Things ya used to do as a youngun

I had a bunch of Hot Wheels track as a kid—but not like a racetrack, just a regular road, with a dashed line down the middle. I used to build elaborate setups (ok, I just built each one like it showed on the box and connected them with spare pieces) and put little road signs around each one.

For the "expressway" (which, like the rest of it, was just a two-lane road, but hey, imagination), I would bend drinking straws to make little overhead sign gantries that I could tape freeway signs to. For roadside signs, I would just cut out little pieces of paper and fold them over so they could stand up.

I also found Lego bricks made good Jersey barriers for those ongoing road construction projects.

Used to make forts out of bed sheets, couch cushions, and pillows. If only I was smaller I could still do that to some extent.

I used to do that, too!

It helped that my sister and I had a bunk bed, too.

When I was a child, my parents' computer had this software called Microsoft Greetings Card Workshop. It was supposed to be a program for designing, well, greeting cards, but it had a bunch of other templates, too, for signs and flyers and award certificates.

I used to use the blank templates to design little "magazines" and things. But I didn't really care about the "content" of the magazines—I think at least one of them had articles of just "Lorem ipsum"—I wanted to do the layout and the design.

They were hideous, of course, but hey, I was 7.

I had classical books and not much computer in those days, (Microsoft 95) and most of the kids were obsessed with Disney and Pokemon so I started to trade cards and I played my first computer game, Pokemon Blue with my Squirtle (Waterema) Persian (Sanpayer) and Raichu (Thunderr) and there was no Digital TV, so I watched Disney Movies half the time. Anime didn't really become an obsession until after Pokemon classics came out, so I was happy. I didn't care about school back then, but I remembered I loved learning most of the time, until high school. Backstreet boys and Westlife were all the rage, as well as the Simpsons

I was recently poring through some of my old stuff and found a box with ages of drawings I made (some in the margins of notes, many on their own). I can't help but smile looking at them. I've always been shitty at drawing, but I put effort into details, as in "Oh hey, maybe I could add this and it'd look more complex/realistic/alive/whatever", steadfastly ignoring the important stuff like proportions and shading and in general not sucking. Almost all of my drawings were of either blocky monsters or blocky swords-and-sorcery setting heroes, and most of them are in the act of killing each other simply because it was easier to draw people in action than at rest (because I could add more details to distract from the complete lack of talent or skill, and because I have no mental idea of what a person's pose who's just standing around looks like). And the pages I found appeared to be about 95% inspired by warhammer figures (Not stuff I owned, I looked at pictures of them on the internet because they look cool and all have fascinating little touches). A few were huge full-page scenes with a whole bunch of one thing fighting a whole bunch of another (humans vs giant snakes, humans vs merfolk, ok one side was always humans and they were usually both dishing it out equally well).

Mixed in to make me look bad were a couple drawings by my best friend at the time who WAS good at drawing. Mixed in to make me laugh uproariously were the plans we had for making a computer RPG, which basically consisted of us brainstorming monsters. Because clearly that's the most important part. Also also were the remnants of a dnd game we tried to run but only met up for like twice, including some monsters I came up with on my own who all demonstrated clearly that I was pants-wettingly afraid of actually providing a challenge or, heaven forbid, killing the P Cs (all things with a gimmick that would maybe be interesting except I gave them stats on par with a goblin and then said they come in groups of 1-3). After reviewing it all one last time for the memories I threw it all away, because I was on a "throw stuff away" spree in preparation for moving to an apartment. Maybe I shouldn't have.

Another thing I know I did, though not in that box, was draw out levels I imagined for videogames. I specifically remember one huge thing where I taped together four sheets of paper to draw a mammoth level for the game Monster Bash (which I never actually bought the full version of). I think me drawing was always less about art and more about letting out creative energy.

I used to:

Draw, go hiking and camping, climb the occasional tree (cherry trees are particuarly nice and easy), make shotgun shell lint bombs, tabletop Roleplay, and make fishing lures.

I used to run around my yard jumping all the young (not much bigger than sapling) trees for exercise.

I also caught bugs to be my "pokemon".

I used to kick a soccer ball against the back of the house too.

And I always went around barefooted. Somehow children don't feel cold like adults.

When I was ten, I used to slide down the banister in my house using only my feet, a la Sonic. It seemed awesome at the time, but a close scrape where I came close to busting my head open on the radiator at the base of the stairs pretty much put a stop to that.

There's a tree I walk past every day at uni, and recently it's become covered in bugs. To be precise, harlequin beetles.

I realised that I know a lot about that particular species of bug, because I used to watch them all the time when they infested the cottonwood trees in our backyard. I spent a lot of time watching them, counting them, wondering why all the babies were blue but then the adult females were orange, watching mother beetles guarding their rows of pale pink eggs.

I used to climb those cottonwood trees all the time and pretend to be a bird. Or shipwrecked people living in a treehouse.

At the old apartments I lived in you could easily reach the roof via the windows in rooms. I and my friends would travel around the complex on the roofs, hopping from roof to roof and going through windows. I would climb on trees as well to get around.

No one seemed to much care.

Play in the woods outback. Chase the cat inside to keep the Great Horned owls from eating him. Monthly camping with my scout troop. Shoot soda cans with my bb/pellet rifle. Play soldier with real Korean Era Flak vests, metal helmets, and decommisioned gas masks. Being the child of a military family had it's perks.

Lots of things. Me and my brother would often play with GI Joes and Hotwheels cars, wrestle in the backyard, ride bikes and in my case get injured attempting crazy stunts. We'd also explore in the woods and stuff out back. We didn't have Nintendo until we were about 9 and 10 and we didn't get cable TV until the year after s we really didn't watch a lot of TV.

During the summers our parents would be at work during the day so we'd stay at our uncle's house and help him work on his car and watch trains out back since him and our aunt lived near the railroad tracks.

We'd play 'dionosaurs'. My older sister would be the T rex, and my younger sister and I would have to protect our eggs in our nest. Those eggs were the biggest rocks we could find. We often got yelled at when dad was mowing the lawn later and ran over a 'nest'.

We also played cops and robbers on our bikes, and jump the ditch that ran around our court.

We used to put on our rainboots and walk upstream the river (a very shallow river!)

Growing up in the countryside was crazy when I think back on it... you would disappear outside all day until dinnertime and your parents never batted an eyelid. I guess freedom to roam is one advantage over growing-up in a metropolis.