A.k.a. Things Worth Remembering
This article starts with a George Carlin bit.
George Carlin maintained that every kid should be able to pop his cheek.
If you wanted to know if someone was a kid you popped his cheek.
In one of his live performances he has everyone in the audience pop their cheek simultaneously.
It is a glorious sound.
I'm sure kids still do this, but I'm also sure they do it less and less as time goes by.
I haven't seen a kid turn his eyelids inside out in a looong time.
When I grew up I left many a childhood thing behind.
Now that I have kids I have to remember these things for my kids so that they'll have a chance to experience them before they are gone or disappear or simply because they are not readily available and it takes some effort to do or find them.
Board games
I first focused on getting the stuff I had as a kid, but in my research I found a lot of stuff I never had, or even new stuff that beats the pants off anything I might have had.
No more Monopoly and Candyland for my kids, they are playing Fireball Island, Heroscape, HeroQuest, Ticket To Ride and Settlers Of Catan, among others.
Kids nowadays have way better toys than we ever had, and yet they are missing basic experiences.
A robot that can do everything is a very cool thing, but you can't do much with it.
These are some of the other things that take a little more effort to locate, things you took for granted or things you have forgotten.
The Saturday Matinee.
One of the first things I did was get books, record music and movies for them.
Our kid library has pretty much everything worth having, since I try to focus on quality more than completeness.
It takes a while to remember all those obscure cool movies you saw as a kid.
The Ol' Swimmin' Hole.
Yeah, I actually went skinny dipping in the ol' swimmin' hole, and while nowadays it might be hard to find, there are still regional parks and nature centers where you can be close to nature.
No more frog huntin' since they are disappearing from our landscape, but at least you can see some, and maybe take digital photos to take home.
The particular ol' swimmin' hole was developed many a year ago.
Currently we live right next to Otay Regional Park, and while you can't really swim there, you can certainly wade, see cranes, lizards, frogs, crawdads, and even tiny fish!
Springtime the whole place fills with the daisy-like Sea Lion flower.
Dry Ice
We used to get dry ice from the ice cream man all the time. A nickel or a dime got you a nice sized chunk. You might even get some for free, if you asked nicely.
Every kid should have a chance to play and experiment with dry ice. A recent mail order of steaks took care of this. They kids didn't know what the heck they were looking at. AMAZING!
The dining room turned into Mona Lisa's crypt for about an hour or so while the kids and I melted a pound an a half of dry ice.
Not a suitable replacement: A few times as kids we got a hold of mercury from those old industrial lamp bulbs.
When we moved out of an apartment to live in my parents' house we actually did not have electricity for a little while (the house was still under construction,) we used and old honest-to-goodness wood and metalicebox that my dad musta gotten from my grampa.
That is an experience.
Atari
Atari 2600 games are still good, even if you have to play 'em with an emulator in your home PC.
I'll betcha anything a kid could still have fun with a PONG, if you can ever find one and make it work.
Mairzy Doats
Amaze your kids with the Mairzy Doats song! I decided to read the kids a story at bedtime, they liked it so much that I had my wife read them a story too (Peter Rabbit!)
Somehow Mairzy Doats came into my mind during the story and I taught it to them right after.
Of course they went to school the next day, and none of their friends knew what they were singing.
Some are still baffled.
Firecrackers
Sad to see them go, but they are probably illegal in whichever state you live in.
NO suitable replacement either. Noisemakers or virtual explosions are no substitute for hands on experience. The closest is probably your local radio station sky show, or maybe a theme park.
5 minutes to the South of where we live, in Mexico, fireworks are still perfectly legal.
Santa's Village (or any other suitable local tourist trap.)
My vague recollection of Santa's Village is that of a magical place hiding in the mists of my early childhood memories.
Sadly it closed before my kids were born.
Other lost attractions: Lion Country Safari, Movieland Wax Museum, Belmont Park (still there, but much changed,) & the Japanese Village.
There is a wax museum in Tijuana, and fortunately lots of other theme parks still around.
Parlor Tricks
Remember doing that "light as a feather" trick where you lift someone using only 6 fingers?
List your own favorite parlor trick!
Create Your Own Adventure
Basic interactivity.
I got the kids some of those Create your own Adventure Books from a thrift store. They loved them!
Comics
Getting, trading and reading comics is not what it once was. I would get 10-25 cent comics, read them, sell them back to the comic book store, then buy more!
Comics are now so respectable: Graphic Novels, Sequential Art, Manga, Comix. They are an industry. But by this very same reason you can get the old classics in very nice collections: Donald, Peanuts, Hot Stuff, Little Lulu, Popeye for a very reasonable cost, probably cheaper that what you paid originally!
Drive In Theaters
Sunday Family Dinners
The Circus
Climbing trees
Playing with Army Men
Baseball in the Sand Lot
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