When I was little ...

Use this thread to post your favourite childhood memories.


When I was little, I used to love those big slabs of Blue Bird toffee you used to be able to buy.

I got through a lot of them when I was revising for my school exams. I used to lie on my tummy on my bed, reading my school books, and sucking (not chewing) a slab of toffee. When I had finished the toffee, I figured that was enough revising for one session.

:mickey:

 

When I was little, I used to doze off after a heavy breakfast, listening to Radio music at 11 AM.

The home would be quiet, mother would be in backyard, washing clothes or cleaning things.

It used to be a serene and spiritual routine.

 

when i was little, my dad worked for the railroad. i used to bring him his lunch, so i could hang out there and watch the trains.

well not real little little. i think i was 7, 8, or 9 by then. (1956 or so. we moved to colfax in 57)

the first time i saw a model train running around one of my dad's friends basement, i was one year old (this was 1949, my having been born in 1948) and could walk but hadn't started talking actual words.

when i was in first grade, in truckee california, i started going for long walks by myself in the woods. (1954)

this was long before they built the freeway, the suburb of gateway did not yet exist, nor the donner memorial park. many of the old logging railroad trestles were still in tack, though the rails were long gone.

our first house in truckee was accross the street from the tracks. when the trains went by it sounded like they were going through the middle of the house.

there was a song at the time that had a lyric that went "the railroad runs through the middle of the house, where the parlour used to be"
(didn't know nor care at the time who sang it or wrote it or anything, but figured they were talking about a house just like ours)

 

When I was a little kid I was afraid Peter Sutcliffe (The Yorkshire Ripper) would get me even though I lived 3,300 miles away separated by the North Atlantic



Hotwater

 

Going to prenursery school for a day with friend. Must have been 3, but got to make a finger painting that day, so I made mine in blue, and still have it.....
Trying to recall earliest memory.....Oh, this is funny....I had a bag of m and m's or something like that, and finished it, and my dad wanted some, so I went into my play room, and cut pieces of chalk and colored them thinking this would be ok, as i felt so badly I had no candy to give my dad....lol

 

When I was a little kid I used play with my Hotwheels cars and pretend we were cruising to parties and doing massive amounts of drugs. I couldn't wait till I got older to do the real thing.

 

I have a lot of good memories from childhood, but the first significant world events I recall are the death of Pope John 23rd, and the Kennedy assassination.
I remember the nuns at school telling me how they would re;ease smoke from a chimney when there was a new Pope.

I can recall my mum being upset, and my dad pissed off about JFK. and that it was a big thing.
I also remember the funeral on TV, and feeling a kind of empathy, although obviously at so young an age I didn't understand it to be such, with the Kennedy kids. I knew how bad I would have felt if it had been my father.

The first international crisis I really had any understanding of was the 6 day war between Israel and the Arabs in 67.
I can recall the headmaster of our junior school coming into the classroom and explaining to us how important is was that Israel should win. Hmmmm.
That was basic education back in 60's Britain.

Main thing i go back to from those years is a girl with whom I was in love from age 9 - 14, and the fantasies I used to construct in my mind about the future course of our love. In other words I was fucked over by romanticism at an early age. Susan was her name BTW. By now, either dead or a fat hag in all likelihood. Or maybe not. Not in the dream world anyway.

Freud once said 'one owes oneself discretion'. So maybe I should leave it at that.

 

When I was little I made my sister eat mud pies,,, seriously,,,, she wouldn't go for the bug eating thing tho, I even ate one to prove to her it was good for her. Now that I think back, she suckered me, hahaha

 

When I was little I climbed trees...caught frogs and watched tadpoles....climbed a water tower a few times....stupid move....but a friend egged me on, and I was very fit and athletic...Cops came around and bull horned us to come down.....and drove us home and told us never to do that again.

We didn't. They put a fence around it after that.

 

I started climbing the old oak tree in our front yard when I was really young, after that I challenged many a tree, loved hiding above people thinking I could pounce on them. Forts and trees and an old boat we found in a field were my fave things to do. Loved hiding under big wild ferns too, we uses to play hide and seek in them because there were so many. Sometimes it took a good while to stumble on someone.

 

I grew up mostly in Chicago. I loved going to Lake Michigan.

