Childhood Delights

[Haven]

The thread about childhood obesity has me wading through a flood of happy memories about all the little things in which I delighted as a child. I can almost feel the electric bliss that preceded the moment of enjoying whatever treat lay before me.

What simple pleasures delighted you as a child?

For me:
- Listening to my mom's bedtime stories at night. She was a MASTER STORYTELLER, and I looked forward to bedtime for this reason.
- Oreo cookies at my friend Stacy's house. We weren't allowed to eat them at home.
- The little Ziploc baggies my grandma Helga always had waiting for us. She put a candy bar, a photocopy of a short story or poem, and a dollar bill in each one. Trifecta!
- Catching fireflies in glass jars in the summertime and parading around the neighborhood with them.
- Saturday morning breakfasts at camp. It was a Jewish sleepover camp, I attended for eight summers straight, entering 3rd grade through 10th, and Saturday mornings (Shabbat) we had SUGAR CEREAL and French toast for breakfast. Heaven.
- School book fairs. Just thinking about those red and blue brochures they used to hand out the week before the book fair came along has my fingers tingling.
- Family movie days. We made no plans for the entire day, stayed in our PJs, popped popcorn, and piled into mom & dad's bed to watch movies all day long.
- Surprise visits from my uncle. He flitted around the world and popped in unexpectedly, always with exotic gifts in tow for us kids.
- Our yearly outing to The Marshall Field's Christmas windows, and driving through Sauganash to see everyone's amazing decorations.

 

[Miss Sparkly]

Oh, gosh, What didn't I love?!

Swinging on the swings
taking walks
watching the stars
eating ice cream in little bites to savor it all
finding shapes in the pattern in the ceiling
Rolling down the windows in the rain or snow (I don't care if I'm heating the outside!)
finding a really cool bug to play with
making pancakes only half cooked and squishy

What I love the most is that I never lost any of this. I still stop to play with a cool looking bug or stare at a pretty flower just to admire all the shapes and colors and how amazing it is that the flower even exists. It still makes me cry and feel so small to watch the night sky. To always know that human logic is so flawed and that I will never understand how we got here or where we are going. I tick my husband off because I let the snow fly into the car rolling down the highway at 65mph. *sigh* I think I'm going to go check out my bedroom ceiling for cool shapes now

 

[Kaleigh]

Great thread!!!

Lets see:

Making chocolate chip cookies, the Toll house version. Took forever..

Playing outside with neighbors. We loved playing kick ball. PLaying in the stream, or just climbing trees.. We would hang outside till parents were calling us in for dinner.

Catching fire flies.

Sleeping outside in a tent, with flashlights.. And telling scary stories, at which point we'd all run in the house and sleep on couches and the like..

Sleep overs..

Having my brother do magic tricks for my friends, and freaking them out.. He would go to great lengths to plan what he was going to do. BUT we loved it. Miss him so.

Elizabeth... You made every day sooooo fun. Loved when we would ask you to make a run to Wawa for Candy and you did!!! That rocked. We had such fun back in those days.

 

[packrat]

Finding frogs and toads outside. We'd catch them and have to run and show mom, she'd catch them and show us. I still do it and cheese out and show JD and the kids. Especially if it's a tree frog.

Playing in the corn crib at Gramma w/the kitties house. We were forbidden, and I can't recall when we *didn't* play in it. Climb up the wall slats and jump into the piles of corn. Each on one side and would throw corn at each other. Going to The Other Place (their other farm) and in the big barn they used a loooong rope and filled a burlap sack w/hay and we'd swing..climb up on the hay bales practically to the ceiling and mom would be on one side of the barn, dad on the other, whichever side we were on, they'd help my brother and I sit facing each other on the burlap sack and whooooosh! That was the. best. feeling. ever.

Spending the night at Gramma Joyce's and having scrambled eggs w/homemade bread and homemade apple butter for breakfast.

Looking in the cushions of Grampa and Gramma's couch (excuse me, davenport) for change. Grampa would take us to Dairy Queen. Mom always ate the curl off our cones. I do it now to my kids.

