What were you really into when you were a child?

Bretrick

Bretrick

Well-known Member
Location
Perth Western Australia
At every opportunity I would go up into the hills surrounding my home town.
Away from people, catching snakes and frogs, trying to pick up echidnas, going out onto the dam on my homemade raft, built with boy scout skills. Loved my childhood in the thickly wooded West Coast of Tasmania.
It is a delight that has stayed with me my whole life.
 

Playing outside, riding my bike, going to the library, reading, exploring the woods next to one house we lived in, picking blackberries, exploring the AF Bases. We lived beside woods in Germany, so we'd go exploring, have picnics, and wrap blankets around trees to make a house to play in, and we picked lots of blueberries. In Germany, there was a huge hill behind the base housing, and we'd play King of the Hill, and have a lot of rolling down it and then chasing each other back up. I loved living on bases. There were lots of kids around and plenty to do. I still remember seeing Hayley Mills in The Trouble with Angels. I wanted to be a nun so I could have as much fun as she was having. I was raised in a secular family and my mother was not happy with that career choice.
 

Reading, I still read a good bit and girls. I never had an aversion to the fairer sex, even long before I knew what sex was. In fact, a big reason that I first became a reader was that I was attracted to the women portrayed on the covers of the detective novels that my grandfather would read. I didn't know why but there was a great attraction to those ladies on the covers of those books. But when I learned to read and I saw that the only pictures in those books were on the covers and in between the covers were lots of words that meant nothing to a young boy, I happily developed great friendships with the local library staff who gave me much more attention and guided my reading interests, than I had at home. Reading is a door to everything!
 
As a young child I played with all types of toys. I was born as a boy, but I still played with dolls and barbies growing up. I also played with Army Men, Trucks, Dinosaurs and things like that as well. Once I became older I started realizing I was a female trapped in a males body. I was attracted to males, but never acted on it or ever dated because I saw myself as a female and not with another boy as a boy myself. When I came out and told my parents I wanted to transition they were obviously asking a lot of questions , but were also supportive. Once I fully transitioned in 1991 that is when I started dated men as a full women. I am now happily married to a wonderful man and have a beautiful and intelligent step daughter.
 
a little girl?
I was always, unless it was frozen over, barefoot, down at the Yellowstone River.
That was MY RIVER! Other people could come and look at it, but it BELONGED TO ME! That river was MINE!

Hill climbing and exploring caves. I found fossils and cave writings, but I didn't tell anyone.

Building whole cities in the dirt at the gravel pit.

Reading books. Whatever I did, I was always alone.
 
I did a number of things as a child -

I ran everywhere. I loved to race to school (sometimes I had no choice, kids would chase us to and from school), and I even competed one year in the running division of the junior Olympics. Sledded down steep hills in winter time, looked for fossils in the woods, played sports (volleyball, soccer), and played viola in school orchestras. Won the spelling bee in fourth grade.

In my spare time, I read many books. In the school libraries, I'd always be checking out books. I'd start from one end of the library and worked my way to the other end, bringing home bags of books and reading voraciously. Later, as I grew older, I started reading nonfiction and psychology books. I think all this reading helped me in life. :)
 
At about age 8 I started working. Paper route, cutting grass, stocking shelves at a small mom & pop grocery store 1/2 block from where we lived, shoveling snow. Just about anything I could do to earn money. Back then no need for work permit so finding something that paid was easy. Fun came in the form of games played with the other kids. Kick the can, tag, hide and seek, leap frog, marbles and hopscotch. A vivid memory of the school principal shocked that 6th. grade boys would find rock throwing fights was fun to do before the school day began.
 
Pinky said:
Walking .. I walked everywhere, all over the city - and also roller skated and biked everywhere. Read a lot of books, mostly biographies.
Click to expand...
Ditto.....almost exactly everything you said,..and also took buses all over the city to discover what was where.. I swear that's why I have such an excellent sense of direction as an adult

I was also an avid reader, , I'd read anything that had print on it regardless of what it was. With the lack of reading material provided for us kids at home, I'd bring home books from the school library, or read my mothers old nurses encyclopaedias...

Every other Saturday we ( that's my siblings and or me and friends) would go either Roller disco-ing .. or to the Public swimming pool... or to the Saturday morning pictures , there was always 2 full length cartoons, and a feature film ( something like Cinderella, and a feature film like the Love Bug ..or Mary Poppins, or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

..all of this was just weekends.. during the week I worked as a MIlk delivery girl before school.. and on Wednesday nights I went to Girl Guides..
 

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