While watching the latest season of the hit series Stranger Things, SliceOfGasant columnist Gasant Abarder was hit hard by a sense of 80s nostalgia. Those were simpler days that gave rise to unchecked trauma later in life. That grit for our kids is something they can learn from but despite the instant dopamine hits available they have challenges of their own and each carries a label.
There was a time when childhood meant scraped knees, milk bottles on the doorstep that weren't swiped, and football in the street until the sun dipped on the Cape Flats. We lived in ignorant bliss. We didn't know about ADHD, dyslexia, or anxiety disorders. We didn't have therapists or diagnostic charts. We had teachers who called us naughty, parents who told us to sit still, and friends who laughed at our restlessness. And somehow, we pushed through.
But where I grew up in Mitchells Plain in the 80s that bliss was never pure. It was pierced by the machinery of apartheid - the threat of police vans, rubber bullets, and tear gas that could descend on a street, never mind a protest or a gathering, without warning. We grew up with the knowledge that authority could turn violent and that our innocence was conditional. Yet even then, we found ways to play, to laugh, to build resilience in the cracks of a broken system.