There used to be a restaurant in town called Scotty's. Best hamburgers. Mom would take us to eat and then we'd stop at the park and feed a loaf of bread to the ducks. Can't do that anymore, against park regulations. That's sad.

My dad's parachute liner. Green camo, really silky and has ties all over the edges. My brother and I would tie it to the spindles on the wall in the basement and drape it over a big chair-it was like a fort. We'd bring cookies and pillows and flashlights. Sometimes it was a spaceship and sometimes it was a submarine, or it just stayed a fort.

My mom has this long ankle lenght black and white coat. When I was little, waiting for the school bus and it was cold outside, she'd open her coat and I would stand inside and she'd close it around me until the bus came. When my brother started school, we both still could fit.

Saturday morning cartoons. Sneaking out of our rooms Sunday nights when we were supposed to be in bed to hide behind the couch and watch Dr. Who and Tales from the Darkside.

We had a stock tank to catch rain water to water plants..most of the time they would either use pool chemicals to keep the water clean so my brother and I could "swim" in it, or they'd have minnows in it for bait for fishing. We'd climb in and spend hours and hours catching the minnows or sitting really still so you could feel the tickles on your skin when they'd investigate you.

I love to play the "remember when" game w/my brother.

 

[Prana]

what a great thread! I have so many, but the ones that stick out the most and that I still think of frequently:

-colored Christmas lights. They make everything warmer, tackier and more mysteriously fun, for me.

-The smell of an old building/house. We had a vacation house in VT that was built in the early 1800's and it smelled like wood and smoke.

-My grandmothers baked ziti. She died over 15 years ago and I'll never have it again. We used to go to her house for Sunday dinners, and she used to send home the leftovers in those plastic deli containers. Everytime I see one of those containers, I think of her.

-zebra cakes/little debbie products. I don't like them now, but when we would visit my other Grandma in her Florida house after she moved, she would always stock the house with plenty of garbage for her 12 grandkids (it was 12 at that time, it's 18 now!)

-Kenny G. hahahahahaha. OK my parents had a cassette tape, and I used to associate it with Christmas and good memories. I think because when I was little, my mom was videotaping the Christmas tree with all our gifts underneath, before anyone had woken up. Kenny G was playing in the background. When I watch that tape, it evokes everything that Christmas is about for me, and so it's Kenny G by association lol.

-Reading hardcover childrens books that contain a lot of different tales/stories. My mom used to read these to me.

-Cape Cod potato chips. These were always a real treat to find in our lunch boxes or on the weekends if we would go out to lunch at a certain place. Kudos bars and peanut butter twix as well.

There's so many, I can't possibly think of them all!

 

[Italiahaircolor]

-Friday's after school. Our housekeeper just left, and coming home was just fun knowing that the weekend was ours and we didn't have to clean our rooms!

-Sick days with Mom. She was a creature of habit, if we were home sick, we'd get cheese and crackers and curl up to watch All My Children.

-Ghost in the graveyard with our neighborhood friends...spooky but in a good way.

-Shopping with my Dad. He is a very generous man, so when we'd go out with him, we could get anything we wanted...even if the jeans didn't fit or we had no use for it. Being 1 of 4 girls, it was such a luxury to just hang with Dad and go shopping.

-Summer camp. Every year we'd make the trek to Wisconsin for 6 weeks of fun in the sun. When you're a kid, you can't easily keep in touch with friends--even if they only live 45 minutes away, so every May was a huge reunion.

 

[dragonfly411]

Wow.

Taking showers in the trees when we would have non lightning filled showers. I'd go under the trees in my grandparents' yard, and tug on the branches so the water would come falling on me.

Every time it would freeze, my grandpa would hose the plants down for most of the night so that we got ice.

Fishing trips with my mom and dad, and always outfishing my dad because he was too grumpy.

Riding my ponies.

Making weekend trips to SeaWorld because we had annual passes and lived an hour away.

