How classic was your childhood?
 

Prison Bitch's fishing thread got me wondering. How classic was your childhood? Take the enclosed poll to find out, and then let us know how many you checked off the list.

Rules: Count only things that you did BEFORE the age of 13.

Disclaimer: I'm a guy so I don't know what girls did before the age of 13. However, I suspect there's significant overlap so hopefully this list is reasonable for people of all chromosomes.


You can summarize your childhood score here:

45 or higher - Your childhood was so American that it was actually Australian.
40 to 44 - Your childhood was classic American and not a pansy soft American. You're an American who eats steak.
35 to 39 - Your childhood was classic American, but probably from one of the coastal states
30 to 34 - Your childhood might be classic American, but more likely it was Canadian.
25 to 29 - Your childhood was more European than American, but one of the tougher central Europe states like Germany or Slovakia. Or maybe Iceland.
20 to 24 - Your childhood was probably English.
15 to 19 - Your childhood was probably French.
10 to 14 - Your childhood was probably Japanese or some other place that's fundamentally different.
9 or lower - Your childhood was probably in one of those bubbles due to an immune system failure.

What pole?

B4pole

Did someone steal the pole?

Your childhood was undoubtedly full of taking pole.

WHERE

I grew up a 100yrds from Bugs.



.
Drops mic and walks off

The upcoming pole is obviously 3 feet long. I'm out !

We all need to neg rep prison Bitch for this shit !

Pablo is in on the big pole. His throat is getting wet

Define classic?

Barbie and Ken dolls? Dollhouses? My Little Pony? Playing house or dress-up in the basement? Playing school, doctor or Bad Lady—even Priest and doing mock communion? Tea Parties? Baking Christmas cookies?

We are talking about man things.

Get the **** back in the kitchen woman!

Yep, did all that.

Priest was a man thing.

I did plenty of man things. Actually boy things, being a Tom Boy, but still did the girl stuff too.

I remember getting really mad at my mom when she told me in the real world outside the home the men cooked and baked. I remember feeling offended by that.

My score was 21. The thing I missed most painfully was not having my own treehouse.

Well, that and sex with a hot teacher. But at that age I honestly would have preferred the treehouse.

Pretty classic I'd say. I checked off 35 of the boxes.

Bought an item from a comic book ad
Built a sand castle or other sand structure on a beach
Built a snowman
Camped in your backyard
Carried a lunch box to school
Eaten food cooked over a campfire
Fired a bb gun
Got into a bottle rocket fight
Got into a physical fight on a school playground
Had a bike wreck
Had your own treehouse
Joined the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or equivalent
Jumped off a diving board, high dive, cliff or rope swing into water
Kissed a person (on the lips) of whatever sex you now like
Lit sparklers and carried them around
Looked at ****ography
Mowed a non-relative’s lawn for money (or shoveled a non-relative’s walk for money)
Owned a science kit of some sort (chemistry, electricity, etc.)
Owned an optical science tool - telescope or microscope
Owned Legos, Lincoln Logs, or an erector set
Participated in a spelling bee
Played doctor with a person of whatever sex you now like
Played in a youth sports league
Rode a dirt bike (as the driver, not passenger)
Rode a school bus
Rode your bike to a store to buy stuff
Sold something (candy, cookies, light bulbs, etc.) as a youth fundraiser
Spent 1+ weeks at a relative’s house without your parents for no particular reason
Swam in a river or creek
Took swimming lessons
Walked to/from school on your own
Went fishing with a grandparent
Went on a road trip in a station wagon or minivan
Went to a sleepover (or hosted one)
Went to an overnight summer camp

I had more than one tree house. I loved playing in the woods building forts, and climbing trees and competing with other kids for territory—even having a sling-shot war. That is until I got hit and ran home.

39, but not from a coastal state.

More than half the people so far had a tree house. I'm feeling kind of deprived.

34

How is it that no one went to Disney World?

I checked off 28 of them. But forgot one. Cooking food over a campfire. I guess marshmallows count afterall.

My family never had the money. I went as a young adult though. 'Cuz I could pay my own way to travel down.

Now I live near it and took my daughter numerous times growing up. As well as to Universal.

That's kind of a shocker. I figured it would be much more common.

Now that I think about it, I voted no and should technically have voted yes. My parents took me when I was about 18 months old. That was cruel, though, because I remember nothing about it and they never took me again. I think they went more for themselves than me, because they were only about 22 and 24 themselves.

31.

O.M.G. That is cruel.

I went when I was 10. Also saw the ocean and went to a beach for the first time.

Two weeks after I saw Jaws in the theater. I wouldn't go out in the water past my knees. :D

You can come hang out in mine but you will need to know the secret word.


Or bring some of your dad's Playboys.

36, but not from a coastal state. (stole that)*

We had an awesome tree house 22' up the tree. They were always building in our neighborhood so building materials were easy to "acquire".:D

The tree house I had was more like a tree platform - it was there when we moved in. It was kind of cool, though.

I don't know the secret word, but I darn well knew where my dad kept the Playboys.

