50 Memes To Remind You How Good Life Once Was, As Shared By The “Ouch, Right In The Childhood” Page (New Posts)
“The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return,” stated Milan Kundera.
The days that were and the days that will never be again sum up the joys of feeling nostalgic for something. The daily rut of getting out of bed, making coffee, working for excessive hours, socializing with people, coming home to watch Netflix, sleep and repeat, falls short of the happiness of childhood.
Those days when life seemed oh so interesting, complex, and explorative. Those days when TV actually had something good on regardless of timing or day of the week. Those days when one didn’t have to pay rent, worry about being able to afford eggs, or ponder the purpose of existence. All those feelings can be summed up in the posts by this Instagram page called “Ouch, Right In The Childhood.”
They come with a warning of having the potential to ruin your childhood, so be careful as you scroll through this list, upvoting your favorites and leaving comments in the sections below. It’ll be a good time! And if you’d like another hit of nostalgia, here’s another Bored Panda article right here. Now let’s get into it!
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A sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call nostalgia. A craving for the way things were. An idyllic way of remembering the past. The bittersweet feeling of happiness and pain intermixing. Those times will never truly come back, but there are bits and pieces of them still present.
The page called “Ouch, Right In The Childhood” has made it their mission to keep the nostalgia train running with their witty memes. Although the page comes with a warning of the potential ruining of one’s childhood, their 142K followers seem to not mind. Started in August 2016, they’re still going strong.
Nostalgia is one of those feelings that is universally familiar, and yet the experience of it is specific to each person. What one person feels deep feelings of longing for, another may have completely forgotten about, and vice versa. Yet in both cases, that feeling may be a result of our own thought processes, rather than an accurate representation of memory.
There is a reason that Alan R. Hirsch refers to nostalgia as a screen memory—not a true recreation of the past, but rather a combination of many different memories, all integrated together, and all negative emotions getting filtered out in the process. One can never return to this past, as it never truly existed, and the present reality, no matter how good, can never be as good as an ideal.
I always smile when I remember this great, wonderful, kind, and very funny man! RIP Robin, you were always a treasure!🥰😁😢❤️
The nostalgic urge to recreate the past within the present in many ways explains the choices we decide to make. Marrying spouses with characteristics reminiscent of those of our parents, painting walls the same colors we had in our childhood bedrooms, sleeping with a stuffed toy, building a diet with the foods that we grew up with, etc.
As Dr. Hal McDonald states, we are, after all, the leading actors in the memories that we classify as nostalgic, so some reflection on the type of role we play in those memories is necessary for determining how important or meaningful those past experiences are to the present in which we remember and embody them.
I can't remember ever thinking I wished we had internet. I can't remember being bored either.
IMO life was better before smart phones. Not everyone will agree.
Load More Replies...Yeah, my brother and I could disappear for days at a time. We used to stop in at the house to "sh*t, shower and shave" and then poof we were gone again.
How can a kid wish for internet when it wasn't even a thing at the time? No one sat at home a hundred years ago and sighed, "Gee it's gonna be so boring until they invent television"
The internet was definitely a huge thing for most of the 90s. The OP is wrong from the start. We had way cooler chat rooms and websites in the 90s than we have today.
Load More Replies...If I stayed in the house during the 90s I got into trouble or I was sick. We didn't need the internet we just went outside and did s**t. We would go out and see what was happening and get up to all sorts of stuff. I miss not having a phone attached to me all the time. I miss live music. I miss having a beer at the pub. We we're Kings!
Yes, I miss turning up more than one minute late, and NOT being phoned by your friends, demanding to know where you are!
Load More Replies...I can remember my dad wishing we didn't! we had it a week before he upgraded to broadband when he realised we weren't getting any phone calls.
Imagine playing outside and riding your bike and not being glued to your phone for hours and everyone knew where we were at cuz all of our bikes and toys were in front of our friend's house down the street. Imagine earning $25/week to deliver the AM newspaper and then splitting that with your sister and still thinking we was rich... at age 12+9. Imagine playing duck, duck goose, red rover red rover and hide and seek for hours, climbing the trees and seeing who could climb the highest without busting your a$$. Imagine hanging out at the pool with your friends without parental supervision because we were actually at the pool frying our skin with baby oil for a tan and spraying lemon water for cool blond highlights lol. Imagine doing homework together with the neighbors and wrapping our books with paper bags from the grocery store and then drawing+doodling all over them to see who's looked the coolest. Nahhh papa, my teenage hood was all good. So glad I got to experience the 80's+90's!
To be fair, we also used to spend an unreasonable amount of time in front of the TV screen, though.
Uh... the internet existed in the 90s. If anything it was more fun than it is now. Between that, all the great TV, and video games, not leaving the house was absolutely an option.
And not just crappy AOL dial-up, high-speed cable internet was rolled out to major urban communities in the mid-1990s. It was also the golden age of LAN-parties, with games like Doom, Unreal Tournament, Starcraft.
Load More Replies...We got internet in the late 90s and it was so slow being dialed up and you couldn't even be on the phone and internet at the same time so the internet was only really exciting when the parents weren't home and you could... Ahem, research... whatever you wanted. Cue a million pop ups.
