POST 9: MEMORIES

For most people childhood is the happiest time of their lives. Sometimes a smell or a song brings back special moments of our childhood days and we wish we were children again, at least for a day. Today you have decided to write about those nice memories.

Here you have some questions to guide your writing.

-What food/song/smell  brings back childhood memories

-What is your first childhood memory? What happened there, and how old were you at the time?
-What is your most favourite childhood memory?
-When and where did you learn to swim/ride a bicycle

-What TV series did you use to watch when you were a child?
-What were your favorite activities outside school?

Whenever I hear songs by the “Nueva Ola Chilena” I have memories of my childhood days. I remember that I used to love twist  and balads. When I listen to those songs now  I think of my first house, my brothers and sisters when they were children, my mom and dad getting things ready to celebrate Christmas, and me playing games.

Maybe the earliest thing I remember was the 1960 big earthqake. I was only 2 years old when it happened and I remember  I was in the street,  in front of our house,  playing with my brothers and sisters.

My best childhood memories are related to Christmas’ days, especially when I was 4 to 6. The smell of the Christmas tree,  the little toys and ornaments on it, and the gifts were almost magical. Sadly, when I was 6, and had learnt to read, I recognised my father’s handwriting  on the gift card and I knew that Santa Claus didn’t really exist.

I never learnt how to swim when I was a kid because my parents never took me to the sea or the swimming pool, but I learnt how to ride a bicycle when I was around 13. The first tries I usually ended up on the ground!!!

We didn’t have a television when I was a kid, so we had to rely on compassionate neighbours and friends of our family to watch our favourite TV programs.  I used to watch cartoons like The Flinstones, and Walt disney’s characters. My favourite series were “Lost in Space” and “Bewitched”.  However, our parents took us to the cinema almost every weekend. I really enjoyed those afternoons seeing films which I still can clearly remember.

When I finished school, in the afternoons, I used to play with other children on the street . We were more than twenty kids, so it was lovely and a lot of fun, because we had the chance to choose what game we wanted to play. We played things like hide-and-seek,  marbles, tag, the round, hopscotch, Blind man's bluff, cops and robbers,and different ball games, for example, an  adaptation of baseball called “tombo”,  one of my favourite ones.

As you can see my childhood memories are really beautiful and unforgettable.