You call up memories of your Gen X childhood with a smidge of pride that you came through (mostly) unscathed. The scar under your chin, shaped like a staple, a souvenir from the blacktop at recess that time you tripped jumping in to Miss Lucy while two other girls turned the rope — a maneuver requiring split-second timing and nerves of steel, like merging onto a highway at rush hour.

You were part of an untethered generation, kids who slid across vinyl bench seats in the back of a station wagon or crouched in the way-back, inches from the rear windshield, making faces at the drivers behind you. Unhelmeted, unseatbelted, uncarseated, unsupervised sunup to sundown on weekends and in the hours after school.

You had run-of-the-mill fire drills and, one time in high school, a bomb threat that turned into a legendary cut day for most of your junior class. You drove with your friends to Burholme Park and hung out for hours and you’re pretty sure someone had a boombox because a soundtrack plays in your head when you think back on that afternoon. Styx, Hall & Oates, Toto. Top 40 from the early 80s. Back then you didn’t drink or smoke or do anything worse than flirt with boys.

At a party the summer after you graduated, you got high and turned to your friends and said, “Do you ever think about nuclear war?” and then you all busted out laughing and for years after that someone would bring it up and it still cracked you up in an embarrassing way. But really, the threat of being wiped out suddenly (or worse, surviving) was the biggest danger you faced next to strangers or hitchhiking or Ouija boards at slumber parties.

You remember with bittersweet longing the texture of childhood. Listening to Dr. Demento under the covers on your Panasonic radio, a yellow ball on a chain with a dial that twisted on with the most satisfying click and a crackle of static. Pulling a lever to unleash a rolling cascade of wooden Skee-Balls and cradling the reassuring heft of one in the palm of your hand. Watching home movies in your living room and breathing in the dusty beam of your dad’s film projector.

What you miss now you rushed through then, eager for each year that edged you closer to adulthood. You weren’t a kid who wanted to stay a kid, but a kid who wanted to outgrow your fears — the ones you confessed only to your diary with the green vinyl cover that locked with a tiny brass key.

You didn’t laugh with your friends about your mom’s temper or the sinking realization that your best friend down the block was now your enemy who lived to torment you, or that you only felt safe when it rained after school, which gave you an excuse to stay inside and watch Bugs Bunny instead of being ordered to play outside, unprotected as a wabbit in wabbit-hunting season.

You think about reincarnation and wonder if you’d even want to come back — worries about nuclear war almost quaint in retrospect compared to the horrors you’d have to contend with the next time around.

Gone are the Saturdays at the roller skating rink, when your only worry was falling down or not being asked by a boy to couples-skate, palms damp, stomach somersaulting to Peaches & Herb on the loudspeaker.

Each time you approached the exit wall, you made a choice: take another lap or call it a day. Every trip around was a point in your favor, a tiny declaration of courage. Eventually, you body-slammed the waist-high wall and clomped to a chair to unlace your skates, legs still wobbly from your last go-round. And when you finally made it to the counter, socks like Velcro on the filthy black carpet, and exchanged your skates for shoes, it felt like you’d accomplished something.

You look back and weigh the sweet nostalgia of childhood against the relief of disembarking, of sitting the next song out. It’s not so bad watching from this side of the wall, relaxing at a table with a slice of pizza and a cup of Coke.

Abby Alten Schwartz is a Philadelphia healthcare writer whose essays, flash, humor, and reported stories have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, HAD, Brevity Blog, The Belladonna Comedy, HuffPost, Salon, WIRED, and elsewhere. Abby’s weirdly poignant flash fiction about Carol Brady was recently nominated for a Pushcart. She’s currently writing a memoir, not about Carol Brady. Find Abby on Substack at Name Three Things, on social media @abbys480 or at abbyaltenschwartz.com.