Things you remember from your childhood

Good or bad what do you remember? Two from me are.
Replacing over a period of days the foil wrapped round chocolates on the christmas tree, and replacing them with ping-pong balls
And standing in a stream of cool water during those hot summer months. There are plenty more but I wont go on.

When I was about 4 years old, I painted my 2 year old sister black with permanent hair dye that my mother had left on the kitchen table. Mom says that it happened around Thanksgiving, and we weren't fit to be seen (read faded to gray) until nearly Easter!!! My mom still has a couple of blankets that have hair dye stains on them (that happened almost 45 years ago!!!)

I must have been a really bad sister! I also remember telling my sister to stand on a heat register on the floor and stick a bobbypin into the electrical outlet. It knocked her across the room and blew a fuse (this was in the days before circuit breakers.) We were probably 8 and 6 years old. I'm surprised my sister lived through the things I did to her, lol! Yeah, I could go on for hours....

Running around laughing and playing on summer nights, surrounded by fireflies. I don't see fireflies much anymore.

Originally Posted by whuckleberry

Running around laughing and playing on summer nights, surrounded by fireflies. I don't see fireflies much anymore.

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And I don't nearly get to run around outside on warm summer nights like I did when I was young!
I should do that again, I wonder how many crazy looks I would get

I remember riding my bike around town with my brothers on summer nights and then catching fireflies. I also remember always taking all the sand out of our sandbox & filling it with water We always thought we would empty the water tower because my mom would ALWAYS yell at us for wasting water We didn't think it was a waste anyways

Arguing with my siter and telling my dad it was her who drank the last of the milk that night, so there was none left for a cup of tea in the morning. Things were looking good for me until my dad grabbed me by the ear and stood me in front of the mirror. Yep! there I was with a big round ring of milk around my mouth, whoops!

Originally Posted by u8myufo

Good or bad what do you remember? Two from me are.
Replacing over a period of days the foil wrapped round chocolates on the christmas tree, and replacing them with ping-pong balls

And standing in a stream of cool water during those hot summer months. There are plenty more but I wont go on.

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Ahahahahaahah!!! Ping pong balls?! Good grief you were inventive!!

I have many many things that I remember....

for e.g. tipping 2kg of white flour over the kitchen - ok, first me and then the kitchen. Mum threw me out in the garden in my underwear while she was cleaning up - unfotunately for me, it was raining... so I'm not sure what came off worst - the kitchen, or the living loaf of bread outside!

BIzzarely enough, I hadn't been baking - I'd been improvising my own plaster of paris!! Mum used to keep it loose in a tin on the top of the fridge freezer... I was tall enough to get it down, just... but not quite tall enough to put it back up there without tipping it. Standing on tippy-toes, I managed to push the tin back into place, but....................

the lid fell off. You could almost hear the "poooofffff"!! All I could do was stand there in the kitchen with my little freshly milled pyramid on the top of my head, flour cloud slowly expanding through the room and shout for mum. When she saw me, she didn't know whether to laugh or yell at me. She reached a rather good compromise and did both. At the same time! I love my mum.


But anyway... I miss playing in the mud and getting away with it.

Rope swings

Feeling all grown up when mum and dad let me stay up after 9pm!!

Sneaking out of my bedroom window after lights out to go for a walk in the dark - I used to like to go a half mile up a dirt track where we had a fantastic view of the stars. Worked well - right up until I was caught my my dad (he's an astronomer and just happened to be out watching the aurora that night!!) but he let me stay and even invited me out the next time around!

Feeling safe if we stayed out in the park playing after 9.p.m

Not being a fat child because we had so much energy playing we burnt the food off!

Long sunny days and long cold snowy winters

Loving the build up to christmas from the 1st of December, and i'm still like that now!

Having lots of fun, I was one happy kid!

I also was very intelligent, lol.

My Parents always watched the news, and we live on Long Island. There is a place called "Babylon Cove" on the map, it's near the water with lots of boats.
The news was on and had a story about Babylon Cove, offcourse I didnt know how to read maps, I was what, only 4 or 5. So on the news they pointed to there digital map in Babylon Cove, and there was a boat on the map.

Everytime it was on the news, I yelled out "B.C. tag in the water!" My Parents never understood what I meant, but when I got older I could explain to them!

B.C. stood for Babylon Cove on the map, they labeled it B.C. as an abbreviation.
Tag was the sailboat in the water, but when I was that young I never knew sailboat, only fishing boats, so to me it looked like a tag. And it was in the water.

I was pointing to the sailboat floating in Babylon Cove! I still laugh about to this day!

I was raised in a really small town and the thing I remember most about it was the little country store that my cousins and I went to about once a week during the summer..
We would spend the week catching frogs, and worms when it rained and sell them to my dad, uncle or brother for 10 cents a dozen for fishing, by the end of the week we would have maybe $1 or $2 and we would go buy this huge bag of penny candies..
I remember this quite often when I go into a variety store and see the same candies I bought 2-3 for a penny now at 25 cents each.