 

The simplicity of finding joy and excitement in new things. Like hitting the ball for the first time, mastering swimming, jumping rope, riding a bike.

 

Going to the zoo and riding a camel with a bunch of other kids on a seat thing strapped to its back. I guess I did not enjoy that too much.....as my photos show me looking very upset....probably because the camel was upset....I don't know.....

 

When I was little I thought mountains were build by construction crews with bulldozers.

 

I used to spend all summer at my grandmas house with two of my cousins. We would swim in the pool from morning til night every day, and do things like plant vegetables and flowers in my grandmothers many gardens. Loved it, best memories ever.

 

When I was little...I didn't have the problems I have today...Other problems yes,some little,some large.

 

When little....we took off our school clothes and changed into our play clothes. We played with all the other neighborhood kids outside in the front or backyards. We jumped rope, hopscotch, tag you're it, and kicking balls. In addition to many other games I can't recall, lol! But it featured fresh air, noise, friends, hurting young bones and getting dirty. Then the street lights would come on and we all instantly ran inside homes. While inside we'd likely take baths and prepare for school tomorrow. Worn out by fun we slept.

 

We spent many of our summers on my grandparents farm. They had a house in town too so we usually slept there because it had more rooms. The day time was about playing on the farm and we didn't plant for grandma, just robbed her gardens, haha.
We wanted to play on the horses but most of them were large work horses so my grandpa bought us a Shetland pony. He was cool but some days he had a bad ass attitude and could throw us off his back right into the rose bushes, never missed those bushes for some reason. Talk about thorns in yer ass! Once we got too big and he didn't want to play no more we had to say good by because he was getting mean then. I think he went to a nearby farm, or maybe to the glue factory, he was getting old.
We chased the chickens and looked for rattle snakes.
Grandpa had farm hands working for him so we weren't allowed to do anything near where stuff was happening, would slow down the boys so we got into anything and everything else we could,,, the fresh air is one thing I remember most and as we got older heading off to neighboring farms to ride their horses and play with their pigs in the mud, we didn't have any pigs. Talk about coming home really dirty, haha. My fave animal on the whole farm was a sheep named Billy, you could go down to where the sheep were and call him and he knew we had a smoke we stole off the adults, he'd come running from nowhere, he would eat the tobacco, he loved it. He would hang out with us like an old dog would as long as we stayed with him.
Across from the house in town they had a huge central park with day programs for kids all summer, a wading pool and lots of funky things like swings and stuff we never saw in a park anywhere else, the thimble was awesome for a buncha bad little kids. We used to hide in it and kids would chuck rocks and stuff at us and visa versa. It was a war zone. If I remember right, the Shriners made all the park equipment and that why some of it was so funky and not your normal city park stuff. Soooo cool.
Rodeo time was kick ass there because it wasn't far from the house so we walk over every day it ran. I miss the rodeo. Haven't been to one since my teen years.
My best memories are there at the farm and their little town and I have all the black and white photos from when they started the farm back in the late thirties right to just before it got sold.
I still get a warm mushy feeling looking at them pics.

 

when I was little we use to spend the summers in the village my mothers family comes from. Swimming in rivers or out on the ocean playing in the surf.

 

one thing i was derp about when i was little, was i believed movies and other entertainment to be historically and scientifically accurate. when two things where contrary to each other, i believed the interpolations between then my mind generated were. which of course, sometimes they are, but as or more often what is real turns out to be nothing like either.

i did not believe anything was simple, but i did enjoy seen and exploring technology and nature more then i enjoyed being around most other people most of the time. pretty much is still do and always have.

when i was little, because my dad worked for the railroad, most of my growing up years, we did not live in cities. cities were places you went to buy stuff you couldn't get where you lived. or just to go see them for a change of sight.

when i was little, my parents never owned a car. my mom never did learn how to drive one. when it was my dad's week end, which usually wasn't the same saturday and sunday like everyone else, because different shifts worked different days so they could have people there all the time, any way, we could all ride the trains for free, because of his employee pass. so whenever we went to a city or anywhere, we rode the trains.

when i was little i never met any of my relatives, because they all lived on the other side of the continent.

only once, when i was still little, did i ever get to meet all of mom's relatives together in one place. i still, as far as i know, have never met any relatives of my father.