What are your memories from childhood?

Everyone has memories from the time when they were kids. And we have a lot of them, but we remember mostly the happy ones. Sometimes we give them more colors, so they make us think “those were the times” with nostalgia and a wish to go back for a while. We look back and we see how we grew up, how the world changed, how the values changed. And how different our childhood memories are different, from those our kids will have. I am 90s kid, also born in Poland, right after communism fell apart, so my memories will be different from kids that lived in America or even west part of Europe. We got certain things a bit later than the others. Anyway, who wants to hear my nostalgic memories?

I remember being all the time outside, playing with other kids, my sister, our neighbours. We would race on bikes, build castles in the sand that was brought especially for us to play, running, screaming and having plasters on our often bleeding knees. We would climb trees, build igloos in the winter, slide on the snow, make snowball battles.

If the weather sucked we would play at home, our imagination had no boundaries. But when the time came we would sit in front of tv and watch the evening cartoons (The Smurfs, The Moomins). Or Sailor Moon. Or some Latin telenovelas (who remembers Luz Clarita?). Sometimes we could play our Pegasus console and that was also something we absolutely loved, but it happened rather rarely. We still would choose to go and play outside.

Going shopping was a task, you had to ask for anything you had on the list and the lady in shop would bring it to you. We didn’t have supermarkets in my small town until late 90s, and when they showed up it was a big event. Normally we would just go two times per week to the fresh market and buy veggies and fruits from local farmers. Meat was either bought from a butcher or given to us from our grandmas. There was no GMO or eco-friendly shops. Everything was natural and the pate or sausage actually contained meat.

I remember writing a diary. I also had a friends diary that I would exchange with my friends at school and they would write me something nice inside. We used to write letters to each other as well, even thought we met and spoke everyday at school. I was also writing with my cousins who lived in different towns, with one of them I wrote until we were already adults, sending the letters via post. There was something magical in receiving a paper envelope with few pages filled with words written by hand. Emails now don’t have the same emotional value, at least in my opinion.

I remember Turbo chewing gum, with pictures of cars inside, I still remember the taste. I remember my walkman I got for Christmas when I was 9, all the songs I recorded from the radio to cassettes. I also remember VHS cassettes with movies on it and the rental stores where you could go, pick the movie and then bring it back the next day for some very small money.

I remember my dad carrying us on his shoulders, mom always making warm lunch, playing with my parents. They had time for us. I’m very very grateful for that.

I remember packages full of sweets coming from Belgium and Germany, the excitement that was in the room when we could open them and then start consuming the most tasty sweets ever. And my dads favourite nuts or raisins in chocolate.

I remember playing hide and seek in the forests, wandering among fields at the countryside, stealing delicious apples or pears from the trees that didn’t belong to us. Also screaming “mooooooommyyyy” standing under the windows when I needed to ask for some change for ice cream.

These and many more are my memories from happy times. I wonder if you have your completely different, or rather very similar. We cannot really say if those times were better than these. They were simply different. I also wonder what kind of memories my children will have. I guess we will see in the future.