Tuesday, August 4, 2015

When I was young


I made mud pies on the patio

raced caterpillars up the side of my grandparents' house

carried a two liter soda around like a baby bottle

pretended a dolphin from Nichols Pools was my boyfriend

walked five blocks to the beach with no shoes

wrote my first piece of fiction about a traveling pen (I still have it)

preferred picking daisies on the soccer field over actually playing soccer

dreaded field day

shopped at Makro, Caldor, and Bradlees with the ladies of my family, and on Mill Street in Bristol too

felt out of my element in art and music classes

wore high top Reeboks in every color of the rainbow

worried daily about getting kidnapped, specifically by someone with chloroform and a van as my mom always told me those people were out there

was rarely silly and usually serious

rocked a Pete Rose haircut

got lifted over the fence or took the path to my best friend's house

said I wanted to be a teacher automatically but really never thought about what I wanted to do

read everything I could get my hands on

hated to cry in front of people

loved swinging on the swings


Care to share some childhood tidbits?

 photo purple_zpse5f7f916.png



36 comments:

  1. adorable.

    -i wasn't allowed any junk food because my mom banned it so we'd always go to our cousin's and gorge (they had full access)
    -reenacted V over and over again with my cousins. i was usually "Lydia" LOL
    -i once a half a stick of butter just because butter
    -i once ate 3/4 of a watermelon in 1 sitting....then had the runs for hours after that
    -found out i was allergic to cats when a friend bought a cat, i rubbed my face in it and then my eyes swelled shut and face puffed out with hives. that was not a fun night.
    -i had to go home pantsless when i tried to jump over a chain-link fence, my shorts got caught on the tip and i heard a huge RIIIIIPPPP! when i jumped down. and when i say pantsless, i mean including underwear....i was like freaking Frank the Tank running down the street flashing everyone

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  2. I like this!

    - Swam in the flooded streets with my mom and my sister after one huge rain storm
    - Played on the playground during the summer until long after dark, unsupervised
    - Walked to and from school every day and was a latch key kid
    - Had a friend who has an older sister that worked at McDonalds. She brought home left overs all the time!

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  3. This is awesome! I will never regret making you paranoid about being kidnapped. Lol on the dolphin and the 2 liter soda bottles. Many memorable shopping trips with MomMom to Mill Street! This and you are priceless.
    Love, your Momma

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  4. I can relate with the following:

    wrote my first piece of fiction about a traveling pen (I still have it) ---THOUGH I'M A BIT JEALOUS OF YOU SINCE YOU STILL HAVE YOURS. I WISH I STILL HAD THE FIRST FICTION PIECE I WROTE IN THE SECOND GRADE. MINE GOT LOST WHEN WE MOVED ABOUT 12 YEARS AGO :(

    wore high top Reeboks in every color of the rainbow ----YUP I HAD LIKE 5 COLORFUL PAIRS OF REEBOKS TOO!

    I really liked this post....I think I might just write one for my blog!! Thanks for the idea Steph!!! You are super rad!!

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    1. Please let me know if you do write one. I'd love to read it!

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  5. -rocked a side ponytail and definitely thought I was cool. especially when there was a gigantic bow on top of it.
    -was 5'6" in 4th grade and HATED EVERY MINUTE OF IT.
    -was obsessed with collecting all the old (and new) Nancy Drew hardback yellow-cover books - used bookstores were always my jam
    -always wanted to be allowed to ride my bike/walk to school but never was
    -earned more girl scout badges than ANYONE.... and sold 436 boxes of cookies going door-to-door... none of this setting up in front of the store for me! #overachiever.

    I think we could have set up a book swap if we had been neighbors.

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  6. Love this post! Gonna borrow the idea!