Being able to leave our house unlocked. Being able to play outside as long as I wanted on Summer nights.

Looking for 4 leaf clovers and making clover necklaces. Eating fresh fruit from the fruit trees. Climbing trees.

Wow!!! Sooo many things I remember...

HUGE family dinner/holiday parties at my grandparents house where my cousins and my siblings and I would be banished to the den... we would raise such a ruckus in there, my grandfather would come in and shout, "here, here" and he always blamed my boy cousins for the trouble!! Hey, if the shoe fits!!

Riding my bike. Staying out until past dark on a summer's night. Climbing in a friend's tree fort. Sitting on a friend's back porch, sprinkling sugar on freshly picked rhubarb and chewing on it. Skipping rocks on the pond down the street. Playing softball in the backyard. My mom's home made and hand decorated birthday cakes....

Playing snap the towel and ice cube hockey with my brother...doing everything I could to torture and annoy my older sister! (She had it coming - she was such a meanie to me! I told her kids that! They LOVED it!!)

So much more.... I don't want to bore anyone.

When we were stationed at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, we lived just a couple of blocks from a little shopping center with a Redbud grocery store in it. After supper, while Mom was doing dishes, my father would take my little brother (2) and me (8) for a walk to the store, where we would buy root beer and ice cream to make floats with... and then we'd stroll back in the twilight, watching for the first firefly of the evening.

If I may also share one from my little brother... he was big into baseball, and it didn't take him long after we moved into a new place to establish a crew of friends to play with. One evening when my brother was about 10, we were standing at the screen door watching as he organized a game in the street out front. Once he had his players in place, we saw my brother take off his cap and hold it over his heart.

The other boys followed suit, and they proceeded to sing the National Anthem before they started the game. Just like on TV.

Good - Summers in the Catskills with my family, swimming, walking in the woods, driving at dusk to see the deer, getting Tastee Freeze ice cream, playing cards and games, cutting fresh beans for bean salad, eating Aunt Lotty's plumcake.

Bad memories - growing up overweight and very intelligent in a neighborhood where neither were tolerated.

Good - Losing weight, getting into Cornell and never going back to the old neighborhood again.

I must have a good memory; I remember a lot of stuff my brother and sister can't recall.

My earliest memory:

We lived in Denver, and the house we were renting had a raised yard with a brick retaining wall around it, and the sidewalk below that. Somehow I rode my tricycle out of the yard, off the wall, and crashed down on the sidewalk. I was lying there crying and bleeding (big cut over my eyebrow) when a little old lady came by and saw me. She went to the door to tell my mother, who immediately came out with my brother and her purse. The bus stop was right there, and we didn't have a car, so she waited for the bus, holding me.

When the bus came, the bus driver got off the bus and held me while my mother got on board and paid her fare. Then he carried me onto the bus. I remember there being blood on the front of his uniform shirt.

At the hospital, Denver General Hospital, they took me to the emergency room. My mother held down one arm, and orderlies held down my other arm and legs and the doctor sewed up the cut, about 6 stitches.

It's a wonder little boys ever live to grow up!

Originally Posted by butzie

Good - Summers in the Catskills with my family, swimming, walking in the woods, driving at dusk to see the deer, getting Tastee Freeze ice cream, playing cards and games, cutting fresh beans for bean salad, eating Aunt Lotty's plumcake.

Bad memories - growing up overweight and very intelligent in a neighborhood where neither were tolerated.
Good - Losing weight, getting into Cornell and never going back to the old neighborhood again.

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Boy I know THAT feeling!!! Still overweight and still very intelligent.

Originally Posted by butzie

... getting into Cornell and never going back to the old neighborhood again.

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Cornell! Oh my gosh -- were you there early enough, and was your major such, that you ever had a class with Carl Sagan? Didja didja huh?

He's kind of a hero of mine, as you may be able to tell...

Oh, wow - good thread!

Riding bikes in the empty lots across the street. Playing kickball with the whole family, including parents. Staying up all night reading a book. Going to Baskin Robbins with the whole family (my sister always got vanilla ) Family food fights in the backyard...

I love this thread ...

Spitting out seeds from home-grown watermelons all over my mom's backyard flower garden, then laughingly denying it when the tell-tale vines began to sprout where they shouldn't the next season.

Pretending I could fly in the whipping winds before a summer thunderstorm.

Panning for gold in my gravel driveway. (My mom would turn on the garden hose and let it run down the driveway for a while, then I had to go outside, usually while she was sewing, and try to find gold. *LOL* It got me out of her hair while she worked.)

The aroma of freshly-baked pumpkin pie out of my mother's kitchen during the holidays. It doesn't smell the same anywhere else.

Picnic lunches on "The Big Rock", a large, flat boulder left by the developers when my childhood neighborhood was constructed.

Scrumping in the plum orchards, those big ripe juicy plums begging to be eaten. There we were stood tip toe on top of a stone or piece of wood, anything we could find. But no that big one was just out of reach even with that long stick