Childhood Pastimes

[catstaff]

Hmm... well, the biggest two are still reading and writing (original poetry, stories, and fanfic); I just never grew out of those two pastimes.

 

As a kid, I was into the original Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica... used to never stay with the girls in the schoolyard because who wanted to play hopscotch or jump rope when one could be the pilot of a Colonial Viper out shooting Cylon Raiders? Fortunately, that was at a young enough age where the boys didn't automatically assume girls had cooties, lol! Nerd from the age of six, that was me.

 

Got into the D&D habit in my teens, and expanded into other RPGs as well. At various times I've played Cyberpunk, GURPS fantasy, Dr. Who, the original Vampire: the Masquerade, the newer Vampire: the Requiem, as well as Werewolf: the Forsaken and several permutations of D&D/AD&D. I still play some of these when I get the chance. I also dabbled a bit in tabletop miniatures games like Warhammer and Warhammer 40K. (fantasy and space fantasy/scifi, respectively)

 

Flirted with the ccg Magic: the Gathering back in my 20s, but got out after a couple of years because I was not long out of uni and had too many bills to spend money on cards. And of course, M:tG is set up that you pretty much have to keep buying the current release cards to play much of anything other than friendly games... and even friendly games got lousy after a while when everyone else had cards from the newest releases with powers that could only be countered by other cards from those newest releases. Losing to a well-constructed deck never bothered me much, but losing simply because everyone else had XYZ power that I didn't have did bother me.

[lizardtail]

i used to always play with my neighbor's cat. he was an awesome cat. <3 i really liked playing in sunny spots too because there were usually lizards to chase.

[lulubelle00]

I'm still in school, but back then I made little villages out of every color of Legos.

 

I still do Legos, and I still made villages out of 'natural' colors. One of those old fashion villages with a working miniature gallows. lD

[clara954]

Legos and the game Battleship.

[Daydreamer09]

It's been so long since I... Grew up I guess. :/

 

I played with barbies like the stereotypical little girl. I would come up with a story and give each one a different role and voice. Usually it was something about a princess and whatnot. Never really got into playing house. My three cousins who I hung out with kind of ruined it for me. Hide-and-go-seek I was a pro at. I would be able to come up with really good spots or strategies to hide myself or another person. Cat's Cradle I loved when it was popular and could make all sorts of shapes with strings. Tether Ball was really fun during recess and of course we made up our own rules for it.

 

Then when Pokemon came along, I jumped on the bandwagon for that. I remember building a pokemon center with my best friend out of legos. Good times...

[clara954]

Hide-and-go-seek was my favorite game.

[blah]

I loved reading. Let's face it - children's books are so much better than adult books. Adult books are either crime, stupid "romantic comedy" stuff and those that feature *y women which are then called modern. Or, you know, Fantasy and again - the Fantasy written for kids is so much better.

 

I would often cry when I finished a book and had to let go of all the people I'd become so attached to.

 

Me and my friends would also play with Barbies. I had a Caravan, a make-up studio and one of my friends the cruise ship. We all had horses. It was awesome and we didn't stop playing until we were at least 14.

 

Most of us had pets; bunnies, guinea-pigs, gerbils... and the father of one of my friends had a workshop behind his garage. We would always build stuff like extremely elaborate tunnel-systems for the animals. Which they then proceeded to gnaw on until they were gone

 

We also loved building any kind of huts, caves, houses, boats... inside or outside, it didn't matter. They all collapsed pretty quickly though, the inside ones would be taken apart by our mothers at bedtime...

 

We did sometimes play with a Playstation, there was that game where you could have horses compete in a jumping tournament... I forgot the name.

 

One of our most favorite things was to dress up as the Spice Girls. We were a group of five friends, it fit perfectly. Only that I had to always be Geri Helliwell when I wanted to be Mel C.

[Linkofages]

Playing Pokemon, ( Even tho I still do. )

Also, legos!

[Astralite]

I was lucky enough (unlucky for my parents, however) to have three siblings all the same age as me and one older sister who acted as the ring leader to us. Mostly I remember playing imagination games either using the little plastic toys from Happy Meals, making up little stories for them to act out. We also ran around the backyard a lot playing Indians or the likes, much thanks to my grandpa who always told us about Native Americans (he was an anthropologist on the subject). And other than that we'd play with legos a lot.

But, it was nice to always have someone to play with. And I still do, for the most part ^_______^

[Princess Kiara]

I refuse to grow up. I playvideogames, read Wikipedia in Italian, design Web pages, and kid around with my teachers and classmates. Oh yeah.

[JCStitches]

When I was a kid, I was all about arts and crafts and books. I was the kid who came to school with the giant pack of crayola crayons/pencils/markers and a sketchpad too big for my backpack I also ended up reading every book in my school library by third grade, being on a first name basis with the libarians, and helping them out with seasonal and holiday decorations during free period/recess.

 

Other than that, I was crazy for all things fantasy and horses. I collected all those Grand Champion horse models and mailed in the boxtops for "special" ones. Animal plushies filled in the empty spots, and later on came POKEMON. Actually, something about Dragon Cave reminds me of all the fun I had collecting and trading pokemon cards. Has anyone else thought that?

 

As for cartoons, I had mixed tastes. I was a big fan of TMNT and My Little Pony. When I got a little older, Toonami on Cartoon Network was my favorite thing to watch after school.

[VampirePrayer]

I am 98% sure I have not answered this thread before but I have been absent for a while and there is a lot missing from my post history.

