Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Random childhood memories

Back in elementary school I used to spent the night at a friend's house somewhat frequently. My friend's parents had a non-working big old station wagon parked in the driveway. We would put the seats down and outfit it with tons of blankets, pillows, stuffed animals, reading material, snacks, whatever. It seemed much cooler than a tent in the backyard.

We once talked about sleeping on top of the station wagon (and the parents probably wouldn't have cared) but decided it wouldn't be the best idea.

I remember playing pirates on top of the old wooden shed my dad had built and using one of his eye patches (he lost an eye in a hunting accident when he was a teen) so I could be the captain of the ship.

My best friend used to live in an apartment on a 10th floor. We used to make parachutes out of garbage bags, put them on our super-hero dolls and attach them to a long string, so that we could pull them back up. We then proceeded to scare the bejeesus out of the drivers that passed through the avenue in front of his appartment: a small superhero with attached parachute would land on somebody's windshield, only to be pulled up immediately afterwards. I'm amazed we didn't cause any accidents.

I remeber falling down a flight of stairs at home when I was about 4 and thinking it was funny until I rolled up my sleeves up and noticed I'd badly broken one of my arms. Funny how I didn't feel the pain until I saw it. The only other thing I remember about that was a huge nurse who kept stroking my curly hair in hospital. These days she would be up on a charge but I found it soothing and nobody thought anything of it.

I remember what The Gap was like before they had their make-over... they had a very distinctive TV commercial jingle.

"Fall... into the... Gap!"

The rotating, colorful "SPECIAL" that always announced an animated prime-time TV show, like the various Peanuts holiday specials.

I remember my brother and I pulling apart Stretch Armstrong and seeing pink, gooey jelly leaking out (we also had his much cooler looking green, Abomination-like foe).

When I was 7 or 8, my best friend Bettina and I would sped hours in this old oak tree pretending we were Jason and Princess from "Battle of the Planets" and we were saving the universe from certain doom. Life was so much simpler back then ...

I remember the first moment when I understood what racism is.

I was probably eight or nine years old. At a mall.

A young child, more or less the same age as me, walked up to the counter of an Orange Julius with some money he was given by a parent.

The teenager behind the register noticed that the boy was by himself, and that no one else was waiting right by the counter. The teenager then said, very clearly: "We don't serve people like you here."

The boy had a look of incomprehension on his face.

The server repeated himself: "I said, get out of here. We don't serve your kind here."

At that moment, the expression on the boy's face melted from confusion to pain. He backed away slowly, still clutching the money in his hand.

Even though I know that the Orange Julius corporation most likely had nothing to do with the views of that particular employee on that particular summer day more than twenty years ago, it was a long, long time before I could bring myself to patronize an Orange Julius again. The whole memory of the sneering teenager with the little Orange Julius paper hat had just become too ingrained in my mind.

Does your old friend Bettina live in NYC by any chance? I'm working in an office with someone by that name at the moment and I thought it was a pretty unique name...

Funny you should ask Drake ... Bettina and I were both 'army brats' and when her father was stationed in another part of Canada, the family moved away. That was back in 1978 and I haven't seen her or been in contact with her since. Her last name was Matthews and I have no idea where she is today.

Okay, another story came to mind after reading Juan's.

Back in grade school, way back (2nd grade I think), the school I was attending in Phoenix, AZ had one of those irrigations ditches running through the school yard. This was back before they figured kids could drown in the things so it run uncovered through the yard. After a heavy rain, our winter weather, the ditch would reach almost to overflowing before it cascaded down into the drainage grating, leading off into who knows where.

Well I was really into G.I. Joe back then. Not the little 6 inch figures some of you grew up with or that are around now. This was the big 12 inch Joe with real tight afro-like hair and scars on his face. This was back around 1973 or 1974 so you know the type of doll I'm talking about.

I used to get the real cool accessories to go with my Joe and had just gotten an inflatable life raft. Big yellow thing that he would barely fit in. Being the middle of the desert there wasn't much by way of ponds to float it in and I was kind of tired of the bathtub rescues I was playing. So I took him to school one morning, partly to show off his raft, partly to try out the irrigation ditch.

My idea, I think, had been for me to let him go at one end and race him down to the other, grabbing him before he could hit the drainage gate. Well, it had been raining hard (it was after Christmas I think) so the water in the ditch was flowing real fast. Faster than my little legs could keep up with.

Joe went in his raft. The raft went in the water. And all I could do was watch as he flowed downstream at an ungodly speed. The last sight I had of him was going over the edge of the little waterfall that led to the drainage grating, raft and all.

