The Presidential Physical Fitness Test is back. We have notes.
Reinstated in 2025, relaunched this year, back in gyms this fall. What the Presidential Physical Fitness Test actually measured, and why your kid’s version isn’t yours.
-
-
Gen X parenting humor: the deadpan is hereditary
We’re the first generation to parent on purpose – and the deadpan still comes out of our mouths anyway. On gen x parenting humor, inherited delivery, and the subtitle track.
-
Pay phone nostalgia: we were reachable only when we felt like it
The quarter in your shoe, the collect-call loophole, and the hours nobody could account for. Pay phone nostalgia isn’t about the phone.
-
School book fair nostalgia: the order form was the best part
School book fair nostalgia isn’t about the books. It’s the grey newsprint order form, two weeks of circling, and a five dollar budget. IYKYK.
-
School picture day nostalgia: one take, no preview, permanent record
The slip came home weeks early, the comb was communal, and you got one frame. How school picture day actually worked for the kids who lived it.
-
Saturday Morning Cartoons Nostalgia: The Only Appointment Gen X Ever Kept
Saturday morning cartoons nostalgia isn’t really about the cartoons. Ask a Gen-Xer to name the actual shows and you’ll get a pause, maybe a wrong answer, definitely a shrug. What nobody forgets is the machinery around it — the volume you kept the TV at so it wouldn’t wake anyone up, the specific squeak of…
-
Gen X Dial-Up Internet Nostalgia: The Sound Was the Whole Event
There’s a sound most people under forty have never heard, and if you played it for them, they’d assume something was broken. For us, it wasn’t a malfunction. It was the doorbell. Gen X dial-up internet nostalgia isn’t really about the internet — it’s about the fifty-six seconds of screeching, clicking static that stood between…
-
Call Waiting: The Original Notification System
You knew the sound before you knew the word for it. A soft click, half a second of dead air, and suddenly the person you were talking to went quiet mid-sentence. Call waiting didn’t announce itself. It just interrupted, and you were expected to know exactly what to do about it. Nobody explained the rules….
-
Gen X answering machine nostalgia: the blinking light ran the whole house
For about fifteen years, one blinking red light decided how the rest of your evening was going to go, and it did this from a beige plastic box sitting on a kitchen counter or a hallway table, doing a job nobody had officially assigned it: deciding who got to talk to you, and when. That’s…
-
Gen X roller rink nostalgia: the couples skate was psychological warfare
The roller rink didn’t advertise itself as a rite of passage. It was just where you went on Friday, because your parents needed three hours and the rink needed your $4.50. Nobody called it socialization. Nobody called it anything. You just knew: skates on, quarters in your sock, and if the DJ said “grab a…
