Your Favorite Pastime As a Child...

[Etienne]

I'm always curious about this subject. I've heard it said that there is often a correlation between our favorite toys or favorite type of play when we are children and what we end up doing when we're adults. Mine was dolls, and then that evolved into designing, building, and furnishing doll houses. I wound up getting a B.A. in Home Economics, with dual specialization in Early Childhood Development and Interior Design! What about YOU?

 

[AtomicBlonde]

When I was little, I couldnt get enough of playing dress up and make believe. My sister and I didnt get along very well when we were little, so I played by myself most of the time. Mom said I would play in my room for hours by myself making tents and dressing up in her old clothes and shoes... I would invent wild stories about who I was and where I was going. I grew up out in the country in the woods, and there was always a fort of some kind in progress. Most of my play derived from some book I had read or was reading, which was another thing I loved to do as a child and now wish I had time for. Most of the books I liked were historical fiction, I couldnt get enough of stories about people from a different era.

Now, I still "play dress up" as a Civil War reenactor and with this new vintage hobby of mine. And, for a while I was a history major but switched to Historic Preservation.

I recently found a picture of me c. age 6 at Colonial Williamsburg listening with absolute facination and attention to a costumed interpreter who was telling me a story about something. I told my mom it should have a caption under it that says "so the facination begins"

-Jess

 

[Rosie]

I was a child not long ago but I can't remember what my favorite thing to do might have been. I do remember making mud pies and cakes a lot and now I LOVE to cook/bake. I always had an interest in sewing and playing dress up like Atomic Blonde says so maybe that has a lot to do with my vintage interest. My undergrad is in Fine Arts/Graphic Design so "artsy" things have always been interesting to me. Though my masters in education (done more out of necessity (sp?) than out of interest sadly). Interesting though, good thread Etienne!

 

[farnham54]

Always loved adventuring--So far that hasn't transpired into a career yet, but its still something I love doing. Perhaps this can be a Fed Lounge Scientific Study: Will Farn end up a pro adventurer?

Actually I am interested in joining the Canadian Army as a way to get into UN Peacekeeping--I don't like the way they do things now, and I reckon I can at least try to fix it.

Cheers
Craig

 

[Lena_Horne]

I (ironic, or perhaps not so much) was always very fond of playing house. My sister was the baby and I was the mommy. I looked forward to receiving new baby dolls, doll cribs and toy furniture for Christmas and was constantly going through the catalog marveling at the new toy washer/dryer set ups and toy kitchens. Maybe that's why I want to be a housewife now, I suppose I enjoyed it more than pretending to have a job or some other (to me) silly things. I also did my fair share of reading and to some extent I still do. I have all of these books that are in some state of unfinished and I write constantly.

Who knows if I'll end up doing what I want or not but at least I know what led to my being the way I am now. Natural inclination!

L_H

 

[Marc Chevalier]

My favorite childhood pastime was playing war: building cheap model kits of tanks and planes, then blowing them to smithereens with M-80 and M-160 firecrackers illegally smuggled in from Mexico. I also managed to "burn alive" every old, played-out G.I. Joe action figure I had. (And these were the tall ones from the early '70s!) It was an "interesting" childhood.

.

 

[jamespowers]

My favorite childhood pastime was playing war: building cheap model kits of tanks and planes, then blowing them to smithereens with M-80 and M-160 firecrackers illegally smuggled in from Mexico. I also managed to "burn alive" every old, played-out G.I. Joe action figure I had. (And these were the tall ones from the early '70s!) It was an "interesting" childhood.

.

Very inkterestink. (in a Sigmund Freud voice)
Geez, I thought playing with firecrackers was a big deal. You play with dynamite much?
Funny thing is that I used to collect stamps, coins and a few other things. Now I collect a few other things as well. :fedora: :jeep:

Regards,

J

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I spent an (probably) unhealthy amount of time playing with stuffed toys - aka teddy bears. My favourite was an otter ...

bk

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I also assembled and painted intricate model soldiers from kits by Historex and Airfix. Made dioramas. My obsession was the Napoleonic wars. I was 12 years old at the time.

