Dumb Kwestion #33

Back by popular demand it's another foolish query, a pointless ponder, an inane interrogation!  (really someone did ask me to post another one).  So to make at least one person happy, here is Dumb Kwestion #33!


What is your favorite childhood memory?

Don't think too hard (remember it is a dumb kwestion), just whatever comes off the top of your head.

This one is pretty big for me. So many but this one is the best. I was very young but remember it vividly. I was around 4 years old. It had just rained very hard and our front ditch was full of water over my head. I was on a tricycle. I got too close to the ditch and fell in with the tricycle on top of me. I saw a bright light. Blinding light. Then I saw a figure in white and I could not see the face because of the bright light. An arm reached down and pulled me out of the water. I ran to the front door and started banging. My brother (who was about 24 at the time - I have 4 older brothers) saw me and asked what happened. I said I fell into the ditch and Jesus pulled me out. After he made sure I was ok he went looking for my tricycle was was submerged under the water. 

Thanks for reminding me of this event sometimes I have to think about it to realize how important God is in my life. Life gets in the way and I am easily distracted these days so this was a good thought for me to have. I am very lucky to be here today. God's not done w me yet. As I look back it was probably an angel.

Awesome story!  Thanks for sharing.

So many childhood memories that were great.  The one that comes right to mind was when my older brother and his friends set up our Slip and Slide to run down our little in in the yard.  Then they found a large piece of plastic to extend the range of the slide about 8 more feet.  After that they found a short piece of linoleum to put at the end.  Not only did we have a long slide, but when we hit that linoleum we took off like a shot!  It was like a power boost.  Fun day!

I think mine has to be when I broke my elbow. I know that sounds weird but here's why.

I was 6 and fell off our back porch. When it happened, it was really the first time I saw my parents kick it into overdrive to care for me - not that they were bad parents, but this incident made me realize how much they love me. My mom put me in the truck and my dad called the Highway Patrol to tell him we were driving the 2 hours to the nearest big hospital in a hurry.

Secondary cool part - when we got on the highway, there was a trooper watching for my dad's truck and he escorted us with lights on to the hospital.

I've a lot of good childhood memories.

The vacations we spent in the small house  behind the house of my grandparents.
They lived in a small village near the sea.
Every morning we went to the house of opa and oma and have eaten biscuits with sprinklers.
The awesome things we did with our uncles and aunts and cousins.

So between Mike and Ish you guys have already answered the next dumb kwestion which was going to be what is your worst childhood memory. 

Mike wrote:

Thanks for reminding me of this event sometimes I have to think about it to realize how important God is in my life. Life gets in the way and I am easily distracted these days so this was a good thought for me to have. I am very lucky to be here today. God's not done w me yet. As I look back it was probably an angel.

Wow, what an amazing story, you set the bar pretty high there from the rest of us.

Xid wrote:

Then they found a large piece of plastic to extend the range of the slide about 8 more feet.  After that they found a short piece of linoleum to put at the end.  Not only did we have a long slide, but when we hit that linoleum we took off like a shot!  It was like a power boost.  Fun day!

Sounds like one of those fun days that could just have easily ended with a trip to the emergency room for somebody.  I've had a couple of those.   

Ishmael wrote:

I was 6 and fell off our back porch. When it happened, it was really the first time I saw my parents kick it into overdrive to care for me - not that they were bad parents, but this incident made me realize how much they love me. My mom put me in the truck and my dad called the Highway Patrol to tell him we were driving the 2 hours to the nearest big hospital in a hurry.

Dang two hours with a broken arm, and still it was one of your best memories?  That's a great attitude right there. 

RockerVu2 wrote:

The vacations we spent in the small house  behind the house of my grandparents.
They lived in a small village near the sea.
Every morning we went to the house of opa and oma and have eaten biscuits with sprinklers. 
The awesome things we did with our uncles and aunts and cousins.

My grandparents lived on a farm for several years, they had chickens, cows, and grew alfalfa.  I have really fond memories of visiting them.  They didn't even have a television, and I still had a great time every time I visited them.

Another fun memory was probably 1978 or so. We lived in Michigan. On Christmas Eve we could open one present and I opened this:



Basically it was a flashlight with an inflatable plastic (like a floatation device used in pools). It would slide over the end of the flashlight and you turned it on and it would light up. The problem was is that since it was inflatable whenever you hit something it would "wrap around" whatever you hit. I remember we put it together then went outside. It was snowing. My brother and I went and walked down the street a few houses down just to enjoy the snow and see the lightsaber in the dark. Was a lot of fun. I guess I was about 7 so he would have been about 14 (as I mentioned in my previous post I have 4 older brothers).

