Those were the days!

[Louweasel]

Wise words there from MyraTrue.
Personally I found the best use of the blanket was in conjunction with a folding clothes-airer, to build a den. Unless of course you had boxes with which to construct a fort.

Even better though, my cousin's children have a real treehouse in the backgarden. I am SO jealous. (I am 26 )

[MyraTrue]

Oh, I so know what you mean. I get a little green at the edges watching my MUCH younger siblings (youngest is 20 years younger) build forts out of sheets and blankets, giant umbrellas and chairs. Its looks like so much fun!

I've rarely encountered a real tree house. But I've decided that there was something really fun about trying to make your own with a few bits of lumber you managed to "procure" somewhere, and random bits of cording, wire and rope, a few shingles, a scrap of tin siding. When its done, its hideous, but it took you days and its ALL YOURS. Yes, the things I remember.

-My'

[Zelda]

My dad built me a tree house on the slope in our back yard when I was about 4. It had a stable door, emergency escape hatch, a real roof and was VJ board. It was built into hte hill and had one of the best views in Brisbane. My parents only got rid of it when I was about 16. I still miss it 10 years later!

[damion18d]

When I was little my mother would get us refrigorator and washer and dryer boxes from big stores. Anything that was a big box was great. You could cut doors and windows wherever you wanted. Stand them up or on thier sides. We would have these forts that would snake through the whole house. At night we would turn the lights down low and play hide and seek in them. Then at the end of play time you folded them away. Stored them and next time built a different one. I loved it. Plus in the winter a cardboard box doubles as a great snow sled.

[pkt]

All,

Please do not blame the media. They are just the messenger.

Look at the case of Cecillia Zheng in Toronto and other similar cases:
Cecilia was taken from her bed in her parents' home over night. That's the worst nightmare parents could possibly have.

I know, I know, when I was a kid in the 50s we were told that if we don't go to bed the kidnapper will come and get us. But we always thought that was hyperbole...

==)========

Lou,

No seat belts in the car either. You crash, you die. Is that that bad? With seat belts one might survive but become crippled for life or be in a PVS - persistent vetgetative state. Which would you prefer?

The way I see it the reason so many kids have allergies is because the environment they live in is too clean. They were not able to develop any imunity to the dirt and bugs.

PK

PK

[MikeHarm]

This was kind of funny. I found myself thinking of the times I injured or nearly killed myself with unsafe toys growing up.

My top four dangerous toy incidents:

Lawn Darts
One of the things they later decided was a bad idea and banned was lawn darts. Huge metal darts that you were supposed to thrown in rings on your lawn. I was almost done in by one of those, I was throwing them wildly into the air when I was in junior high, it got stuck in a tree, and my pet lab decided it was a good idea to run straight over to the tree and lie down directly under the branch it was stuck on.

I saw it rustling and about to fall towards the dog, told myself this is the most idiotic thing I've done yet then ran over and pushed the dog out of the way. Just as the dog was out of the way I got smacked flat right on the head by the dart. I was afraid to reach up for a few minutes thinking I'd find a huge hole in my head, but luckilly all I ended up with was a lump.

Magnifying glass

My parents got me a magnifying glass and a book about insects. I had seen other kids fry ants now and then with one, and was bored one day and decided to try it myself. Apparently on rare occasions the ants are able to figure out whats going on and swarm over you biting the hell out of you which promptly happened to me. Good thing they don't have fire ants in Michigan. They were the little black ones too, that always looked so harmless. I ended up getting my body covered in ugly welts from all the ant stings for a while.

Remote controlled toy robot

I had seen a toy robot in radio shack that I liked, and my parents decided to get it for me for christmas. It was mostly together, but had some minor assembly required.

It had this thin wire antenna on it, about the width of say a thin needle. My hand slipped while trying to put it on the robot, it broke and stabbed me in the arm digging in a few inches. It was on the surface so it didn't do any permanent damage other than bleeding a lot.


Dirt Bike

My parents got me one as a present. Naturally I raced around, and jumped it off small hills and such. At one point the little muffler part come loose after a jump I did. Not thinking I reached down grabbing it thinking I'd reattach it somehow. I heard the sizzling sound as I cooked my hand.

[Inquartata]

Originally posted by pkt
All,

Please do not blame the media. They are just the messenger.

It would be comforting were this the case. Alas, however, McLuhan was at least partially correct: in some ways the media IS the message. And at all times, it shapes and alters it, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously. Hard to say which is the more pernicious.

[pkt]

mike,

That's funny. It's amazing how you survived your youth!!!

Which reminds me:
When we were kids - before we're teenagers, my younger brother and I always played with swords, not unlike every boy. Our parents even got us metal toy katanas on a trip to Japan.

