Thursday Thirteen: Things I Used To Do As A Kid

 These are things I used to do when I a kid. These are from before I moved to Savannah at age 11.

1. Drink Strawberry Milk - That was my fav drink ever. I used to guzzle that like it was nobody's business. This one time, however, my mom had some liquid dish detergent in a cup (I think she borrowed it from our neighbor.) I made a cup of strawberry milk, left the room for some reason, then came back and picked up the wrong glass. Yep, I drank the dish detergent. I still remember the nasty aftertaste in my mouth.

2. Fight with my sister - We've been cool for like 20 yrs, but she used to terrorize me. Once she hit me in the head with a can of soup. Other times she would randomly hit me or unplug the Atari when I was playing. The worst thing she did though was rip my "Whodini" poster of the wall and rip it in half just to be evil. I was so mad..

3. Be a DJ - My father was a DJ and it ran in the family. He would let me pick the records when I was like 4 or 5. I remember I sent an 8-Track to my grandparents that was in my grandma's garage as recently as 2000. Don't know where it is now. I wrote a post about one party I did with my pops.

4. Flip baseball cards - Me and my friends used to collect baseball cards. A quarter would get a pack of cards and some nasty bubble gum. We played a game called flipping. It was basically a way to gamble. I can't remember all the rules, but it has something to do with matching the colors of the team logos. Whoever won got to keep all the cards. I'm sure I lost many valuable cards playing this game, but it doesn't really matter since I don't know where any of the ones I won are anymore. I'm sure they were lost when I moved to Savannah.

5. Play Atari - I had tons of Atari games and I was a master in all of them, at least that's how I remember it. I can't even pick my favorite games, but if I had to I would say "River Raid", "Baseball" and "Pitfall." Looking back the graphics were terrible, but mind-blowing to me back in the day.

6. Play "Baseball" - Even though I had tons of friends, one of my favorite games was a solo game of baseball. I would bounce a tennis ball of the steps of my apartment and depending how far it went, it would be a single, double or triple. If it went into the street, that was a home run. I also played defense against myself, so if I caught the ball it was an out. What a strange little kid I was.

7. Watch Purple Rain, The Terminator and Police Academy - Those were the only 3 movies we had for our VCR. This was back when I was still young and none of those movies were really age appropriate, but I still watched them all the time.

8a. Get up early to watch Saturday morning cartoons - No matter how late I stayed up the previous night, I had to get up to watch my toons. Even though I watched them all week, the Saturday ones were better to me. I remember Turbo Teen and Mr T were some of my favorites, but I also like the Looney Toons that came on at 11.

8b. Stay up late Friday nights to watch TV - I had to watch Knight Rider, Remington Steele and Miami Vice, then I would stay up til midnight to watch the video show "Hot Traxx." It was the only show that played black videos at the time. Rebbie Jackson's "Centipede" and Stephanie Mills "Medicine" used to give me nightmares.

9. Crush on Ana - My mom was a teacher for troubled kids when I was young. When I was let's say 10 or 11, she brought Ana home. Ana was like 14, and the first girl that I noticed in that way. I never said anything about my crush, but for however long she stayed with us (a couple months I think) I was in luv (l-u-v, not love.)

10. Hang out with my Big Brother - After my mom and dad separated, she enrolled me in Big Brothers to give me a positive mail influence. He was pretty cool at first, until he started dating my sister's Big Sister and forgot all about me. At least that's how I remember it. But for awhile, he used to take me to arcades and stuff. Thanks white liberal guilt for the free video games.

11. Be outside all the time - If me and my crew weren't playing sports, we were riding our bikes all over creation. During the summer, it was nothing for us to be outside from the time we woke up, til the street light came up, only pausing long enough to eat lunch, and play a quick game of Atari.

12. Go to the store for my father - My father was my hero, so if he wanted me to do anything for him, it was done. He would give me money, and I would go to the store to get his cigarettes and cough drops. He ate Halls cough drops like candy. (I found out later that was a cocaine thing to keep the sinuses clear, but at the time I had no idea.) He would let me buy my own candy with the change.

13. Read voraciously - I read everything I could get my hands on. If I wasn't outside playing, I was reading. I remember always being a few grades above my grade level. My favorites were the Encyclopedia Brown books and the Choose Your Own Adventure series, but I read everything. I definitely took advantage of the libraries. It's a shame that I don't read anything now that's not on a computer screen and the only novels I take part in now are audio books.