Childhood Memories

Craz4acop tagged me with this last week and I finally got a chance to do it last night, but when I went to post it, it mysteriously DISAPPEARED! And I usually type big, long, drawn-out stuff in WordPerfect and then paste it in here, but the one time I didn't . . . So we'll hope this one doesn't land in the Bermuda Triangle as well.

5 Things You Really Miss From Your Childhood --

1. Playground games
Kickball - I really sucked at kickball as a kid (Hell, I sucked at virtually every sport as a kid and still do.) but I miss the sounds and sights of a kickball game on the playground. And making up the rules then yelling "1984 (or whatever year) padlock! No takebacks!" There was serious business on the kickball diamond.
Jump rope - We were the queens of the jump rope, lemme tell ya. We knew every chant there was to chant, from "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear" to "Not Last Night but the Night Before" to "Candy Apples on a Stick". We could go up to a hundred jumps without stopping. Now I couldn't do five, I'm sure. We tried Double Dutch, too, but we were too white.
The Monkey Bars - We were the girls who wanted to wear dresses to school, but didn't our fashion choices to get in the way of our playground activities, so we wore the ol' shorts under the skirt. Yeah, what a statement. Blisters were a badge of honor on the monkey bar side of the playground and if you could skip two and three bars, well you were nothing short of a playground icon. I tried to do the monkey bars last summer when I took the kids to the park. Not only did I get instant blisters from trying to hold my own weight, but I made the kids laugh hysterically.
The Merry Go Round - I ruined a brand new pair of navy leather Mary Janes once when it was my day to be the "brake". When the bigger kids would get that thing going, man you thought you were spinning somewhere close to the rotational speed of the earth.

2. Being a country kid
I'm a country grown-up now; we were bound and determined to make sure our kids grew up in the country, but I'm pretty sure they're not getting the same experience I did. I guess their childhood will be magical to them in its own way, but I miss how it was. We'd get up on summer mornings, scarf down breakfast then speed out the door on our bikes (with banana seats, no less) and stay gone all day. Sometimes DeLisa and I would meet up halfway between our two houses, sometimes we'd make one of our houses our command post for the day. We rode down the big hill to the river bottom, hands off the handlebars, wind rushing past and we felt like we were invincible. We'd traipse through the woods, finding wildflowers (once we found wild marijuana), we'd swing on the grapevine and splash in the runoff creek that sometimes appeared through there. We didn't worry about sexual predators, kidnappers, dehydration, SPF45 or anything remotely not fun. The neighbors all knew to watch for us and we'd wave as they passed. Sometimes they'd stop and we'd visit in the road for awhile. If we got thirsty we'd stop in at a neighbor's or just hit the water hose.

3. My girlfriends
We were a close-knit group of girls back then. Our numbers varied, but for years and years it was the five of us: Stacie, DeLisa, Necia, Chloe and me. We did EVerything together - slumber parties, shopping sprees, boy/girl parties and we were always together at recess. Our slumber parties were classic and fun and I have so many pictures of us dressing up, laughing hysterically, eating junkfood and just generally acting silly. As we got older we still had slumber parties, they just had more "substance". Once we made a video spoof of Wayne's World called Wilma's World and "Wilma" interviewed a slutty cheerleader and a driftwood sculptor (think SNL and John Malkovich) and she also had a Belgian sidekick that was Garth with an accent. We laughed together, cried together, acted goofy and got in trouble together. We helped each other through
boyfriends and the lack of them, heartbreak, losing our virginity, bad grades, crappy teachers, parents who we thought would never understand us and countless other angst-bearing milestones. As we got older we weren't so clique-ish. We got other friends, we got boyfriends and they consumed more of our time. Some of us weren't friends at all for years. Now that we're adults, we've had a few Girls' Night Outs and they're always fun and we always say we're going to have them more often, but with husbands, kids and life - well, they don't happen. A few of those girls I could call up today and have a 2-hour phone conversation with like we'd spoken yesterday. Others . . .well, the conversation would be strained and uncomfortable. I miss my girlfriends a lot.

4. Being in love
There is nothing like your first love. That first love is an all-consuming, intense, passionate thing - something you can never recreate. Oh, you can have passionate love and you can find your soulmate later, but that first love . . . that first love is in a league of its own.

5. Having nothing in the world to worry about
When you're a kid you are taken care of completely. You take for granted the security and comfort of the entire adult population of the world looking out for you and your safety and well-being. Your parents support you in your endeavors, build you up when something knocks you down, comfort you when you are sick, fund your seemingly endless need to purchase something from concession stands, movie theatres, book fairs and the yearbook staff who sells suckers every day at noon and mediate when a teacher is unfair. Your worries consist of having the most awesomest lunchbox ever to grace the cafeteria, being the one to bang the erasers, looking good at the dance/prom/game/movie/date, saying "here" at roll call without your voice cracking, passing that algebra class that you swear will kill you before year's end, making sure you are popular and cool and . . . well, that's pretty much it. You have no idea that someday your greatest concerns with involve consuming enough folic acid to ensure your future children's health, picking out a name for that healthy child that won't make him a target for the name-callers on the bus, sitting up all night to make sure your croupy kid continues to breathe, refraining from kicking the kids' ass (or his momma's) that makes fun of your kid on the playground, teaching your child about predators, molesters and kidnappers without scaring them - and yourself - into never leaving the house again, teaching them to be kind and good and compassionate and not "that horrible Hoover child", wondering if your husband finds you attractive still and if he has a girl on the side, trying to figure out how to pull money out of your ass to pay the electric bill and if those last ten diapers will last you till payday . . . and the list goes on. You have gone from being the recipient of all that care and protection to being the protector, the comforter and the authority.

Innocence and ignorance . . . those were the days.

I'm tagging:

Courtney
Irish Divinity
Mrs. Coach
Granny Glenn (Check her out and say hi - she's my Aunt!)
Brady's Mom
Karbon Kounty Moos
Crazy Mom
and Hillbilly Mom

because I can tag as many people as I want!