What’s your "I'm so glad I wasn't there!" GenX moment?

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TeenNinjaTortoise@reddit

I stayed home from school the day the space shuttle Challenger blew up. For anyone that doesn't know, it was televised to kids during school hours because a female school teacher was on board, I just happened to have allergy issues that day and slept through the whole thing at home

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spargel_gesicht@reddit

My school had a holiday that day! Nobody else I know seemed to have that day off! Maybe a teachers work day or MLK? I don’t know, but I was skiing for the first time (and there’s no way my parents would have pulled me out of school for a ski trip), and when I got down the slope (non-stop! I was so proud of myself!) and saw my mom and said “did you see me? I came all the way down without stopping!” And she said the Challenger blew up. Glad I didn’t see it live.

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Naive-Garlic2021@reddit

I was out of school as well, at the mall with my mom, so it wasn't a snow day. I haven't been able to figure out why we were off. I do remember the moment when we noticed people watching the display TVs at the TV store and then learned what had just happened.

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speckledhen74@reddit

We were out of school for a snow day, too. But… my mom was a schoolteacher so we had it on at the house. I saw it live on television but not in a classroom like so many of our peers.

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CynicalOne_313@reddit

I was in 4th grade history class (I think). We didn't watch it live, though the explosion was announced on the PA system.

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aradiacat@reddit

Slept through it as well. Surprise snowstorm in the area the night before....no school.

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txtw@reddit

I was a freshman in high school and we were not watching it, for which I am grateful. Catholic school, so they did make an announcement about what happened and asked everyone to stop what they were doing so that we could pray as a school.

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CommunicationHappy20@reddit

You’re so lucky.

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TangeloDismal2569@reddit

This may be a little too late to be a Gen X moment, but Hurricane Katrina. We were going through a homicide in the family that had occurred just a couple of weeks before and so were so wrapped up in our tragedy and grief we couldn't pay any attention to what was going on in New Orleans. I remember watching a 5 year anniversary special on it and was like, "Holy shit, this was such a terrible event!" It was so surreal that something like that had happened and we just had no real knowledge of it.

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elphaba00@reddit

One of my friends was going to Tulane in 2005. Over the summer, she came back home and just decided at the last minute that she wasn’t going back. Also meant she was breaking up with her “roommate” (what she told her mom he was). So in late July or early August, she went back to get her stuff and move out. A couple of weeks later, her apartment complex was flooded

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CynicalOne_313@reddit

Definitely Woodstock '99 and all the MTV Spring Breaks.

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IDMike2008@reddit

9/11. We were stationed in Germany.

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alchebyte@reddit

I was in the trade tower restaurant on 9/11, the year before the planes.

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IDMike2008@reddit

My husband once worked at the pentagon. The plane that hit it basically stopped with it’s nose in his old office.

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WonderfulHearing8726@reddit

Woodstock 99. That was an utter shit show. Literally overflowing portable toilets & no TP. Also $9.00 bottles of water, and then the riots where women got SAd.

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dtoddh@reddit

I lived in lower Manhattan between 1992 and July 2001.

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chi1idog@reddit

wdw for y2k. my family went but i had a minor medical emergency and couldn’t go. it took them 4+ hours to get back to hotel rooms and they were on property.

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DeeEnn72@reddit

We went to WDW (Walt Disney World) January 1, 2000. It was practically deserted that morning. Had a great time.

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TwistedMemories@reddit

I’m GenX and this may or may not be a GenX moment, but July 2011, I took a trip to DC for the 4th of July holiday. For all I know, the 9/11 attack could have happened then. The people I went with said that they would never fly again.

Me? I didn’t let it get to me and still took a flight later that year.

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theewlk@reddit

I had a connecting flight at Dulles on 9/10. Woke up the next morning to the news.

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FullFrontalNerd@reddit

Woodstock 99

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SamCanyon@reddit

My first thought.

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Abpoe77@reddit

Came to say this. Had a chance to go to

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LomentMomentum@reddit

Woodstock ‘99.

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Whynot151@reddit

Rhein-Main international airport in Frankfurt Germany, 1985 I think , car bomb in front of main terminal. I was there the next day and it was eye opening.

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MrTorben@reddit

Memory unlocked. I still lived in Germany when Red Army Faction was active. Definitely too young to understand the why/who as well as to comprehend the context.