It was better back then. More quality time with your friends and siblings, and a hell of a lot less stress.
There was no need for the internet when we were kids because actual social interaction with other kids existed
There was the time 12 year old me went to another country for a day and mom was worried. In USA, lived close to Canada. My friend and I went to Canada (border crossings different back then) with his older brother to hang out with his girlfriend. It got really late, crashed at GF's house and drove back next morning. Thought I was doing mom a favor by not calling her at 2 AM thinking she would be asleep. Came home to cop car in driveway because mom reported me missing. OOPS. lol There are some pluses to being able to send a quick text these days.
the 90's were a**? You had bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden who were dominating
We already had computers and consoles and guess what? Even TV and movies. Actually gaming was better without constant online updates..
Can't be stuck in the house when we were locked outside lol
So true. Out after breakfast and for lunch out again and for supper out again. out after breakfast and for lunch out again and for supper out again, our parents our parents knew we were safe and that all the neighbors watch out for each other’s kids
What fun. Outside playing, home by 11 on weekends. Greatest fun ever....with real live people!
I just miss TV going off at night. I have no self-control!!!! I stay up and watch shows if it went off at night if get more sleep. I'm not staying up to clean lol
I certainly wasn’t bored, I always played out & I never remember it raining, so now we have wet bored kids!!!!
I immediately fell in love with the Internet because I love going down rabbit holes of research. But, I'll be the first to admit that it's isolating. Prior to the Internet, we actually had to go out for research, which led to engaging with other humans.
We were actually out in the world experiencing life, not sitting infant of a computer making a fake one up!
I wonder what “kids these days” are going to have for memories. OMG, we had fun! Sex drugs, rock n roll! In person! We also went canoeing, camping, and grew gardens.
The 90s went over two or three spots of change. Early we had a Mac lab at school to do papers sometimes, no often. There was a lab with programs to learn data entry and not sure what else. I was pretty bad at it. I'm 96 my first year in college a teacher had us to to the library and use a PC to get on the World Wide Web. I remember being scared haha! By 98 I had my own PC and I taught myself how the PC worked, which most cannot do now. Learn so you don't go into debt buying a new PC/Mac/tablet/phone/notebook or whatever every few years. I was definitely not bored. And SIMS! LOL. Also people still talked to one another without looking at their hand every 5 seconds.
I was a kid in the 60's and 70's, I had a wonderful childhood and feel like it was in the "best time to be a kid." I hope ALL kids feel that way.
I would love to have been born in the 80s-90s. I wish I wasn't surrounded by technology all the time :,)
Don't get me wrong, technology is amazing and my life is very dependent on the communication that technology provides, but I regret how often I sit and scroll my phone or laptop tbh
Load More Replies...Now that message would have to be on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or no one would ever see it.
I miss the days of playing outside for hours, only knowing it was time to come home when my father's piercing whistle echoed through the entire 12-block neighborhood.
Back in the 90s, you couldn't keep us in the house. Kids today, you can't get them out of the house.
Idk how my mom didn't lose her mind letting me run wild as a kid and not knowing where I was or when (or if) I was coming home... I can't go a full hour without checking on my dog with our cameras, I can't imagine going hours without hearing from a literal child.
That started in the early 80's, right along with the fried egg saying this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs. My mom was a stay at home mom with a police scanner, my aunt was a vice superintendent of schools. I didn't get away with s**t.
As a kid growing up in the 90s we had internet, problem was, for AOL users that is (which was my family), you had to put in a disk that gave you a x number of free hours to use it. But the real problem was waiting for it to boot up. It was so loud and so slow that you'd find yourself doing other things that are more productive while you waited. But yeah I was never bored, I'd play on the gameboy or N64, read a book. It's were I figured out I liked writing
I reference that commercial a lot when my managers are nowhere to be found. 'Another three-bell. Do you know where your mate's at?'
We did have the internet in the 90’s. 7.4K! How excited we were to upgrade to14k! That’s kilobytes.
Definitely were not stuck in the house. You looked for bicycles or skateboards to know where everyone was if they weren't at your house.
I have lived well over half my life with no internet and no cell phone. Believe me, I had fun!
Yeah, until the Internet came along, before that I was never never bored, always outside doing something. And I also remember that 10pm commercial. My parents were very deligent about rounding all of us in the house by about 8pm latest if we were having fun. About 13 when the Internet became a thing and my Dad wouldn’t let me on there Internet till I was about 16. And even then it was even able to be on it all the time time.
I can still remember my family and friends phone numbers...fat chance now. Where's my phone? aka my new main brain.
They say ignorance is bliss. We didn't care about internet, because it just wasn't there until later in the 90s. That being said, I can hear the man's voice
God I wish I were living then. I'm dying here in the house, not allowed to leave, playing third parent.
I was never bored in the 90s, I barely knew home existed! Miss those days when you hung out with friends and actually talked to each other and did ridiculous and idiotic things!