Baking Christmas cookies with my grandmother

popsicles on hot days

roasting marshmallows

Oyster nights, steaming them over the fire or on the grill.

Fish fries and bon fires

All of my animals I had growing up, getting to raise them and love on them.

 

[anitabee]

- going down to the creek by the railroad tracks w/ the neighborhood kids and catching pollywogs

- going rollerskating (from 10-12 years old) every saturday afternoon (double session!) and then coming home and watching the muppet show

- making chef-boy-ar-dee pizza on sat nights w/ our babysitter

- putting on plays on our front porch w/ the neighborhood kids for all the peeps in the 'hood to watch, lawnchairs & all!

- going to the drive-in as a family w/ p.j.'s on and with blankets and pillows

- in the fall in the primary grades (1-3) going out as a class, finding giant leaves, usually maples, and ironing the leaves between pieces of waxed paper. so magnificent!

- riding my bike all over tarnation and making it back before the street lights came on

- hitting the tennis ball against the school yard gym wall w/ best friend, cynthia

- watching the love boat and after, fantasy island on sat nights (that is, if folks actually let me stay up for fantasy island... usually not... such a weird show!)

- favorite show? THE BRADY BUNCH!! and hoping and wishing i could be JUST LIKE CINDY!!

 

[soocool]

Roller skating and especially have my own skate key to wear around my neck

Using clothespins to hold baseball cards in the spoke of the bike wheels

Catching fireflies in glass jars

Halloween when you would get a full size candy bar

Walking to school in the snow. My sister and I recall never having snow days.

Not having to schedule playdates. You went outside and there were your friends ready to play, all day! - no video games or handheld electronic devices. You used your imagination.

 

[somethingshiny]

I love this thread!

It doesn't take much to make me happy so I have lots of little things I remember delighting in.

-going to the zoo. It didn't happen often but I would shiver with anticipation like it was Christmas Eve!

-ice cream truck. On rare occasions, my dad would buy ice creams for the whole neighborhood. It was always a surprise and the kids would run down the road so they weren't forgotten. Each of us would be sticky from head to toe and then run through the garden hose.

-book orders from school. I would drool over the Scholastic Book Order form for HOURS. I would scrape up all of my change and go through my want list and figure out how to get the most bang for my buck. Sometimes my mom would throw an extra dollar or two in and then I was really thrilled. On the days that the books were due to arrive, I was so excited. As soon as the teacher would give me my bag, I'd open them slowly, caressing each cover, smelling the pages, but only allowing myself to read the first page of each. I'd savor in the stories I knew were all mine.

-the creek. The joys of crawdadding have no equal! We'd snag a few slices of bologna and fishing line and go deep into the woods to our special place. We'd tie the bologna with fishing line and just dunk it in the water. A crawdad would get it's claw on it and then we'd scoop him up and put him in a bucket. We never ate them but we'd keep them that whole day before dumping them back in the now murky water. Sometimes we'd wade through the creek and see how many would try to get our toes. Of course we ran from the really big ones but still ended up with more than a few cut feet.

-swimming in the pond. My aunt and uncle had a pond on their property. The clay at the bottom would turn our toe nails grayish green, the water was completely brown, snakes abounded, but we were elated to be swimming.

-the lagoon behind our house. One of our houses was way out in the boondocks. There was an old pig shed that jutted out over a lagoon in our backyard. We were strictly forbidden to play there. So, of course, at every opportunity we'd run to it to explore. We bullfrogged under the dock area, cut them up and fish for snapping turtles. I was 6 at the time and fully willing to cut my brother's leg off if he were to get bitten by a cottonmouth. lol I shudder to think of the hell we put my mom through.

-REAL winter mornings. I grew up in TX so we didn't have much in the way of snow. Every couple of years, we'd pile in the truck and go North to IL for Christmas. I remember the line of ice covered trees that signaled my grandma and grandpa's lane. We always arrived in the early morning because we drove through the night. My brother and I would jump out of the truck and plummet ourselves into the snowbanks, then run flush-cheeked to our grandparents. We shivered with the cold but didn't want to go inside. When we were made to go indoors, we'd stand in front of the radiator until our jeans were crispy. Grandma would put cut-out cookies on top of the radiator to warm for us to snack on. I'm sure I got my fair share of lead paint that way!

