Remember when smartphones died and nobody knew how to get anywhere? Last week, my neighbor’s twentysomething son knocked on my door asking for directions to the airport. His phone was dead, GPS wasn’t working, and he looked genuinely lost. I grabbed a pen and started drawing him a map on the back of an envelope. The kid stared at me like I was performing magic. “How do you just… know where everything is?” he asked.

That got me thinking about all the things we used to do without even thinking twice. Growing up in the 70s, there were certain skills you just had to learn. No YouTube tutorials, no Google searches, just figuring things out because you had to. By the time we hit middle school, we could do things that would probably qualify us for a survival reality show today.

1. Reading a paper map and giving directions

Every kid knew how to unfold that impossible-to-refold road map from the glove compartment. We could trace routes with our fingers, calculate distances using the scale, and give turn-by-turn directions to our parents on family road trips. “Take Route 42 north for about 10 miles, then hang a left at the Dairy Queen.”

Try asking someone under 40 to navigate using only a paper map today. Most wouldn’t even know which way was north without their phone telling them.

2. Using a rotary phone and remembering phone numbers

We had dozens of phone numbers memorized. Not just our own, but friends, family, the pizza place, even the local movie theater for showtimes. Your best friend’s number was burned into your muscle memory from dialing it hundreds of times on that rotary phone.

These days, I bet most people don’t even know their spouse’s phone number by heart. Everything’s stored in contacts with cute emoji labels.

3. Fixing a bike chain and patching a tire

Your bike broke, you fixed it. Simple as that. Every kid had greasy hands from wrestling with a slipped chain. We knew how to find the hole in an inner tube by dunking it in water, rough up the rubber with sandpaper, and slap on a patch that would hold for months.

Recently helped my grandson fix his bike tire, and his friends gathered around like I was demonstrating ancient sorcery. They’d never seen anyone actually repair something instead of buying a replacement.

4. Making change and balancing a checkbook

By age 10, we could calculate change faster than any cash register. If something cost $3.47 and you handed over a five, you knew you were getting $1.53 back before the cashier even opened the drawer.

My mother would sit us down once a month with her checkbook, showing us how to track every penny. “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” she’d say, making sure we understood where every dollar went. Today’s tap-and-go culture has made mental math almost extinct.

5. Using the Dewey Decimal System

Want to find a book about dinosaurs? Better know your 567.9s. We navigated libraries like tiny scholars, pulling out those wooden drawers full of index cards, fingers walking through alphabetical entries until we found our treasure map to knowledge.

Walking through a library with young adults today, watching them wander aimlessly through the stacks, you realize we’ve lost something valuable. That systematic way of thinking, of categorizing and finding information methodically, shaped how we approach problems even now.

6. Writing in cursive and addressing envelopes properly

Every kid could write a proper letter in cursive, fold it perfectly into thirds, and address an envelope with the return address in just the right spot. We knew the difference between “Street,” “Avenue,” and “Boulevard,” and why ZIP codes mattered.

Handed my nephew a birthday card last year and asked him to address it to his grandmother. He printed everything in block letters and put the return address where the stamp should go. When I corrected him, he asked why it mattered “since the mailman has GPS anyway.”

7. Tying actual knots that held

Square knots, bowlines, clove hitches. We secured everything from tent stakes to cargo on car roofs. If something needed to stay put, we had a knot for it. These weren’t just random tangles of rope but actual, functional knots with purposes.

Watching people today try to tie anything to a car roof rack is painful. They create these elaborate web designs that somehow manage to be both overly complicated and completely ineffective. Twenty minutes later, their mattress is flying down the highway.

8. Starting a fire without matches

Okay, maybe not every kid mastered this one, but most of us at least knew the theory. Magnifying glass on a sunny day, flint and steel, even the old bow drill method. We understood that fire needed fuel, air, and heat, and we could troubleshoot when our campfire kept dying.

Modern adults panic when their automatic gas grill won’t light. The idea of creating fire from scratch seems like something only Bear Grylls should attempt.

9. Basic sewing and mending

Ripped your jeans? Sew them up. Lost a button? Sew it back on. Every kid knew at least how to thread a needle and make basic repairs. My mother made sure all five of us could hem pants and fix tears. “Clothes cost money,” she’d remind us, needle between her teeth.

These days, clothes are so cheap and disposable that mending seems pointless. But there was something satisfying about fixing things yourself, making them last.

10. Entertaining yourself without screens

This might be the biggest one. We could occupy ourselves for entire summers with nothing but what we found outside. Building forts, creating elaborate games with made-up rules, organizing neighborhood baseball games where ghost runners covered missing players.

Give modern kids an afternoon without devices and watch the panic set in. “I’m bored” comes out within minutes. We didn’t even know what bored meant. There was always something to build, explore, or imagine.

Final thoughts

I’m not saying everything was better back then. Nobody misses busy signals or having to rewind VHS tapes. But there’s something to be said for knowing how to do things with your own hands and brain, without needing a device to guide every step.

These skills taught us more than just practical knowledge. They taught us patience, problem-solving, and self-reliance. When teaching my grandson to tie his shoes last month, watching him struggle with those loops and finally getting it right, his face lit up with the kind of pride you can’t get from beating a video game level.

Maybe we should all pick one of these old skills and relearn it. Not because we need to, but because we can. Because there’s still magic in knowing how to navigate by the stars, even when GPS is right in your pocket.