The things you miss from childhood.

[mitchymo]

Add yours.
A few of mine are:-

1. Butterflys. I used to see so many during summer but they have declined in big numbers to the point where i smile whenever i see one nowadays.

2.Tulips and Daffodils. Grew up where the garden of my childhood home had rows of these flowers every spring/summer, i have no garden now and miss these flowers.

3. Stars. It seems that the towns and cities have so much light during the night these days that its difficult to find space to stare at the night sky and be dazzled by the stars anymore, as a kid i used to look up and see so many but now...

4. Smell perception. I remember as a kid being able to smell the concrete when it was a hot day. Cannot describe the smell but as soon as i stepped out the back door into the sun filled garden it would be the first sensory delight of a play outside.

 

[ZOS23xy]

I saw a Monarch Butterfly once last year. As a kid, there would be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them.

I see the stars very well, living out in the boonies.

Smell perception is a good thing to have. Mine own is fairly sharp. Have located sparked electric wires just by scent. Alas, I do have synesthesia and when something strong (like skunk) is smelled, it won't go away and intermingles with my other senses...

 

[HellsKitchenmanNYC]

I miss having that feeling that tommorrow is years away. In school I thot I'd never get out that the end was 100 years away. Now a weeks goes by in a flash.

 

[hypoc8]

Caterpillars - As a child this was a common site to see in the summer. I have seen two in the last 16 years, my daughter played with one of them for hours.

Fire flies - Another common site in the summer, seemed to be hundreds in the sky at night. My brother and I would run around the yard catching them and putting them in glass jars.

 

[Ethyl]

My grandfather.

Catching toads at my grandparents house in Napa Valley. Swimming and boating in the lake.

Believing the best in everyone without reservations.

School field trips.

All the time in the world to learn and create.

 

[B_Stronzo]

I miss the cottage at Sandy Neck and summer nights on the beach and all those antique relatives who went with it.

 

[Northland]

People sitting out on the front stoop talking.

People sitting on crates in front of stores.

People being able to hang on the corner without cops accusing them of loitering.

The sound of the milk bottles being delivered.

The squeak of the clothesline wheel as laundry was hung out to dry or pulled back in.

The cacophony of car, bus and truck horns all the time.

Cough syrup with codeine.

The Good Humor man making his rounds in the summer. (mr.Softee and that damn 'la di da di da da da da duh da da...tune are not near the same).

The simplicity and joy of watching the television screen light up and then tuning it and adjusting the antenna...again and again and again.

Woolworth's and their luncheon counter.

The soda fountain at Bigelow's Pharmacy on 6th Avenue.

The medallions which used to hang from lamp posts on 6th Avenue (in an attempt to call it Avenue of The Americas, each medallion represented a country in the Americas, most are now gone).

Stop lights which were just red and green.

3 man crews on sanitation trucks.

45rpm records.

Bowling alleys-there are very few of them left. (at least around here)

Straw seat covers on the Lexington Avenue line.

Fans on the trains instead of broken air conditioning.

Speaking of trains, windows which could be opened, and the destination signs which we could fiddle with so they were wrong.

Korvettes- it was a great store.

The early days of Motown.

Records on the back of cereal boxes.

Prizes in cereal boxes.

Striped bell bottom trousers.

Love beads.

Look magazine

Graffiti on the subway trains. Looked awful most times on an idle train, looked great on a moving train.

Butchers (it's not the same buying a cut of meat at the supermarket).

 

[nudeyorker]

This song reminds me of my childhood. It makes me cry to hear it, because I mostly miss my mother, father and brother.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0UJ8M8EuIg

 

[vince]

Playing kick the can after dinner with my brothers and sisters.

Wasting summer days hanging out in the huge screened room over the garage.

My grandfather built a 1890's style steam launch and would take us salmon fishing on it. He said it was the best for fishing because it was nearly silent and didn't disturb the fish. I remember my brother and I packing the wood logs down to the boathouse before a trip. I miss him and I miss the boat.

I miss the tree fort. It was girls allowed and we use to smoke my dad's Pall Malls up there.

 

[thadjock]

i miss experiencing things for the very first time.

as you get older there are fewer things that are completely new to u.

people are the one exception, every one u meet for the first time is new.

 

[thadjock]

I remember as a kid being able to smell the concrete when it was a hot day.

i bet u were the kid that ate the chalk too?

