I was born in Mexico, in the border with Texas. I remember as something very usual crossing the border almost every weekend to buy goceries,  walk at the shopping mall or going to the flea market Sunday mornings. That was how I grew up back in the 80's, now that I think about it I realize how good was that. I said that because of two aspects, one is for the good memories about my childhood and the other aspect is for what was life back then, specially in the border of Mexico with United States. 

We were a typical middle class family, what was middle class back then, no luxuries, no A/C at all, not going out to restaurants, my parents always took care of the money, I mean they care about how to spend it. When buying goceries I remember they bought a chocolate milk gallon, we called it chocoloco, that in English is "choco-crazy" I really don't remember why we called like that but for sure that was the brand of that one, it was a big deal to have that gallon in our fridge, it last because we wanted it to last forever! We appreciated things. 

A pizza restaurant was opened in town and I remember it was really exciting when my father took us there, the owner was his friend and had business with him, so there were always free pizza and soda for us. A regional fried chicken restaurant chain called Pollo Buenosaires perfumed the main street where we have to pass by to get to our home and it was so good that smell, we had that chicken some times and that was normal for us, now is so easy to get to eat out even for poor people!

The weather in that city is as hot as 100 degrees in summer and as cold as freezing some times in winter, and we didn't have air conditioning, we did have a gas heater that my father turned on few hours at night. We were happy, I never thought we were suffering anything, that was life. Nowadays we as parents may feel we are failing our children if there is no air conditioning in home or in the car, if we don't take them to eat out or if they don't have an iPhone because they might feel inferior with the 1,000 dollars iPhone their middle school peer have.

I will write about the other aspect later that is how was life in the 80's vs nowadays.