My grandson and his Mom and Dad are on vacation this week to a fantastic beach location, along with other family members (Cody’s side) and also along with some of my grandson’s little cousins. This makes me happy. George and I read a book one time about the seven things kids remember. And while I cannot remember the author’s exact seven things, I do remember that “travel” was one of them. I know for me that is true. Any travel we did as a kid, stands out across the days of my life. Does it for you?
I decided to come up with seven of the things I remember the most as a child. Not in any particular order.
- Travel
- Pets (dogs)
- Eating out
- Times spent with friends
- Group outings with church groups
- Special meals made at home
- Christmas and Holidays
- Momentous Birthdays (Barbie cake, telephone cake, 16th party lol)
- Situations (the good, the bad, the ugly) – excited times, problems, crisis times, and I probably remember just about every time I was yelled at, smacked, spanked, punished, because my psyche was always so fragile).
- Desk Time
I can say without a doubt that travel sticks in my mind the most. I suppose it is because we (most of us) don’t ordinarily travel often and when we do, the memories naturally stick out in minds as it is something special, unique, and broadens our horizons.
Probably the most sentimental of memories is the time at Christmas. We had time at home and my family always did everything over the top to make everyone have a special Christmas. Hardly anyone was every cross on the holidays. Love was shown, family spent time together, ate special meals that we didn’t have all the other days, and it was the most special of times. (This is why I spazz at Christmas b/c I too want to make it special for my family). My Mom and my Nanny mostly were stay at home Mom’s except Mom worked some part time jobs here and there to supplement. I am working full time and try to meet those same standards (insert crazy eye’d emoji here).
We traveled to Panama City and Daytona Beach usually when we traveled. I always loved the beach and the seafood and the little touristy gift shacks. Sometimes Mom and Dad did weekend trips that included pools. We went to Huntsville, AL and Henderson, KY – places within radius. But mostly it was just beach trips and not every year. I also include in that my time spent with Mam-ma in the country and also with Nanny and Grandaddy in town. Two very different experiences but much filled with love and good food and a comfortable setting and/or a laid back countryside setting. The cuisines were very different and the entertainment was different at each place but I loved being in both places any time I could.
Church camp always stuck out in my mind. I loved the independence of getting away and being with friends. I enjoyed most of the activities, but I felt shy and awkward at times and a little overwhelmed with there being so many kids. It was like school but with different activities. I was never a fan of the damp beds, cold showers, and exposure to total elements, but was I strong and endured new things like going with a friend to the bathroom at one in the morning with our flash lights and being swarmed by bats in the bath house, and being scared out of our minds – lol.
Times spent with friends were usually going to the movies, having teenage sleepovers, eating pizza, going bowling, dancing to Kung Fu Fighting, and thinking about and talking about boys in our classes and which teachers we liked or didn’t like. We played cards a lot (war mainly) and walked to nearby retail stores or anything we could think of to fill the void of time. Oh to have that problem again.
I decided to go back and add “desk time” to mine. Because I had a lot of time to myself and spent a lot of it at my desk – even as a child. I rarely did homework at my desk, but on the couch or bed. But my desk always had my ideas, poems, writings, artwork, desk things, pens, paints, paper, and who knows what all else. Back then we also wrote letters and passed them between us, whether it was a close friend or a boyfriend. I also had pen pals. I enjoyed that very much. I wrote to my cousin Lynn a lot, my friend Opal when she moved, Belinda when she moved, and out of a magazine, I wrote to a girl named Charbeth who had horses and we wrote back once or twice about who we were and where we lived and what our life was like. I later met Charbeth who came to me out of the blue at Lipscomb (college) and said “hey I know you…we were pen pals”. We never were close friends. We only came across one another in a quick minute and she was in a different dorm and club but I wished we’d had more time to talk.
Anyway, this is one of my “canned” posts. Well, I’m typing it this morning but I’ve had these notes as a blog topic for quite some time. And since Little Roo is at the beach, I thought it would be a good time to post this.
What all do you remember from your childhood? I tried to keep it positive. I know we all have bad moments in time that jump out. Some worse than others. But for the most part, these above were all the things I remembered that stood out and mostly were all good memories!
Other Updates
Well let’s see. Not much going on but work, taking care of Dexter dog, and taking Mom to hair appt and shuffling Doc appts around and doing her online orders.
The Dexter Dog is doing well. I’ll have more pics about Friday or so. Tomorrow I’ll work on the video which is almost through. I just have to edit us going through our freezer, lol. Hopefully an upload but it might be for next Saturday though and not this one. I’m going to try to breeze through getting these done more quickly if I can. Once Sept hits things will slow down but I’m going to be changing things up a bit I think for 2023.
Back to Dexter. Again, he’s a puppy so it is to be expected. He has about two to three hours a day where he is just in to everything and needs a lot of attention and walked and played with. And much like a toddler, needs a lot of toys to catch his attention. But over all he is working out well. The biggest issue for me is him not wanting to go to sleep at night when I’m ready to go to sleep. So I end up losing about an hour of sleep at night or more. Sometimes I’m getting up early a bit too. So if I can get him to sleep when I am ready to go to sleep that will be the main thing for me. He wants to nip and play and be rambunctious. I put him in the hallway last night again. Usually within 30 min he will calm down but I was so tired that I fell asleep until 12:45 and got up and opened the door and he was standing beside it patiently waiting for me to open up and let him back in bed and laid down that time. So this is the biggest problem for me right now but other than that, he has been fairly easy to deal with – the 2nd thing is just getting into everything but we just put that up. I don’t have enough horizontal spacing to put things that are on the floor. lol. But we are making it for these puppy days. One day he won’t be so spastic and erratic and trying to eat everything.
Well I need to get on my make up and get out the door. I’ll have more pics later. Meantime, enjoy Little Roo at his beach swimming pool. We got to face time.
It makes my day when I hear from you…