 

[blg3floor3]

Not having any worries: Bills, school, grades, work, loans, having an unchartable libido without the social skill to satiate it, cooking, shopping.

I also miss, from when I was 8, waking up at 7am with my cousin and playing mario 3 or zelda while the rest of the house slept and we had nothing to do the whole day (weekends/summer).

 

[vince]

i miss experiencing things for the very first time.

as you get older there are fewer things that are completely new to u.

people are the one exception, every one u meet for the first time is new.

That's one reason I travel and live away. The weeks and months move more slowly when you pack them with new people and experiences.

 

[D_Andreas Sukov]

i miss no worries, playing sports on the weekend, that feeling on a sunday when you knew that you had school the next day so tried to jam as much relaxing as you could into a few hours, having an imagination and it not making me "wierd"...im sure there is more

 

[Mickactual]

Actually looking forward to my birthdays.

Actually looking forward to the Christmas season.

Having energy and feeling great.

No other cars on the roads on Sundays.

Palisades Amusment Park.

Department stores like Korvettes, Alexanders, Sterns, Grant's and Woolworths. The original Paramus NJ Sam Goody before it became a generic mall music store. Jochem's Park Records in West New York NJ.

Many long gone friends.

New Jersey when it was still English speaking and a nice place to live.

Summers without constant rain.

My family before the old-timers passed away and it became dysfunctional.

The hope and belief that dreams and ambitions might come to pass.

 

[thadjock]

That's one reason I travel and live away. The weeks and months move more slowly when you pack them with new people and experiences.

ya i think i got that bug early on, moving around alot as a kid always having something/somewhere/somebody new to explore and learn. i still have a huge appetite for travel just to satisfy that curiosity

 

[Dave NoCal]

A lot of my childhood was pretty annoying, to be truthful. I was a kind of grumpy kid, mostly due to having very religious parents. College was a HUGE improvement. However, I got to spend some extended time in Mexico when I was a younger teen and had some pretty cool experiences that I still remember very fondly and wish I could recapture, as if we could selectively recapture youth. Here are some examples. My friends and I would ride horses out to the country, find a swimming hole, unsaddle the horses, get naked, climb onto the horses and ride them into the water. They would swim and we would ride. It was epochal! We rode (MUCH) further into the country, about five hours beyond where a Jeep could go, and work their dad's cattle round-up for a week or two. Plus we got to goof around riding calves and seeing how long it took to fall off. We would ride down to the river and bathe. We explored a cave full of bats that, supposedly, sheltered a whole battalion of insurgents during their revolution of 1910 (Date?).We would walk through fields of Camomille that smelled wonderful.
I slept for a week's worth of nights, next to my first crush, on the beach at Pie de la Cuesta, north of Acapulco. The sunsets were astonishing and the surf has to have been ten feet high sometimes.
I still love Mexico very much, challeges and all.
Dave

 

[D_Andreas Sukov]

A lot of my childhood was pretty annoying, to be truthful. I was a kind of grumpy kid, mostly due to having very religious parents. College was a HUGE improvement. However, I got to spend some extended time in Mexico when I was a younger teen and had some pretty cool experiences that I still remember very fondly and wish I could recapture, as if we could selectively recapture youth. Here are some examples. My friends and I would ride horses out to the country, find a swimming hole, unsaddle the horses, get naked, climb onto the horses and ride them into the water. They would swim and we would ride. It was epochal! We rode (MUCH) further into the country, about five hours beyond where a Jeep could go, and work their dad's cattle round-up for a week or two. Plus we got to goof around riding calves and seeing how long it took to fall off. We would ride down to the river and bathe. We explored a cave full of bats that, supposedly, sheltered a whole battalion of insurgents during their revolution of 1910 (Date?).We would walk through fields of Camomille that smelled wonderful.
I slept for a week's worth of nights, next to my first crush, on the beach at Pie de la Cuesta, north of Acapulco. The sunsets were astonishing and the surf has to have been ten feet high sometimes.
I still love Mexico very much, challeges and all.
Dave

From what you have just written, i cant see why it would be annoying. sounds pretty amazing, minus the religious parents.

 

[mitchymo]

i bet u were the kid that ate the chalk too?

pmsl shut up you, i did not haha

 

[witch]

ok, I’m dating myself here

drive-in movies

walking alone to the library late at night

the way the air feels just before a storm

cliff -hangers at the local movie theater ...how was Flash Gordon going to save the world

the taste of a fresh warm peach off our trees