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Thick_Journalist7232@reddit

Same here. I was about 14, living in Heidelberg at the time. We were heading back to the states a week or so later, so definitely got relatives calling to make sure that’s not when we were traveling.

I vaguely remember it having to do with a bomb dropped in a trash can, not a car though

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KatintheCove@reddit

Oooh, I’m about to post something similar.

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SoCal7s@reddit

Is Fyre Festival too recent? I’m trying to think what was most like Altamont in the 80s-90s? Probably Woodstock 94. But Fyre Festival is even worse, don’t want to step on Millennial toes - ha ha.

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Samwhys_gamgee@reddit

Chernobyl in 1986.

Summer of ‘86 I went on a 7 week college studies program in Germany and the USSR. We went to Hamburg, West Berlin then crossed into east Berlin and a week in the USSR. The professor who put together the trip was juggling the USSR part of the itinerary and trying to add a third city to the trip beyond Moscow and Leningrad. Vilnius, Lithuania and Kyiv were the two he was looking into, but it got nixed in the early planning stages and we just did Moscow and Leningrad. After watching the HBO mini-series I was REALLY glad that Kyiv leg of the trip never happened…..

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MrTorben@reddit

Lived in Hamburg at the time, plus had a very health focused parent. That was an experience. No more milk, only powdered stuff. Only red meat I was allowed to eat was beef from Argentina ($$$).

Ended up with a severe iron deficiency. Plus spent months at the university hospital, stuck in a metal tube for 50 mins every other week, to measure any residual radiation they could detect and I may have been exposed to. (Afaik, I was very young and didn't understand half the stuff back then)

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Low_Cook_5235@reddit

Minneapolis 1-35 bridge collapse. I was pregnant and drove over bridge every day to goto work. That day I drove over it an hour before it happened. My coworker made it over 10 minutes before it collapsed.

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Full-Friendship-7581@reddit

I drove over about 2 hours before it happened.

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jrbighurt@reddit

A friend would have been on the bridge as he crossed it the same time every day, but he got sent to a different location to fill in for someone that day.

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calling_water@reddit

Ecole Polytechnique.

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EnnazusCB@reddit

Not me but a college buddy worked at the World Trade Center. On that infamous day he forgot to set his alarm and slept in. By the time he came up from the subway station there was smoke, sirens, emergency vehicles… He noped out of there, went home, and checked the news…

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obligatory-purgatory@reddit

Def Woodstock 94. I remember someone looking at me and my friends and saying what aren’t YOU at Woodstock? We went to Phish (me ticketless)Dead (all ticketless)and Pink Floyd (2x) together. I guess Woodstock wasn’t our scene. lol. Thank goodness. Missed that porta potty mudslide.

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Iko87iko@reddit

You must be thinking 99. 94 looks & sounds great. See/listen for yourself

Hart 94 https://youtu.be/uDTClsaNcyo?si=Ej8R_XmaMsaXUDN7

ABB https://youtu.be/QDGUFXMTLLA?si=GWxeDanbNW1FXq81

Traffic (this is so good, the empty pages, yow)

https://youtu.be/N0tf8FIPZsw?si=8A_DKvMHsM3UuMl2

Neville Bros

https://youtu.be/D9-keexGmCQ?si=skC0uzsCriamoGNF

Dylan https://youtu.be/XX52JMfGqiE?si=UP0z0LiYe5Xne3EM

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obligatory-purgatory@reddit

It def was 94 that. We did not go to. 99 I had a 2 year old. But maybe the poop mud was 99. I honestly forget there were two.

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laurellestlaurent@reddit

Agreed. I don't live far from the site. My mum was at the original and she told me that eventually the gates fell. I figured the same would happen this time so I watched the thing on TV waiting for the gates to fall. The gates fell. But I I also saw the porta potty mudslide happen. Nah. I'm good.

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Bokononfoma@reddit

And wasn't 99 the REAL bad one?

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BrightlightFloorWax@reddit

He is 78.Are you telling me you would look better at 78?Show your photo at 78 and birth certificate.

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KatintheCove@reddit

I was stateside on leave when my unit went to the air show at Ramstein, Germany where a plane crashed into the crowd. A member of my unit was killed and several others were badly injured. I absolutely would have been there if I hadn’t been on leave.

