5 Things I Miss From My Childhood...

I've been tagged by Sgt. B / Sully / Godzilla to list the 5 things I miss from childhood. I miss ... 1) Family vacations together over summer break. We would pile into the car and drive to Lake Erie or Virginia Beach, or fly to Ft. Lauderdale and stay with the grandparents (who managed a hotel on the beach). Spending a week sharing a hotel room / cabin with my Dad was a challenge. My father could snore so loudly that he woke himself up ... so the trick was to fall asleep first! Otherwise, you were in for a long and noisy night. Since most of our vacation spots involved water in some form, we naturally spent most of the day in it ... the Atlantic, Lake Erie (before you could walk on the pollution), even the pool at our friend's cabin near Ft. Ligonier. Of course, the point was that Mom and Dad didn't have to work, and we all did things together. 2) Telling time by the streetlights instead of a clock. The house rule was that you had to come inside as soon as the streetlights came on. Being in western Pennsylvania, that was at around 9pm in the summer, and seemed to last forever as a kid. My sister and I, and the neighborhood girls, would play badmitten or dodge ball. We would catch lightning bugs in the twilight, and keep them in jars to watch them blink on and off. Heh ... one time I took a jar to bed with me, and *cough* the lid came off! What a hoot!! 3) Going to barn sales and auctions scouting for antiques with my Mom. She loved finding auction notices and looking for fun pieces to refurbish. She bought one of the coolest beds I have ever seen - then or since - when I was about 10. It was wood done in a dark finish, and had a headboard that was over 6 feet tall, which was intricately designed and carved - and a footboard around 3.5 feet tall, with a wide smooth top. I would sometimes get up on the footboard and walk back and forth as if it were a balance beam ... balancing myself with my hands on the ceiling (leaving fingerprints, of course!). To this day I still have some of the furniture that Mom refinished, although not the bed.... *sob* 4) Kid games ... like Marco Polo, Dodge Ball, Tag (real tag - not blog tag!), Kickball, etc. Made up games, too, where the rules changed to suit our whims, and the number of kids available to play. No adults required to supervise or direct us - we just played. If someone got upset, we generally worked it out by ourselves as well. 5) Dressing up for Halloween and Trick-Or-Treating in the neighborhood. We could go around the block (anybody still have blocks? with alleys?) and perform the ritual at each house - holding up our bags for treats, while the person tried to guess who we were. The times are so different today, and Halloween as an adult just doesn't intrigue me any more. The rules: Remove the #1 item from the following list, bump everyone up one place and add your blog’s name in the #5 spot. You need to actually link to each of the blogs for the link-whorage aspect of this fiendish meme to kick in. Cake Eater Chronicles MargiLowry.com Subliminalkoolaid The Gun Line Righty in a Lefty State Next, select four new players unsuspecting victims, list and link to them. John of Castle Argghhh BlogPop Graumagus of Frizzen Sparks Desultory Girl of Desultory Butterfly Key of Key Issues Have fun with it, gang! *big grin* 'Scuse me, gotta go ... running like crazy