what do you miss the most about your childhood?
 

the beatings or the verbal and mental abuse?

I miss not having to pay bills

How long days let alone weeks would last. I could live almost an entire life in a week as a kid. Be in a fight with someone, fall in love, go camping, build a go cart, become friends with kid i was in fight with again, fall out of love, and still have 3 days left in the week.

oh jeeze my thread is turning into 'Standy by Me' :1orglaugh

Honestly just coming home and meeting friends and playing baseball or football or basketball etc.

what about your dad crushing whatever dream you had on any particular day with his gruff mean spirited negativity?

I enjoyed being a child, but no desire to go back :)

Not much...

:Oh crap

Oh also miss the mexican girl who played doctor on me when I visited my great grandparents.

damn right

the hope and the wide open future.

I miss having bones like rubber and having hormones that made it seem like unlimited energy all the time.

It has to be the beatings.

Just visited the old man or am I missing the sarcasm? I had it easy. I was the accident child when my parents were 38/39. By the time I was a jackass they just let me be. But they knew something because I worked my ass off and paid for everything. But for some strange reason they treated me as an adult and I responded that way. To this day I have friends and old acquaintances that will bend over backwards for my parents. Ironic/possibly sad part about it is I have friends that go see my old man more then I do since he has been diagnosed with cancer.

I was lucky, my parents were so great and even when my old man kicked my ass I knew I deserved it. I would love to have those days over so I could wear my Graig Nettles uniform again

Complete lack of any sort of responsibility.

LOL! I miss being able to ride my bike EVERYWHERE (except school). It's amazing that back then parents didn't have to worry about sending a young girl out on her bike. I drove through woods, to the store, to the pool - even the orthodontist's office :)

Now, I wouldn't put a kid on a bike or even walking where I couldn't keep an eye on them the entire time :(

absolutely nothing...

Things were cheaper... and there were these gummy candies that got discontinued. Other than that it all sucked :-|

I miss the beatings without question. lol

Remember riding bikes in the woods, building dirt jumps, playing manhunt at night, etc. I wouldn't even ride through these places in the dark these days let alone hide in them.

Finger banging old Mary Jane rotten crotch thru her pretty pink panties.

Verbal abuse :P

My parents and I were talking about it the other day - from 1st-5th grade I walked about a mile to school. Not far, but some of it was through some pretty dense woods. And I almost always walked to school by myself but the Rambo brothers (honestly, that was their last name) walked home with me. I guess their Dad took them in the morning or something.

In 5th and 6th grade my brother and again walked through even denser woods to get to school.

I look at these two places today and I wouldn't even walk in there MYSELF, let alone send a little kid in there. But back then.....that's what I miss. That you didn't have to lock your doors, you could talk to and take candy from strangers and you didn't have to make "playdates" - you just knocked on doors until someone could come out and play.

playing soccer with friends all day...

The innocence :)

damn right



exactly! ugh time goes by so quick now and I hear it only gets worse...

I miss being young and having no responsibilities except playing and eating and sleeping and the occasional schoolwork

Thinking 20 bucks was a fortune

I miss being young, and worry free

LOL this happened on occasion too :2 cents::1orglaugh

Oh well it's his own bad, he only sees me a couple of times a year because of that mean spirited negativity and I only live less than an hour away lmao

you ARE young and should be worry free - don't complicate your life!

I missed the time when watching porn is too exciting for me :(

I'd say hope for the future and the glee of learning new things. I miss other things but they were outweighed by the negatives. Innocense always came with fear of the unknown. I never liked being "innocent" because I knew that I couldn't fend for myself effectively. And being small, you know that any adult can kick your ass and there would be nothing you could do about it. Also, adults said things to you and you didn't know how to judge it because you had no experience with it. And a lot of conflicting info - adults would tell you not to do things yet you would see them do exactly those things regularily. I used to envy older kids when I'd watch them break the rules and be able to talk their way out of punishment with teachers/elders. Not having responsibility? Sure, not paying bills, but you were forced to go to school every day, forced to obey the 'law' laid down by your parents. There was responsbilities, just of a different nature. Not being 'responsible' landed me in the principals office. Freedom? Like not being able to go where you want when you want, eat what you want when you want, not being able to buy what you want (clothes etc)? I hated that.

As we get older we probably have a tendency to idealize childhood but I don't. It sucked.

Adolescence > childhood for sure

no bills. :)

Discovering masturbation.

I agree and plus the free time

Being able to play hockey with my friends

I hated being a child. I had to do what my parents told me and I had no freedom.

I am also a lot more "cooler" and fashionable and trendy as an adult. When I was a child (in high school) I had no money, wore ugly clothes (really ugly clothes, you don't know how traumatizing it is for a child to not be in the cool crowd and wear ugly clothes, I am still traumatized to this day), had ugly hair cut, was uncool and unpopular, had to walk home from school, had no car. I am better looking now then I was at 17-18.

I basically transformed myself into the person I have always wanted to be.
I am now the cool person that I have always wanted to be when younger, maybe not on the inside but I
look the part now.

Well if those are my only choices... I choose mental abuse.

photo plz!!!

What a surprise.

Love this post :)

I miss the feeling of not having any anxiety about work, relationships, debts, and everything else that comes with being an adult

pretty much sums it up for me

this thread is dope. i read the whole thing.

here's my two cents:

death is creeping up on us old timers. i'm only 21 and i feel decrepit. so as someone else said, it's easy to naively idealize childhood. but for self-employed stay at home internet hustlers like, well, at least half of us (i hope, gfy is riddled with wannabes), don't you think we might be overly appreciating our childhoods and simply living in the past?

face it, part of being a kid definitely sucked. having zero freedom. waking up at 7am everyday for school.

but the way i felt as a kid was so much more intense. with age comes a type of emotional dullness, basically turning aging people into sociopaths. when you walk outside now, do your senses light up still? do you still see a world of fresh adventure, opportunity and beauty? or do you see a played out pointless universe that you've grown weary and nihilistic of?

pros and cons.

if we aren't careful this hollywood over-glorification of childhood will submerge us all in delusional memories of happiness that rarely if ever took place. :2 cents:

my mom and dad