What is your best childhood memory?
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What is your best childhood memory?
Chopping and hauling silage in the 40 acre lower field on my grandfathers farm about dusk around this time of year. The air was thick and it had a smell I can't describe. Like grass but much sweeter and heavier. The field was perfectly flat but a chore heading up the hill on a cabless ford 8000 tractor with a full silage wagon and loading it into the blower for the silo.
That field had steep hills on all sides and a creek off to one of the small bluffs. It was big enough you felt like you would never be done chopping but small enough you felt like you were in the most secure spot on the planet.
Sunday dinners and deer seasons really shined through.
I lost interest in hunting pretty much completely. It wasn't that though. It was just the way everyone came together and everyone in the family didn't have some bicker or despise for each other like they do today. Two rooms full of people laughing and talking and every kind of food imagineable. We were a strong unit and no one was left out or didn't show.
Absolutely zero danger or worry. We were all a part of the ground that we all grew up on. If the sun shined or not made no difference, we would be just fine and we always had something to do. No fucking cellphones or internet. No one had heard of such a thing. People were real and paid attention when you spoke, even us kids.
You can never go home.
I am a billion miles from that place and I could probably go back to that field and find a bunch of burnt up fescue and get pissed off at how goddamn hot it is.
It was the whole situation and scenario, not the field.
Take away the family and you just have another field full of work. There is a thousand acres of ground back there that no one will ever see the security in that I did back then. If I were to go back I would just see the same thing anyone else does... Just another
field.
Spending the summers at the farm and as I was able to help start doing so. Best time of my life, or at least in terms of memories, to this day! Milking cows, driving a tractor, baling hay, a time I will never, ever, forget!
Hard one, not many happy memories to be found in my childhood, nor I like to dive in those, thought a bit about it and perhaps best ones are those about me learning astronomy on my own, contemplating the stars at night despite horror of darkness, and imagine to build a ship faster than light one day that could bring me up there, and leave this lousy world behind. Call it escapism...
My best memories are all the weekends where my mom a single mother with 2 jobs and night school would bring us to the beach or a state park to hike and play...we had the best times...
When i was about 10, I made a set of nunchucks out of an old broom handle and a shoelace. It was awesome, and I felt like a real bad ass. I went down the alley behind the library to find some thugs, looking for a fight i guess.... What I found was a dumpster. I took a giant swing at that dumpster and the nunchuck bounced back off the dumpster and hit me square in the mouth.
I walked out of that alley with a beat up set of nunchucks, a swollen lip, and blood dripping down my chin... But in my head I was
Chuck freaking Norris and I just kicked ass.
Editedo
I think we need to redefine the word best.
Playing outside.
My Schwinn Fastback
My first 10 speed bike (still have it in perfect condition)
My first mini-bike (Rupp)
My first cycle (Honda CT-70)
My second cycle (Suzuki RM-125) that I raced
My second cycle (Suzuki RM-250) plus others. Raced that too
I grew up on a large block that had a huge field behind all the houses. Could ride bikes/cycles there, play sports there, etc. It was great. In the winter ice skating on a local pond was awesome. Was a great childhood with great friends. Awesome memories.
Thanks for making me think about it!
I'm going to reply to each post because all of them really got to me. Honesty I've read this thread 4 times today but i cant reply due to my schedule but i will when i can. I just want to say wooooow very overwhelming
Thankyou
hard to describe 'best'
most were playing sports with and against my friends
hunting and fishing with my dad and his dad
getting a go kart
getting my first gun (real young, pew pew pew!)
many many more!
Yea, it would be tough to nail down just one, but one of my favorite memories for sure was a beach trip. I was 14, around '86 or '87, at Panama city beach Florida, my mom use to take us nearly every summer. Deaf leppard's album hysteria just came out, and I had the cassette with my boombox. I met a hot girl and we hung a couple nights, jamming to def leppard, and I fell in love big time! Her family left a couple days before we did, I was broken hearted to say the least. I spent the rest of that vacation, and rest of my summer listening to love bites...lol
Does childhood end at 11-12 or 16-18? I'd have a hard time remembering the "best" memory from before 12 years old, I had lots of fun doing anything back then.
You need to knock a girl up and have some kids.
It will bring the sunshine right out.
I will warn you though its a bitch sometimes. Your kids can grow up with you giving them all the opportunities you never had. That will give you a lot of peace and a sense of direction. It will also make you go gray and want to pull your hair out.
Life aint so bad.
Gotta make it what you want.
I like to describe my parents' parenting style as "benign neglect." They weren't abusive, but they were extremely neglectful and although I wasn't a bad kid and never got arrested or pregnant (well, pregnant when I wanted to at age 35), I did do a lot of crazy stuff. My best childhood memories are those things: sneaking out at night, jumping off the roof of our house, getting away with all kinds of mischief because there were no adults paying attention
I was the opposite just too naive and calm for my own good. Parents were poor and we lived in an unsafe house, at times part of the ceiling would fall down, couple times it's been a matter of seconds I avoided 100lbs of concrete falling on my head. But hey, I was happy :)
You are calling the human condition issues.
I assure you, your kids will have all sorts of unique and different issues. Thats why I treat them all different.
You are an awesome person, you think you aren't.
You are wrong.
Let go of the controls and live.
I have one son just like me. He doesn't connect with his emotions like the others do and is hard on himself like no one else could ever be.
If you are lucky you will have a kid just like you that you can help work through the issues. Most likely the kid won't have your issues and you will have to learn, which is twice as scary.
My son and I are twins. I can take him anywhere with me in my truck or on a bike ride and he is thrilled but doesn't show it much because he is a tough guy. A bottle of pop or an ice cream cone and we can go miles not hardly talking, content as can be.
Every kid will go through torment on the path to adulthood and beyond. You would be a perfect father.
It's nice hearing about your experience as a father, Obs. Kids make us better people for sure. And they're cute...
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Son above
My daughter on the left in the other.
My best and worst all in one. We lived on a farm at the very end of a valley, the dirt road dead ended at our door. There were 4 boys and 3 girls in my family and my Ma should have never had any kids. My Dad was a union Carpenter and always worked out of town. I was about 12 years old and was the star pitcher on my little league team. We were playing a team in a town about 20 miles away and I had no ride (Ma was on the couch from taking Valiums). So I road my bike the 4 miles into town and the coach picked my up in his old Willy's jeep and took me to the game.
Back in the early 70's they didn't have the same rules and you could pitch a kid the whole game. This team had these two brothers that were huge compared to most of the kids, big ol farm boys. Anyway, I had a wicked inside fast ball that I could throw right at the knees, from lots and lots of practicing. The good part, I ended up striking out every batter I faced. The bad part, I didn't have a single family member there to see it, but it was in the local paper and the coach clipped it out for me.