CHILD'S PLAY-Post Your Memories

When I was 'young' (guess some people still consider me to be young), around the age of 7, I always went out on an animal-rescue thing with a good friend of mine. Whole afternoons we spend on rescuing animals, from little bugs who sat on the sidewalk to a little mouse who was wounded and some little ducks trapped near the water. It ended when at one day, we stayed away too long and my mother and my friends' mother along with the neighbors and some other people organised a search. We were not allowed to go on animal rescuing again after that.

Priceless Rick!
I'm embarassed to admit that you brought back a horrible memory. My best friend recieved a BB gun for Christmas(pellet gun) We spent countless hours shooting at birds and squirrels. I don't recall why I had no remorse. Luckily we finally put the gun away when we discovered "Grrls".
BTW I was forbidden to own a BB gun. Maybe that's why it was so attractive to me.

Well at least you had BB-guns :wink: One of my most horrible memories was this one: I had a neighbor, a boy who was one year older than me, and he was a major fan of the local soccerteam, PSV (maybe you've hurt about it - we produced famous players like Romario and Ronaldo, no kidding!). As a joke, me and a friend called him one afternoon and said on a serious tone that he had won a ball with the autographs of all players. He was very excited and happy, and he couldn't wait. Of course he didn't get the ball. Later we heard that he was very disappointed when he found out it was all a joke. We really hurt him. We never said that we were the ones who did it, but we did feel guilty afterwards.

You know Rick, part of growing up is learning the consequences for immoral childs play. I remember I took something from a neighbour(He was our Scoutmaster) and my parents found out and made me bring it back and apologise. It took me a week to screw up the courage to do it. It was one of the most uncomfertable moments of my young life.

I can imagine. I was once (falsely) accused of stealing when I was very young - 6 or something. I still can remember all of the looks of the people - you saw them thinking 'so young, yet criminal'. My mother was really embarrassed. I was so in shock that only after five minutes, after we had left the store, I said to her I hadn't stole the pack of cigarettes (they accused me of stealing a pack of cigarettes), but I had picked it from the things which already had been paid for, in an effort to be funny, and put it in my jacket. You should have seen the look on my mother's face! She ran back to the store and DEMANDED that the woman behind the counter apologized to me. In some sort of way, it was also funny.

A mother's unconditional love. Some of us were lucky to take it for granted.

Erm, my juvie record is sealed.

:wink:

I swear, I did not kill that shopkeeper over a gobstopper.

While that is completely untrue, I did once take out all the windows in a neighbour's garage with a friend who made wicked home-crafted slingshots, with ankle grips and surgical rubber for slinging.

Shame on you cav :wink:

They were planning on tearing it down anyway. It's not like it had 'stuff' in it or anything...geez, DAD... Years later I hooked up with the dude again, by chance, and he had become an awesome pool player. We spent a long night shooting 9-ball, and the man was good....thankfully, we weren't playing for money.

Right on Cav! That's the stuff I'm looking for.

Cav ... son ... you have to know that what you did, was very immature. You're grounded!

Speaking as a recently hatched adult, I would say Rick, if you ain't been sued, let it ride. :cool:

Well, one of the finest outdoor activities I remember, is driving with a "Holländer"



(I used to have the "scooter version", can't find an online pic).

No my son, I won't.

A Höllander?

We had wholesome fun and dangerous fun. We played dodge the headlights, but we never really faced down any cars. We'd walk the center line and get off the road when we saw one coming.

Mostly we explored. We lived in a suburb of Boston which used to be farmland. There were rock walls crisscrossing through the forest around out neighborhood. The rock wall was a path and there was a story to be told at every step. We started at the begining where we had to slip between the sleeping guards (two pines which leaned over the wall to form an arch), then we went past one of te streams and through the fern forest (where the little people lived) and eventually we got to the sleeping giant (a large tree which fell and exposed half it's rootball to us). That was usually the end of the tour, but the wall went on.

We also had three little streams which crossed a different pathway. They were ingeniously called 1st, 2nd, and 3rd stream and each was a little more difficult to cross than the last. The 3rd stream was all of 3 feet across and about 4 inches deep.

We had archaeological digs, botanical expiditions and fauna hunts. We used tree stumps for potties and napped on moss. Nowadays most of that area has been developed.

We were all out in the front yards playing Roly-Poly. (I've never heard anyone else mention this game, but it involved two teams lined up and facing each other, oh, say, a front yard apart. Who ever was It had to cross sides without getting - ah, nuts, I forget the rules) and one of the kids - we were all girls - broke something on one's brothers car in some stupid diversion. One of the mothers came out and scolded all of us and said, "Osso, I am surprised at you" (even then I was a goodygoody). I said, to the best of my memory, "but Kathleen broke Sister Edwardine's vase!", speaking of an occurrence the week before of said Kathleen at her piano lesson), a finely nuanced tattling if I do say so myself.

Mother talked to mother and I had to go apologize to Kathleen's mother, the scolder.

Looking back, I am not sure if I was supposed to apologize for ratting, or for talking back - I'm afraid it was the talking back part.

I was an only child and hadn't, before we moved there, had a lot of time playing with other children. I eventually figured out it wasn't cool to tattle.




Edit - that wasn't Roly poly, Roly poly was sort of like hopscotch.
How soon we forget..