    - played outside all the time
    -got dirty a lot
    -lived in a noisy home

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  7. Oh I loved this!!! I share some of those same memories! Especially the kidnapping scenario that my mom also beat into my brain! I remember Caldor and Bradlees too. High top shoes yes! Anddd my first two wheeler without training wheels was a bike with a giant banana boat seat! Haha

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  8. Picking flowers on the soccer field was awesome! Especially when the girls on the other team were friendly and you could make dandelion chains together. But art class was the best. I always said I was going to be an artist when I grew up (or a librarian).

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  9. I got lifted over the fence too, our backyard neighbors have a girl a year older and a boy and year younger. I was over there a lot :)
    I freaking love your pete rose haircut and I think I follow your mom on instagram solely for (a) dog photos and (b) childhood photos of you. SO GOOD. My hair has pretty much always been long and blonde like it is now. The only difference was my bangs, but even those weren't bad.
    Might have to do this post! But as with any post of mine lately, it'll take me 2 months.

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  10. Field day SUCKED! The only good thing about it was the 25 cent Popsicles.
    The Pete Rose haircut is my favorite! bahahahah

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  11. walking five blocks to the beach, being afraid of getting kidnapped with chloroform involved, reading everything, walking to Aunt Lucy's pool, getting stung by bees on the way, making leaf houses, walks in the park/neighborhood single file line with Pop as the group leader, outdoors in the snow, rain, sun whenever, walking to school, Dawn slipping on ice and getting cindered, me laughing at her & falling down injuring my tail bone horribly, you being my shadow for most of my childhood.

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  12. ahh love this.
    i rang neighbors doorsbells and would sing them a song THEN ask to be paid.

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  13. So much win for the Pete Rose haircut! And I can co-sign most of these, miss the good ol' days especially chasing caterpillars, and walking around with no shoes :)

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  14. Such a fun post! Gosh I remember the days of just being a kid - life was easy and breezy! xo, biana -BlovedBoston

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  15. What a cute post. I love that you had a Pete Rose haircut, I did too. I miss the carefree days of my childhood. Being and adult is hard. Work always seems to get in the way of things. It drives me crazy that my office calls me on my days off. Crazy!

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  16. This post is adorable!! I read a lot when I was young too! Ah to be a kid again. So much innocence and wonder!

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  17. That picture is priceless!! It looks a lot like my childhood home- minus the swing set. And yessss to Caldor and Bradlees, I definitely remember shopping at those two! I was pretty much the exact opposite of you as a kid- I loved soccer and was fairly good at it, was the only female alto sax player in band (and played for 9 years), loved field day, and always had long hair which my mom straightened on the regular.

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  18. I never wore shoes as a kid either. We had a big walnut tree in the backyard and when the wind blew, the walnuts would fall out of the tree, crack on the roof and land in halves in the yard. I was always barefoot and now I have a scar on the bottom of my foot from when I stepped on half a walnut shell and had to have it surgically removed. Oh, and I was also a very serious child too, and always reading something!

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  19. This is such a great post!

    - I played outside and had to be dragged in at the end of the night
    - I lived in the community pool during the summer. We could walk there.
    - I made "stews" out of water and poisonous berries with the neighboring kids
    - I was always reading
    - I wrote a fiction piece when I was in third grade called The Three Wishes. I never finished it because I couldn't come up with what I deemed a "proper" ending. I WISH I still had it.

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  20. I hated field day too!!!! HATED!!!!

    -I lived in a constant state of fear that something would happen to my family if I wasn't there, so I rarely wanted to spend the night at a friends house
    -I hated heights then and I really hate them now
    -I treated my bike like a car and would make turn signal sounds and stop for pretend stop signs
    -I carried my carebear Lov-a-Lot around with me wherever I went. My mom would have to wash her and hang her up on the clothes line by her ears and it would make me so sad and angry to see her out there being hurt

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  21. I totally raced caterpillars as well! I also walked around barefoot pretty much everywhere I went! I wrote my first piece of fiction when I was younger as well and technically it would be fanfiction even though that didn't really exist at the time! I still have it along with all the other short stories books and half finished novels that I started!

