'member when?

(click above picture with sound on while reading this entry for full effect)

I took my little girl for a walk while we were in the OC over the weekend. My wonderful wife was tuckered out and took a nap with my son. I had to take the Little Miss Noisy out so they could sleep.

Read more...The sun was shining and the air was crisp and cool. As we walked hand in hand, my daughter took great joy stomping on every leaf she could find. Her eyes widened at the sight of a pretty flower. She started laughing as she played with a seashell. This care free exploration carried on for at least thirty minutes or so... It reminded me of the wonderful simplicity of childhood. In my mind I was taken back to my own boyhood memories.
I remember days that were defined by naps and candy... weeks that were shaped by allowance and BMX bike rides in the neighborhood. Chuck E. Cheese was really something back then, a paradise... well, maybe not paradise, but AT LEAST a million times better than anything else I had to do. McGuyver was so cool. And I even looked forward to watching Murder She Wrote with my grandparents while eating popcorn with fake butter-salt (not butter AND salt, it was mixed all in one... how cool!). Arcades. Remember how cool arcades were? Hacksaw Jim Duggin... ooh.. and The Rainbow Connection, now THAT was a deep song. Man, Life Was Good.
Back then there was a wonderful mystery about everything. Every joke I heard pure genius, every game I played was exciting and new... every single thing I experienced was completely and totally unique.

Anyhow, as my daughter and I strolled down the street together, I gathered everything that sparked a memory for me.

Pinecone thingamajigs...I have memories of gathering these pinecone things, picking out the red seeds, and hucking the empty pinecone-grenades at imaginary enemies. So much fun. No purpose to it. No guilt afterwards. Just pure fun.
The leaves... remind me of living on "28th St between H&I." That has such a nice ring to my ears when I hear somebody say that. Its where my dad and mom lived before they divorced... and where I lived with my dad and brother afterwards. That is the house that I think of as Home. So many leaves would drop to the ground during Fall. I think I will love the crunch-crunch sound of dry leaves forever.
Sticks... and yellow flowers... so common to where I grew up. Sticks had a role in just about any boyhood adventure of mine. So handy those things. Need a gun? Grab a stick. Need to bunny-hop sumpthin on the trusty BMX? Grab a stick. Need to build a fort? Grab a stick. And the flowers? Well, they expose my softer, feminine side (that one was just for you Steve). I remember playing with the girls in the soccer fields after school and them teaching me how to make bracelets and necklaces by pinching a hole in the stems and connecting each flower to the next.
Seashells... takes me back to all the memories I have with my mom. Trips to the beach. Living in Pacific Palisades. Big-wig-hot-shot parties that she catered. Hanging out with all of her friends in Santa Monica. The whole lot of 'em were pot-headed, drunk, volleyball playin' pagans. And it was a wonderful experience. They all loved me to death. Such an odd, but wonderful, childhood... from the downtown streets of 28th St... to hanging out on the Santa Monica Pier with celebrities.

All these things were so pure. But thats not to say that everything was good in my childhood. I scraped a knee here and there, had my heel chopped off in the spokes of a bike, was humiliated and forever scarred by a 3-D dinasour project gone bad at school, and my parents DID get a divorce. But ... even with all that said... I look back on it with fondness and thankfulness.

Mom and Dad, thanks for all that you did to love, protect, and encourage me as a kid. I love you both more than words can say.