Saturday, February 14, 2009

Childhood Memories

We were talking at work today about how things were when we were growing up. This is something I vowed I would never do when I used to listen to my Dad talking about how things were when he grew up. I dont know--I used to be bored with it and I really didnt believe a lot of things he said. You know the stories, how they walked 5 miles to school in the snow and crap like that. For one, it never snows here. here was also a story about playing baseball with a rock and a stick. I understand now why he liked to talk about that kind of stuff. I think kids today sometimes miss out on the simple fun we used to have. We didnt have video games, computers, cell phones, etc. TV was limited also. So we did other things. We ha a lot of good times.

One of the things we used to do was go find tadpoles. We would go down by the creek and find a low lying area where water stood almost all the time. There would be tadpoles in that water and we would take a gallon jug and scoop them up in there. Then we would proudly take them home to mother and show them off. My mother is a saint. She would look at that jug filled with muddy water and tadpoles and let us sit it on the kitchen counter. We would feed the tadpoles fish food and crackers. Over the days and weeks that past, we watched the tadpoles grow little legs and get bigger and bigger. Right before the time that they would become frogs, we would take them back to the mud hole and release them. We did this almost every spring and would always be fascinated watching them grow. Mother never complained about that nasty stinky jug on her counter. I guess she knew that we were learning at the same time we were having fun.

I dont think kids do stuff like that anymore. If they do I never hear about it. But we had tons of fun back when we were kids. It is one of those childhood memories that make me smile.





What kind of childhood memories do you have? I would love to hear about them.

3 comments:

Linda said...

I was just having a conversation about the simplicity of my childhood the other night...We rarely watched tv. I lived on the same street with 8 cousins. We spent countless hours playing hide and seek. In the winter they would turn the local park into a huge skating rink, and we would throw our ice skates around our necks every night after supper and skate way past dark.
My mother cut the buttons off of every piece of clothing that was going to be discarded and put them in a box. They were beautiful buttons. Lots of them with crystals in the middle, or some other ornate, colorful decor. When I would get bored, she would thread a needle and I would "string buttons". I was given that box of buttons before she died. What memories! I saw bags of buttons being sold in an antique store a while back for like $40.00 a bag!! They don't make buttons like that anymore...

I really did walk to school in the snow. And then home for lunch. No school buses except for the high school. It wasn't 5 miles-maybe 10 blocks, but what a memory cause it was freakin' freezing. No pants to school for girls in those days, so the dress and tights were covered with snow pants, heavy jacket,hat, snow boots and two pair of mittens. A scarf around the face to avoid frostbite. Get to school, take everything off and hang it on the radiator. Then I would get all that crap back on and walk home for lunch.
Those were the days, my friend.

Coach B. said...

Great topic. I'm sure that kids are still collecting tad poles somewhere :)

When I was young, we used to get out the sleeping bags and slide down our enormous stair case into a pile of pillows waiting for us at the bottom. Aaaah! Good times, good times.

Lynnbug said...

Gosh! I remember the coat rooms at school to hang all our coats in the winter. We really had to bundle up--I walks about 5 blocks. You really could walk anyway in those days and be safe.

I wish we had a staircase to slide down. I always thought that looked like so much fun. If I tried that now I would kill myself! LOL