There’s been so much “heavy stuff” going on with many of the blogger posts lately, I thought I’d lighten things up a bit.
Do you ever find yourself saying things like …
When I was growing up, we did _____
I remember when we had _____
As I kid, I really liked _____
I think many of us, especially as we get older and find ourselves “tolerating” what goes on in the world today, often look back with fondness at our younger days. So I decided to open up this post to any and all and invite you to share what you miss about the earlier times in your life.
PLEASE!! No references to religion or politics. There’s more than enough of that going around. This is JUST FOR FUN … !!
Nan's Notebook 
Nan, I’m still a kid at heart, but don’t tell anyone 🙂
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Rosaliene, I think many of us are. ❤
But I daresay few of us do some of the crazy things we did when we were kids. That’s what I’m hoping people will share.
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I didn’t know you had a Brazilian connection! I’m in Brazil.
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Yes, I sometimes look back to my younger days. But it isn’t so much with fondness. It’s just to notice what has changed.
No matter what, we can’t ungrow a tree, we can’t unbreak an egg. We cannot go back. Some of what changed has been for the good, and some not so good. But they go together. You can’t have only the changes you like.
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Hi Neil! I appreciate your comment … but gosh. I was hoping for something more light-hearted.
You’re correct. We can’t go back. But surely there must have been times in your past when you were carefree and simply having FUN. That’s what I’m hoping people will share.
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Growing up (in Australia), there was native bush north of our house, and native bush south of our house. (It’s all houses now). As kids, we would often play in that bush.
At one time, a neighbor (child) loaned me a broken bike. I leaned it against our front fence, climbed on and pushed off. We were on a hill. I rolled nicely down the hill for maybe 50 feet, and landed in a thorn bush. But, after two or three more tries, I had learned to ride a bike.
My own children (growing up in Chicago) never had similar experiences. But that’s the way the world changes.
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OUCH!
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What’s a few thorns and scratches when you are having fun?
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I miss the naiveté of youth, the passion to learn and the hope to make a difference in people’s lives. Ignorance truly is bliss for children. Their eyes have not yet been jaded by experience. They see the world purely as it was meant to be.
Many times with friends and family, I would gaze upon the stars and contemplate the nature of the cosmos and our role in it. Once on a camping trip high up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, my high school buddy and I laid awake under a crystal clear and brutally cold December sky. We watched communication satellites traverse to and fro. We knew what they were, but instead allowed our minds to wander. We saw them as “Vultones” – extraterrestrials in technologically advanced spaceships. Were they observing us? Were they friendly? What secrets did they possess? For a few hours, it was nirvana.
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Love it! I’ve always been a “star-gazer” myself. Never gave a lot of thought to the extraterrestrials though. I was simply hypnotized by the MILLIONS of lights in the night sky. Still am. 🙂
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One of the things I miss are the weekends spent in the country at my grandparents house. We used to go for “Sunday dinner” every week, joined by aunts, uncles, and cousins. In the summertime, “Pop” would make homemade ice cream. Of course my favorite cousin and I would get to help churn. Fun days!
I also miss simply playing hide and seek with the neighborhood kids. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 … Here I come! 😀
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Every time I smell creosote it reminds me of playing in the water under a railroad trestle near my house. Picking blackberries and catching polywogs and swimming. What a life it was!
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Just for fun, no religion, no politics. Attractive proposal, Nan! I want to share a tale that contains the word ‘war’ but let me quickly assure you, it appears in a neutral way, necessary because of the context.
Besides recollections of hide-and-seek, and shadowy trees in our garden where I used to find some fork to accommodate upon with a book in one hand and an apple in the other, something remarkable happened when I was 10 years and 100 days of age. I know this almost exactly because how can I forget that Pearl Harbor was attacked on my tenth birthday December 7, and that my country, the then Dutch East Indies now Indonesia, were occupied by Japanese troops in the first week of March 1942. This had occurred almost silently. Except for the fatal Battle of the Java Sea a week earlier, there had hardly been bombings, and the Dutch Forces had surrendered to the foreign supremacy, thus avoiding violent hostilities.
