to that, just a bit more upscale and whiter bedroom community for me. We only had one black guy on our football team. 1986 grad. |
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It was great. Graduated in '83. Everyone pretty much got along. Never really saw any fighting. Our district was 367 sq miles. School was our social life.
We used to challenge the teachers in the mornings by meeting in the lower back parking lot and shooting trap out across the woods with them before school. We had a rifle team and would ride the bus 45 minutes to school with our 22's uncased, with us. Every old beater pick up in the student lot had a Marlin or Winchester 30/30 hanging proudly out in the open. We ran trap line on our way to the bus stop and the afternoon bus stop was 2 3/4 miles walk home every day. Less if there was no water coming over the old dam and we could walk across. We hunted and fly fished for trout before and after school. Hair was big, lots of neon colors and bush was dense. I worked on stage crew for musicals. While running wire up above the ceiling of the auditorium across the HVAC vents from spotlight/projection room to the stage, I came across a full size mattress at a junction recessed in all the HVAC surrounded by a black curtain. We used to do shit like this unsupervised. think of that in today's terms. Anyway. I had two girls I would take up to the film/spotlight room and we would access the ceiling through the tile with a ladder and crawl across the vents to the "Sin Bin"( found out the one teacher knew about it and gave me the wink, knowing I was running a new line from the spotlight room to the lighting booth off to the side of the stage.Told me that's what it was called by the guy who set it up 7 years before ) where we would set an alarm clock so we could bang and be done in time for the last activity bus. Walk like an Egyptian, my 80's bros! |
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Class of 89 here.
And it was girls, cars, hunting and farming. One day I was talking to my math teacher about guns. He was a gunsmith as well as a great teacher. Anyway we get talking of this old side by side that was my grandfather's. Nothing collectable, just a old Ithaca. It had a broken firing pin and he wanted to look at it. Next day had it in my car, told him I have it for him to look at. He says come here during study hall. So a few classes later I do so. He says go get it so I can take a look. Out to the car take it out and open it up sling it over my shoulder. I walk back into school during the middle of the day past the office. There stands the principal, the vice principal and the head of the school board. They wave me in, " going to see Mr.C"? , said yes broken firing pin. Can we see, they all look it over er , shoulder it up at the clock. Nice old gun. Ok be careful... Cars, heck we used to drag race down the road in front of the school bus garage. One of the town police officers would occasionally show up, with his kick ass 70 nova ss. Nothing more Nothing less, such different times. Wish it was like that now... |
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Graduated in 1993, from a monastery school.
No, not a Montessori school, a monastery school. Run by monks. No girls. Small, very Catholic (obviously). Great from a learning perspective, lousy from a social perspective. |
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Class of '78 it was exactly like this.
Dazed and Confused | Matthew McConaughey’s Breakout Role |
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I grew up in Jersey and graduated around the same time. Coke & speed were rampant in sports, especially football. Anabolic steroids, too.
I suspect suburban NYC is similar to DC. Maybe the company we kept? I was 100% straight edge, drank beer occasionally, no dope. I still remember bringing my cases 12 gauge Ithaca 37 Featherlight to put in the vice principal’s office to go hunting after school. Maybe a dozen or so guns in his office with ammo. May as well be a different planet. |
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Rural Georgia here - class of 93.
The biggest controversy was striking golden showers from sex ed and removing prayer from our graduation ceremony. There were many kids who stood up in our pre-graduation meeting and gave the administration and earful of why it was wrong to turn your back on God. If that is the worst my son gets in in 6 years I'll be happy. This world is another planet and most people have gone mad - up is down, right is wrong. |
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8 track mutherfuqers!
Nobody needs a goddamn CD or MP3.... 8 tracks 4 eva! |
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class of 80 also, North Central High in Indy. Just like the Op said, and we had an indoor range under the football stadium.
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Quoted: OP, i could've wrote that, across the river though. Had a 67 Camaro and a 68 Chevelle in HS. Car culture was STRONG. Hunting too. Ran trapline before school. Drugs everywhere, and beer even more so. View Quote car culture is coming back . you're just out of touch. go on facebook and look up car groups in your area. there are more than you think and they allow anyone to join. old school muscle or japan tuners, or new school muscle. all welcome. also guns and hunting are still in, but you're not seeing it because you're looking in the wrong places. |
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Quoted: car culture is coming back . you're just out of touch. go on facebook and look up car groups in your area. there are more than you think and they allow anyone to join. old school muscle or japan tuners, or new school muscle. all welcome. also guns and hunting are still in, but you're not seeing it because you're looking in the wrong places. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: OP, i could've wrote that, across the river though. Had a 67 Camaro and a 68 Chevelle in HS. Car culture was STRONG. Hunting too. Ran trapline before school. Drugs everywhere, and beer even more so. car culture is coming back . you're just out of touch. go on facebook and look up car groups in your area. there are more than you think and they allow anyone to join. old school muscle or japan tuners, or new school muscle. all welcome. also guns and hunting are still in, but you're not seeing it because you're looking in the wrong places. I'm out of touch? Attached File At the dragstrip most Friday nights. Yes,I'm a carbed dinosaur, but there. With my sons. At the range and hunting with them too. |
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I graduated in 82.
My high school was on the fringes of Cleveland Ohio. We were somewhat..... diverse. There had been a race riot 2 years before I started high school. We had metal detectors in the entrances along with security guards. There were certain hallways that a white student could not traverse before school began since they were claimed by the more vibrant students. Absolutely no pocket knives, nothing that could be used as a weapon was permitted. Any metal shop projects had to be picked up at the end of the school day. Before and after school the vibrant students claimed territory on the campus and right off the campus. No non vibrants were permitted passage through their turf. Drugs of all varieties were readily available. A year after I graduated the violence at the Friday night football games really kicked into high gear. The band bus driver was beaten to death by a vibrant student and there was a shooting, wounding two vibrants from the opposing team's school. I have no nostalgia for my high school experience. |
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