Playing with Legos for countless hours. It developed me into the person I am.

^We have so much in common.

Driven wrote:

Playing with Legos for countless hours. It developed me into the person I am.

I love legos....still have a few castle themed sets that I collected as a young adult.

I love lego too.  Played with that for ages.  Fortunately my son loves it (less so now, but he still plays with it now and again), and he has an AT AT walker, which was great to build!

I also enjoyed going out birdwatching with my dad. We still usually go once or twice whenever I go to my parents', but there was something special about spending hours on end with my dad in his late-80s Toyota. It had a tape deck, so we had on rotation tapes like Daniel Band's first two albums, The Clash's Sandinista! and London calling, the Québecois prog rock band Morse Code's greatest hits, and so on. That developed my music taste.

I guess it's the little things I spent hours doing that I remember most fondly. Most major events in my early life were bittersweet. I don't have contact with any of my childhood friends anymore, we were just too different. When playing with Legos or reading, I was often lonely.

When I was in the 4th or 5th grade I remember going to Oktoberfest in Munich with my parents.  It was a huge celebration (mostly about beer).  But it was like being at the largest county fair you've ever seen.  They a ton of rides and games, along with food and shops to buy souvenirs.  They also had several large beer tents.  The beer tents were large tents that held several hundred people.  There were long tables with benches and usually a stage at one end with a band.  Most adults sat in the beer tents and just drank beer for hours.  I ran around the rest of the grounds riding anything I wanted and eating junk food, and buying garbage.  Occasionally I would run out of money and head to the beer tent where my parents were getting blitzed to ply them for more money.  After they had been in the beer tent for about an hour I could usually talk them into letting me get just about whatever I wanted.

You couldn't get away with something like that today, but back in the mid 70's it was the norm, and I remember having an absolute blast.

I went to Oktoberfest once too. Weirdly (cause it's a German festival), the Irish Rovers were playing. I remember thinking, "Wow, the grownups are listening to my kind of music...these guys are singing about lollipops and unicorns. Nice memory. Thanks for reminding me of it.

I think my favourite childhood memory would be working in the garden and shed with my Dad. He passed away in 2011 so those sorts of everyday memories have come to be my most precious ones. I used to follow my Dad around like his shadow. He taught me about plants and soil and about building things (gave me my first hammer when I was 4 -- I still have it and still use it -- it's precious). We lined the basement walls together, built furniture, painted the house, made a snoopy dog house for our wee pooch, and he taught me to build a camp fire. Now that I'm older, all that sounds a lot like work to me but at the time it was all about learning from my dad and enjoying his company.

Oh, and lego. We played lego (and mechano) too.   

Mine is gonna sound very redneck, white trash-ish... Haha ! But it would have to be going to our local landfill 
I'm serious !  And here are the reasons:

We would go in my Dad's '71 GMC pickup that he modified by removing the bed and reattaching it complete with a hydraulic lift, making it a fully functional dump truck.

Going there, we would listen to my oldest brother's tapes - Genesis, Pink Floyd, Ted Nugent, Van Halen, Wings, Fleetwood Mac, etc. That alone created some cool memories.

Once we got there, my Dad would back it in and clear out the bed while me and my brothers would go on a scavenger hunt to find good items people threw away. And yes, people threw away LOTS of nice things ! We'd come home with some very cool items for free. (Not only did I find a lot of great toys in those days, but once I found a $5 dollar bill !!! Obviously not purposely thrown out)

On the way back, we got to ride in the bed of the truck and stick our heads over the cab like dogs in the wind ! Sometimes when we got home, my Dad would "dump" us out 

Unfortunately by the time I was a pre-teen, the county made a rule so people could no longer dig in the dump. Kids had to stay in the cars. Lawyers have to mess everything up.

Oh, course they had to make a few more rules a little later when they found a dead body in our local dump 

Ahhh, good times....

Guilty/Forgiven wrote:

Oh, course they had to make a few more rules a little later when they found a dead body in our local dump 

Ahhh, good times....

There's nothing quite like finding a dead body at the dump.

Xid wrote:

Guilty/Forgiven wrote:

Oh, course they had to make a few more rules a little later when they found a dead body in our local dump 

Ahhh, good times....

There's nothing quite like finding a dead body at the dump.

Nowadays I'm sure you could find plenty of used drug needles at the dump as well.

The story was all over our newspapers - Woman finds body in local dump !