One of those first days I was playing with friends on the street when a military jeep stopped. An officer got out and beckoned us with a wide smile to follow him into the small sweet-shop at the corner. Of course, we didn’t understand a word of what he was trying to tell us but he was extremely kind, and his gestures were eloquent. He requested the owner to spread candies and chocolates on the counter, and put some of them in our pockets.
All that time the officer kept smiling, and I still see me staring into his bright eyes, gladly twinkling behind thick glasses. When we had made our choices, he shook hands with everyone of us and cordially said goodbye. Now, I don’t remember if he paid the shop owner but I’m almost sure he did. Because it seemed to me (not at that moment but on afterthoughts) that he was a father, and that he imagined us being his son’s friends, whom he would probably have happily invited to do the same.
My reflection was: if these were our invaders, why was everybody so afraid of war?
In a way, the anecdote was fun. In spite of the world being in flames, we were fortunate not to have troubles. Not yet…
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That’s a pretty cool memory, Federico. But yes … I’m sure the following days were not near as much fun.
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Being Australian, there was a lot of blood that accompanied youth. Not sure I miss that, but the quick healing was certainly nice.
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For some reason, reading through these comments made me think of wintertime activities. I remember one year there was a huge mound of snow which the neighbourhood kids made into a fort – it froze and, looking back, it seems as if we played in that fort for weeks (it was probably only days). We’d walk to town, buy ‘treats’, and sit in there and share them – mittens off, noses dripping, and experiencing the exhuberance of childhood.
I also remember one year when the brooks all froze not far from our ‘block’ (again, it seemed like many weeks that year) and we skated for miles. As soon as school was over for the day, we’d lace up our skates and away we’d go – I remember singing, “Follow the yellow brick road!”, over and over. Such fun!!
(Can you tell I’m Canadian?) 😉
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Oh yes! Experiences like these stick … forever! The skating sounds like soooo much fun! Never got to even try on ice skates … 😦 Where I grew up, snow was a rare as … well, I’ll let you finish that sentence.
I remember roller skating though! That was so much fun! And isn’t it wonderful how the falls and bruises are quickly forgotten when you’re young?
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I ice skated from about 5 yrs old. I had never even seen a roller rink until my early adulthood. I’m pretty good at ice skating, having done both hockey and figure. I was right full of confidence while strapping on my rollers, and it didn’t take me 10 seconds to discover roller skating was a whole other thing. I had more moves than Ex-Lax and none of them were pretty. I eventually figured it out, but never got as proficient on wheels as I was on the ice.
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I’ve heard ice-skating is a lot about the ankles whereas roller skating is simply about balance. But I don’t know if that’s true or not since I never got on the ice. Since you’ve done both, what do you think?
P.S. “more moves than Ex-Lax,” huh? 😀
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Well, they both are about balance to some extent. For me, how I interacted with the surface was different. Wheels seemed more “slippery” to me for some reason. Rollerskating was about dance, and ice skating was about form and progression. The best part of both was enjoying the momentum. It’s a little bit like flying. [it feels ‘free”]
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I’d have to agree with you persedeplume about ice-skating and roller-skating. I’ve played inline-hockey and loved, loved, LOVED that! And when I transitioned over to some friendly public ice-rinks, I found I was very well prepared by inline skating. Later, that also included roller-skating when I returned to it with my own kids. LOL
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That was hilarious, persedplume. 🙂 I have never roller skated but it looks like a great way to break your neck. I am not even remotely interested in trying. . . Ha, ha. .