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RetroBerner@reddit

I'm also glad I wasn't at Woodstock in '94 too.. I'd hate to have been 5 years early to that shitshow

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Ca1v1n_Canada@reddit

This exactly. I was out camping with four crazy friends that weekend, the kind of guys who would absolutely be down for last minute stupidity and I remember sitting around the campfire on Fri night and someone saying "If we started driving now we could be there by noon..."

Thankfully we decided fishing and going for a midnight canoe while on mushrooms was going to be far more fun.

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deleted_by_reddit@reddit

[removed]

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GenX-ModTeam@reddit

No Politics - Political posts or comments of any sort are not permitted. If you wish to have political discussions, you may do so on our other sub r/GenXPolitics.

Breaking this rule may result in bans, either temporary or permanent.

Before you make the claim: No, providing respite from political discussions does not infringe on your rights.

Also, this politics ban was put before the sub over a year ago, and members have spoken.

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Agent7619@reddit

I lived 11 houses away from three of the Tylenol murder victims.

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LadyNorbert@reddit

I remember reading about that in an issue of Reader's Digest - the article was called "Who Killed Sue Snow?" Absolutely horrible situation, and even as a kid I was chilled to the bone by the killer's lack of remorse.

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Agent7619@reddit

Different murder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Nickell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders

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LadyNorbert@reddit

Oh, I didn't know there were two different Tylenol murder cases! Yeesh.

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Agent7619@reddit

The ones you referenced were Excedrin, not Tylenol.

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LadyNorbert@reddit

So they were. For some reason I always remembered it as being Tylenol - maybe I heard about the other case later and mixed them up in my head.

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RandomObserver13@reddit

As others have pointed out, pretty sure you are thinking of 99, not 94. 94 had better artists and it turned into a mud fest but not nearly the shit show of 99. Both were fairly close to where I lived…99 was about a 30 minute drive, but I always knew that would be a shit show and definitely glad I wasn’t there, but it’s been discussed to death anyway.

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Terrible-Mind-5414@reddit

Glad I was not watching Challenger nor the towers on 9/11. Sad that I did have to see Return of the Jedi.

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Parker51MKII@reddit

The "Moon Swatch" roll out in 2022. Living in America's "bread basket," the nearest Swatch boutique for me would be either Dallas or Minneapolis. I didn't go, as it was too far for too low chances. I later found out that the Dallas rollout was an immediate snafu, very poorly managed by Swatch, local police, and mall security, so not only would I have not gotten one of the 45 available if it had been a fair queue, but would have been pissed about how my hundreds of miles of travel would have been wasted for such a messed-up outcome. Frankly, Wal Mart or Foot Locker manages its Play Station or Michael Jordan sneaker rollouts much better than this.

According to commenter "bigmatz" on Hodinkee who was at the North Park Mall in Dallas:

"Not to mention that none of the 400 people waiting in line (including me from midnight, 14th in line) were able to get one. “Mall walkers” snuck in from other entrances, formed a line in front of the store, and refused to leave even after the police were called. The Swatch store decided to give the 45 watches to these people while the 400 waiting outside watched and were held outside by police."

Sounds like they are still have trouble with this for other models of Swatch:

Swatch closes stores as watch launch causes crowding and scuffles

(Yes, I finally got one. It's not like I could ever afford a real Omega Speedmaster. I waited almost 2 years later on a trip that I was taking for other reasons, walked into the mall and the Swatch shop, and was sold one in stock with no line, or even significant crowed in the store, MSRP, warranty, no marked-up flipper price.)

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Nouseriously@reddit

Mall in Orlando ended up selling no watches because of a near riot

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RedditSkippy@reddit

I can’t imagine driving hundreds of miles to get the chance to buy a watch.

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SeekStillness3741@reddit

1996

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MioMine78@reddit

I had a blast at the first Coachella. What did you not like about it?

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___YesNoOther@reddit

Hollywood. I grew up near Hollywood, went to school with a number of child actors (when they were at school), and had some experiences with Hollywood at the time. Without going into detail, I am glad I didn't end up there. I could have, but circumstances were such that I didn't get momentum to be included in that world. At the time, I was not happy about it. But now, looking back, I see it from an adult's perspective, and it was so messed up the things I was included in. That world would have absolutely exploited me and I wouldn't have had any clue it was happening. I'm so glad I didn't end up there along side many of my peers at the time.