.

 

[John in Covina]

My favorite childhood pastime was playing war: building cheap model kits of tanks and planes, then blowing them to smithereens with M-80 and M-160 firecrackers illegally smuggled in from Mexico. I also managed to "burn alive" every old, played-out G.I. Joe action figure I had. (And these were the tall ones from the early '70s!) It was an "interesting" childhood..

Me too! Although m80's and m160's were hard to get by us. I would buy those green plastic army men and crush them in a vice or cut off limbs to simulate battlefield dead and wounded. Also a good magnifyyer was great for carpenter ants. Later BB guns but I have only shot a bird once, as soon as I saw what happened to it, no more. (I am OK with hunting for food though.)

Bicycles and riding all over the place was a big past time.

 

[scotrace]

Child Schmild

I'm still playing. Even better toys now.

 

[The D.A.]

You guys into the bombs (the word "firecrackers" just doesn't do them justice) scare me. The closest I ever got to setting-off explosives was smashing a whole roll of caps with a hammer!

When I was a kid I used to spend hours and hours in the back yard, digging elaborate fortifications with Tonka toys and then manning them with green army men. Then it was war time. No explosives, just kinetic energy weapons (rocks).

A buddy of mine and I would also trek through nearby woods for hours, dressed in World War II surplus and carrying those wooden, bolt-action toy rifles that they used to sell. Alas, our old battlefields are now suburbs.

When I was older, I would ride my bike insanely long distances from my house, make Revell and Mongram models of World War II tanks and aircraft, and read for hours (a lot of pulps--Doc Savage, The Shadow).

Anyone seeing me as a kid would have expected me to turn-out to be a soldier, but instead I somehow turned-out to be a lawyer. Many of the same old interests endure, though--World War II, the pulps, etc.

 

[Lauren]

Dress up and make believe. And we were always building forts and tree houses to dress up and make believe in.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

You guys into the bombs (the word "firecrackers" just doesn't do them justice) scare me.

I grew up in Los Angeles and saw movie/TV scenes shot on location all the time. They often involved explosives. (This was the '70s and '80s: think "Charlie's Angels" and "The A-Team".) I'm not surprised by my childhood fascination with fire and explosive effects.

 

[Viola]

No. 1 hobby was playing on the computer. I can still do crazy things with even very lame programs. I loved to draw little houses and stuff. And I just graduated with a degree in Computer-Assisted Design.

After that was barbies, karate class, and gardening. I still garden a lot. I just got a bunch of raspberries and strawberries because I miss the raspberries I had as a kid.

The main attraction of the karate class was permission to a) hit my sister, who was in the same class and b) let my baby brother beat HIMSELF up with plastic nunchuks. "What? I didn't touch him! I'm... sharing!"

I was NOT a toy-torturer. I knew if I broke 'em I wouldn't get any more, and I bought most with my own quarters at the fleamarket in the first place. I was fairly careful with them all and would have killed in the defense of Barbies:rage: (not that I had to; my brother was a clever little boy and he didn't want to go out like that...lol )

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Land 'o disappearing posts. My second favourite stuffed animal was a beaver.

bk

 

[scotrace]

OK Gentlemen. Move on to other species please...

 

[Marc Chevalier]

How about lemurs, then? Not forgetting huemuls, of course ...

.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I also used to wander alot in the countryside. On the weekends i'd take off with my brother and some friends to hang around in the myriad woods around our town. Taught me a lot about nature. I have an abiding love for birds to this day - particularly birds of prey ...

bk

 

[Absinthe_1900]

Building scale model aircraft, then collecting out of production model kits, (from early wood solids to the first plastics) to ending up collecting the archives of a vanished aircraft company,........... getting a pilots license,....etc.