-playing on the farm. When I was 14 we moved to IL. We would play for hours in the corn crib, climb the silos, jump off the ladder inside the grain bin-trying to avoid the auger, walk the foundations of old buildings, and swing in the hay mow. The adults didn't know where we were but we thought as teenagers we were plenty old enough to do what we wanted. There were only a few minor injuries of which we all gladly lied about, savoring our secrets.



Oh my gosh, there are so many more memories, but as I've probably succeeded in boring each and every one of you, I'll stop for now. I am sitting here grinning from ear to ear though.

 

[anitabee]

I love this thread!

It doesn't take much to make me happy so I have lots of little things I remember delighting in.

-going to the zoo. It didn't happen often but I would shiver with anticipation like it was Christmas Eve!

-ice cream truck. On rare occasions, my dad would buy ice creams for the whole neighborhood. It was always a surprise and the kids would run down the road so they weren't forgotten. Each of us would be sticky from head to toe and then run through the garden hose.

-book orders from school. I would drool over the Scholastic Book Order form for HOURS. I would scrape up all of my change and go through my want list and figure out how to get the most bang for my buck. Sometimes my mom would throw an extra dollar or two in and then I was really thrilled. On the days that the books were due to arrive, I was so excited. As soon as the teacher would give me my bag, I'd open them slowly, caressing each cover, smelling the pages, but only allowing myself to read the first page of each. I'd savor in the stories I knew were all mine.

-the creek. The joys of crawdadding have no equal! We'd snag a few slices of bologna and fishing line and go deep into the woods to our special place. We'd tie the bologna with fishing line and just dunk it in the water. A crawdad would get it's claw on it and then we'd scoop him up and put him in a bucket. We never ate them but we'd keep them that whole day before dumping them back in the now murky water. Sometimes we'd wade through the creek and see how many would try to get our toes. Of course we ran from the really big ones but still ended up with more than a few cut feet.

-swimming in the pond. My aunt and uncle had a pond on their property. The clay at the bottom would turn our toe nails grayish green, the water was completely brown, snakes abounded, but we were elated to be swimming.

-the lagoon behind our house. One of our houses was way out in the boondocks. There was an old pig shed that jutted out over a lagoon in our backyard. We were strictly forbidden to play there. So, of course, at every opportunity we'd run to it to explore. We bullfrogged under the dock area, cut them up and fish for snapping turtles. I was 6 at the time and fully willing to cut my brother's leg off if he were to get bitten by a cottonmouth. lol I shudder to think of the hell we put my mom through.

-REAL winter mornings. I grew up in TX so we didn't have much in the way of snow. Every couple of years, we'd pile in the truck and go North to IL for Christmas. I remember the line of ice covered trees that signaled my grandma and grandpa's lane. We always arrived in the early morning because we drove through the night. My brother and I would jump out of the truck and plummet ourselves into the snowbanks, then run flush-cheeked to our grandparents. We shivered with the cold but didn't want to go inside. When we were made to go indoors, we'd stand in front of the radiator until our jeans were crispy. Grandma would put cut-out cookies on top of the radiator to warm for us to snack on. I'm sure I got my fair share of lead paint that way!

-playing on the farm. When I was 14 we moved to IL. We would play for hours in the corn crib, climb the silos, jump off the ladder inside the grain bin-trying to avoid the auger, walk the foundations of old buildings, and swing in the hay mow. The adults didn't know where we were but we thought as teenagers we were plenty old enough to do what we wanted. There were only a few minor injuries of which we all gladly lied about, savoring our secrets.



