8 Things You Did as a Kid That You Wish You Could Do Now
Play hide-and-seek
This applies to “Ghosts in the Graveyard,” four-square, and pretty much any other game you used to enjoy. If you’re still engaging in these activities, odds are you’re the only participant over the age of twelve or you’re drunk. For example, last weekend, I went to visit my extended family, and it was my cousin’s eighth birthday party. All his friends were over, and they wanted me to play hide-and-seek with them. It was his birthday and all, so what the hell, right? So I go and hide in the hall closet. A minute passes. Two minutes. Three minutes. I wondered what the hell was going on. I mean, I was in a really obvious spot. So I start to think, “Wow. Either I haven’t lost my hide-and-seek prowess or these kids are fucking retarded.” So after five minutes I finally exited my hiding spot. Turns out they weren’t really playing hide-and-seek. They just wanted to see how long I would stay hidden before I got pissed. I got fucked over by a group of eight-year-olds.
Enjoy Candyland
I used to love this game. I also used to think Queen Frostine was hot. Neither of those facts remain true today. Have any of you played this game recently? First of all, the person who designed it was obviously high. Lord Licorice, Mr. Mint, Gramma Nut, Gloppy the Molasses Monster. Those, my friends, are the creations of a person who is under the influence of some drug. Secondly, it’s boring as shit. Under “skills required” on Wikipedia it lists only “color recognition.” All you do is pick a card with a color on it, and move to a square of that color. And we wonder why kids spend so much time watching television. When Candyland is your alternative, there’s really no choice.
Believe in Santa
My life changed the day my grandma told me there was no such thing as Santa Claus. Yes, that’s right. My grandma. Most grandmothers probably bake cookies, watch The Price is Right, and send you twelve dollars on your birthday. Mine ruined my childhood. One time my uncle made sleigh tracks in the snow to convince my cousins and I that Santa had been there. I mean, my family really put in some work to keep us believing all those years. And then my grandma proceeded to tear down the foundation on which my life was built. Horrifying.
Beg your parents for money
At this point in our lives, it’s almost pathetic when we ask our parents for money. The primary reason for this is because they know we’re just going to spend any funds they give us on alcohol anyway. Right before I came back to college after Christmas, my dad gave me one hundred dollars as some “spending money.” He knows it’s going towards beer, I know it’s going towards beer. I guess that was a holiday exception or something, but that’s not going to happen very often. I remember when I was younger I would get like five dollars for every “A” on my report card. You can’t really do that now. It’s hard to ask for money for good grades when your parents are paying like $5,000 a quarter for you to get those same good grades.
Beat the shit out of each other
I don’t know if this is normal, but my friends used to come over and we would have like a mini-UFC tournament. We would literally just annihilate each other. My little sister had a toy kitchen, and I would always hide the fake, plastic loaf of bread in the fake oven. During the fight, I would pull that out and use it as a weapon. At that age, no one is risking injury because everyone is the same size. If my friends and I did this now, we’re looking at broken bones, lawsuits, and jail-time.
Ride a bike
My bike used to be my life. My friends and I would have races around the neighborhood, and they were cutthroat; if I came in second, I would be pissed for weeks. And sometimes I would put playing cards in the spokes and think I was a badass. But after awhile, I started to realize cars were invented for a reason. Last summer my mom and I were going to go somewhere relatively close and she asked me if I wanted to bike there. I thought, “Well, I could either spend a ton of time riding an uncomfortable apparatus that would cause me scrotal pain, or I could get into a vehicle and be there in a fraction of the time.” I always laugh when I see those middle-age people that are really into biking. They always look at you like, “What are you staring at? I’m just 45-year-old man wearing skin-tight clothing riding a toy made for eleven-year-olds.” Unless you’re Lance Armstrong, riding a bike should be banned for anyone over the age of sixteen.
Take a bath
A bath used to be the primary way of getting clean. After you’re introduced to showers, the world is a different place. You could either spend fifteen minutes taking a shower, or you could spent that much time just preparing the water for a bath. Taking a bath is a lot like masturbating. At the outset, it sounds like a good, relaxing idea. There might be candles or lotion involved. But when it’s concluded, you feel disgusting. You’re essentially sitting in a tepid pool of your own filth. Personal story: when the fifth Harry Potter came out, I bought it the first day and decided to read it while taking a bath. Five minutes and about eight pages in, I dropped it in the water, ruining it, and forcing me to go back to the store to buy a new copy. So thanks, bath.