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MioMine78@reddit

I grew up in West Covina, but my grandpa worked in Hollywood PR starting from the 60s through the 80s. He took me to a couple industry events as a kid, but was very firm that none of his grandkids work in Hollywood.

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HemlockGrv@reddit

I was at Woodstock 94 and while it was grueling with the rain and walking in the mud, overall it was a good time. It really just depended on where you were and what you were into.

We camped nearby offsite and walked back & forth (hitched rides a couple times) and we weren’t in the mosh pits. It was an adventure and I’m glad I was there. Probably would have hated it if I’d been a fussy “girlie-girl” but I grew up in the country, was fine with camping and had experience at previous music festivals.

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Relevant_Outside_860@reddit

Also 9/11. My job sent me on an assignment in New York that lasted 3 months. I was housed at the Millennium Hilton, literally across the street from the WTC. I worked nights (was part of a trial team that had to help prepare each night for the next day's court proceedings), so I one million percent would have still been in my hotel room when the planes hit.

The assignment ended and I flew home in late January 2001. Not a super close call (8 mos) but for a midwestern girl who typically had no reason to be in NY, very close. 😢

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Ok_Ad8249@reddit

My boss in 2001 was from New Jersey and her step mother had worked in the WTC until that summer. My boss' father's health had gotten bad enough that her step mother transferred to an office closer to home so she had more time to look after her husband.

The company she worked for was just below impact so a lot her former co-workers were killed.

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ladybraine@reddit

Columbine, 9/11, so many

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tumblindice77@reddit

911

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MaximumJones@reddit

I'm glad I was never in Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment.

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SnikkerDoodly@reddit

Me too!

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AdministrativeCut727@reddit

Not as much me as my parents. I was stationed in London and my parents were in for a visit. Told them not to take the Tube into central London until after 9:30am at the earliest to miss the big crowds. Thank goodness they listened and weren't part of the 7/7 attacks 🙏🏼

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Agitated-Painter5601@reddit

94 Woodstock was awesome. You might be thinking of 99.

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MikeMilzz@reddit

Came here to say this. 94 would have been cool…99 not so much for so many reasons (watch the doc if you haven’t).

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RedditSkippy@reddit

We somehow were NOT watching the Challenger launch is school. If I recall, we had had a snow day earlier that week and our teachers were always complaining about making up the classroom time after snow days and assemblies. I’m sure that they refused to show the launch because they needed to teach us math, or something.

I didn’t find out until I got home from school.

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Dogzillas_Mom@reddit

Woodstock 99 when they (we, Gen Xers) burned the damn place to the ground.

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Myfreakinglyfe@reddit

Yup. That one. Watched it Live on MTV. That was enough for me. I don’t live far from there. A few friends of mine were there as well, payed to be “security.”

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Dogzillas_Mom@reddit

There’s a docu on Netflix (I believe) about the whole thing. The Boomers in charge severely underestimated the vibe of Gen X. They thought we were just extensions of themselves—tattooed hippies. They don’t realize that years of Reagan/Bush era policies created a generational rage they were not prepared for.

In retrospect, it’s kinda funny that the “kids” were pissed off about $3 for bottled water. That’s not too bad now at festivals.

And I’ll say it again, although I’m sure you guys are sick of it already: AARP ain’t ready for Gen X.

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GenX-ModTeam@reddit

No Politics - Political posts or comments of any sort are not permitted. If you wish to have political discussions, you may do so on our other sub r/GenXPolitics.

Breaking this rule may result in bans, either temporary or permanent.

Before you make the claim: No, providing respite from political discussions does not infringe on your rights.

Also, this politics ban was put before the sub over a year ago, and members have spoken.

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Not_a_fan_of_me@reddit

You sure you aren’t mixing this up with ‘99? 94 was sloppy and poorly planned. 99 was a cash grab

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oSuJeff97@reddit

Yeah OP definitely mixing up ‘94 and ‘99. The former was fine; the latter is the one that devolved into chaos.

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Iko87iko@reddit

Right, 94 looked awesome

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Cest_Cheese@reddit

I missed the Loma Prieta earthquake by a couple of days. I travelled to Northern California for Game 1 of the World Series, but had to go back to LA for school.

