Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you decide to make a purchase via my links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. See my disclosure for more info.
Millions of people remember what it was like to stay home sick from school. In our formative years, nothing was more exciting (and sometimes dull) than being at home when we should be in school.
As an ’80s kid, I consider myself the authority to turn back the clock and reveal what I did whenever I was home sick from school. That holds even when the sickness in question was legitimate. If you’ve been yearning for inside information about what the ’80s were like for countless children, today’s your lucky day.
Here are 15 things kids in the ’80s did when they stayed home from school. What are kids doing today when they stay home from school?
1. Watched the Price Is Right
The rumors are true. When home sick from school, my main priority was to tune in to CBS at 11 a.m. for a well-deserved viewing of that day’s episode of The Price is Right. Bob Barker was a captivating host, and he routinely led me on a rollercoaster ride of emotions, pricing games, and witnessing people incapable of putting in a straight line. Some of my favorite childhood memories were of me curled up on the couch watching a particularly dramatic edition of the Showcase Showdown.
2. Made the Ultimate Chocolate Milk
My strategy was simple: When my mother let her guard down and left me to my own devices, I’d make a beeline to the refrigerator to commit the perfect crime: creating the ultimate chocolate milk. I’d pour a full glass of milk, grab the trusty bottle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup, and make it rain. I would squeeze an ungodly amount of syrup into the glass, stir it up, and take a big gulp. It was always awful. I always said, “Oh no, I used too much syrup.” But it was always worth it.
3. Let the Boredom Overtake Them
I’ll be honest: not all sick days were filled with capers that made Ferris Bueller blush. Sick days in the ’80s could also be exercises in boredom. Being in an empty house with nothing but your mom to keep your company could sometimes be torture, and even the most engaging video games and sick day activities eventually become drab. We were often bored and learned how to deal with it.
4. Played Video Games
If you were an ’80s kid and didn’t spend most of your “home sick from school” time playing Nintendo for hours on end, I question whether you were an ’80s kid at all. I know I wasn’t alone in using my sick time as an excuse to sharpen my Super Mario Bros. and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles skills. I was better equipped to beat those games when unencumbered by trivial things like homework. Video games were terrific, but video games while being home from school were next-level childhood memories.
5. Caught up on Cartoons
From Transformers to The Get Along Gang (and every show in between), you really messed up if you were a kid and didn’t watch copious amounts of cartoons during sick days. Being ill and skipping school were essentially “get out of jail free” cards. They could be redeemed by sitting your sick butt on the couch and enjoying hours of your favorite television shows without a care in the world. If you didn’t employ this strategy, you were an idiot, and I hope you loved learning so much at school.
6. Watched Soap Operas
There were too many times as a kid that I was too clever for my own good and wound up paying for it. On many occasions in the ’80s, I thought I had committed the perfect crime. I’d fake being sick and plan to spend the day playing Nintendo and drinking supercharged chocolate milk. Unfortunately, my mother had other plans. She was suspicious of my mystery illness and might banish me to the living room couch, where I would be subject to hours of General Hospital and other soaps of the day in between sessions of intense vacuuming. It was a fate worse than death in my eyes.
7. Talked to Their Grandparents
Unfortunately, one aspect of staying home sick from school was inevitable: your parents making you call your grandparents. They knew you were faking the whole thing and demanded punishment for your wrongdoing. Regardless, as a kid, being forced to speak to any blood relative over the phone was essentially a death sentence, and it could make any child recoil in horror. Nevertheless, we suffered through it like the stereotypical ’80s kids we were.
8. Ate a Disappointing Lunch
There’s no two ways around saying this: our parents were always woefully unprepared to take care of us when we were sick. I don’t know what my mom ate during the day daily, but I was always disappointed with what she cooked up for me at lunchtime when I was sick. Dinner was always a five-star affair, but I always felt like I got the short end of the stick during the day. At any rate, I made peace with my disappointing lunches because I’m not a psychopath.
