How classic was your childhood?

[Rain Man]

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.

[Rain Man]

Here are my "Tame 21".

• Built a snowman - Did this frequently.
• Carried a lunch box to school - Every day until I hit 7th grade
• Explored an abandoned house or hobo camp with your friends - A hobo camp was not far from my sixth-grade house, and that was when my bicycling peaked.
• Fired a bb gun - short phase of life when I was about eight.
• Got into a physical fight on a school playground - only once and it was tame
• Had a bike wreck - never anything major. I never did any bike tricks. It was purely transportation.
• Had a line in a school play - second grade. I recited a poem from memory that at the time seemed as long as the Iliad, but it was probably eight lines in reality.
• Joined the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or equivalent - very failed experiment. Very bad.
• Collected some type of sports cards or collector cards - football cards. I was avid.
• Lit sparklers and carried them around - Well, duh. I'm American.
• Looked at pornography - It was so easy to find. I had to learn somehow.
• Owned an optical science tool - telescope or microscope - I got a microscope as a kid. It was pretty cool.
• Owned Legos, Lincoln Logs, or an erector set - Slightly too old for Legos, but I had the other two.
• Played in a youth sports league - Horrible experience. Horrible. Every freaking time.
• Rode a school bus - Most years until I hit 16.
• Rode your bike to a store to buy stuff - That was when I knew I was a man.
• Spent 1+ weeks at a relative’s house without your parents for no particular reason - went to my grandparents with my sister a couple of times. It was quite fun and exotic since they lived about 70 miles away on a pseudo-farm.
• Swam in a river or creek - Once or twice with some distant relatives. I'm shocked that I didn't die since I can't swim.
• Walked to/from school on your own - Did it in second grade and maybe part of fourth. Don't recall exactly.
• Went fishing with a grandparent - See above when I spent a week with them.
• Went to a sleepover (or hosted one) - Went to one once. My parents were very private and didn't like social things like this.

Things I didn't do, but thought a lot about:

• Bought an item from a comic book ad - Sea monkeys were intriguing, but I was skeptical. However, I really really really wanted the working submarine for $10. I just didn't have the money.
• Had your own treehouse - this would've made my life whole
• Went to an overnight summer camp - My school in Springfield would show us a film of Camp Arrowhead toward the end of the year, which in retrospect was quite cruel. The sales guy would show it and it looked so fun, but there was no way my parents would ever send me. It made me feel like Charlie at the beginning of the Willy Wonka movie.

[Frazod]

Originally Posted by Bwana

Nice

When I was around 12 my parents went golfing and Crazy Mike and I took my parents other car for a joy ride knowing they would be away for hours. It wasn't the first time, so I was an old pro at it.

I came wheeling around the corner by the house doing some kind of power slide that would of made Bo Duke proud. Much to my surprise, there my folks sat in the driveway. They had evidently forgotten something and came back for it. Both of them had just gotten out of the car. I'll never forget the looks on their faces. It was kind of a combo, we can't believe what we're seeing and a you are going to die now look.

Crazy Mike bailed out of the car said "I have to go now!" and ran off up the street. I think he thought he may be part of the impending collateral damage. I don't recall what my punishment was, but that was the 2nd maddest I have ever seen them.

Crazy Mike sounds like Eddie Haskell on steroids.

I was very lucky in that I got away with most of the crap I pulled, and the stuff I got burned on didn't really register much on dad's radar. I got grounded once for cutting class and once for being drunk and fighting (I got my ass kicked, so I guess he didn't feel the need to rip on me on top of it). Had he known about the car shit, that the drunk and fighting was actually drunk, stoned and fighting, or all the times I drove drunk, I would have been in dire trouble.

But as it was, my dad never laid a hand on me. Of course, he really didn't have to. I weighted around 130 in high school and my dad was close to the size I am now. I got the "you think you're a man?" line once. I quickly answered, "no, no."

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Things I didn't do, but thought a lot about:

• Bought an item from a comic book ad - Sea monkeys were intriguing, but I was skeptical. However, I really really really wanted the working submarine for $10. I just didn't have the money.
• Had your own treehouse - this would've made my life whole
• Went to an overnight summer camp - My school in Springfield would show us a film of Camp Arrowhead toward the end of the year, which in retrospect was quite cruel. The sales guy would show it and it looked so fun, but there was no way my parents would ever send me. It made me feel like Charlie at the beginning of the Willy Wonka movie.

I remember having sea monkeys because I got animal kingdom or something cards in the mail each week and they sent a couple packets with sea monkeys and you put them in a fish bowl and amazingly I think after a couple hours or days they started swimming around like little sperms. At that age I was too young to really know what sperm was.

I think you should get some just to mark that off your list.

[Bwana]

Originally Posted by Frazod

Crazy Mike sounds like Eddie Haskell on steroids.

