Tags
banana seat, Black Cat gum, cherry coke, Diana Schwenk, growing up, hide and seek, jaw-breakers, kids, memories, monkey bars
Things ain’t what they used to be and probably never was. ~Will Rogers
Ahhh the good old days…
When being a kid meant playing outside in the field down the street.
Riding my blue bike with the banana seat and monkey bars to the corner store to buy 99 cent smokes for Dad
playing Cowboys and Indians
drinking from the garden hose
Double Dutch skip rope
Hula hooping and Basket shooting
jaw-breakers, cherry coke and Black Cat gum
Hop Scotch and Blue Bells Cockle Shells Easy Ivy Over
Hide and Seek and Frozen Tag
hanging with friends at the river and rolling up our pants to fearlessly cross the dam
watching ants, spiders, Daddy Long Legs and butterflies
the sweet taste of clovers
holding Butter Cups under my chin
large groups of kids, wreaking havoc throughout the neighbourhood
grass-stained jeans, mosquito bites, bruises, cuts and scrapes, sweaty and tangled hair
staying outside until the street lights came on.
Sometimes I feel sorry for kids today
sitting around indoors with their iPods, iPads, iPhones
while all of nature waits to be their playground…
…outside where imaginations rule and dreams take flight.
Are your kids missing out?
What’s your favourite childhood memory?
talktodiana 
Kids today miss out on a lot of fun activities. I’d forgotten about the sweet taste of clover until this post reminded me of how we used to pull the pedals off the flowers and eat them.
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I still do it every now and then. 😉
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Ahh, sweet childhood. I think the kids of today are deprived of so much freedom, the kind that today is unthinkable. Just to let them run outside. My parents let us (my brother and I) out on streets in the morning and we would run home just to eat. At some point we were given these bells to carry around our neck once in a while, just for them to hear us, that we were ok. Now, when I go to playground with my kids, as soon as I loose him out of my sight for sec. I want to see where he is, not to even consider letting him just run out without me seeing him (ok he is also just almost 4 years so perhaps it will come). I remember side and heek, bike rides, football games, nature adventures and home made toys (I grew up during Soviet Union times, so we did not have many toys). We only had our creativity! I still joke around that, if crisis hits me now, the skills I learned from my parents/grandparents would sustain me for sure. The really creative survival. Make a meal of nothing and use one thing for really many purposes. It was so much fun to be a kid. I did not have many things yet, I was never bored. 😀 hahaa memory lane. Thanks for this post.
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It’s so true. I didn’t feel comfortable letting my daughter just be gone and out of my sight for any period of time! Thanks, as always, for stopping by xo
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Really nice post. Im always torn on the issue of the dreaded iPad. On the one hand, I think Internet and iPads etc etc add a lot to my kids – my son, clutching his model fighter jet, can now sit with me and watch clips of the real thing, see how it’s engines work, find out how fast it goes. As a parent they’re also pretty awesome – not only do they make 12 hour flights a survivable thing, but when I’m asked things like ‘what’s inside a snake?’, ‘how fast can that car go?’, or (and these are all real examples) ‘what is the tallest building in Ukraine?’ I have some hope of answering them. But I know what you mean – we are on holiday right now and the best thing in the world is that visceral joy you get from being outside – swimming and splashing and running around in the grass. Yesterday my 6 yr old girl rode her bike for the first time and I’m not ashamed to say I cried a little. I don’t think I’d get the same emotional high from completing a level of marionart with her or watching her watch television 🙂
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Yes there are definite benefits to iPads and other iThings but nothing helps me on a 12 hour flight. I get so antsy and a little crazy so kudos to you! There’s also this issue of it being ‘less safe’ now or maybe we’re just more aware or paranoid of danger. My daughter is 18 now and I can’t imagine the hell I would have gone through if when she was litte, she’d gone out after breakfast, sans cell phone and did not get back until dinner! Yet that’s what we did! Thanks for stopping by Doug and confusing the issue with such common sense! I mean leaving a thought provoking comment. 🙂
Diana
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Way to take me back to my childhood and what a great childhood I had, I remember walking around to the shops to buy my dads smokes or some mornings he would get up with a hang over and ask me to go to the shop to buy him a can of coke to have with his smoke…………..the days of kids buying smokes for their dad is long gone can you imagine a kid going to the shops to buy smokes now days………I also feel sorry for kids now days they do miss out on some really great times but the world doesn’t seem as safe now days as it did when we were kids………..
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definitely, the idea of kids buying smokes for their parents now seems unbelieveable! Thanks for stopping by Joanne and for leaving a comment!
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Climbing trees!
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and checking out the view from up there!
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LOVE! As usual. Great memories for me are mostly from summer camp – campfires, s’mores, moonlit hikes, canoeing, swimming. Fireflies remind me of being a kid too. Awesome post! I wish grownups could go to summer camp for the whole summer – I would be thr first camper! 😉
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YES!!! That would be so much fun!
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Kids are definitely not playing outside like they used to be. I’m glad my childhoood was more or less spent outdoors.
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Oh, and a lot of those games you mentioned…very familiar haha
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(smiling) I think it would be fun to have a grown up game of frozen tag! Who’s in?
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Me too! I had so much fun as a kid!
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I loved playing all those above and many more … thanks for the positive post
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You’re very welcome – thanks for stopping by 🙂
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🙂
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Dear Diana,
I like to believe that you and your brother had a good time outdoors and using the playgrounds quite often and if you got hurt for some reason while playing and having lots of fun with your friends Dr. Schwenk’s wonder cream was Nivea Creme.
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It was a great childhood Mom! And I believe that he referred to himself as Dr. Heinz and yes there always Nivea! Thanks for reading my post Mom and leaving a comment. How lucky am I? Does anyone else’s mom even read their kid’s blogs?? Happy Sunday. 🙂
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Now that takes you back for sure! Times were so different and so much more fun! I loved this post as I’ve been thinking of the past for days now….maybe I’m getting old…ha! thanks!
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Ha! They say the older we get the more we look back. 🙂 Thanks for stopping by and leaving your kind words of encouragement!
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Too many to choose. Thanks for the memories.
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How true! I could have gone on and on…but I limit my Sunday post to 200 words. 😉
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I have two memories that have stayed with me: a bunch of friends and I pretended we were part of the tv show Man From Uncle. We had aliases, set up boobytraps in the woods and spied on the neighbors. The other was when I wrote, directed and starred (of course) in a play, The Purple Scarf. I cast a group of neighborhood kids and the show ran twice to an adoring (and forgiving ) audience of family and friends
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Ahhh it would appear that creativity and imagination were part of who you are always. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your comment!
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Tree forts or better yet undergound forts (otherwise known as a big hole in the ground with wood on top), staying outside until the street lights came on, penny candy, and playing baseball without a league, coach or parents to organize it.
Love it and I agree, what will happen to our kids without all of these experiences?
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underground forts, now that sounds cool – I never had one of those! Yes, and spontaneous, unorganized games…what fun!
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I wanted a banana bike so bad!
remember when they put iodine in your cuts…. Ouchie
we did butter cups too! great post! I like this one twice
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I was lucky they didn’t put iodine on our cuts, just something like polysporin….Glad you enjoyed it … it was fun to remember and write!
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