A Flip Back When Play Lived Outside, Not Behind a Screen

There was a time when childhood had dust on its knees, not screens in its hands. When weekends were for bicycle races, chasing tyres down a slope, and pretending a stick was a sword, a mic, or a steering wheel. We didn’t need Wi-Fi to connect —the neighborhood did that for us.

This Throwback Thursday, I hark back to the raw, imaginative joy of growing up before everything became digital. Before “indoors” became a lifestyle and “content” replaced curiosity. We made up games, invented rules, and created worlds from scratch.

You could tell who was your friend by how loudly they knocked at your gate after school —not by who tagged you in a meme.

We waited for cartoons to air on Saturday mornings. We knew the pain of missing your favorite show and having to wait a whole week to catch it again. We didn’t binge. We anticipated. We valued the little things.

Today’s children may never know the chaos and joy of sneaking off from home to go and play outdoors only to return home in the evening and find your parent waiting for you at the door, a slipper in hand that could land on you any minute.

They may have digital playgrounds, but we had real dust, real bruises, and real friendships built face-to-face.

There were no remotes with “Continue Watching.” You missed an episode? Too bad —catch it next week if you’re lucky. No buffering, no rewinding.

You watched with full attention, because missing even five minutes felt like losing an entire storyline. And if someone dared to switch the channel or block the TV, they instantly became your arch-nemesis.

It’s not about wishing time backwards, but about remembering what we had —and maybe finding a way to reintroduce some of it. Not everything has to be instant, streamed, or edited.

Sometimes, the best parts of life are the unfiltered ones. And on this TBT, I just recollect the sound of laughter outside, louder than the TV, louder than social media videos, and loud enough to call it living.