Enuff Said: 7 Things I Miss From My Youth, 5 I'm Glad I Left Behind

I did a lot of stuff when I was a child. Some of what I did I would love to have a chance to go back and do over again and again. Some other stuff not so much.

Here are seven things I miss about being a child

1. Summer days which seemed to last forever and were gone so quickly all at the same time. These are the days spent with friends, going on family vacation, or just hanging around the house with no cares and more importantly no school to worry about
2. Freedom from the the hustle and bustle of adult life. Childhood is time of learning while adulthood seems to be all about forgetting the leisure of our youth. It seems to me if we could learn to be more like we were when we were young, we would be a whole lot better off,
3. Friendships which were supposed to last forever but didn't. There are so many friends I miss from my childhood. There are days I wonder what ever happened to them and why our friendships didn't last through the test of time. There is an old adage, some friends you have for a day, some you have for a month, some you have for a season but very few friends do you have for a lifetime.
4. 10 cent sodas and 5 cent candy bars. I know I am going back quite a ways but I miss the corner drug store where you could go with your friends, spend a few cents and have a great time.
5. Snow days were those bonus days when school was canceled but fun was in session. I know you had to make them up at the end of the year but we still had fun in the snow. Today everyday it seems is a work day and no one except for school staff gets off for snow days. The rest of us sludge through the snow to work. Wouldn't it be great if we all had snow days.
6. I miss pin ball machines. When I young the local mall arcade was filled with pin ball machines. Pin ball machines were great to play because it took a lot of finesse and skill to keep the ball in play and rack up the point. Unlike the games of today pinball felt more like it was a sport then just a game. I also liked the fact if you got there when the owner was fixing the games,he let you play some of the games for free to make sure the machine worked.
7. Walking the mall was a good Friday night activity. Usually walking the mall involved very little money and a whole lot of quality time spent with friends window shopping, looking at t latest albums or just trying to hook up with a member of the opposite sex. In the hustle and bustle if today's world we all need a little mall time to just get together and walk and talk about life.

Here are five things I'm glad I left behind.

1. Training wheels. For some reason when you're young training wheels are a status symbol. The sooner you get your training wheels off, the sooner you fit into this elite group of true “bike riders” who enjoy the open road. Sadly I do not really think we never leave training wheels behind we just wish we had.
2. Black and white TV. I am so glad color television came along. I remember thinking the world around us was so colorful, why not our television. Just once when I was little I would have liked to see Leave it Beaver or the Lone Ranger in color.
3. Sappy music or bubble gum used to drive me crazy but that was all they played on AM radios stations. People like Bobby Goldsboro and others who always sang those teary songs like Honey and Wildfire.
4. I used to think I left behind school politics but now I know it was just a pipe dream because adult and workplace politics can be just as bad or worse then school politics was. If you don't know what school politics was just ask someone who may not have fit into the “in crowd,” and they can tell you.
5. Gym class is probably one of the few classes in school I really am glad is over. While I like to exercise and move around gym class was a one size fits all affair. Fat, skinny, short or tall you were expected to be able to all do the same exercises. I don't know about you but it is very hard for a portly guy like me to climb a rope, jump on a trampoline or “gasp” jump up and do exercises on the horse.

There you have it my list for now. I am sure I will add to the list sometime or just make up another one.