Oh my gosh, there are so many more memories, but as I've probably succeeded in boring each and every one of you, I'll stop for now. I am sitting here grinning from ear to ear though.

oh, wow! your memories are VERY similar to mine, esp the ICE CREAM TRUCK (except in our case, it was an ice cream bike!). also, i forgot that in addition to catching pollywogs, we'd get crayfish too (our term for your "crawdads"). thanks for stirring my memory ESP with the scholastic books!!! I HAD THE SAME CRAZY ANTICAPATION/REACTION YOU DID!! i miss being a kid

 

[somethingshiny]

anita~ I try to do as much of that with my kids as possible. I want them to have the same great memories too!

 

[purselover]

I loved sleeping over at my best friend's house, we would sneak into the kitchen for a midnight snack after her parents went to bed, it was so much fun! They always did have the best snacks. I also loved walking into town with my best friend, we'd go into CVS to buy make-up (we felt so grown-up!) and then after we would go to the gift shop for fudge.

I loved playing in the pool in the summer, and eating dinner outside. The best was the nights after dinner we'd have those Dixie cups of chocolate and vanilla ice cream. So yummy!

Eta: I also always looked forward to sledding with my brother in the winter, he would build bumps that were so much fun to go over, and then we'd have cocoa.

 

[D&T]

- riding bikes with my best friends for 12 hours straight, and getting a bit burned...lol (I rarely sunburn)
- fishing trips with my parents, hunting for our own nightcrawlers,
- yes! the ice cream truck. There was a little old couple that would drive around offering those swirly cones type you buy at McDonalds.
- Not the best memory, but my parents likes to gamble and would take us with them, but leave us with a ton of quarters at the arcade, spent too many hours there. I don't like arcades now and we don't own any of those gaming system in our house now

We grew up very poor in the states, so no vacations, and my parents worked all the time but the best time of my life with my family was all of our fishing trips we'd do almost weekly.

Also my childhoold friend, still friends with today - her grandma would watch me, (didn't speak a lick of english, and I didnt speak any vietnamese) would always give me pistachios, they were heavily coated with bright pink dyes, but boy did we love them!. I still love pistachios today.

 

[Skippy123]

riding bikes all summer long

walking over to the grocery store with the neighbors

snowball fights with the neighbor kids during snow days *splat*

eating popcicles till they dripped during the summer

swimming for hours

hide and seek on the block

going with my dad for an ice cream treat

my dad taking my sister and I to get some small item at Kmart for fun

picking fresh fruit off the trees and eating it till our belly's hurt

after a hard rain we would hop on the swing set and splash water with our feet while swinging.

selling stuff we made to the neighbors (macaroni bracelets, paintings, lemonade stands, girl scout cookies)

driving around Christmas Eve to look at Christmas Lights with my family.

school field trips

my list can go on and on; I had so many good memories

 

[Puppmom]

- Stirring up my hand-dipped ice cream until it was like soup before eating it
- Fruit cocktail from the can after dinner
- Birch beers and pinball at the bar where my dad worked on the weekends
- Taking off my dad’s shoes when he got home from work
- Sliding down the house stairs any way we could think of – we even once used our mattress!
- Getting new shoes at the local shoe store. This was a HUGE event in our house.
- Playing poker for pennies with my dad
- School supply shopping
- Making *concoctions* out of things in our medicine cabinet . What the heck is Coca Cola syrup for anyway?
- Hiding in closets and outside doors and scaring my parents when they walked past
- Playing in the dirt
- *Skating* on the hardwood floors
- Getting my sister to French-braid my hair
- Tricking my parents into thinking all of the umbrellas were lost so they would drive us to school on a rainy day
- Birthday cards from my grandmom – she somehow squeezed m&ms into the envelope!
- The school holiday bazaar
- Sitting on the radiator cover after playing in the snow

 

[soocool]

I want to add:

the Hoffman soda truck delivering case of soda to our house. I don't drink soda, but I loved cream soda and that was my favorite.

Scouring the neighborhood for disgarded bottles that my sister and me would take to the store and get money in return. We would then go and get either lemon ice or soft pretzels with the money.