They said she saw a boot sticking out of the piles and went over to pull it out, only to find it was attached to a murder victim !  Gotta love our desert 

Ah well, since you said "childhood memory" my mind went waaaaaay back to my early childhood. I can even tell you when it was, Christmas 1976 or 77. I remember this as it was the only time we went back to Iowa for a family reunion at Christmas time and I was in the 1st grade.

Me and my cousins had all kinds of fun but the one thing that sticks out and remember the most was this.Since it was Christmas,that meant snow...lots of it. We got bundled up and then went outside,grabbed a sled, and went to the hill. We all took turns sliding down the hill and the only thing that stopped us was either running into some bushes or a tree. That some awesome fun.

Hardkore wrote:

Ah well, since you said "childhood memory" my mind went waaaaaay back to my early childhood. I can even tell you when it was, Christmas 1976 or 77. I remember this as it was the only time we went back to Iowa for a family reunion at Christmas time and I was in the 1st grade.

Me and my cousins had all kinds of fun but the one thing that sticks out and remember the most was this.Since it was Christmas,that meant snow...lots of it. We got bundled up and then went outside,grabbed a sled, and went to the hill. We all took turns sliding down the hill and the only thing that stopped us was either running into some bushes or a tree. That some awesome fun.

Snow as a kid was a lot of fun. I was born in Michigan but we moved to Tennessee in 1980. As a young child I thought everyone had a white Christmas because there was always snow on the ground. In fact I remember many white Thanksgivings as well. Had a lot of snow in East Tennessee too but once we moved there I was suprised that school would get called off with an inch of snow on the ground. They never cancelled school for snow in Michigan, NEVER. I even remember my dad saying "there is no way school has been cancelled for an inch of snow" and he dropped me off on the way to work. I had to sit for hours waiting for someone to pick me up and bring me home (this would have been 4th grade, my first year in TN).

We (my parents & I) moved down here when I wasn't even 2 yet, so that was the only time I have ever really seen serious snow. It has snowed here a couple of times but was gone the next day. I would love to go back for Christmas but my job doesn't allow vacation time during the holidays.

I grew up in several places, but mostly Colorado, Germany, and Western Washington State.  Got a substantial amount of snow in Colorado and even in Germany.  But not a bunch in Western Washington.  Since my kids grew up in W. Washington we would try to take them up to the mountains every few years to make sure they got to play in some snow.  I kind of feel bad for kids that grew up with very little or no snow.  I spent countless frigid hours building snow forts/igloos in Colorado.

Born and raised in Southern California, but that doesn't mean we never had snow fun. Thankfully Big Bear is less than an hour from our hot desert. Done lots of skiing and sledding up in the Big Bear mountains. One such excursion we were sledding and I thought it'd be fun to veer off the tracks onto virgin snow.... BIG mistake ! I hit sharp and jagged rocks under the snow so bad that it tore a hole into my super hard plastic sled ! I couldn't sit down for a week ! 

Oh, man!  We had a lot of fun!  I remember BB gun fights, sledding down the neighbor's hills on a jagged piece of roofing tin, inner-tubing down the creek, swimming at the local swimming hole, aggravating and attempting to court the 2 girls that moved in next to us one year, taking a wild hair and just walking to Grandma's house just because I was bored at the house, being little and riding our German shepherd like a horse, learning to play my very first bass, etc.

Wow, so many....  There was the family vacation to Wisconsin Dells when I got to be a deputy and help nab the stagecoach robber.  There was the trip to Sea World (back when there was one in Ohio) where I got Batman's autograph after his ski show.  Oh yeah, Robin too.  There were all of the adventures we had in "the bottom" (the area at the foot of the hill we lived on down near the creek) and Big Rock.  It was this big...rock that had slid down the hillside on the far side of the creek at some point and stood like a wall.  It was a cool place to hang out, a vantage point to fight off the Russians, a fortification against dragons, and eventually a nice quiet place to sit with the Word.  Then there was the awesome sled path our neighbor's dad cut down to the bottom.  My clearest, most distinct memory of times down there was the time two of my friends took their BB guns (I wasn't allowed to take mine because my parents were big meanies...or maybe they just had good sense).  We were walking along the creek and saw this snake curled up on the bottom.  One of my friends (with his gun) hid behind me while our older friend was closest.  We watched it for a few minutes and decided it was probably dead because it didn't move.  Made sense to us.  So the older friend decided to find out for sure and took a shot at it.  He hit about an inch in front and it appeared to make the snake lift up and float for a second, but it didn't do anything.  He shot again, and the same thing happened.  He shot one more time and apparently hit it, because that snake uncoiled and stretched out toward us.  That was probably the fastest this little fat boy ran in his life because even though I was by far the slowest of the three of us on a normal day, I was at the top of the hill before either of them.