Remember when a jar of change lasted weeks and splurging was adding cheese to a Famous Star. Whimsical laughs translated silly jokes and young minds told stories of ghosts and toilet-papering adventures. A long sidewalk was your highway and a sticker laden bike was your hotrod. Summer days invited hours of sandy toes and peeling shoulders. Life was simple, the mind was uncluttered and entertainment was found in the most unlikely places.
Seven smiling suns dance in a row as I read the weather page of the local newspaper. Rays beam in through my dusty window and I sip a glass of tap water and smell the stench of morning breath. The once familiar clacks of a skateboard rolling down a sidewalk fills the silence of the crisp morning air. A quick glance out the window catches the last skater of a trail of many.
Remember when you searched the paper for smiley sun symbols rather than the icons which describe your falling stocks. The sky once told you whether you were going to build a tree fort in the local grove or spend the day on the beach making drip castles, eating watermelon and exploring the surrounding
lagoons. A vacation wasn’t a highlighted week on a calender; it was a 3 month stretch where the sun was a clock and the tides were your calender. Your briefcase was a backpack filled with a snorkel, a towel, sunblock, a PBJ, a skate tool and a handful of fart bombs. Your boss was your mom and your paycheck was a hot dinner. Your colleagues were your best friends and your only enemy was a running nose. A headache came from a monkey-bar accident and you still got rug burns. A beer was something your dad drank too many of and cigarettes were only for camels. Life was simple.
Stand back and reflect on your favorite memories. Think of what highlighted your summer days. Remember spending early mornings with your siblings browsing through Saturday morning cartoons, building rope swings and toilet-papering the house of a schoolyard crush.
When you remember a good one, share it and watch the smiles grow!
Click HERE to read The Art of Childhood-Part 1
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my favorite childhood memory and to this day I still remember doing it like it was yesterday was going down to the local baseball field in San Clemente and laying there for what seems hours making shapes out of the huge white fluffy clouds. You’re right when it comes down to it our childhood memories are etched in our minds, the simple things in life!
thanks for that walk down memory lane son, you are very special indeed
fake lake wake skate fo sho dirty winchers