Finally, rides that would come into our neighborhood each week during the summer. There were 2 kinds, carousel and bumper cars. Five cents for a ride.

I, also remember the World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, NY in the early 1960s.

 

[Haven]

I love reading these! Thank you for taking the time to share, everyone.
Keep 'em coming!

 

[zoebartlett]

Fun!

Here are some of mine:

-- Exploring the woods near my house with a friend and finding a makeshift house. We used it as a fort.
-- My bike. It was beautiful: powder blue banana seat with puffy white clouds. I loved it at the time.
-- Riding through my neighborhood on my bike (no handed).
-- Playing outside with my friends.
-- Sledding in my neighborhood.
-- Climbing trees and reading for hours.
-- Spending the summers at our local swim club.
-- Reading everything by my favorite authors: Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, Lois Lowry, Cynthia Voight, and reading the Nancy Drew series.
-- Playing with my Cabbage Patch dolls.

ETA: I also LOVED ordering books from Scholastic Books and other companies. I couldn't wait to get home from school and show my mom. I also forgot to mention gymnastics. I took lessons for 7 years and I was on a team for a few of those years. It was so much fun. Oddly enough, one of the most vivid memories I have is actually after practice when my mom would let me get a drink from the machine. I always got the same thing: pineapple juice. How weird is that?

 

[Lady_Disdain]

So much fun! It is very interesting to see how similar and how different our childhoods were.

- Getting home early on Wednesday and eat freshly baked cake with Mom
- Traveling around Europe with my family by car
- Swimming all summer long
- Getting new books for Christmas, birthdays or other special occasions
- Reading out in the lawn
- Trying to sneak from the dessert table my grandmother always set up during family gatherings (sure, the adults are not going to notice 8 children crawling along the floor towards the table, just 2 meters from them )
- Setting a "fancy table" for long Friday night dinners, when Mom would go all out on the cooking
- Constantly learning new things and making new connections (yes, I am a major nerd)

 

[marymm]

I love this thread - great idea!

Playing hopscotch with my sisters on our front walk

Running through the sprinklers on our lawn

There was a chalkboard on the brick wall just outside the kitchen and while Mom was cooking we'd play Hangman or Tic Tac Toe

My Mom played guitar and we'd (us 7 kids) sit around her and sing folk songs - to this day I still know the lyrics to most of those songs

Riding my bike to the library or Mom driving me to the bigger library just about every week to get new books

When one of us kids had on a piece of clothing getting too raggedy to repair, Dad would announce "ripping party" and we'd all tumble around on the carpet trying to pull further on the holes and tears (we were real young)

Double features at the movie theatres

Having our own July 4th fireworks lit off by Dad right in front of our house, and seeing all the neighbors set off theirs up and down the street

Knowing almost everyone on our block and being able to get a good game going of Red Rover or Tag if you hit enough houses

 

[qtiekiki]

Riding/rollerblading/walking to the liquor store for ice cream with my sisters and cousins during the summer.

Playing baseball in the street outside of Grandma's house.

Swimming during the summer.

Ice skating.

Going to the park.

 

[katamari]

So many great memories here! For me:

-Summer Book Clubs at the local library. And, earning the top reward usually in the first week or month. And, Book Fairs.
-Being so excited for school to start back up (I still get to experience this one!).
-Any time we got to eat in the formal dining room.
-Having my whole extended family together for my grandma's birthday every year.
-Sleeping over at my best friend's house.
-Getting to walk to the local park and play with my cousins in the summer.
-Going to the county fair in August with my mom.
-Staying the night with my Grams and having the best biscuits and gravy ever for brunch the next day.
-Playing board games or cards with my family.
-Driving around after Thanksgiving Dinner to see Christmas lights in our neighborhood. Everyone would have them up, but not lit, until Thanksgiving.

 

[Lady_Disdain]

My Mom played guitar and we'd (us 7 kids) sit around her and sing folk songs - to this day I still know the lyrics to most of those songs

Did you live in Austria, was your father a former navy captain and your mother a nun before meeting him?

