Alone At Home (1983)
Added 2021-11-30 14:56:03 +0000 UTCSome music had to be removed due to YouTube copyright rules. This very 1983 reel is all about what to do and not to do when you are a latch key kid, taking care of yourself at home after school. Like so many of my generation, we were expected to be able to take care of ourselves, and this 16mm classic would help guide the uninformed. But in reality, we pretty much just did whatever we wanted. Enjoy!
Comments
Hardly a dad in sight.
Dan Swinehart
2021-12-02 08:44:13 +0000 UTCThese videos made me laugh too, and I was in the target audience group. But, of course, these videos were created by rich, white, politicians just so they could say they were "doing something", without, you know, _actually_ doing something.
Donovan Young
2021-12-01 16:05:36 +0000 UTCI have never seen such a comprehensive collection of artificial forced smiles and facial gestures all in one short film. It was as if they all were on laughing gas. And they all lived in some sort of utopia where everyone was middle class and suffering from sort of Jedi mind control. Back in the 70s there were a lot of middle income homes where a parent was always present. If not, they hired a baby sitter until they knew their kids were smart enough not to put the cat in the microwave. Is there an inner-city ghetto version of this film. You know, where drugs, violence and missing parents were FAR too common? You know, an inner-city wasteland of drugs, gangs and little hope and great failure? How to survive in a run-down school, dangerous mass transportation systems, and if you were lucky enough to have a phone do you really think you can just call your parents that are just waiting for you in some cushy office someplace? C'mon! Get real! If they showed this to me at 8 years old, I would have died laughing! Since when was it a holiday-worthy parental bonding event to figure out how to unlock the door to your home? When I got out of school, I promptly got on my green banana seat Schwinn bicycle and did my dumpsters and trash can collecting route to find all the electronics I could. There were no cell phones, GPS, and I never had a key around my neck like someone manning a nuclear missile silo. Kids of the age in that movie were very streetwise by then. No one I ever knew locked themselves in their house and did homework in silence as soon as they got home from a mind-numbing soul-crushing boring day of school. We all had wallets by that age where essential phone numbers were always available. This was terribly detached from any kind of reality I experienced at that age. If I didn't get all this information just by normal living for 7 years, then I can see this tripe being fed to me at school. To the eternal shame of my parents!
Matt Wietlispach
2021-12-01 03:12:21 +0000 UTCI was one of these kids in the mid 70s when my parents divorced. But since I was raised to be independent it wasn't a big challenge. I was already doing my own laundry and could make meals at age 7. Growing up in suburbia with lots of stay-at-home moms around helped.
lohphat
2021-11-30 16:40:59 +0000 UTC