One day we sharpened some kabob sticks - or something like that, can't remmeber. We were poking around, fencinglike, and I punctured my brother's skin under his eye! That was close. Yes, I drew blood. And we threw the sticks away rather sharpish! D'oh.

then there were those toy F1 cars from the 50s - told you I was born in 1949 - that we used to race down the gutter by the stairs. To make them go faster, some of us - I didn't have the wherewithal - would fill the rear end with LEAD!!!

And some of the model planes we built, the ones with tricycle undercarriage, if you build them with the landing gears down, in order for the model to sit properly, one would have to put a piece of LEAD weight in the nose.

Imagine that, playing with LEAD!!! and in the [clean] gutter to boot!!!

PK

[Louweasel]

Originally posted by pkt

Lou,

No seat belts in the car either. You crash, you die. Is that that bad? With seat belts one might survive but become crippled for life or be in a PVS - persistent vetgetative state. Which would you prefer?

PK

PK

PK,
We have a rather harrowing advert doing the rounds on TV at the moment here in the UK. It shows a teenager sitting in the back seat of a car wearing no seatbelt. His mother, driving, has to make an emergency stop, and despite being prevented from going through the windscreen by her own seatbelt, she is hit with force from behind by her son and killed. He has only mild injuries.

So it's not just about what I'd prefer for myself between a coma and death (and this was never supposed to become a debate about euthanasia), I also think it's about a responsibility to others.
Besides, it's the law in this country to wear one wherever you are in the car so it's not a valid argument for me personally.


Good grief, frankly I'm beginning to wish i'd never posted this thread. Thanks to all who replied with a little childhood nostalgia, in the spirit that it was meant.
*louweasel sighs and scampers off to build a den somewhere*

[arcon]

Making rubber band guns out of sticks.

Having dirt glog wars with the other neighborhood.

Playing Roman Soldiers with garbage can lids and sticks.
we also played(The 300 Spartens)

Building Forts and tree houses.

Shooting birds and light bulbs with BB guns
(ok, shooting the birds was bad but we did it back then)

Watching our mom and dad freak out over "Rock and Roll"

Threatning to run away and getting grounded.

having neighborhood bike races.
(and winning every year....hehe)

Running to the Ice Cream Truck.

falling down, running to the Ice Cream Truck.

Getting pinched on the cheek by really old people
(this one i dont miss)

-----------------------------------------
Im sure theres more fill free to list some of your good ole times.

arcon

[MyraTrue]

oh, this is a good one!

When I was little my mother would get us refrigorator and washer and dryer boxes from big stores. Anything that was a big box was great. You could cut doors and windows wherever you wanted. Stand them up or on thier sides. We would have these forts that would snake through the whole house. At night we would turn the lights down low and play hide and seek in them. Then at the end of play time you folded them away. Stored them and next time built a different one. I loved it. Plus in the winter a cardboard box doubles as a great snow sled.

We also did this, but we had a little hill in the back yard, so we'd crunch up the dryer box (I was much shorter then) until it was soft, and then roll down the hill in it. It got even funnier then my brother and I tried to do this in the same box. I think we both ended up with black eyes, and then did it again.

Going down the stairs in a laundry basket. Great till you hit that LAST step.

The magic of holidays

When playdough was pretty much the best thing ever

When a box of blocks entertained for hours

Going to the mall and having my dad put me on his shoulders so I could pick up the escaped ballons off the ceiling, and in the end, looking just like the baloon seller

[Soldier]

Hell, I wasn't born until (exactly) halfway through 1985:

Yes, the magic of the holidays.

The way you could never sleep the night before your birthday.

LEGOS!!! That's where the vast majority of my childhood went to.

Creek Wars - head down to the creek behind my house with four or five friends, flinging mud back and forth at each other - you win when your shots sting enough that the other guy gives up.

Rolling in said mud when you both get sick of the Creek War.

Hiking up and down the creek all afternoon with your sister, exploring.

Note - we'd go miles up or downstream, having only told parents we were "out exploring"; they'd have no way to get ahold of us.

Hanging out with my sister constantly (when you move that much, she's got to be one of your best friends).

Roaming the entire base on bikes with a pack of friends - leave in the morning, come back long enough for lunch, come back long enough for dinner, come back in around dark.

Garage sales!!

Playing in the snow. There was one day when my sister and I found a snowbank next to the house, over where the dryer vent was. The hot air had melted an ice-walled cavern in the inside of the bank, complete with a small vent in the top - it was perfect! That was in the middle of one of the worst blizzards (whiteout conditions, etc.) of a year of eight named blizzards. We'd come in with our eyes frozen half shut because of the ice between our eyelashes. That same winter, Dad helped us carve out some especially big drifts across the street - by especially big, I mean that we were standing up straight inside, and he was just a little hunched over, and there was still room to climb up a chute we'd carved to a higher level back against the wall of the building. Another drift, had a whole network of tunnels woven through it.