It was brand new when I was 13. Disneyland was way way far away. I don't think we had water parks either.

I can't imagine not seeing an ocean with a beach growing up.

Cool, you're in the club then.

Discounting the Disneyland trip when I was 18 months old, I saw my first beach at around age 24. My twenties were a decade filled with discoveries.

Being landlocked is not something I ever want to be.

When I went home on my first leave after being on my ship, my dad asked me how I liked it. I said I didn't. He asked why. I said I don't like the ocean. He said well, why'd you go in the Navy, dumbass? I replied I'M FROM MISSOURI. How would I know? LMAO

I went to Disneyworld for the first time on my honeymoon at age 21.

Only missed out on 6. You left out all kinds of good shit too :P

Oh yeah. Pile of boxes in the corner of the basement, hidden just well enough that mom wouldn't see them unless she was really looking for them. But I had no trouble locating them.

BTW RainMain your list is sexist.

"You're back! What was your favorite ride?"

"I can't answer that."

I suspected as much. What am I missing from the Y-chromosome deficient category?

Took me waaaay to long to get that one.

Some were listed a few posts back, but you did cover Girl Scouts.

With only 50 slots, I had to cut out some, such as, "Did a long hike with friends to look at a dead body beside the railroad tracks". What else did I miss?

Screw BB guns. Shot real guns should have been a question. :bang:

That's a pretty funny answer. I would be scared of being out in the deep ocean far from shore. Bunch of macho guys I know here went on one of those deep sea fishing boats and most of the time they just spilled their guts and got sick from sea sickness. I laughed.

I got into two physical fights outside not at school playground but at the town pool's sunbathing area, the other in my back yard. Both were bullies though. But at home I was would beat up my passive aggressive older sister more often—and win!

40 to 44 - Your childhood was classic American and not a pansy soft American. You're an American who eats steak. Yes, I love steak.

It will be easier to list what I didn't do than what I did.
Had sex with a hot teacher
Had your own treehouse
Went to Disneyland/Disneyworld/Epcot
Participated in a spelling bee (I may of done this but I do not recollect)
Played doctor with a person of whatever sex you now like ( Who needs to play doctor when you are already getting it?)
Served as an altar boy/girl or equivalent in a religious group
Took dance lessons
Took piano lessons ( I did play the trumpet )
Went to boarding school ( The threats were made but parents never followed through )

I am disappointed that "lit creek on fire" did not make the poll.

So far, we're 24 of 24 on snowmen. I almost didn't include that, but figured we might have some southerners in the group who never saw snow.

I think I mainly just hated being away from home, isolated, and working a crappy job for next to no pay, and being at sea was just part of the package. I never got sea sick. And the wife and I went on an Alaska cruise last year, and as much as loved Alaska it was great being back on a ship at sea. We even had some mildly rough seas one day, enough that a good portion of the passengers became ill. I was in heaven. :D

"Pitched tent in back yard, told parents we were going to 'camp' in the tent overnight but never slept because we were out terrorizing the neighborhood all night" is also conspicuously absent from the poll.

I am psychologically unable to go on a cruise. I went on a huge cruise ship to see a cousin off and just going down a few levels, I had to high tail it out of there as fast as I could. Makes me feel like I'm being buried. A smaller cruise ship off the coast where they serve dinner or a riverboat I'm fine on. I have sailed quite a bit off the New England coast, north and off Cape Cod. I am fine there too, unless the weather gets rough with deep waves. My sister and husband have a large sail boat and my brother in Maine a more modest one.

Check another one off for me. Could have also said, "Snuck out of the house to run around in the middle of the night".

Good idea, Treb. The ones I didn't do:

Never bought an item from comic book ad
Never carried lunch box to school
Naver had a crush on a babysitter (although I did see one of them naked once - she was fairly hot)
No entry in a Science Fair
No sex with a hot teacher
Never mowed non-relative's yard for money (I had a couple of yards that I did for money, but they were both relatives)
No lemonade stand
No science kit
No science tool
Never rode bike to a store (lived too far away)
Never was an altar boy
No dance lessons (and boy does it show :D )
No piano lessons
No water park
No walking to school (too far)
No station wagon/minivan road trip - just a regular car
No overnight summer camp - just summer day camp at the local college
No boarding school

Yep! Did that. I hear a lot of kids do this. Seems to be a rite of passage.

You would definitely not do well on a submarine.

My ship was only in truly horrible conditions a couple of times, but once it was on the 10 day crossing from Spain to Virginia, and it just went on and on and on. By the time it broke, I was part of the roughly 10% of the crew that wasn't incapacitated, and it was starting to get to me. Didn't help that there was puke, and the stench of puke, EVERYWHERE. Don't know if I would have lasted another day.

And cleaning up somebody else's puke in rolling seas is actually far worse than it sounds.

I'm pondering doing an ocean crossing on a freighter next year, and wondering how it'll go since they apparently don't have the stabilizers that cruise ships have. But I generally do pretty well on the motion stuff. When I did the ferry in Alaska it was on their roughest route and I had no problems at all. One of the people I was hanging out with had to bail out and fly home due to seasickness.

