Thursday, February 18, 2010

Writer's Workshop Thursday: Childhood memory time: Write about something you loved to do as a child

I know, I know... It's supposed to be 'Change Your Life Thursday' BUT... One of things I was going to change was writing more. Welp, as fate would have it, I stumbled upon this Blog through another Blogger I had stumbled across. My 'assignment' is this: Childhood memory time: Write about something you loved to do as a child. So here goes...

I grew up in Ohio. I am the oldest of 5 and our house WAS the Kool-aid house. All the kids on our street were often over in our yard or playing on our porch. One of things we would do is pretend that we were genius runaways. The front porch was our boat from which we did research, of course. The floor beds around the porch were the dolphin tanks that contained our extremely intelligent pet dolphins whom we would take out with us on exploring junkets ( I don't think we used the word junkets back then though). The grass: the ocean, duh. The sidewalks were the safe places to take our mini-boats (bikes). We had to make sure we avoided the sharks as well as the evil group that never really had a name but was always looking to take us back to the orphanage we had escaped from.
My mom had a climbing plant with pretty purple flowers that we picked to use as our experiments. We'd crush them and mix them with dirt and water, and once in a poorly designed move on my part, old perfume, to see what our results would be.
If it was hot out we could sit on the porch with the hose and squirt one another as we rode by. Not sure what that was supposed to represent in our make-believe world but we didn't care. Our game, our rules.
We could do this for hours! We were up and down the street. Everybody's yard had something to be discovered. We were in front yards and backyards. We climbed trees and swing sets. We left messages on the sidewalk with those chalky white rocks that lined everyone's flower beds and even some driveways. No one panicked when we got out of view or earshot. We were allowed to come and go as we pleased... As long as we didn't cross any busy roads and were home for lunch or dinner.
Gosh, that was fun. Did I mention that my brother and I also used to pretend we were combing a giant's hair when we raked the yard? Another story for another day.

I hope you'll check out other people's submissions at http://mamakatslosinit.com

3 comments:

Amber Page Writes said...

Don't you miss those days? I hope my daughter has some neighborhood friends when she gets older. I hate to think of her only playtime being during organized play dates!

Michelle said...

so fun. i played similar things all the time.

glad you joined us at ww from kat. i love it!

Christina said...

Brings back memories for me too! Why is it that growing up means losing our immaginations? I struggle to play immaginary games with N now. My favorite bits of this story were the "of course!" and "duh!" you threw in there.