What Were You like as a Kid?

Played outside, climbed trees, and only came inside when it got too dark to see. Had to drag us in....so different from kids today. Sigh.

oh, ephie, your lucky husband! what great stories to tell.
it would be very easy for me to make my childhood a tragedy (alcoholic dad, mom died when i was 10 leaving 5 of us) but i genuinely find, despite the Bad Things, that my childhood was enchanted.
didn't hurt that it was in bermuda<G>.
when we lived on the north shore, i remember one magical summer when i forgot there was anything in the world than crossing the street to 'the rocks', a sheltered outcropping of sharp bermuda limestone, and swimming all day every day. sometimes i was with the neighborhood wolfpack, sometimes my brothers, often just me and the dog. i don't remember a preference. parents never came with us. it was OUR place. a shallow area, a deep lagoon, and the open sea. old faithful, the huge red snapper who terrified us. diving for sea urchins. endless, endless hours of ocean and 'let's pretend'. i'd leave after breakfast and come home just in time for dinner. when mom said we had to go shopping for my school uniform, i remember the bewildered shock i felt for a minute. school? what was that?
i remember lying on the grass under a full moon for most of the night, imagining i was a moon priestess. i was about 7. i think i may have been remembering a past life. :)
maybe because of all my brothers i never had a huge need for other kids. i LOVED it when i got to hang with my besties, but i was really very content to play 'let's pretend' all by myself. i had my huge stable of imaginary horses and it kept me very, very busy taking care of them all. and that was just on the days when i wasn't a wild horse myself, with occasional forays into being a panther, or a pirate, or a world class jewel thief (after james bond). and when i turned 10 and started riding real ponies? well, my free time just got better yet. real ponies didn't replace my beloved pretend ones, they just added to the joy.
must. pull. self. from. nostalgia. haze. and. get. practical. stuff. done.
thanks, ephie!
:) khairete
S.

One of my favorite things to do was dig for treasure or dinosaur bones :)
I also LOVED exploring the woods. My parents kept a pretty close eye on me, I would slip off into my own world of exploration.

Cute/ funny story... I wanted an in ground pool SO bad when I was a kid that I begged my Dad to dig a hole and put my small pool in the ground. He was so awesome, sure enough he did. I was so darn happy!!

You should write stories! You retell your childhood memories and I can get a visual.

Thanks, Have a great day!

Favorite place to play? Outside. On a trampoline, swinging, climbing trees, or in any of those places being still and reading. It can be really comfy to lie on a trampoline in the shade and read. :)

In just the past few years, I asked for (and got) a big wooden swing installed in the side yard (the kind with a back and arms and wide enough for 3 people to sit on it at the same time), since that was one of my favorite places to read when I was growing up.

What a cute post.

Your story sounds lovely.

As a kid I was outgoing & loved everything!
It was a fun time.
I had a tree house in the backyard then we moved.
Dad built us a playhouse. How sweet of him. It was soooo nice. It had a roof, window, shingles, play furniture etc.

I was friendly so I liked being outside w/the neighbor kids playing games.

I loved the grass, trees, going on walks, the neighboring school were we could play, riding bikes. My dad put our initials in concrete at our new house. We went to carnivals, went on road trips!

I was a wonderful child. I got straight A's, perfect attendance, straight E's. ONE time I got an S and I cried. I was a teacher's favorite because I always gave my all. I was shy.

As for playing, we loved to dig for bugs/worms in our backyard and down this swampy trail behind our house and catch minnows and tadpoles. We always played at our elderly neighbor's house, she would let us pick her peaches from her peach tree and suck on her honeysuckle plant and she made always made us jello and told us stories about her husband during the war.

I wasn't much of an outdoor kid, but I loved to sit in the crook of a tree we had. We grew up on 12 acres of oak trees. It was clear that Native Americans had lived there. The tree was once tied down to show a direction of a path, and continued to grow down, and then back up. So it left a natural seat about 3 feet up. I would sit there for hours and read. What a great memory. (A storm broke it off many years later....so sad.)