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Sintered_Monkey@reddit

I was in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. That was not a great experience.

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Cest_Cheese@reddit

I was done with undergrad by a few years and back in Northern California when Northridge happened.

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chabs1965@reddit

Ditto. I lived in Reseda at the time.

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Shieldor@reddit

I was away for college when Loma Prieta hit. But my entire family was in the Bay Area. I couldn’t get through to them for hours. Finally did, and they’re all good! Awful watching from afar, and can’t do anything.

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SouthOrlandoFather@reddit

1993 Iowa flood would have severely affected my freshman year at Iowa if occurred in 1992. Luckily by 1993 I was in an apartment on campus. The 93 freshman had to deal with 3 or 4 to a dorm and kids sleeping in study rooms in dorms. They probably survived but it should made things tougher.

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gideonsean@reddit

Oh my god, yes. I had just transferred out of state but my brother and sister-in-law both lived there still and I was terrified for them. They were both safe and my sister's shop (The Second Act) escaped unharmed.

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Lickford@reddit

The Mayflower, 1993 was my last year there. I left in August.

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ProperBar4339@reddit

We had moved from Florida not long before Challenger exploded. We used to be able to see the shuttle launches from our house.

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Fugue_State76@reddit

Challenger explosion day. I was so upset that my homeroom had recess scheduled at the time of the launch which all the other kids got to watch live in class on the TV cart. I missed the whole thing live because I was on the playground. Word travelled fast on the playground tho. I just remember some stupid boys had already made some Challenger explosion jokes that same day and were laughing hysterically. I was horrified. But thank god I missed the live explosion.

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liddybuckfan@reddit

I'll pick one that was local for me. The Rush concert, Hollywood Sportatorium 1981. I started heavily hanging out at the Sporto in 1983, so I was just a bit too young for that Rush show. There was tear gas and a riot and a lot of blood. It was kind of in the collective memory of that venue for my whole teenage concert years but nothing like that happened there again.

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keirmeister@reddit

I didn’t get that job at the World Trade Center when I moved to NYC in 1999.

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Relevant_Outside_860@reddit

My job sent me on an assignment in New York that lasted 3 months. I was housed at the Millennium Hilton, literally across the street from the WTC. I worked nights (was part of a trial team that had to help prepare each night for the next day's court proceedings), so I one million percent would have still been in my hotel room when the planes hit.

The assignment ended and I flew home in late January 2001. Not a super close call (8 mos) but for a midwestern girl who typically had no reason to be in NY, very close. 😢

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PutAdministrative206@reddit

I stayed home from school sick the day The Challenger exploded. I woke up and turned on the tv because I remembered the launch was that day.

News was running so I thought I still had time to see the launch. Then the anchor said something like,” If you have just tuned in, there was a catastrophic explosion during launch. We do not know if there will be any survivors.

“Here is the video of the explosion.”

So I got a warning before seeing the explosion. It still sucked, but it was not as traumatic for me as it was to most of our generation.

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foodweneedfood@reddit

Yeah. The day of Bud Dwyer’s suicide was a snow day for mr. All the kids in central Pennsylvania were home, most of us watching tv, and saw the former state Treasurer put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

Dropped like a marionette with the strings cut.

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PutAdministrative206@reddit

Wow. I worked at ABC news for a few years after college and one of my colleagues ordered the tape just so he could see it.

I noped out of that viewing experience with haste.

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Certain_Luck_8266@reddit

Sadly I did not stay home. I got to watch it explode a 100 times on the TV cart they setup for the first space teacher

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PepsiOfWrath@reddit

Mine flipped. At first I was i glad I was not there, now I kind of wished I was. In early Sept 2001 I was traveling to work in our financial office about a half mile down from the twin towers. We left and flew to the next office in DC, where I was for Sept 11. I remember the first tower hitting the radios then the second tower and people crying, one person leaving to go home to his family and coming back 3 hours later because he couldn’t make it through roadblocks or traffic. The fear, taking a cab near the pentagon to see the damage later, and Reagan airport being indefinitely closed and no way for us to get home as rental cars and busses were all booked up. I didn’t know anybody personally in the towers and at the time, at least I wasn’t in NY, our hotel was closed, but now to be closer to that history might have been worth it.