I've always wondered what kind of encounters he's had since in the sewers of Phoenix. I wonder if he spent time battling the alligators released into the sewers or the rumored pirranahs.

Go Joe!

My earliest memory is of my sister coming home from college and singing "Chim Chim Cheree" to me go I would go to sleep. I don't know how old I was, but I do remember looking at her through "bars" so I am thinking I was 3-4 and still in my crib.

I also remember "Santa" coming to my house and giving me a standing Mickey Mouse bank. I remember putting my coins in it and thinking that I would save for college. I must have miscounted but the amount $103 sticks in my mind.

One of my earliest memories is shopping with my Dad in Aberdeens sole supermarket at the time and he sat me on the trolley and explained why he would never buy South African goods - taking time to explain in great detail abour apartheid and Nelson Mandella and how if I want to dislike someone I should do it on the grounds of WHO they are and not WHAT they are..... That was in 1972 or so....

Funny, he wasn't so generous of spirit when I came out to him..... oh well

!!!

OMG, that was so funny I just about pissed myself! I also had to relay the story to my coworkers, who were wondering why I was having convulsions here! :rolleyes:

Thanks for sharing such a great story, Scooter! I'm sure it wasn't as funny when it happened...

Hanging out by the river. Playing strike-out under the bridge, sliding down the salt piles, chasing rats for science fair parts.

Blockade Boy,

how do you play strike-out?

Speaking of games, I remember playing Relieve-o. That was a group hide and seek game. there would be a designated "jail". one rule was that if you weren't caught, you could free your teammates from the jail. One trick I developed was to wait until no one was around and go to the jail area and sit in it. I'd wait until all but one teammate were caught. (The other side could not post a guard) I'd then announce that I hadn't been caught yet and free them all.

I hated Doctor Ball in Gym class.

It was a variation of Dodge Ball, where we were split into two teams. The gym was divided in half, and neither team could cross the center line to retrieve balls to lob at the other team. Each team had a player designated as a "doctor", who could drag stricken players back behind our "line" and revive them.

Well, I was the biggest kid, and therefore usually the first to fall. And nobody ever wanted to try and drag me back to the safety zone. So I spent the next 20 minutes of P.E. laying on the gymnasium floor. If I wanted to do that, I'd've asked for an extra study hall... :rolleyes:

(Fuckers. )

Well when we were kids, it involved defacing the wall of some building with a spray painted square, a rubber ball, and a bat.

Now-a-days it seems to be associated with the word "NO!"

sigh

When I was 4 or 5, we moved next door to a family with 4 little girls. Instant friends! After a series of horrible babysitters, I started being babysat there. The mother, Ann, would generally send us down to the basement to play. Sometimes she'd give us each a handful of dried spagetti noodles, and we would try to cook them by running them under hot water in the basement sink. Linette, the oldest, was the only one ever successful.

We would play She-Ra. I was always Bow, because I had short red hair and no bathing suit. The girls would put on their bathing suits and we would use coloured chalk to draw jewels and stuff on them.

We all had these strange dolls that came with babies, and I think they must have had a bride and groom, because they were constantly getting married and going honeymoons (to explain the babies?). For their honeymoons, we'd put them in the dryer and turn it on.

I clearly remember staying the night and trying gobstoppers for the first time. I also remember Linette telling us that butterscotch candies had boogers in them.

I have a lot of memories of those days. Unfortunately, we moved when I was six or seven.

When I was nine or ten I would grab as many Super Balls as my hands could carry, go to the empty parking lot next to my house, hold out my arms and let go of the SBs and watch them bounce all over. Then I'd gather them up and do it again.

I remember reading the old newspapers reprinted on the tables at Wendy's in the very late 70s/very early 80s.

I vaguely recall reading something several years back about these tables fetching a price on the open market.

I was about five or six years old, living in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. It was summer and the sky was deep blue. I took a short-cut through the neighbour's yard. Like all the lots, it had several apple trees, probably because the neighbourhood had been built on an old apple orchard. I remember walking under the largest apple tree, looked up at the blue sky, through the deep green leaves and the red and green apples. I thought to myself that I would always remember that moment and to cement it, I squished a fallen apple under my heel. And I have always remembered that moment, the way the air felt, the colour of the day, and the sweet rotten smell of the apple under my heel.

I suppose that since I decided to remember it, it isn't technically a "random" childhood memory. But what strikes me odd in retrospect, is that at five or six years old, I was concerned about remembering something from my childhood, as if I were afraid that it was all too transitory.