Oh he was back then but he ended up getting married to an alpha female, a real nag. I think he has to get permission to go take a leak. I was a groomsman in his wedding and I remember thinking, this won't end well. I called him several years ago to see if he wanted to go fishing and he told me "my wife said no." I was like, WTF??

I ran into him last year and he was so beaten down from being married to that matriarch that he was completely mellow and would hardly make eye contact.

[tooge]

Originally Posted by Bwana

That same buddy and I (lets just call him crazy Mike) would go to the golf club in our neighborhood and dig through the bushes and scrub brush for lost golf balls in the summer to sell to the pro for a little extra money.

For some reason the pro didn't want one of the golf balls we found so Mike kept it. We were walking along the same street with the ditch and along comes a car. For some reason crazy Mike decides to lob the golf ball across the big ditch at the car. As fate would it, it was a cop car. This was back when cop cars had the cherry on top rather than a light bar.

The ball drills the cherry on top and broke it. The cop slams on the breaks, runs to the side of the ditch and told us, you punks stay right there! Much to my horror, crazy Mike starts taunting the cop. "Hey you fat pig, why don't you swim your fat ass across the ditch and come and get us!" then starts walking around like a chicken squawking. I'm thinking oh shit! The cop yells back, "I will catch you and you little mother ****ers are going to jail after I beat the hell out of you!"

We ran into Crazy Mikes house and hid in the basement. There was just enough of a crack in between the curtains where we could see the cop driving by. This cop drove around the neighborhood for over three hours looking for us. I waited until it was dark and snuck back to my house through alleys and back yards.

. that's awesome

[tooge]

These stories remind me of a buddy that I was riding around with in HS. He was fairly drunk at the time and wouldn't let me drive because it was his girlfriends parents car. He asks me to lean back (im in the passenger seat)so he can ditch his empty and then he throws a beer bottle through my window, which he thought was open, but it wasn't. I was like "dude, what the ****?"
He says he thought the window was down, and went on about how ****ed we were. I was like , "we?"

[prhom]

41 here. I always felt i had the quintessential American childhood experience. I even built a raft with the intention of floating down the Colorado River like a modern day Huck Finn, but then my parents refused to help me transport it from our backyard to the river. It's probably for the best that they didn't let me go through with that crazy idea.

[Frazod]

Originally Posted by Bwana

Oh he was back then but he ended up getting married to an alpha female, a real nag. I think he has to get permission to go take a leak. I was a groomsman in his wedding and I remember thinking, this won't end well. I called him several years ago to see if he wanted to go fishing and he told me "my wife said no." I was like, WTF??

I ran into him last year and he was so beaten down from being married to that matriarch that he was completely mellow and would hardly make eye contact.

*shudder*

I had one of those once. Lasted about seven months, which was about eight months too long. Thank God I never married her.

[RippedmyFlesh]

Originally Posted by Bwana

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. I ended up with some welts and that was about it. Did any of you guys ever go hooky bobbing?

We did it in the winter when roads were covered in ice or snow with no skateboard or bike. Just slide with your shoes on the ice. We called it hopping bumpers.

[Bugeater]

Originally Posted by ChiTown

Had one of those and loved it. Oh, and you could actually learn something from it too.

[Bwana]

Originally Posted by RippedmyFlesh

We did it in the winter when roads were covered in ice or snow with no skateboard or bike. Just slide with your shoes on the ice. We called it hopping bumpers.

Yeah that's exactly the way we did it.

[Gadzooks]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

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.

I had the same experience, or lack of experience of Disney World.

I scored a 34 which would make total sense based on the grading.

[Iowanian]

I had THE All-American childhood.


In case you're wondering...That's my pa, feeding hipster beer to a baby deer we caught while mowing hay. We're wearing matching jackets my mom made and he's wearing a hat a relative brought back from Viet Nam for him...at my grandpa's farm where I can see a barn we played in and a river I swam, fished and camped near with cousins and uncles. I helped milk cows, butcher chickens, hogs, beef and deer in barns I can see in this pic. I lived the dream and didn't even know it.

[MTG#10]

That reminds me, I still havent received those AC/DC and Motley Crew pins/banners I ordered when I was in 4th grade. I dont know what could have went wrong putting cash and exact change in the envelope.

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

I had THE All-American childhood.


In case you're wondering...That's my pa, feeding hipster beer to a baby deer we caught while mowing hay. We're wearing matching jackets my mom made and he's wearing a hat a relative brought back from Viet Nam for him...at my grandpa's farm where I can see a barn we played in and a river I swam, fished and camped near with cousins and uncles. I helped milk cows, butcher chickens, hogs, beef and deer in barns I can see in this pic. I lived the dream and didn't even know it.

That is such an adorable picture. A classic slice of American rural life in the middle of America. Very Normal Rockwell. In fact I could see it done as a Rockwell illustration for a magazine cover back in those times. I would love to draw or paint it.