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temerairevm@reddit

lol, Woodstock’94 was my response to “favorite I WAS there”. You really had to try to be in those mosh pits. Mostly it was just muddy.

Don’t get me wrong some aspects of it sucked. The porta John’s weren’t adequate. Mud everywhere. At one point they started running out of food and that got a little stressful. Our car (77 Monte Carlo) died in a Burger King drive through on the way home and the manager came out and had to help push it out of the way. Got towed to a gas station and I remember being thrilled to “clean up” in a gas station bathroom. My dad burned my clothes when I got home, which I thought was a little extreme. But I remember it fondly. Like I felt really alive and like it was an adventure. You should do something like that at 23. Would I do it now? Fuck no.

My “glad I wasn’t there” is Woodstock’99 (the one with the fires). I have a younger Xer friend who went who confirms it really was absolutely awful and he’s jealous of me for going to the good one. Besides by then I was 28, just married and had to get up for work the next day. And probably would have been more worried about being injured or getting hepatitis or something.

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Think-Log-6895@reddit

I was at both- ‘94 was awesome, ‘99 had some great music but everything else about it was... complicated. We stayed late Sunday night- our camping spot was good and didn’t want to be stuck in traffic for hours. Went to go see if any food vendors were still there/open and there was a line of SWAT with rifles. My dumb ass kept walking up to them to ask them about it, maybe 50’ away some dudes came running at them from behind us and started whipping bottles at SWAT. Rifles were raised, I clenched my butt cheeks as I raised my hands up in the air and yelled “I just wanted food!” and turned around and RAN in the other direction. Scary shit

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BDF106@reddit

Bhopel chemical disaster.

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Sad-Corner-9972@reddit

(Terrorist sabotage)

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wasnapping@reddit

My office was in the Pentagon in 2001. I had a huge meeting planned for 9/11 and the day before we had to move it to an offsite building due to a conference room debacle. I watched everything unfold on the news like everyone else, but my coworkers were in there and my family thought I was in there. The phone lines were completely jammed up, it took hours to get through to anyone to tell them I was ok. It took hours to get to daycare to pick up my daughter and they thought I was dead.

I went back into the building on 9/12 and I'll never forget how surreal that was. Walking across the parking lot where they were towing victim's cars (with their car seats in the back.) And the halls were still filled with the smell of smoke, char, and jet fuel. We all just solemnly marched on, keeping everything going, but it was f-ing eerie.

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Entiox@reddit

The father of a friend of mine was happily in a meeting away from his office but still on the same side of the Pentagon. If he had been in his office he would have definitely been killed as it was completely destroyed. As it was he came out of it with only relatively minor injuries, a couple moderately bad burns, and some minor cuts and bruises.

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PutAdministrative206@reddit

I’m glad you were okay. And very sorry you were so close to it. That has to be exponentially worse than how most of the rest of us experienced it, but still much better than it could have been.

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Seachica@reddit

9/11. I had moved from DC to the UK a week earlier. Used to drive by the Pentagon every morning to work.

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AdditionalTip865@reddit

When the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing happened, I was away from the area, in Manhattan in fact. Came back to a city that was still involved in a manhunt for the surviving attacker.

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gilesachrist@reddit

Ran the marathon in 2012, wanted to do it again, but injury deflated my ambitions. Took my daughter to watch in Framingham in 2013 because I didn’t want to go downtown.

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Chemgoddess94@reddit

Yes, both 90's Woodstocks. I lived in Albany NY then (graduated college in 94, so Woodstock was top of mind) but dear God I'm glad I was smart enough to avoid that shit. Lollapalooza 92 at SPAC was bad enough with all the mud.

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The_Latverian@reddit

Probably the Twin Towers on 9/11

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KM68@reddit

A friend of mine flew into Manhattan on 9/10/01 for a meeting at noon on one of the high floors of the Twin Towers the next day.

Needless to say the meeting didn't happen and he was no where near the towers when the got hit. He was still in his hotel.

That same friend was also about 150 feet away from when the first bomb went off at the Boston Marathon in 2013.

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PurplePenguinCat@reddit

Your friend is either the luckiest or unluckiest person ever! 💜

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AdditionalTip865@reddit

My dad collaborated with people who were in an office in the WTC, but he wasn't there that day. I think all but one of them managed to get out in time.

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pushing_past_the_red@reddit

Me too. I had jury duty that had been cancelled the night before.