Our Aussie son-in-law, when he came to Nova Scotia the first time, was determined to learn to ice-skate (in Canada, ‘skating’ automatically means ‘ice’ – we don’t bother to specify) and we took him to the local rink, where he figured it would be a simple thing to acquire the new skill. WELL! My husband and I couldn’t skate at all, we were bent over laughing so hard. That poor fellow did more dipsy-didos than you could imagine, and many hard whomps to the elbows and knees. He was adamant that he could do it, and kept at it until he got so he could stay upright (after several trips that visit). If you knew this guy, you’d realize that there’d be no way he’d go back to Australia without having given it his very best shot. We weren’t surprised that he finally mastered it but we also were reminded of something most of us take for granted – It makes quite a difference when a person starts when they are practically babies, which most people do around where we live. I dare say it’s as difficult to find a person who can’t skate in Canada as it is to find a person in Australia who can’t swim! 🙂
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I remember having those adjustable skates that fit over your shoes. We would wear the skate key around our necks on two shoes laces tied together. And what a thrill on Christmas morning to find SHOE SKATES! wow wee! Movin’ up in the world!
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So many memories and not enough time to recount them all, so I’ll limit myself to two.
Breaking Ice
Walking to school took about 30 minutes if one hurried, but typically took us about an hour (so much to see and do). Where we lived, it never snowed, but in the peak of winter overnight temperatures frequently dropped below zero. On those days, as soon as we were out of site of home, we’d remove our shoes and socks and with our bare feet jump on every ice covered puddle we could find. The goal was to find a puddle where the ice wouldn’t break. There was a scoring system we evolved to make it more competitive, but I don’t recall how it worked. When we got within sight of the school, we’d put out shoes and socks back on.
Wind powered carting
Every boy in the neighbourhood had a cart. They were all home made using a wide range of construction methods and materials. My brother’s cart was the lightest and fastest as it was little more than a lightweight timber chassis with canvas stretched over it. Mine on the other hand was an elaborate affair with bonnet (hood) mudguards (fenders), padded seating and an elaborate hidden pulley system for steering. It was by far the heaviest cart in the street, but I was very proud of my handiwork. As there were no hills nearby, racing required a team of two: a driver, and a pusher. Being somewhat of an outsider and having the heaviest cart, I frequently found there was no one available to push for me, even though I had taken my turn at pushing. So I resorted to technology.
I added a sail to the cart. First it was a squared rigged device, but more or less limited me to downwind runs. Eventually I came up with what could probably be called a gaff rigged sail. It was very unstable and it took me quite a while and many scrapes and bruises before I learnt how to avoid (most) capsizes. This was back in the late 1950s and early 1961s and the thought of safety gear never entered my mind. But in the right conditions it could fly!. Most of our racing was done on the road (traffic wise it was a very quiet neighbourhood), and on any race longer than half a block, I could win by a country mile. I remember one exhilarating day when there was a stiff breeze, and I overtook a car. I remember looking up and seeing the very startled look on the driver’s face as I shot by.
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Brilliant, Barry!! 🙂
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HAH! Great stories/memories Barry!
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As I read that I could feel the wind in my face as the cart sailed down the street. What a lovely memory.
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When I was a kid, fall smelled like burning leaves. Everybody had a large box made out of chickenwire, or something similar. We’d rake up our leaves, pile them in the box, and set them on fire. The ashes were spread out on the yard afterwards as fertilizer, I think.
Even though I really appreciate now that this was a bad idea, and I love our cleaner air, that’s still the smell of fall to me.
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I miss being a kid more than any specific activity. It’s possible that it’s tougher to be a kid today than it was then; I have no way of knowing. But having someone else look out for the bills, the groceries, the meals, etc. was nice. “Someone else” was my Mom, and she selflessly did everything for yet and still found time to read stories, take me to the library and parks, and so on.
In almost every other way, I’m glad for *now*. Technology’s improvements are amazing, and science’s body of knowledge is growing faster than ever.
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I’m with you, Anderson. While I have some great childhood memories that I like to recall every so often, I don’t dwell on them. I prefer to live in the “now.” Unfortunately, there are many others who are simply unable to “move on” and keep trying to relive the “good old days.”