9. Got Dragged Along on Errands
Your mom’s life kept chugging along whether you went to school or stayed home, which meant potentially being dragged along on family errands while you were sick. Whether you were faking it or not was irrelevant. Sitting in the backseat of the family station wagon as your mother stopped at literally every shop and store in a 10-mile radius was torture whether or not you were actually feeling ill. It was impossible not to think of all the video games and The Price is Right episodes you missed.
10. Took Oatmeal Baths
Bizarrely, taking oatmeal baths when you were home sick from school was commonplace in the 80s. I love how parents back then didn’t bother using legitimate medical knowledge to cure us of our ailments. Instead, they threw us in a lukewarm pile of oatmeal, went about their day, and hoped we didn’t drown in a pool of oats and spices. It’s not the worst parenting strategy I’ve ever heard, but it’s close.
11. Swallowed Cough Drops
Parents in the 80s refused to acknowledge modern medicine instead of shoving cough drops down their kids’ throats. When I was legitimately sick, did my parents take me to the doctor? Of course not. Why would they waste their hard-earned money on medical care when they could nurse me back to health via an entire packet of $1.99 CVS lozenges? (For the record, their strategy worked to perfection. I never once died under their care.)
12. Continued the Deception
Here’s a secret that every ’80s kid is too scared to confess: Sometimes, I faked being sick. If I was up against a particularly combative teacher or was dreading facing a crush after being romantically (for my age) denied, I had no shame in faking being ill. This meant that I would run the gamut of parental deception. I would cough approximately 1,000 times per hour; I would say things like, “I think this is the end” to an increasingly horrified mother, and generally keep up the ruse as only a kid could. I should’ve explored a career in acting.
13. Ate Chicken Soup and Saltine Crackers
If you were allergic to chicken soup and saltine crackers as a child, your sick days at home were spent in complete agony because this is what you had to eat. Parenting books in the ’80s dedicated entire chapters to “How to feed your kid when they’re sick” and filled pages with nothing but “Shove chicken soup and crackers down their lying throats.” As someone who preferred New England clam chowder and oyster crackers, this was a nightmare scenario for 10-year-old me.
14. Had a Bucket Nearby
Whether you were legitimately sick or faking it, there was always one constant next to your bed: the sick bucket. As a young lunatic capable of throwing up viciously at any moment, you were doomed to live in a world where a plastic bucket was no further than a few inches from your face at all times. Your mom made sure of it. That’s what you did when you were home sick from school. You made peace with the bucket and your uncertain, possibly vomit-filled future.
15. Plotted Tomorrow’s Plan
Sick days didn’t necessarily need to end after 24 hours, so a significant chunk of my “sick day” time was spent plotting how to parlay my situation into another sick day. I can speak freely for ’80s children by saying that school back then was boring and lame. We didn’t have smartphones and video games to distract us. We would do whatever it took to get out of going to school, and that’s what made our generation great.
18 Startling Life Lessons Threatening Our Kids’ Futures
Raising kids is like building IKEA furniture without a manual: all those mysterious parts and no idea where they go. We’ve been making some assembly errors regarding the life lessons we’ve been handing down. So, grab your metaphorical Allen wrench! It’s time to tweak, twist, and retighten those wonky lessons we’re dishing out to our future adults.
15 Bizarre Items That People Bought and Sold on eBay
We all have an eBay account, but who still uses the platform? Traditionally, eBay was the go-to website to sell and buy used items. There are many marketplaces for second-hand items, but eBay is where weirdness abounds. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen on eBay? I can bet it wasn’t as weird as some of these items.
18 Everyday Household Items That Are Surprisingly Valuable to Collectors
You don’t have to be a collector or hoarder to have several valuable things in your home. We all accrue many items over the years, some of which could be worth money. Even some everyday household items can be valuable, especially to collectors.
To help determine whether any of your household items are valuable to collectors, we’ve assembled a list of 18 everyday items you likely have in your house. Check out this list and see if any of your ready items can become money.