I think I was about 8 y/o when the internet went public in the early 90s, and I can definitely say like most of us who were growing up at that time, we were never "stuck in the house." We spent so much time outdoors, having adventures, that I barely remembered what my parents looked like. Lol
My daughter is autistic, and she does love browsing youtube and does that a lot on her tablet, but during nicer weather I make sure to take her out and about so she learns about stuff in the world too, she loved seeing the lambs last spring, so that will be coming around again soon. x3
yup. I was born in 92. n we didn't have Internet untill maybe 2009. didn't really bother me too much. my grandparents were super old school. I had books, music (records mostly, bit also guitar and piano) I miss those days. sometimes ill still have days were ill go off the grid. just becuz the internet just seems so crappy. clickbate, scams, ect.
S**t....life was actually BETTER without it. IDGAF what you're having for lunch or the status of your kid's bowel-movements.
I would play in the yard or with friends... would love if my kids found that as wonderous as I did.
Back then, since I was quickly going from relationship to relationships, "Do you know where your kids are? came across more as an accusation than a question to me.
Imagine being a modern kid, not even realizing that playing outside is an option.
I don't even remember living at my own house... just went there occasionally for food and to sleep 😂😂
Can't miss what you jever had. What we had was a great time playing outside.
Although we think of nostalgia as something that one is fond of, a positive thing in general, back in 1688 Swiss physician Johannes Hofer defined it as a neurological illness. It wasn’t until the 19th century that things started to shift. According to VeryWellMind, another Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung saw nostalgia as a way of reconnecting with our past and understanding our present.
Studies have shown that nostalgia can have positive effects on mental and physical health. For example, nostalgia has been shown to boost immune function and reduce stress levels, and can also help to increase life satisfaction and reduce anxiety. But, of course, everything has to be taken in moderation, as nostalgia can lead to a sense of loneliness and isolation and make us less likely to take action in the present.
And today, the actors who played Short Round was nominated for an OSCAR and he's predicted to WIN!!! CONGRATS Short Round 🎉🎊
There are a few things you can do to avoid the negative effects of nostalgia. As advised by VeryWellMind, one should aim to ground themselves in the present moment. What are you doing right now that you enjoy? Also, make an effort to connect with others, spend time with people you care about, and talk to them about your positive memories.
Furthermore, do things that make you happy. Listen to music, go for walks, watch your favorite movie. If you’re feeling particularly down or drifting more and more into the past, it would be a good idea to speak to a therapist about it all, as they can help you make sense of things. Most importantly, be mindful of how much time you spend dwelling on the past.
At the end of the day, nostalgia is an experience that unites us all as people. Albeit different in each case, nostalgia motivates us to remember the past, uniting us with that authentic self and reminding us of who we have been, then comparing that to who we feel we are today. The conflict of the bitter longing for what can never be again together with the sweetness of having experienced it is what makes us all inherently human.
As you continue to scroll through this list of hilarity and painful nostalgia, make sure you’re upvoting your favorites and leaving comments along the way, and I shall hope to see you in the very next one! Have yourselves a good one!
Scriptwriter: "I dreamed of writing the Great American Novel, but this is what I ended up doing instead. Oh well, might as well make the best of it and use some of my "A" material."
And the next line, for anyone wondering is: Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i. Which is the original line, backwards.
Mythbusters did this one once. The bad guys would hear you crawling through that metal vent from a mile away. Clang clang clang. "I'm being stealthy" Clang clang clang.
After I watched this a few times I remember thinking about that same thing and there goes the Ed Gein of the Cars world!
Many celebs will wear the same thing in public because it makes the paparazzi photos worth less money.
For the rest of us it is trying to kneel on a piece of wood balanced on a kitchen table, trying to saw a bit off and the wood keeps moving, you then find the cut piece is crooked and you've left a small nick in the table top. Sawdust is sticking to you and you tea/coffee has gone cold.
Idk what to call it but it needs a name.. Toothlasaur? Someone help me out here
There is a photo from a particular type of adult movie, involving a group of black males towering over a very small white girl. I believe this is in reference to that particular photo,
Bored Panda, I don't know how you manage to assemble so many quirky, interests, and diverse categories, but don't stop. I always look forward to your newest offerings.
As an incredibly young gen z I relate to like all of these are you seriously telling me there are epeople in the world who haven't seen httyd or Kung fu panda
Does anybody remember Ford gum? It was square, and only sold in vending machines in restaurants, and they were always sponsored by the local Kiwanis Club. The machines always dispensed two pieces, IIRC.
Commenting on the last one: I remember how Maggie Smith looked in Othello, playing Desdemona across from Laurence Olivier.
Bored Panda, I don't know how you manage to assemble so many quirky, interests, and diverse categories, but don't stop. I always look forward to your newest offerings.
As an incredibly young gen z I relate to like all of these are you seriously telling me there are epeople in the world who haven't seen httyd or Kung fu panda
Does anybody remember Ford gum? It was square, and only sold in vending machines in restaurants, and they were always sponsored by the local Kiwanis Club. The machines always dispensed two pieces, IIRC.
Commenting on the last one: I remember how Maggie Smith looked in Othello, playing Desdemona across from Laurence Olivier.