My Favourite Things About Being a Child #BEDM

Another one of the Blog Every Day in May prompts. Today’s one is about the best things about being a child. So I decided to make a list of some of my favourite memories.

-Imagination. Being child, you have so much more imagination. I used to pretend to be a gymnast, doing cartwheels and balancing on things. And you the warning they used to have at the end of the TV show Gladiators? About not replicating anything at home? That message was totally for me as I used to pretend I was playing Gladiators. I used to have a playhouse out the back of my house and my friends and I would bring down all sorts of things, old telephones, books, blankets and play all sorts of games. Or sometimes we’d stay inside and do things like pretend to be hairdressers.

 

-Computer games. Yes, I LOVED computer games when I was a child. My Dad was given an old Amiga computer and a ton of games of floppy disks. I still have hankerings to play Zool, Rick Dangerous and Switchblade. Then we got a Super Nintendo, we had so many cool games but unfortunately we gave it away once we got a PlayStation. Still regret that as I want my own SNES!

 

-Christmas. Now, Christmas can be fun as an adult and you can certainly enjoy it but Christmas was so much more magical as a child. All that excitement!

 

-Taping songs off the radio. Ah, kids these days will never know the agony of radio presenters talking at the beginning and ending of songs and ruining your recording! A friend and I took it a step further and recorded our own radio shows on tapes! I really wish I still had a copy of that today.

 

-Smash Hits. I LOVED that magazine! So much so that a cousin and I made our own version called Mashed Bits.

 

-Jumble sales. In my neighbourhood, every now and again kids would decide to sell some of their toys and set up a jumble sale on the wall of their garden. There was always such excitement about nabbing a bargain! Also, once a year my school would do a big jumble sale, it was like the neighbourhood one times 100!

 

-Spending so much time outside. Nowadays I don’t like to spend that much time outside but as a child I could spend hours without going inside. Saying that though, I could also spending hours in my room reading as I was am a massive bookworm.

 

-Fat Frogs. Apple Jacks. Postman Pat sweets. Desperate Dan bars. Banana Bubbles cereal. When Freddos were originally Taz bars, Starburst were Opal Fruits and Smarties came in tubes with collectable tops.

 

-Henry Hippo money box

 

-Zig and Zag. And kids TV in general. Art Attack, Live and Kicking, Power Rangers, Animaniacs, TOP 30 HITS!

 

-Toys in cereal

 

-NOW That’s What I Call Music CDs. My first being NOW 36. I still have it!

Things that Kids Won’t Know

Call cards

Or even phone boxes in general! I don’t think I ever got to own call cards myself, however I used to love seeing as the new ones that came out, with bands and films on it. So what do you do if you stacks of these at home? Well, you could do what my boyfriend’s brother did, which was arrange them into a frame and make it into art!

Dialling tones to Internet

Imagine having to sit through this bloody thing while waiting for the internet to connect?! Seems like an alien concept these days (while the tone itself sounds like aliens). Though, upon searching for this video, I came across this dubstep remix of the tone. So maybe kids these days do know this tone!

Using a pencil to wind a cassette tape

Oh the humanity of it all! In case you’ve forgotten about this yourself, here’s a handy article on WikiHow on How To Manually Rewind a Cassette Tape.

Walkman

Speaking of cassettes, what about Walkman? I’m sure they don’t even remember Discman (oh, the conundrum of trying to walk and listen to one of these!). Though all this talk of cassettes reminds me of when this happened to me

Blowing into a Nintendo game to get it to work

Ah yes, we all knew how to fix a Super Nintendo that was buggy. None of us remember where we heard this advice though. And it turns out it actually BAD for the cartridges as it blows in moisture and can damage it! I’m shaking my head at 9 year old me for doing this.

This sound

Ah, the sweet, sweet sound of the PlayStation 1 starting up! About 2 years ago I managed to snag a PS1 in a charity shop along with controllers and some games for 10 Euro! There’s so many more games I want to get though that I’m missing (Spyro Games and Crash Team Racing come to mind!). Must start looking on eBay really. I envy people who kept their PS1 games (and their SNES! I really really want one!)

Floppy disks

Floppy disks eh? I remember using them in TY to save documents, 8-9 years ago. Though to be fair, they were ‘going out of fashion’ then, for our Coca-Cola Futuristic Fashion entry, we used the plastic shells as armoury.

Den TV

Zig and Zag! Dustin! Ray D’Arcy fighting with Ted! Podge and Rodge and their evil antics around Halloween! And let’s not forget the programmes. Bosco, Echo Island, Draw With Don, The Disney Club. TV just isn’t as good these days.

Prizes in Cereal

Seriously, these are either non-existent these days or just plain shite. Ah, the fights to be the one who got the prize! More pictures here at The Daily Edge.

I could go on and on and on but I won’t. What would you add to this list?

Childs Play (Your Inner Child)

I watched the above video on YouTube last week and it really struck a chord with me. It’s all about the games we’d play as children, the silly things we did to entertain ourselves. And I realised that it wasn’t something I did when I was younger but it’s still something I do from time to time!

