Childhood memories/lessons.

Don't know how interesting the concept will be but I thinks it is fairly deserving of a try.

Basically use that superior long term memory of ours into use by recalling certain events that left impressions on you as a kid, be it weird/funny/important or terrifying.

Been quite a few childhood memories slip by me lately, and one that I was thinking of today was pretty funny.
I couldn't have been older than 6, maybe 7, and we lived a pretty quiet life back then.
Really rural part of Sweden, and worth of mention again, I was only 6-7 years old.

Anyway, I had no idea what Nazis were--and I had especially no idea of whom this Hitler guy was, I didn't even know he existed.

But one day I went over to a neighbour, a friend of mine and he was maybe 9 or 10 at the time.
He was drawing these pretty neat looking flags, they were red and had something that looked like an X on it.
I thought it looked real cool!

Later when I got home I started drawing them too, since, hey, it looked good.
And I probably drew on a couple pages, since I probably sucked at drawing(I do now, anyway.) and the first few didn't look anything like what I was trying to achieve.

A couple of days probably passed because I didn't even remember drawing them at the time, but all of a sudden I heard a very angry mom that had found the notebook with my drawings in them, yelling my name.

She was pissed, I claimed to have no knowledge of these evil Nazi guys she was talking about, Hitler? Why was he so bad?
Of course she didn't explain to me at the time but I never drew them again, because man, she was furious.


But I still thought: There's stuff you shouldn't draw? How silly!
(Still think the flag looks good goddammit.)

Haha, I think still on this day she thinks I actually knew what I drawing at the time, but I had no clue.



I'd think more stories like these would be pretty interesting, but that's just me!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I have one, although its not quite so much on the funny side.

I used to have a play room, back when I was pretty little, and there was this wooden slide in miniature, a bit like the ones that you see in play parks. From what I understand, my dad made it for me when he was in a carpentry phase and my mom was pregnant (worked in theater, so he was big on building sets)

Anyhow, from what I remember, it was a normal day, and my dad came in, and I don't remember great details, but I think folks were sad, or that's the impression I get. Lots of hugging all around, and quite a bit of confusion on my part. Then everybody took off, and I resumed sliding down my slide.

Told my mom about it a few years back, because I thought it was weird that it was one of the only really young memories I had, and she said that she remembered that, as it was when my dad moved out, and a tiny bit before they got divorced. Turned out he'd slept with one of his students, and then felt guilty about it and told her earlier that day. She never forgave him for it, and after bumming around in town for a few years, he hit the road when the economy tanked and they started dumping art from the university.

I've got more, some more funny, particularly ones from boy scouts in the early days, but that's the first one that always comes to mind when people ask about old memories. Hard to tell these days whether its a reinforced fakey one that my head's rebuilt, or just something emotional that stuck around on its own.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Araes

Hard to tell these days whether its a reinforced fakey one that my head's rebuilt

Heh, the one memory I have that I know is fake but I've heard it so many times it's become a real and very clear memory is when I met my best friend.

Apparently I was playing in our sandbox, and whereupon his arrival the first thing I said was not "Hi," or any sort of greeting.
But merely the question "Which car will go over the other of these two?"
I think it was some kind of toy monster truck and a snowmobile.
He guessed right, the monster truck drove over the snowmobile.


What's funny about that is that I had no recollection of it a couple of years ago, so either it's just his version or his stories has indeed reinforced my memory.


Still gives me hell for not remembering it, and he's not happy that I remember it now.
Guess I'll be hearing of it until we go under ground.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by ExoXile

Guess I'll be hearing of it until we go under ground.

Man, feeling so slow. Took me a couple of seconds to realize what you meant. Thought you were planning on going all bombshelter on us, a la Fallout or something.

On a lighter one, one of my fonder outdoors memories (even though it kind of sucked at the time) was going on a winter campout with the Boy Scouts, where we were supposed to practice our survival skills. They gave us a tarp and sleeping bags, and nothing else for two days. It was also a really nasty winter and there was a good foot+ of snow on the ground.

Anyhow, the first night wasn't so bad, and working together we got a lean too up and hollowed out a section of ground where we could sleep in a big huddle (manly). The next day we were freezing though, so scavenging around we found a bunch of sticks that were dry under some trees, and after like three hours of all of us trying, one managed to get the old stick friction method to work and a tiny fire going.

Now, an important part is that he had done this in the dead roots of a huge tree that had died and fallen on its side. (Huge to me in memory means several feet wider in diameter than I was tall) Anyhow, this was great, and for the rest of the day we basically just kicked around the fire, playing games, telling stupid stories, and riding out the rest of our sentence until our dads would come back for us and we could go home.

Unfortunately, we were also young and stupid, and two important things resulted because of it. The first, was that in the middle of the night, several people started shivering, and getting woken up because their sleeping bags were getting wet. One of which was me. In my sleepy state, I just thought we were melting the snow with our heat, and tried to move out of the pool. This went on for hours until I started to see light and there was this weird sound, at which point I finally gave up and got up.

What I saw stepping outside of our lean too was that the world was literally on fire about 10' off from us. We had stupidly left our fire going in the roots of the tree, and over six unattended hours it had lit a few of the roots on fire, and then proceeded to take over the entire tree. Nearly the minute I stood up, I almost immediately had to get back down because it was like standing next to a furnace. Luckily for us, the tree had been a bit of a loner, and fallen away from the main woods when it died, so the only real worry was the grass lighting up. Good thing too, as there was a shit lot we could do about it. I started yelling at the rest of the folks, and then we all scrambled around for the next couple hours doing our inexperienced / ineffectual best to dig panicked fire trenches and throw snow on everything.

Needless to say, our folks were pissed / horrified when they showed up, and immediately went to work with shovels and whatever else they could find. Also, we were never left unattended in the woods again. Ever.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I have two that I'll write about.

The first is set during Christmas in the mid 80's. Transformers was the biggest thing in the world, at least to me. That morning, I'd received the greatest present Santa could've ever brought me, OPTIMUS PRIME! It was so awesome. I'm pretty sure I played with it all day. The next morning I woke up to find Optimus was missing a leg. I couldn't understand what had happened. When I asked my mom what happened, she explained that I'd left it on the living room floor the night before. When my dad woke up in the middle of the night to put more wood in the fireplace, he'd stepped on it and broken the leg off. To teach me the lesson that I shouldn't leave my toys in the floor and that I should take better care of my things, they said they weren't going to buy me another one and that I'd have to play with the broken one. Now I appreciate the fact that they used that as an opportunity to teach me a lesson, but it really sucked at the time. I also learned that toy money didn't grow on trees. To end this story with a happy note, I recently found a 25th anniversary commerative edition Optimus Prime at Walmart for $70. But there was no way I was going to pay that much. So I waited. 2 weeks ago, my wife found it on the clearance isle for $35. She called and asked if I wanted it and of course I said yes. So 25 years later, I now have a fully functional Optimus Prime that is in one peice. And I promise you that it will NEVER touch the floor!

The second is a good memory. Really simple one too. It was late August of '83 and the morning after my little brother was born. I'd spent the night with my grandparents while my mom and dad were at the hospital. That morning my dad picked me up and took me home and made me lunch. My dad is a "traditionalist" so this was a big deal. It doesn't take alot of effort to open a can of ravioli and warm it up on the stove, but it's still special because that's one of the few "me and dad" times I can remember since my dad worked nights and slept during the day.

i also outlined one of my other early memories/lessons in the "stupid ways of hurting yourself" thread if anyone is interested. much better story.

I was speaking idiomatically.