We didn't see the last of that snow until mid-May that year.

Trampoline!!

[MyraTrue]

oh! Swimming in the lake by my grandmothers house! We'd cover outselves in mud from the bottom, and then stick water weed all over, and chase the younger cousins pretending to be "mud monsters"

The way you could never sleep on Christmas Eve!

How I always tried to build things- the hang glider out of a lawn chair, etc.

The "raft' I built to run away on, just drift downstream to somewhere fantastic (made of a piece of plywood and some twine and 2x4's). I didn't even hacve a river or stream nearby, but I spent days scheming.

learning to ride your bike "no hands!" and to stand on the seat while you did it.

Playing poker with cheerios because we didn't have money. Playing rummy for chocolate.

Long hikes up into the hills behind my parents house with the dog and noone else...

Ok, thats it! I want to quit this "Adult life" and be a kid again!

[Catlady]

I can top sliding down the stairs in a laundry basket. I used to just slide down them on my rear, which hurt after a while but was fun anyway. The house I grew up in was two stories and a basement so there were plenty of stairs available. Then my grandparents had really steep stairs going down to their basement, so I'd really go to town on those. My two of my cousins were braver than I was though. A few years ago the house my grandparents lived in was up for sale, it had been about nine or ten years since my grandfather had died and we'd sold the house. We'd heard from a neighbor that the people who were selling the house had really fixed it up so my mother, my cousin, his girlfriend (now wife) and I went down to look at it. When we headed down to the basement my cousin was telling his girlfriend how he and his brother used to jump all the way from the top of the stairs to the bottom in one leap. I couldn't help cringing, but they came out okay, and their dad's an orthopedic surgeon so I guess they were covered.
One of my fondest memories is after a sleepover for one of my friends' birthdays we decided to head over to the park for a while. There was a tire swing there that you could spin around in a circle. We rode on that thing until we were all about to be sick--as a matter of fact I was eventually, much to my mom's embarrassment (you threw up where?!?). We had to stop halfway back to her house to rest on the lawn of a church we were in such bad shape. Then there was the time that another friend and I were setting off fountain fireworks in the middle of the street outside her house, generally we tried to time it so they'd go off under cars.This was nine or ten at night in the fall so it was nice and dark. As a concession to safety the parents left the dog outside with us-- and it was a very protective dog, you didn't even have to touch this girl to upset the dog, all you had to do was yell in her presence and the dog was ready to take you out. Once we cut it kind of close and ran up the driveway screaming, this of course, set off the dog, and the mom came charging out and just looked at us funny as we tried our best, but I suspect failed, to act casual.

[2Sirius]

The feeling you get when you're on a long car trip, it's late, and you wake up from sleeping on the back seat. You look into the front seat, and know you don't have anything to worry about because your mom and dad are taking care of you and everything else, so you just go back to sleep.

[Zelda]

The safe feeling you get knowing that no matter how far away you are, you can come back to your parents place and find your room exactly as you left it 6 months ago.

[damion18d]

All this reminiscing has me wondering. As adults why do we forget to have those times. My wife and I are very active people. We both like to scuba and sky dive. We do a lot of shooting, bike riding, hiking. In all our activities though it dosen't have the imagination it did as a child. Think about being twelve and scuba or sky diving. You would act as though you had gone to a different planet. Like Soldier was saying, as a child a pond a stick and a hill could keep your imagination busy for years of your life. It's funny that when you are a kid all you can think about it being grown up. But as an adult, I think we all wish we could recapture those years of wonder and amazement. Rekindle the fire in our imagination.

[Zelda]

Reading that last comment made me think of something our SM said. For some unknown reason there are quite a few young (as in still @ school) members in our cast and the SM said to us last night "I dont want to be the adult anymore.... i want to go back to being a kid!". We always want what we cant have!

[MyraTrue]

you know, I'm convinced we just look at things differently, and that nothing has changed. And I don't mean that we've got jobs and car payments, insurance and a telephone bill to pay, and so on. I mean that we STILL have experiences that as kids we would have made into something fun, something exceptional.

I suspect we just don't think about it like we used to, and its just not as magical as it could be. Now we look at the dryer box as a "what do I do with THIS?" or are in too much of a hurry to get somewhere, so we don't stop and look.

And thats too bad. Which is why I went jumping in puddles today, and why everyone at work thought I was crazy as I came in yelling that it was snowing outside. But there it is.

[Zelda]

Thats why I have harry potter band aids, regularly hijack the swings at the local park, and happily build sand castles in summer. Thats why when I walk along the beach with my dog we frolick in the foam, and I just DONT CARE what people think. I intend to live my life my way, being happy in any way possible. Its why I swing around light poles at midnight coming out of the theatre, and dont care what people think!