The video opens with games the narrator and his sister used to play in the car. I did these too, both of them. I used to ‘chop’ all the hedges and trees to the same height. Or failing that I’d pretend someone was travelling beside the car, doing somersaults and flips on all the objects so they wouldn’t touch the ground. I still do this when I’m a passenger in a car.

And while I no longer try to stop a stopwatch on the exact ‘perfect’ time, I do try and get my petrol pump to stop at the exact number!

To entertain myself going down the street, I would try not step in cracks, limit myself to 2 steps per pavement stone and balance along the curb. I’ve been known to do the balance thing when walking back to a friends house after a night out! When I was around 7 I would also walk across the top of my closed gate, something I don’t think I’d try do now!

I would run and (unsuccessfully) try to touch leaves and other things at heights, try to successfully predict when the light will turn green, hold my breath will going through a tunnel (something my boyfriend and I still do to this day!).

I would get the sweeping brush, line it up against the couch so it was at an angle and try and walk up it! I would turn off the light at night and try to run into my bed as quick as I could so the monsters wouldn’t ‘get’ me. I used to tuck my teddies in with blankets so they wouldn’t get cold. I used to sleep my head under the covers as I was afraid that people such as my teachers had a secret view into my bedroom at night! (that one is quite weird I admit!). And I wouldn’t let my feet out of the bed covers in case they got eaten.

And then we come to the classic ‘Don’t Touch the Lava’. It’s funny as I was playing this game last month in the Burren with two friends of mine!

This has reminded me of how many of the ‘games’ I still play and it makes me happy, as I think it’s important to be in touch with your inner child from time to time. But it’s also reminded me of how fearless you can be as a child. I used to walk across my closed gate when I was 7-8 and I was never afraid to do so. Now I don’t time I’d have the courage to try that! I would hop up on skateboards and the likes without fear. Now I see my younger siblings zipping around on whip sticks and yet when I’ve tried to go on them, I get straight off as it’s terrifying! It makes me sad how much fearless we become as we grow older and release responsibilities and other things like that. It’s certainly necessary but I hope I can tap into my inner child when I need it, to help me relax and play when things become to serious or too stressful. I suppose that’s the good thing about having younger siblings (or for some people nieces and nephews, children, grandchildren), they are great to be silly around!

Do you play any of these games? And how do you stay in contact with your inner child?

Decluttering my room (and life)

I warned you all last year, I’m a horrible procrastinator. This time last summer I swore that I’d clean my room out. And did I? No, I bloody well didn’t. Don’t get me wrong! It was tidied and cleaned a bit throughout the year (Despite what others around me might say and think!), but I never got down to it and cleared out all the junk. Two weeks ago, I started this epic quest, to get rid of everything that’s no longer used, has any use or that I’ve grown out of. And boy is it amusing!
It turns out that not only am I a serious procrastinator but I’m also a major hoarder. These do not go hand in hand, it’s just a good thing these are in some weird balance, cause if they weren’t I’d be on an episode of Hoarders or something. We moved into this house in 2001, so it could have been a lot worse. Let’s take a look at what I’ve found in my room so far.

1. Instruction Manual for a Walkman! Bear in mind I was 9 when I got a Discman. So I haven’t owned a Walkman for 14 years. Why the hell do I have an instruction manual for this?! (On a side note, I was on a train in February and I spotted someone using a Walkman. And not in an ironic hipster kind of way. Unless this was a hipster granny. Hmmm, Hipster Granny, sounds like a comic book…).

2. A bunch of Christmas cards from when I was 10 and upwards. Completely useless! Although hilarious to read as so many people could never spell my name right. Something I’ve addressed in the comments of this post by CherrySue.

3. Speaking of hilarious, I have some letters that my now 17 year old cousin sent me when she was probably 7 or 8. Bless! I’m debating scanning them up on Facebook to show her, but I’m not sure if she’d like it or not! (Hi Emma!)

4. Magazines dating back to when I was 12 or so. Yep, teeny magazines that I have no use for anymore. As well as plenty other magazines from the last 10 years that I probably don’t have any use for but keep on to just in case I want to read them again (rarely happens).

5. Beanie Babies. I haven’t counted them, but probably a billion of them (or like 30 maybe?). While I have no issue throwing away magazine and cards from my childhood, I’m not sure I can part with these. Or at least some of these. I spent ages building up my collection and some that were gifted to have very sentimental.

This is just scratching the surface of what I’ve found. Old clothes that no longer fit. Books that belong to my Aunt, some read, some still unread. Stacks and stacks of blank CDs that have been filled with all sorts of music and no labels on them. College notes from last year. I’m still expecting to find some Junior Cert notes when I dig deep into my storage space! I’m sure there will be a part two of this, once I get some more cleaning done. Not sure when that will be, I have loads of, em, more important stuff to do (like write blog posts, bake and play computer games…).
Pictures from here, here, here and here.