I Went To Random Mentality And All I Got Was This Lousy Meme

Kris at Random nailed me with a meme. Now, there is a lot of stuff going along with it that feels awfully chainletterish (she her original post here), so I’m going to skip that. But I will go for the basic premise. Which is:

Five Things I Miss From My Childhood

Some caveats. I’m not feeling particularly loquacious lately, so this may be brief. I’ve got those “moving soon and damn hot and life bites and everything falls down at once on you” blues. Second, I’m not generally into the looking back thing. I’d much rather look forward. Not that my past is bad, by any means. Quite the contrary. But that my past is always with me, singing harmony. It is fully a part of me, so I don’t feel the need to look back at it.

What I didn’t include: I thought about including discovery, that feeling that everything is new and exciting. But I don’t miss that – for one thing, I still experience it, still am open to it. For another, having a two and a half year old lets you re-experience it. You can feel again the joy of seeing a train pass, or ducks, or putting a stack of blocks together. And I thought about saying a sense of wonder, but I try to approach my world that way anyway, reveling in the things God gave us, enjoying the small and large gifts. And I seriously considered freedom, lack of obligations, at least the sort that tie adults up in knots. Being able to roam, explore, feeling unfettered and alive. Nobody calling me up for favors. No one’s future to decide. That sort of thing. But I spent most of my adult life with that kind of freedom, and freedom has it’s own constraints. So I’ll stick with specific things, not concepts.

So with that in mind, the list.

1. My dad. I really don’t feel I need to go any farther down the list than that, though I will. But damn, just saying that is enough to make the tears well up a little. So, I’m not going to talk further about my dad, except to say that few days go by when I don’t think of him or miss him or wish I could talk to him about something. I’ll add my pet theory as well – men don’t truly grow up until their father passes away. Doesn’t matter how old they are, or if they have families of their own, or what they’ve gone through. As long as a man’s father is alive, he isn’t completely grown up – it’s that passing that takes you the last step, that makes you realize that there is no longer any man more significant in your life than yourself.

2. Knot hole games at Kinnick Stadium. Back when the Hawks were bad, bad, bad, and before the first stadium remodel, kids could get in free with their parents. You had to sit in the end zone bleachers, but you could run around and watch the game and generally have a great time.

3. Cheap gas. Gas was $.42 a gallon when I started driving, and didn’t reach the $1 a gallon spot for a looooooooooonnnnnnnggggggggg time. We would get in the car on a Friday night and drive, drive, drive, just seeing what there was.

4. Going to grandpa and grandma’s farm for a week every summer. Driving a tractor, annoying livestock, playing in the barns. Going into town to the A&W for a frosty mug of root beer. Seeing my cousins, hanging out with them.

5. Sleeping in the car. I used to love the feeling of sitting in the car, coming back from a relative’s house, and falling asleep to the rhythm of the road.

So there’s my list. Now, the chain letter parts involve me acknowledging where this thing has come from and challenging others to do it. Not going to do that. But I will ask any of my faithful readers if they want to take this up and do a post. So, do any of my faithful readers want to take this up and do a post?