 

One of my favorite things to do as a child was search for rollie pollies in the edges of the grass at my daycare. Even at home, I would ask my mom to take me out to the front of the complex to play on the grass and I would look. I even made a box home and kept one in it like Chucky did in the one episode of The Rugrats.

 

I also loved acting stories out with my friends either from movies or when I was in fifth grade my best friend at the time and I would make them up ourselves. We had one in particular about two brown birds who get turned into humans. Max, my best friend had called it 'Afterlife'. I miss him, I never saw him again after I graduated fifth grade, he was in fourth.

 

Another thing I did was play with my stuffed animals a lot.

I also liked to write stories and draw, which I STILL like to do.

[Mupen64 Man]

I used to climb trees, and throw rocks in the river, I wish I had the luxury of being able to do that.

 

^

And welcome back!

Edited October 2, 2012 by Mupen64 Man

[DaniBoo]

Ah, where do I start? I actually never really grew up. I mean, I still have A LOT of growing up to do, but I still do a lot of my childhood past times.

 

When I was little, I liked to go frogging and fishing, play videogames, play with my ponies and barbies, play with my moms makeup, and of course, jump from couch to couch avoiding the "lava" (I still do the last one )

[clara954]

Playing the game Mafia.

[futuregohangurl]

loved pokemon still do like playing it. i am a big kid at heart. i loved reading playing outside with other kids playing nintendo and sega

[Vampiresswolf]

I was actually a pretty boring kid. All of my free time was spent sitting in bed and reading. Or if I wasn't reading, writing. Stories, poems, etc. I still do that actally, though now I have a dog so she makes me do more stuff, whereas at that time I had a couple cats, and they were content to sleep on me whilst I did said activities.

[DustyBelle]

I am one of 5 children (#4). We played a lot of imagination based games and things like hopscotch, hide and seek, statues, red rover, bike riding, roller skates metal with keys to fit them to your soled school shoes. Most neighborhoods we lived in had lots of kids and as long as the other kids didn't get physically violent we played with them. We played tether ball, had swing sets, put on circuses, pays and puppet shows. My sister taught us how to make marionettes and we'd sew on really hot days or rainy weather or too cold to go out.

 

I drew and read. My nose was always in a book. I used flashlights to read after we were sent to bed. We walked to school and home. TV was knew and there really weren't that many shows and we didn't have a set until my grandmother came to live with us. No video games and movies were rare treats.

 

Dad was navy so we moved from one coast to another or up and down the Eastt coast. We built a fort in a hole that was in an abandoned wooded lot behind us. We dug it deeper and we used Old Christmas trees to make a roof. We'd excavated the inside so there were steps which we covered with rocks so they'd still be there after heavy rains. We also spent time helping or parents build bomb shelters in the basement. The cuban missile crisis was scary to us.

 

We also learned to cook, boys and girls in the neighborhood. Not much but a bit of plain food so we wouldn't be totally dependent on others. Eggs of different varieties and baked potatoes in and out of oven and fires. Pancakes, french toast and bacon. We also played on the big empty field across the street from our house when I was elementary school age. We played at the school playgrounds and fields behind us until High School and then we moved again and I lived at school.

 

Tree houses? Don't you have to have a building permit most places to build one now days? Our sue you society pretty much demands it. Sad.

[mipuppy1]

Webkinz, I was obsessed, it was so much fun *.*

[Dimar]

I played lots of imaginative games with my toys or acted out fantasy adventures with my friends, and once I got into middle school I just spent my life reading and drawing. I usually read a book per day. I also collected Beanie Babies and Breyer model horses, and I gave each one a personality and backstory. I played Neopets but other than that I didn't spend much time online or watching TV. We only had PBS anyway for kids' shows.

[renlacarne]

id pretend i was steve irwin and go catch small animals

[Skulexander]

I don't remember my childhood much, but one of the things I remember I used to enjoy a lot was climbing. I might still enjoy it if I had the upper body strength to do it.

[HeatherMarie]

I was very much a "let's play pretend!" child. My friends and I would spend hours going on treasure hunts, complete with maps we drew. Any of you remember those glowy stars/planets that you could stick on your wall, and when you turn the lights off they'd glow? We would often rearrange them and make the stars themselves into "maps" we had to follow in order to get out of some sort of dangerous situation (ie, my bunk bed).

 

Me and my best friend played with Barbies until we were like 13, but it was never "normal" play. We'd spent hours (sometimes most of the night, when she spent the night) making up twisted crazy soap-opera type adventures for the Barbies... Skipper would get kidnapped and all the others would have to ride on my Breyer horses to save her, but one of them fell off and sprained her ankle and Ken offered to help her the rest of the way, so Barbie got all jealous.... That kind of thing.

 

I also liked spending a lot of time alone. I climbed the tree in my grandpa's front yard often, climbing as high as I could go without totally going splat if I fell, and in later years climbing that tree would lead to making up stories about why different people were climbing the tree (I was a writer even back then!)

[Natevaelle]

Everyday, right after I got home from school, I would rush to my doll collection the playroom. I would play with my dolls and make up stories of their lives and adventures. The setting was always medieval, even before I knew the definition of the word. There was always a queen or a princess among my dolls. I found an old diary where I used to write the title of the story that I made up for the day. Alas, it was just the title. Most likely, I thought that I would recall the stories just through the title. Perhaps this is where my love for making stories and roleplaying started.

[sh20000sh]

Drawing something like maze in note. I continued that until high school.