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Ihaveaboot@reddit

What's your favorite way of making a post?

Asking a question and immediately follow it with an answer.

Just post the answer.

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PutAdministrative206@reddit

What’s wrong with OP giving us the example from their personal life?

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BloodyWellGood@reddit

At the big graduation party i overheard my enemies threaten to push me into the pool. I left. So glad i wasn't there

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Vast_Breadfruit_162@reddit

I was in the building and fairly close to the scene when Jeff Gilooly attacked Nancy Kerrigan. I had no idea what was going on, but it was obvious a more than minor incident was goung on.

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Jpkmets7@reddit

Woodstock ‘99

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worstpartyever@reddit

Make sure you watch the documentary for extra “glad I missed this” vibe

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deleted_by_reddit@reddit

[removed]

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GenX-ModTeam@reddit

No Politics - Political posts or comments of any sort are not permitted. If you wish to have political discussions, you may do so on our other sub r/GenXPolitics.

Breaking this rule may result in bans, either temporary or permanent.

Before you make the claim: No, providing respite from political discussions does not infringe on your rights.

Also, this politics ban was put before the sub over a year ago, and members have spoken.

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sfgf27@reddit

On a Bay Area freeway in NoCal when the 1989 earthquake hit just before the first pitch of game 3 of the World Series which killed 63 people, mostly in a freeway collapse. Ended up going to the makeup game 3 twelve days later.

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WolfMaggot@reddit

That was one hell of a pitch to be able to bring down an entire freeway.

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Weird-Ninja8827@reddit

Absolutely Earthshaking stuff.

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Adorable_Bag_2611@reddit

I’ve never been so happy to be home sick as I was that evening.

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b-lincoln@reddit

The 94 show was peace and love, it was the latec90’s show that devolved into fire and chaos.

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InformationSerious27@reddit

The bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. Very close to home.

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Frigidspinner@reddit

mine was being the first schoolteacher to fly into space - I got to be a kid in school instead

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Fearless_Street5231@reddit

94 was fine, muddy but fine. 99 was not good

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root_fifth_octave@reddit

Was that the one with the mud?

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mustardmadman@reddit

It was 1999. There was a whole special on Netflix about the 1999 Woodstock

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Consistent-Tie-4394@reddit

Thanks for the correction. Saw OPs post and assumed he had the year right.

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Charlotte_Braun@reddit

Plus fire, sexual assaults, leaking port-o-pottys, Flea naked onstage…

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Consistent-Tie-4394@reddit

Wthat wasn't just mud; the portable toilets were overflowing too. Yeah, OP nailed it with Woodstock '94... I was soooooo glad that I passed on the chance to go.

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root_fifth_octave@reddit

Dear lord, some of that was night soil?

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jayhawkwds@reddit

There were people sliding in that (literal) shit. They were called the Mud People.

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Witty_Presence7504@reddit

Woodstock 94 s*it show for real

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Charlotte_Braun@reddit

You mean ‘99?

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Witty_Presence7504@reddit

My bad … it’s late I should be in bed🤣

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Flababulous@reddit

Woodstock '99.

(Had a chance to go with some college buds, but went to the shore instead)

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jayhawkwds@reddit

I was so mad that I had a rotation in college while some of my buddies went to 99. I couldn't believe the stories they told me about how bad it really was. I've watched both documentaries about it, and everything they told me is exactly how they said, like they could have narrated them. My buddy does still have a piece of the wall hanging in his garage.

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DenThomp@reddit

Not being at The Station when Great White performed comes to mind

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discreetcd60@reddit

or at the 2026 Crans-Montana bar fire in the swiss alps . just about the same situation recreated . sparklers / pryo effects starting it .

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Unusual-Ask5047@reddit

When I got married I stupidly gave my groomsmen a bottle of booze. They went out the night before my wedding, and I wanted to go. My bride to be forbid it. They proceeded to almost total a rental car, got in to a brawl, and doors were kicked in. They showed up to the wedding with a couple of shiners and some missing socks.

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ExtraAd7611@reddit

Were any of them missing a tooth?

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jacks-injured-liver@reddit

Wish I was there? In bed the night I met my ex wife.

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Accurate-Survey6985@reddit

Best of the Best to miss:

"I think I'll make myself a star on social media"

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