Wear light-up shoes
Let’s just all admit this: if light-up shoes came in adult sizes, we’d all still be wearing them. Those shoes with the roller skates in them? No, those were gay. But light-up shoes? Just as the number of wives you had was a symbol of power in the fourteenth century, light-up shoes showed you were a god among seven-year-olds. If this country wants an economic stimulus, make these shoes available in bigger sizes. Not only would millions of dollars be poured into the economy, but the sight of flashing lights everywhere would rescue us from our seemingly nationwide depressed state. Hundreds of years from now, scholars will look back and say, “That New Deal thing was alright, but light-up shoes saved the United States of America. May God bless Sketchers.”
im going to go ahead and disagree with you on the bike statement. your in college, you can ride a bike. I do everywhere i go, and you know what, its really fun!!! everything else though… brilliant!
My family didn’t even bother pretending there was a Santa. So I told the little bitch across the street that he didn’t exist. You have no idea how much I enjoyed destroying her childhood. That’s what she got for crashing my 8th birthday party and trying to convince my friends to go play at her house.
Oh, and a lot of my guy friends still beat the shit out of each other every weekend. Of course, they are usually drunk. And one of them might have gotten a concussion (I told him I would stay with him all night and keep him awake so he wouldn’t slip into a coma. He spent probably 10 minutes convincing me he would be ok before I called him a dumbass. Seriously, and he wonders why he can never pick up girls.)
Oh, and I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I still play hide-and-seek.
I don’t feel dirty after masturbation. I feel sleepy and want to be single again
UMMM…. I’ve been Mountain Biking for years… It is significantly more fun than farting around my neighborhood on a Huffy when I was a kid (the playing card in the spokes was pretty bad-ass though). Some of the stuff my friends and I do is borderline maniac/suicidal and fun as hell. I have to agree that it would be mildly lame as a form of transportation… unless I lived on and Island or something.
“Taking a bath is a lot like masturbating. At the outset, it sounds like a good, relaxing idea. There might be candles or lotion involved. But when it’s concluded, you feel disgusting.”
Speak for yourself on that one, champ!
I don’t feel “disgusting” after masturbating!!!
Sleepy, YES!
Satisfied, YES!
But disgusting?
HELL NO!
And I never liked baths – showers make me feel a lot cleaner, and they’re much faster and more efficient.
Oh man, when I was little four-square was the shit. I remember this one move called black magic, where you focused your eyes on one person to make them thing you were about to pass to them and then, BAM!- slam it to another person, who would dive for it in helpless futile shock.
I have seriously resolved to get my friends to start a tournament.
’cause me scrotal pain’
Hell I agree with that part.
Though it may be prevented if you are taking the ride as often as you can. It’ll be some kinda exercise to make your “…” stronger and, therefore, no such pain will exist no more…
*lol :razz:
I make my living remembering episodes from my childhood. Choosing the pleasant recollections is oftentimes difficult, but here goes:
1)Playing with my Britons (UK toys); these were just the coolest, hand painted Knights and Vikings a kid could ever want and I had hundreds of them. Back in the sixties, mind you, one warrior on horseback was 3 bucks. That was a lot of dough and I saved every penny I could.
2)Getting soaking wet on a hot, HOT summer’s day at an illegally opened “Johnny Pump” (what we called a fire hydrant, then lying on parked cars to dry out so I wouldn’t get into trouble.
3) Flying kites off of the apartment building’s roof. It was safe and no one stole the damn kite either. In Brooklyn, being beaten or having your things stolen was a constant headache- to say the least.
4)cutting school and carting my father’s huge, monstrous typewriter into my room where I would lie on the floor and write adventure yarns(because that’s where my record player was, of course). Alas, the tales have all gone the way of the Dodo, but it was great fun for a lonely kid.
5)A bit older still- riding my bike all around our new, Wantagh Long Island home, late at night with a powerful pair of binoculars. Let’s just say if I did that today I’d get arrested for voyeurism (and my wife would kick my ass to boot). But damn, for a kid going through puberty it was gangs of fun.
6)Comics: Marvel, DC, it didn’t matter, I was hooked. My favorites were, among others, Daredevil, Batman, Dr. Strange,and my all time favorite, Conan. Comics are way too expensive these days and meeting the mortgage payments are hard enough.
7)Riding the Long Island Railroad into the city and back, just for the thrill of travel. I became a travel junky, a wanderer at a very early age. Once again, too expensive these days.
8)Convincing myself- on almost a daily basis- that I mattered and shouldn’t kill myself, even though I never really believed at the time that I did matter at all. Now I know that I do and so do many others who love me far more than my own family EVER did.
Christopher A. Lay author of, “Brooklyn Heat Lasts Forever”
Please refrain from advertising your shit on my blog. And maybe you should rethink number eight because your “anecdotes” were about as entertaining as watching paint dry while at the same time reading a book on the history of topography.
