Being a kid was great. I remember coming home from school and watching the Family Channel line up – Dave the Barbarian, The Weekenders, Recess, Kim Possible. Then there was the Saturday morning stuff – Boy Meets World, Brotherly Love, Teen Angel, You Wish. Such great times. Most of these shows are hard to find now, for me at least, and there’s nothing quite like watching them as a kid.
There are a lot of things I remember fondly from childhood. Some of the standouts are toys. Barbies, Polly Pockets, Ponies were all classics and strong favourites of mine. I also went through a phrase of Groovy Girls. I remember after seeing Toy Story, I would always try to catch my toys moving. I would try sneaking up on them, or studying their positions to see if they had changed from where I’d left them. I never did catch them though. Most of these toys I still have stored away in the attic and my closet, waiting to be passed down and played with again.
Some things, sadly, I don’t have anymore. Most of these are computer games, because my mom gave those away to my old elementary school (without asking me first – uncool mom, who said I was done playing with those, hm?). There were Barbie computer games too, which were great and a lot of fun, but I think my favourite ones were, believe it or not, the educational ones (gasp). I started out with Reader Rabbit games, which taught basic reading and grammar skills and stuff like that. I have vague memories of one that took place in a castle (oooooo, caaaaaastle!) and I think there was one challenge in the dungeon where your character was running through the hallway and shapes were coming at you and one category of shapes was good and the rest were bad and you had to avoid the bad ones. So if squares were the good shapes, you could run through those, but if a rectangle came at you, you had to jump over it. I wish I could remember what game that was.
My brother, who’s older than me, got to play Clue Finders, because those games were for higher grade levels and I remember being so jealous and I couldn’t wait to play them. I think those games started at third grade level, but I’m pretty sure I started playing them when I was still in first, because my mom was tired of me whining about not getting to play them. Those games were amazing and actually helped me out with school a lot. Math has never been my best friend, but those games helped me to finally understand fractions.
I liked those games because I liked puzzles. My childhood was full of puzzles now that I think of it. Actual puzzles where you had to put the pieces together, but also puzzle books, like the Puzzle World series and I Spy type books.
Those were great times. Being an adult is fun and all, but being a kid was less worrisome. Ah, nostalgia – no doubt in fifty years I’ll be reminiscing over the times in my twenties. But hey, that’s future me’s problems. For now, I am still in my twenties, so I might as well make the most of it while I can. And who says I can’t pick up one of those puzzle books and enjoy it just as much as when I was kid? In fact, I might just go find one right now.
violetsams 