Cleaning up puke makes me puke or retch. Oh, that sounds horrible. I would never survive that and certainly not be able to ever go on submarine.

Generally it's the size and displacement of the ship, and in the case of a cargo ship, whether it's loaded or not, that determine how it rides. My ship was a 581 feet cargo ship, so it was pretty big, and when fully loaded, it rode very well. When it was empty, though (like the puke fest I described earlier) it was a different story. But smaller ships, like destroyers and frigates, had it far worse. Riding on one of those in some of seas I went through would be brutal. I'm told you get used to it, but we had some guys on my ship who would get sick in calm seas and stayed sick. You never know until you do it. And it's not like you can take the Navy out for a test drive beforehand.

But on a big ocean freighter, more likely than not you'll be fine.

This is all it takes to have a decent childhood? I did virtually ****all compared to most of my friends, because: 1. I didn't live in town, and by 6 I was doing a lot of work on the farm, and by 10 it was every day during the summer.

-Built a snowman
-Camped in your backyard
-Carried a lunch box to school
-Eaten food cooked over a campfire
-Fired a bb gun
-Got into a bottle rocket fight - I'm not sure it was before 13, but it was close
-Got into a physical fight on a school playground
-Had a bike wreck
-Had a line in a school play
-Had your own treehouse
-Joined the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or equivalent
-Jumped off a diving board, high dive, cliff or rope swing into water
-Lit sparklers and carried them around
-Looked at pornography
-I did mow lawns for money, but by 10 I was working every day in the summer. Some of that was mowing.
-Owned Legos, Lincoln Logs, or an erector set
-Participated in a spelling bee
-Played in a youth sports league
-Rode a school bus
-Sold something (candy, cookies, light bulbs, etc.) as a youth fundraiser
-Took swimming lessons
-Visited a water park
-Went to a sleepover (or hosted one)
-Went to an overnight summer camp

EDIT: So 24 I guess.

Takes a special breed to do sub service. They go through all kinds of psychological testing before getting approved, and even then, occasionally some of them still freak out. And they stay freaked out, because a missile boat isn't going to surface to put off a freaking out crewman. I figure they probably just duct tape them to a bulkhead and go on with the mission.

44

I took a break dance class at the downtown Y around 83.

Hmm, a quick look tells me that oceangoing freighters are going to be that size or larger. And I suspect they're usually full. So that's a good sign.

These were the two ships I was on in Alaska. I was on the smaller one longer and it was in rougher seas, but I did fine. The bigger one was so smooth that I couldn't even discern motion most of the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Tustumena

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Kennicott

Modern freighters are much bigger than my ship was, and will likely be loaded out going both ways. My ship's mission was to provide supplies to the Sixth Fleet, so on the way back to Norfolk there was no reason for her to carrying anything.

Those are neat - much smaller than the one I was on. I think I would have liked being on a smaller ship more.

This is the ship I was on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Westerdam

34

I took dance lessons—ballet.

Ice skated, went coasting, tobogganing and skied. Coasted down grass hills on cardboard panels.

LMAO Poor things.

Yeah, that would suck. Hmm, it seems you're having a psychotic break. We'll get you some treatment for that in about four months. :evil:

can on your bicycle wheel, bicycle jousting just off the top of my head.

35 here.

In before Prison Bitch posts 5.

Almost the whole thing.

Jumped off the roof.
Poison Ivy --- I never have BTW, not because my childhood wasn't classic but because I won childhood.
Built terribly unsafe bike ramps.
Got detention because you were an idiot

Lots of good stuff.

Playing "Smeer the Queer" in the front yard with a bunch of surface roots.

Snow sledding down the hill in the neighborhood. If there was no snow, putting out garden hoses.

Building, from many broke dick bikes, into one with a sissy bar and banana seat.

Seeing how far you could jump said bike off a ramp, with no helmut.

Using cloths pens to attach cards by your bike wheel spokes to make it sound cool. (the world revolved around bikes)

Exploring the storm sewers.

Digging hideouts.

Build a go-cart.

Getting up to change the TV channel (only 3)

Playing Twister.

Epic snow ball fights to include snow forts.

Not ever being bored.

Your list was quite good. Took a lot of thought and creativity. Brought back a bunch of memories.

Scored 47: no teacher, collecting nor boarding school.

40

Heh true, I was firing off .22 rounds at 7 or 8, larger rifles and shotguns by the age of 12. We also got into so wicked slingshot and BB gun wars back in the day. :hmmm: I ended up with some welts and that was about it. Did any of you guys ever go hooky bobbing?

LOL

That reminds me, dad and his buddies were shooting blue rock when I was about 7 or 8, and naturally I wanted to too. So dad dug out an old 410 and I shot too. I have no idea why he did that. All he did was waste a bunch of 410 shells. ROFL

Oh yeah, that was a good one.

Also should have added. "Built a dam on the local creek".

What the hell is that? I know what hooky is (and yes I did), but hooky bobbing?

Yeah, I got nothing on Hooky Bobbing. Is that like Snipe hunting?