O.T. What did you do for fun as a kid? Pre Nintendo... - Page 8

When I was a kid we moved around alot. Dad was in the Navy.  Lived in the Philipines and got my first GSD there.  I was 4 and named her button and loved her!  Then she bit my dad and had to go.  So heartbroken.  I swam in my neighborhood from the monsoon.  Used to find geckos and try to keep them but it never worked.  We always took in dogs after someone moved off base because dogs were/are eaten there so we always had a dog or two.  I always wanted a zoo and would bug my M & D for animals to no avail.  Always brought strays home only to be told "we can't keep them"!  On my list to Santa was the Lone Ranger and Silver!  AND, I got it!  Woo Hoo!  That was my fav!  Silver had movable joints too!  LOL, my sister had the Sunshine Family and I got in trouble when I put Mr. Sunshine on top of Mrs. Sunshine.  Am I what would be called the black sheep?  I don't know but I don't care.  Then when we moved back to the States I lived in the same neighborhood I moved from and had my same neighborhood kid friends.  We used to make printing presses and make our own newspapers and sell them to our parents and play all the regular games we play.  We'd play army and collect the red berries off the bushes to throw and if it hit you and left a red mark, you're dead!  Ahhh,  so many good memories!  I really loved the kid across the street and he was the first boy I ever kissed....in my closet.  He's an architecht (sp) now.  Damn!
And, has always wanted to be! What would you change if you could go baclk in time?  Me?  There are  few things I'd change but I kinda like where I am now.  Wishing for money but isn't everyone?

I have been waiting all week to join this thread.....between work & dead batteries in the key board.....

I was pretty much raised, as a little kid, by my grandparents......I remember my grandfather cultivating tomatoes that he would raise from seed, showing me how to pollinate the flowers, & "Don't play near those plants!!"....there was an old coal bin under the back porch stairs, when I was in trouble I would hide in there, come out all covered with soot, & my grandpa had an old car with wooden wheels in his garage, & an old chest full of old silver dollars & the first hundred issues of National Geographic, my brothers were very interested in those, I'm sure you know why. And in the basement, my granpa had an old 'ham' radio, we could listen to radio from behind the 'wall', very cool. He had posters of planes to ID, posters of 'the Morris Code', of what different siren blasts meant, of what the flags indicating naval weather conditions meant; & he had really thick old records & a record player with a horn...we would listen to 'Red Sails in the Sunset'. He had lots of war stuff down there, too. My grandmother was all white fluffy hair & lavender; a large, soft lady in polka-dot dresses. From her came my love of horses, though. Her grandparents owned a funeral home in Jersey City (with the big black matched horses to pull the hearse), & her cousin had a racing stable in Syacett(sp?), NY(on Long Island), just like the Walter Farley books that I loved!

Then my parents bought a big house in a 'developement', I rode my schwinn english racer all over the place, as fast as I could, up the big dirt hills & down the sides, broke my arm twice...lol! I fainted when they put the cast on the first time, my long hair got all in the plaster, I wound up with a pixie cut, I hated it! We would hike in the woods behind the neighborhood, catch little tiny sunnies in the canal by the railroad tracks, hike for miles on those tracks, saw hobos...no-one ever bothered us...! We would take the little boat my father had out on the lake by our house, we did catch polliwogs, too! And one summer, after the local paperboy drowned in that same lake, they dredged the lake, & all summer long we would find these huge frogs smushed flat by all the heavy machinery after the workers would go home (we were horrid, we made frog frisbees!)...we'd sneak around after dark in the lake bed, reenact the latest horror flicks....our favorite was 'The Frogs'! Of course, we had plenty of frogs to play with, so that was natural! I did have Barbies, I liked the ones with the bendable legs, 'cause they could ride my Breyer horses...most of them were headless, because my 3 brothers would decapitate them as soon as I got them, the brats. The living room was a great prairie, under the dining table was our fort.

And I loved to ride. I took lessons for years, & was a general barn rat. When we moved further out into the country, I finally got my own horse, I boarded him at first, & mucked stalls & exercised the ladies other horses & basically did her odd jobs & whatever she needed done, from baby sitting to helping hold down horses for veterinary procedures to pay my horses board until we had a place where we could keep him ourselves. I had to earn the money for tack, & feed, & to pay the vet, it wasn't a given. I would take off on my horse & be gone all day, riding down dirt roads for miles. No-one cared. It was MY responcibility to take care of myself, & my horse; & MY responcibility to be home by dark. That was it. If I goofed up & got lost & was late, I was in trouble. No police search or missing child amber alert....just a whooping!

And I loved to read. I was the dorky kid who would be sitting in the recess room with a book after everyone else had gotten on their bus & gone home. And I read the strange

Sorry! Got cut off! (continued) the strangest things, I read 'Mary Queen of Scots" when I was in 6th grade, I loved historical biographies. And anything about horses, dogs, cats, etc.. I always had my nose in a book!

Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane! jackie harris

I remember swimmimg in a mud pond & having to pull leeches off after we got out....we screeched & jumped around & our cousin laughed at us, but we all survived it.   And both my brother & my cousin all seem so normal now....how did that happen? LOL! jackie harris