 

[somethingshiny]

Zoe~ Your bike sounds like mine! It also had streamers and a little basket, although I don't remember if the basket was added to it or came with it. I loved that bike.

 

[KimberlyH]

I delivered my grandmother's eulogy on Tuesday and writing it brought back so many wonderful memories of her and my childhood in general.

-singing along to Gram's organ version of Bad Bad Leroy Brown a million and one times, dancing around in her pajamas (best dress up clothes ever!)

-learning to drive a golf cart with my Pop

-sleepovers w/ friends, my parents would wake us up with music blaring then make us breakfast

-beach Mondays every summer...tuna and sand on rye

-reading under the covers with a flashlight

-big wheels

-exploring the mountains with my best friend, her older sister and miine, who were also best friends

-driving vacations

-my sister checking me out of school early and taking me to lunch

 

[marymm]

My Mom played guitar and we'd (us 7 kids) sit around her and sing folk songs - to this day I still know the lyrics to most of those songs

Did you live in Austria, was your father a former navy captain and your mother a nun before meeting him?

I know, pure cornball, huh? But we were good Catholic kids, my mom was schooled by nuns, and my dad was an Army veteran... Should i mention that "The Sound of Music" was one of my mom's favorite movies and we had the album soundtrack?

Funny story - my mom and my aunt went to the movies years and years ago to see a new flick, it's starting and my aunt tells my mom, "listen, that music reminds me of The Sound of Music"; my mom tells my aunt, "hey, those hills are just like the Sound of Music"; then they see Julia Andrews come running up, and they look at each other and burst out laughing -- they'd gone into the wrong theatre!

 

[ksinger]

Pulling the stamens out of the honeysuckle flowers and sucking out the nectar.

My mom worked at a bank, and they did these punched cards (for what I don't know) but it resulted in buckets of these tiny multi-colored punches. TINY. Mom would bring home bags of the stuff, give me and my friends a bowl and measuring cups and let us go to town playing with the colorful confetti. OUTSIDE.

Walking to the nearby convenience store (more a country store really) - it had a ricketly wooden screen door, and wood floors. We'd take our quarter (singular) and get all sorts of stuff. Giant Pixie Stix. Mmm! And those horrible wax bottles filled with "embalming fluid"! Great stuff!

Walking to a nearby church with a covered portico and drive (small actually, but it seemed HUGE to us), and strapping on our metal rollerskates and being oh so graceful, we thought.

Learning how to bake and make lacey fried white cornbread from a neighbor from Georgia.

Hitting up my friend for Borden Fudgesicles. Her dad was a refrigeration repairman who worked for Borden, and they gave damaged stuff to their employees (he even took us there to see the freezers once), so they always had a deepfreeze FULL of frozen milk, icecream and Fudgesicles. Endless supply. All summer.

Climbing the mimosa trees. Taking the mimosa flowers and stringing them with needle and thread into fluffy leis.

 

[dragonfly411]

I have to add a few more that I didn't have time to add yesterday.

My cousin and I used to put on our moms' old roller skates and skate along the front porch at my great grandmother's house. Back then that porch seemed so huge... and now it is tiny to me.

In the same house, there was a "twin bedroom" - a bedroom with twin beds. We used to jump from bed to bed. It was my favorite room. It was a bright floral pink with white trim, and it had all of these old paintings of little girls from the 1950s. I have those paintings to this day.

Staying at home from Kindergarten and watching Land Before Time, Dirty Dancing, and Top Gun over and over and over with my great grandmother.

Weekend day trips to the beach. We'd get up really early and drive over. We'd eat lunch at this walk in bar that sat by the beach, and I'd eat grilled cheese next to all the bikers and beach bums. On the way home, I hated how I'd be covered in sand.

Eating Kumquats out of the kumquat tree outside of my early childhood house.

 

[somethingshiny]

I forgot to post a great one!

Playing HOT LAVA!

Oh the injuries we sustained while leaping from couch to chair, scaling the entertainment center, losing the footstool beneath you....good times.