I thought tonight I would write about some of my most favorite things. In growing up in the mid to late 60's, we had a pretty carefree lifestyle. It was a time where you didn't need seatbelt to ride in a car, or ride in the back of the truck, wear a helmet when riding your bike, and could leave the house at the time the sunrose until the streetlights came on and didn't have to check in with your parents. We were simply a yell away. We could drink out of the hose and not wonder what's been in it. Everyone on our street was our bestest friend. We knew all our neighbors and we never had a fear of anything. We thought we were invincible. We would jump off our rooftop because we could, we would invent dumb stuff to jump off of into our swimming pool but I think trampolines and the rooftops worked the best.
My childhood was one of my most favorite because I didn't worry about the stuff I worry about as a parent now.
1. So my first favorite would have to be Barbie. As a child of a single parent, I had a couple Barbies. I never had the house, the boat, the car, although I do remember owning the camper but it took a few years to get one. I would wake up on Saturday morning as early as possible, grab my cardboard box filled with Barbie stuff I created, like a bed from a tissue box and a washcloth, the box was the home, and would take it to the front yard of my house. I would play there all day long as my friends would later join me and we would have a whole town. The boys in our neighborhood brought along all their GI Joes. The real ones with the jointed bodies and facial hair. We would play until it was too dark to see. So I had many a Barbie weekend growing up until I was too old to play with Barbie.
2. Creative Games ~ anything you could make up to play with the whole block full of friends. This involved the timely classics of Red Rover, Hide and Seek, Freeze Tag of all variations, and the really bad ones we played at night time....Ding Dong Ditch and Toilet Papering someones house. Never anyone that was part of the group. It had to be a house with lots of shrubs and trees in the front so it had to have lot's of places to make the toilet paper stick. We would agree to meet on the block at a specific time and each of us had to score at least 1 to 2 rolls of toilet paper. I remember smuggling a roll under my jacket when my mom stopped me one time to ask where I was going. Quite innocently I simply said to go outside and play. I often wonder if our parents knew it was us. We had the hardest time while toilet papering keeping quiet, and you could never toilet paper the house of someone who had a dog. It would wake the neighbors. We would try so hard not to laugh otherwise someone in the house would hear us. Great times!!
3. Rainy Days ~ We did everything we were told not to on those days especially keeping dry. We splashed in every puddle we saw, we splashed everyone we could. We took umbrellas but never used them. Jackets? We carried them! It was simply too great an opportunity to pass up when you could get wet!! The harder it rained the better, and the funny thing is, I don't remember it raining like that anymore, at least not as often. We had a lot more rainy days when I was growing up than we do now.
4. Schoolhouse Rock ~ Loved it!! It got me through so many classes in school! I remember they aired an episode during every commercial on ABC on Saturday morning when our favorite cartoons were on. I remember that the Noun song would remind me of what a noun was. Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here, helped me to remember what an adverb was, and who could forget Conjunction Juntion, Whats that Function? It helped me to remember that and, but and or were used to join two sentences together like a train. The saddest one I can remember was "I'm Just a Bill". It was so sad seeing Mr. Bill waiting to be signed into a Law. Now if only they could do that again our kids may be a lot more smarter in school.
5. The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Hour ~ This was another Saturday Morning favorite. I would be glued to my TV set for a solid two hours on those mornings. I just couldn't get enough of Bugs, Daffy, Tweety and Sylvester! I got to memorize those cartoons so well that I could tell what episode it was simply by the title. Some of my most memorable are Bugs Bunny in King Arthurs Court, where Bugs find himself trying to outwit the Sheriff of Nottingham. I love Hair Raising Hare with Bugs locked in the evil scientists castle while trying to outwit an orange monster with black and white tennis shoes. Who could forget Witch Hazel and Bugs Bunny? I love the flying hair pins everytime Witch Hazel would leave. Classics! Now I try and get my kids to watch them.
6. Swim Parties!~ We had a neighbor that lived next door that got a swimming pool. Sometimes when they wanted to be nice they would invite us over to swim, which in most cases was a lot. We would swim from the earliest we could until we couldn't swim anymore. We played Barbies in the pool, played Marco Polo, all the swimming pool games, and we especially love food! Nothing tastes as good as anything made after swimming. The thing I hated was our parents used to use the old rule on us, that we had to wait 1 hour after eating anything, even a bit of candy, before we could swim again. So you know when we ate, we really ate, stuffed ourselves silly. We never worried if all that junk would harm us later. Heck we probably burned off way more calories as a kid than we ever took in.
Thanks for taking a trip with me down Memory Lane. Hope you enjoyed them as much as I did writing about them.
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