I’ve got two, one, is we love katamari, which I’m currently playing the rerelease of on steam. The Japanese culture, the wonderfully wacky story and gameplay, the weird but enrapturing soundtrack all coalesced into something new and amazing for me that to this day 20 years later I’m still glued to the screen for.
The other one is back when I was little enough, I would lie on my back under the Christmas tree looking out the window at the blizzard outside. I would lie like this for hours just watching the flurry of snow hitting the pane glass, that icy chaos mere inches away from the calm, twinkling tranquility of the string lights on the trees.
Both of these memories make me incredibly happy and frustratingly sad in a bittersweet way, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget them. How about you guys, what childhood memories stuck with you to this day? What felt so special about that moment?
This sounds kind of sad, but bear with me. This was c. 1976-1980.
My father was mostly absent, but I prefered his neglect to his abuse, so that was okay. He’d go on business trips a lot. My mom was an alcoholic, and sometimes she’d be passed out for days. I grew up an only child in a suburban home, and some weekends a year, I had the house to myself. From age 8-12, I had a few weekends here and there where fortune fell upon me and I’d be alone in the house with no real responsibilities. Friday night home from school to Monday morning going to school, all I had to do was check if my mother was still passed out, and if so, it was like one long vacation from my life to be myself. Bonus if there was still food in the house, which usually there was something I could cook myself.
I wasn’t allowed to watch TV as a kid, except sanctioned PBS shows, but we had a small B&W TV in the kitchen for my mom’s soap operas and cooking shows. I’d drag up all my Legos, pour them on the kitchen table, and watch “illegal TV” all weekend while building stuff with my Legos. Eating when I wanted to, or not, and I had free reign of pretty much anything there.
My positive childhood memories are scant and few, and most are just things like that. Like “sometimes the sun came out, if only for a brief time, before the storms returned.” I have a lot more as an adult.