It’s your show, of course, but that’s a little harsh. I know that it’s considered rude to advertise on another person’s blog without permission, but I also know Chris (though we are not friends, or even friendly) and doubt he does.
As to the entertainment value of his comments, YMMV of course, but I find it difficult to see how his thoughts merited such condemnation and the preceding no comment at all.
Mr. Johnson-
Sir, I found this commentary page quite by accident when I opted to make my comments on March 9th of this year. In response to your vehement and unnecessary bashing, I can assure you I meant nothing by mentioning my credentials. I was honored to read the defense of Mr. Beatty whom I do indeed know well and he was quite correct in his surmises. Having little or nothing to do with blogs, tweets and the like I lapses nostalgic in a moment of weakness which i now quite regret. Nevertheless, I am honored by your defense of me and my work, Mark.
That being said, As for your attacks, well Sir, all I can suggest is had you lived my life and survived what I have (including a gang rape, brutal beatings and total eviction onto the street when still only a child to survive by my wits until eligable to enlist in the Marine Corps) perhaps you would not have been so vicious as to state my more pleasant memories were little better than drying paint. I thought I had followed the instructions of your blog- which I stumbled upon while looking for a review of my book- however even if I failed to do so your response was baseless and cruel. Let me suggest, Sir, that you research and know a bit more about your subjects of critique before launching an unwarranted attack on someone who found your site charming and which brought back memories which I now regret sharing at all. I feel sorry for you, actually. You truly have no idea what you are talking about.
Chris Lay
Gang rapes? Brutal beatings? Please, whose childhood didn’t include such things? Seriously, though, I can’t give any less of a shit about your life story. So please stop telling me it.
As previously stated, I feel very sorry for you as you are obviously a very sad and angry person. I can’t help but wonder what terrible happenstances in your own life cause you to be so bitter and resentful of those others who can deal appropriately with adversity. I wish you well and can assure you I won’t bother trying to understand your sorrowful state of affairs any further. It simply isn’t worth the time, effort or respectful inclination towards helping someone in obvious pain. As a teacher of mine once said, “you can offer a gift but cannot force it to be accepted.” Be well, take care…
What happenstances, you ask? At the age of four, I was orphaned into a crack-cocaine dealing family on the South Side of Chicago. They performed experiments on me, including inserting the coke directly into my anus in order to see if it would enter the bloodstream faster. As I got older, I was forced to become a dealer. I would offer 2-for-1 deals where the buyer would get both the crack and fellatio. The other kids began to call me “Phallus BlowJobinson.” At fifteen, I became a male prostitute. My first client was a gentleman by the name of Big Willie. The quote you offered above was proven false, because Big Willie did offer me a gift (his penis), and he forced me to accept it. I acted like I enjoyed the experience so I could get a better tip, but deep, deep inside, I was crying.
So, as you can clearly see, Mr. Lay, your hardships are nothing compared to the atrocity that was my childhood. I expect, nay, demand an apology.
A sad tale indeed. You have my sympathies.
I must say, however, that there are few things I find more irritating than someone with a sad past bruiting it about as though anyone else (other than those who harmed them) owes them something for it. It’s even worse when said individual actually believes that their special issues give them license to belittle other people’s traumas.
As anyone with even a nodding understanding of therapy knows, emotional trauma is highly individual. People are frequently driven to breakdowns, suicide, etc by traumas that others consider trivial indeed. It’s all about who you are and what’s inside your head.
I’m not in any way suggesting that your own experiences are trivial to me. It’s a horrific story and I admire you for surviving it in any form. If you’ve published it, I’d be interested in reading it; if not, I think you should.
Nor will I engage in ‘dick measuring’ over traumas, as my life has been a paradise compared to the way both you and Chris describe yours. About the worst thing that ever happened to me was having people who’s professed core beliefs helped shape my own turn out to be hypocrites who didn’t believe in their philosophies nearly as much as I did…
I do, however, suggest that you should treat others with the respect and regard you seem to feel you deserve.
Atlas, this is your blog, but you should show some remorse for the way you treated poor Christopher A. Lay. This man stumbled upon your site while he was on a search for the cure to his “writer’s block”. He no longer could think of anything original to write so he typed “Things you did as a kid” in google in a niggardly attempt to steal a few of your ideas (It is the first item to pop-up btw). You should be honored that an author as well known as Christopher A. Lay, would even consider stealing your ideas.
Past the point of the idea stealing; Chris was fucking gang-raped, Atlas, most gay people would pay oodles of dollars for an experience like that. I’m not insinuating that Chris did so but….. My question is why would Chris revisit this site? Writing a sequal?
PS: The book looks like a piece of shit, Chris. You’re making a living off of that?