My oldest daughter is my mini-me. I see myself in a lot of what she does, and how she goes about life. Very fun.

I was pretty normal, 1 best friend that lived down the street, mommies girl..,played barbies and dolls up until I was 8 and my mom died. After that I took on the responsibilities of my mother cooking and cleaning. Then at 12 I started drinking, smoking and doing drugs. My dad came down Ill when I was 14 with cancer and he was paralyzed due to it, that's about the time I switched to harder drugs and started having sex. At 15 I started working to save money. My dad eventually died due to complications with his illness.i moved out at 17.

Huh, laying it out like that it sounds kind of depressing. I had 2 older brothers I forgot to mention. One of them was a great comfort and still is to this day.

I live in a house in front of rice field. Every afternoon, there was always the ducks herder and the ducks, water buffalo, flamingo. My father used to take us there to catch the eel for our meals. Because we were not rich, we bathed outside, my parents would hold the sheets as the shield when we bath. We didn't have the electricity, so at night we would gather and listen my father stories, cuddled up until we slept.
Then, we had the electricity, we watched TV and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Full House were the only TV shows at that time. A campus was built, no more rice fields and animals were gone. I kept wondering about the farmer and the ducks herder.
I remember this memory most, because it was a very intimate family time.
And no, we don't have Barbie. My sister and I share a doll. I remember I cried for a baby doll, my father gave me 2 cents and I went to buy the doll. I cried the whole way home, because i only got 4 peanut candy.
Finally I had my first doll when I was 6, the only toy I had until I was 10.

I was a pretty nerdy kid.

We moved 14 times during my school years. My favorite places to live were out in the country. Twice, we had houses on large, forested acres. I loved wandering around by myself, daydreaming, conjuring up the adventures of Laura Ingalls Wilder (who I still adore) and writing little kid poems. I loved climbing trees as high up as I could, those skinny evergreens, finding hiding places and making forts.

Because of my somewhat troubling parents (to put it lightly) and a keen sense of poverty, I never really fit in well at school. I was the kid who worked in the school kitchen for a free lunch. I was never fashionable, kind of dorky--never had the 'cool' anything. I loved to read, loved Star Wars (by the time I was 13 I wasn't sure if I loved Luke Skywalker or wanted to be him). I wasn't allowed to have much in the way of material possessions, and it was often taken away--either through moving or punishment-- so it was very difficult for me to know how to make friends. Plus, being an introverted dreamer-type didn't help...But books were always there to take me off to someone else's life, and that did help a lot.

But what I liked about myself: I was tenacious enough to make it through some pretty difficult stuff. I had two teachers who really made me feel pretty great about myself; one of which was a huge influence on me and praised my poetry. So, while I wasn't really able to have friends or a pet to call mine, I had a great imagination and the determination to just put my head down and keep going forward, no matter what. I joke to my husband that when things get rough, I'm "in tank mode": short, low to the ground, head down and focusing on no more than what is right in front of me and going forward, if a bit slowly. Tanks are able to make progress while protecting the person inside. I think this probably saved my life on more than one occasion.

Best of all, I do remember those private 'good moments' and cherish them. Those moments nurtured me. Those private secrets I had with a snowy night~ and oh, how light the sky was!, or the deer I discovered on some lava beds, wandering off on my own while camping in the desert... those private moments were all mine. They are still dear to my heart.

Write a book of good questions, Ephie. Seriously... it would be used on retreats and the like.

I was a resilient tom boy who rollerskated down Dolores Park city hills in San Francisco,CA.. I loved playing sports had lots of friends and was very sentimental. Back then, I joined in easily and was much more introverted.
I liked to listen to music (especially R&B) and loved musical shows... I wanted to be so many things, one of which was a broadway star :) ha...

Umm... I'd like to find that girl of yesterday.. at least part of her.