An acquaintance just posted a pic of them being absolutely delighted with building a snowman and I realized I haven’t done that in years. It also made me think about things I enjoyed doing as a kid, and (whether it be from mental issues or not) I can’t quite recall anything that brought me joy.
So I’m really just curious, what are other people’s happy memories of their childhood? Might help me remember mine, and “worst” case I get to enjoy some good memories second-hand!
Edit: Couldn’t be happier to have asked this question, not only are there some wholesome little stories, but I could also finally remember some of the good times of my childhood again!
Dicking around in the woods with my friends. Building forts, climbing trees, catching crawfish in the creek, playing war, ninjas, or wolf, riding our bikes off sketchy jumps. The woods were absolute freedom. It’s wild, we have a similar area of woods where I live now and my 11 year old daughter has zero interest.
I had a very similar experience and my kids are the same way. More than likely because the internet is their freedom, it’s the thing they can control.
I used to do the same thing. When I was in jr high the guy that owned it sold the property and the new people didn’t want us to play back there anymore.
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School plays! I got into a costume and acted on stage. There were some parts where I had to sing and I looked forward to those plays so much I would be giddy! The one I remember the most was when I had to dress up as a gold star.
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Building igloos out of snow. Rather than building snowmen we would build chairs, beds, etc. made out of snow!
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Drawing. I remember my mom and dad telling me about how I could just fill up an entire page with different things! My grandma was a painter for most of her life, and whenever we went to her house, she’d go upstairs to retrieve her art supplies and teach me how to paint.
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Swimming. I just love water in general and the tradition was that we’d go to a fast food place immediately after. If it was after a session at a public pool, I’d still smell like chlorine even after showering. The combination of the smell of the inside of a McDonald’s and chlorine is such a formative memory to me for that reason haha.
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Laser tag. I was really good at it!
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School trips! I went to this really cool science museum with my class once, I would love to say the name of it, but then that would reveal where I live. It was one of those museums where you could do practical things and it was really fun. I also loved it whenever we went go-karting even though I’d always end up with bruises on my inner thighs.
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When I was in early elementary school, my dad would take me & my sister to the local mall. He would get us all books at the Waldenbooks - he would get a scifi pulp novel, I would get a Garfield book, and my sister would get a Calvin & Hobbes book. Then he’d take us to a restaurant there in the mall, and we’d have a nice leisurely lunch while reading our new books.
Your dad and you sound like the protagonist of the book ‘Inkheart’ :)
Books so numerous, they are stacked in the hallways of the apartment/house
Playing CS 1.5 to source everyday/every night with the exact same person for years…
After school? Running home and gaming till the morning
During vacation? Non stop gaming
During new year? Just a glass at 00:00 with family and gaming again till the morning…
This was the best time of my life and probably the best childhood memory, until I grew up, met my first girlfriend, went to highschool/university and now having a job…
I miss this good old days where you had nothing in between your fun and happiness.
Now it’s just a mess of disappointment…
Things I loved but don’t do anymore: Climbing trees, building snow forts, making elaborate toy castles. Falling asleep on the floor in a sunbeam next to the cat.
Things I still do: eat chocolate chips out of the bag, walk barefoot in the grass, take mediocre pictures of random things that feel really profound at the time but are immediately forgotten
My childhood home had a skylight, and I would use the sunbeam like a blanket, with just my head poking out into the shade. It was wonderful.
Christmas morning at grandparents when everyone was done opening presents sitting alone in a corner building a Lego set with no worries about responsibilities or time constraints.
Painting my grandma’s face with makeup. I thought she didn’t realize I was painting her like a clown with a red nose and all, and I thought it was hilarious. Was always mildly disappointed whenever she took the makeup off before leaving, but I never lost the hope one day she wouldn’t notice and would walk out with it.
Ah fun times.
When I was a kid my parents would rent a beach house at the end of summer on the Oregon coast. Their friends from college would usually stay there with us, in the evening we would have a campfire on the beach. The smell of a campfire almost always brings back memories of those days even now that I’m in my 40’s.
Being able to play sports (baseball/football) with neighborhood kids. No organizations like today. No parents interfering. No one drove you to the field, you walked there. Everyone got along and there were no overweight kids because everyday you got plenty of outside exercise.
Not to derail this, but I think a lot about our zoning and residential housing now and how it killed these exact things. Your neighborhood is now only people in the same economic bracket as you. New builds only make bland open areas with nothing to do, and they’re built so far out that they’re essentially unwalkable. Then there’s only one exit or entrance so even if there is a city park nearby it’s minimum 20 minutes just to walk to the entrance of the residential zone. Then add on that any teens together are hooligans and Ms Jansen will call the police on them and 40 years of fear mongering has lead us to no kids can be unsupervised
Skipping stones over the local water reservoir.
I sucked at it, but it was still time away from my sisters.
I just want to say how much I love this question! Yes, I should think more often if the things that I really enjoyed as a kid :)
Thanks! When I noticed how long it’s been since I’ve done anything with that pure joy of a child I kinda felt sad. So I really wanna try to bring that back into my life a little bit!
Christmas dinner when my grandparents would join us, miss them loads
running around with super soakers
Getting a new LEGO set and going home. I would spend the entire trip home analyzing every little bit of that box even if it was dark until we got home. I couldn’t wait to finish unloading the groceries and then going to my room where I would kneel by the bed and unload all the plastic packages all over the blanket. I’ll never forget the way those bags with holes used to feel and sound as I’d crunch each of them and open them up.
Then I’d get the book and spend the next 30 minutes to hours building it and then admiring it before playing with it with the rest of my collection.
I get tempted every now and then to buy another when I’m at the store. I bought the Skyline car recently and that was fine to put together.
This. There was something vaguely ritualistic about getting out a box to open all the little plastic packages into, then spreading out the instructions and getting to work.
For a while there the instructions sometimes even had little comics at the bottom of the pages, and so you could read the comic and then go back and actually build the thing.
The house I grew up in had two trees in the front yard. We would tie string (probably a thin nylon rope) between the trees and hang sheets/blankets on the string, creating a “fort”. All the neighborhood kids would hang out there in the summer and we had so much fun pretending it was a fort, spaceship, bus, etc.