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  22. i loved swinging on the swings as well, and hated art / music purely because i was bad at them. i always told people i wanted to be a princess or a writer when i grew up, neither of which i am now.
    what is field day?
    when i was young, i played with my barbies, inside and out, and for much longer than any child should. i read a lot. i didn't have a lot of friends. i jumped on trampolines and spent a lot of time at the beach. i fought with my brothers constantly, and we would find little skink lizards and bring them inside, stealing my mum's tupperware for their 'homes', which we would fill with grass and try to feed them grapes (no idea why we thought lizards ate grapes) and without a doubt we would always accidentally let the lizard out in the house. we never found them though.

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  23. What a fun post -I need to do one of these.
    Such precious memories of being a child...

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  24. I love this post! I want to do one now :) I was all about the flower picking during sports: soccer, t-ball, tennis! haha I was all about the swings, too!

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  25. It's good to reminisce. This post actually helped to jog my memory a little bit. I wanted to be a teacher as well and would actually play school with the neighborhood kids. Poor kids. lol

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  26. I wouldn't sit still and wanted to be an astronaut. Not much has changed, ha!

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  27. Brsdlees was the place to shop!! I never really thought about what I wanted to be either, except awesome. I consider myself a success. *sarcasm* I was always hanging with my best friends, creating a club of some sort just so we could hang out longer. Playing tag with all the neighboorhood kids, or kickball in the street.

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  28. I loved to play house and was always packing up my dolls and things and taking them on adventures outside. I liked to pretend that we were on the run. I loved to explore the woods around my house. I loved to play dress up and "bake" meaning throw flour and random things together.

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  29. Oh, what a great post! I love thinking back on my childhood. I hope that my children look back on their childhoods with fondness. My teacher-friend told me that playgrounds are being replaced with sets that don't include swings because of safety issues. Can you believe that? I loved the swings. I'd swing as high as I could and then leap off into the mulch. Dangerous, but fun! When I was young, I picked honey suckers off my neighbors' plants, I ran past the house with the rottweiler and fence with posts too far apart, I bought cigarettes for my dad at the corner store, I choked on ice...and more! Maybe I'll steal your post idea :).

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  30. "wore high top Reeboks in every color of the rainbow" = YES!!!!!

    When I was young: I refused to eat fast food hamburgers (although I loved Jack in the Box tacos); I cut my dolls' hair in mowhawks and painted their faces with nail polish; oh...this is so fun, I may need to "borrow" this post ... linking back to you of course.

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  31. I love these types of posts (and I love the picture you shared)!

    I also wrote my first "novel" at a really young age (7 or 8). It was around 60 pages, which I think is actually kind of impressive for a child. (If I do say so myself.) It's currently collecting dust at my mom's house, but I did keep it.

    I was also an avid reader. I credit my mom for that ... She instilled a love for learning and literature in me at an early age.

    I was a huge tomboy. I could often be found playing outside with neighborhood boys or sitting high in my backyard tree with (you guessed it) a book.

    I wanted to be an author, actress, and singer. (And, let's be honest, I still do.) Some dreams will never die!

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  32. I thought Canada was a state and that other countries were on different planets, with bridges running between them. And now I work in the aerospace industry, proving there is hope for idiotic children.

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  33. I always said I wanted to be a teacher as a kid too. I didn't realize I didn't actually want to do it until I was 20! I hated playing sports and PE, I was often told I was too bossy, I read about fifty The Baby-Sitters Club books one summer, and I preferred the bars at recess. I love this post and might have to copy it, if you don't mind. :)

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  34. finally catching up on back posts...LOVE LOVE LOVE this one. I might have to borrow it some day :)my first piece of fiction was written on paper from the gas station i worked at. I don't have the original paper but I do have the story since it was printed in the booklet my school created for students who submitted art/written essays

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