While I’m not so sure I’d want to live “forever,” I do regret that I won’t be able to see and take part in some of the advances that are, without a doubt, going to take place over the next several years. Oh yes. The times … they are a-changin’. 🙂
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I’m old enough that TV was bad, no video games, so we spent most of our time outside.
In the winter, I loved “snow days,” no school, just endless sledding and making snow forts. I don’t remember it ever being cold. Probably too busy having fun for that.
In the summer, we played in storm sewers (they were like caves) and on the hills around us. A lot of kids would go to a creek near the Mississippi River where there was sand and a diving board, rope, etc. Part of that fun was finding small crawdads and teasing the girls with them. Of course, there were the snakes, too. 🙂
My wife and I had very different childhoods. I grew up in a small town, she grew up in the middle of the city (Chicago). But we both could go anywhere and be fairly safe. Sadly, that’s not the case now.
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Sadly, that’s not the case now. … Very sad indeed.
When you mentioned the rope over the creek, it reminded me of a memory. There was a river just “down the hill” from my aunt and uncle’s place where my mom and I used to go (dad was working). It too had a rope … and what fun it was to swing on it … waaaaay out over the water … then let go and float down the river to the next “stop.” Then quickly run back upstream to do it all over again! Ahhh yes. Those were the days.
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I miss our huge 100-300 people Uncle Kiddo Tacquard family BBQ’s (on my father’s side) of all the six family lines starting with my paternal grandparents including family friends around town, which for me included the attendance of some 50+ cousins of all various ages up to their mid-20’s or so, the live band hired for Texas 2-stepping, waltzes, polkas, schottische, cotten-eyed Joe, swing-jitter-bugs, and sometimes a rock-pop dance song for us youth! Plenty of beer, wine, and some liquors all on Kiddo’s 120-acre ranch in Brazoria County, Texas. This annual event went all day and late into the night! Us cousins would get into so much mischief, play gags, and of course a ton of dancing and eating ALL DAY LONG with games galore into the night while the adults danced, played 42-dominos, poker, etc, etc! Hahahaha!
I MISS Kiddo’s BBQ Bashes & Dancing terribly! 😞😋
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WOW! That’s about all I can say. Sounds like a REALLY BIG (ala Ed Sullivan) event.
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Most people in the county at least KNEW about his huge ‘Family-n-All’ bash Nan. It’s kind of funny how a live band will really bring the folks together. My paternal grandmother (a Konzack-Tacquard) taught me not only all of those dances, but many of her ballroom dances too. She was in many National Ballroom Dancing competitions. She was one spunky, fun, woman-of-a-Grandmother… let me tell ya! LOL 😛
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How fun! Family get togethers with aunts, uncles, cousins are the best when you’re a kid!
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[…] week Nan was talking about childhood. No politics, no religion, and how great it was to be a kid from so […]
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Every time it rains, I am transported back to a day from my childhood. The rain brings back all the giddy, silly, exciting feelings of that memory.
When I was 11, I spent the night with a friend whose wealthy family lived in a beach community. On Saturday morning, my friend and I decided to walk to a nearby artist colony/tourist spot. As we walked along the grassy side of a busy four lane road, it started to rain. We were singing and laughing and waving at cars.
When we arrived at our destination, we were cold and wet. We went into a little diner to get one cup of hot chocolate to share. We felt so grown up, being in a restaurant on our own and ordering from the menu. When the waitress brought our order, she set a steaming cup of cocoa in front of each of us, and she put her finger up to her lips to tell us it was a secret. Her treat. She took money out of her apron pocket and paid our check. We left all the money we had in our pockets as her tip.
When we got back to my friend’s house, her mom was so mad at us for getting soaking wet and being so “irresponsible.” No matter. It was the best day!
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Yes! Why is it that mothers get angry at kids aged 11, mind you!) for ‘singing in the rain’? How come they did not enjoy that unspeakable pleasure? Not always, of course. But who cares about getting wet when walking or bicycling you approach a place where you can at least borrow a dry shirt? And when that place is called ‘home’, can there be anything nicer than getting wet again but by a jet of warmer water?
.-
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