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...the many things that you remember as a kid or teenager...

…ha!… I was reminded today of something that happened at Christmas when I was about 9 - 10 in England… on Christmas eve my brother and I were sent to bed early so we could wake up earlier to get to our presents… this particular year my brother and I were getting a combined present to play with… I think that it was called a ‘Scalectric or Scalextric’ car racing set…

…my dad and my uncle Harry were setting up the track that night after my little brother and I went to bed early… well… I was awakened by a noise of celebrations and got up and opened our bedroom door to see my dad and uncle Harry (who were both half drunk by now)… racing each other on our present lol!… seeing their shocked faces as they looked up at me (they were both sitting on the floor) and realising that they had just been sprung by me was so hilarious… I still remember it so vividly to this day lol!… they were sprung big time…

…anyway… my mum cracked the shits with them big time shouting stuff like “well done you idiots!… now he knows what they’re getting for Christmas!”… (or something like that) and then she turned to me and said something like “Peter… don’t tell your brother what you’re getting for Christmas okay?… now go to bed… don’t say anything okay?”… needless to say… being the little shit that I was at the time… I woke my little brother up and told him straight away!… we were awake most of the night because we were so excited about getting a car racing set… funny times indeed… cheers.
 
Mr Stickyfingers said:
…a strange little fact about myself… since I was a little kid my eyes have always been a vivid bright blue… so intense blue that people always remarked about them when I was a child… well… I’m going to be turning 70 in June… I noticed that my eyes have changed to a light hazel type of colour… so I Googled it… apparently it’s a natural thing to happen as you age… I never knew that…. (most times when people ask me what colour eyes I had… I used to reply “bloodshot’ lol!)… cheers.
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Many congrats, I (blush) prefer not to reveal my age. I used to say (since I have a daughter) that people could guess whether I was a teen mum or not haha
 
…going shopping today we passed two kids in their front yard playing a game that I haven’t seen for about 60 years!… I was totally gobsmacked… it was ‘knucklebones‘/or maybe even ‘jacks’ from memory (or as we called it back then ‘knuckles’)… it’s this if you don’t remember…

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…here’s me usually thinking “kids never play a game nowadays that doesn’t use batteries “ and the next thing I see them playing knucklebones lol!… bless their little hearts lol!… talk about a blast from the past lol!… cheers.
 
I went to junior hs in Vermont w/a bunch of white people lol
Here are two things we did for physical education
one I managed, the other not so much
Tinikling
Double dutch
 
…in this post on the ‘things that make you laugh’ thread I did a post on our robotic Eufy vacuum cleaner…

Mr Stickyfingers said:
…I had a good laugh at the expense of my sweet darling wife and her daughter… a few months ago I bought my darling wife one of these… a Eufy robotic vacuum cleaner to make her life a lot easier…
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…when we got it you have an app that you can download and control it with if you want to… it asks you to give it a name… I called him ‘Fred’ as a joke… we usually put it on when we go out shopping… it cleans the whole house twice in about 50 minutes while we’re gone… just as we were leaving the house and push the ‘start’ button this conversation happened…

…Wife:… “I’m starting ‘Freddy’ now”…
…Daughter:… ”he’ll have it done by the time we come back”…
…Wife:… “yeah… he does a great job doesn’t he?”…
…Daughter: “yes he does eh?”…
…Wife:… “‘Freddy’ is a life saver… he’s the best thing we ever bought!”…
…Daughter:… “he gives you more time for yourself”…
…Wife:… “he sure does thank God!”…

…I start to laugh and said… “do you realise that you’re talking about ‘Freddy’ as if HE is a human and not just a robot lol!”… they just both stared at me and laughed too… then both simultaneously said… “oh yeah!… the daughter then said…

…”anyone or anything that does something to save me some work is my friend so I treat them as a friend!”…

…a good point I guess lol!… to think… that when I watch ‘The Terminator’ or ‘I Robot’ in the future about robots enslaving mankind… it all started with robotic vacuum cleaners!… funny as!… cheers.
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…when I think of when I was 12 -13 years old in the East end in London in the early 1960’s… my mum and dad bought me a ‘transistor radio’ for my birthday ( even though we were so poor bless them )… they were the ‘new super amazing thing out’ at the time… I was so proud and amazed on this ‘new technology’… it was like owning something that ‘James Bond’ would own!…

…how could we possibly think back then that eventually we could talk to our watches like ‘Dick Tracey’ could then?… lol!… when eventually during my lifetime things like ‘calculators / Cassette Players / Super 8 video / VHS and Beta players / Walkmans / cordless TV remotes then eventually stuff like home desktop computers / laptops / I pads / I phones / video games / and now Bluetooth technology’ etc… etc… etc… just to name a few…

…to think that the Apollo program sent men to the Moon and back with the same lowkey technology of a mere standard calculator makes my mind boggle… it’s beyond words… to have lived my life through all of these wonderous and amazing things makes me so grateful for my century that I’ve lived in…

…I would never had thought as a kid back in the 60’s in the slums of London that I would ever own such amazing things that I do now… a wonderous life indeed… it still makes me feel ‘James Bond-ish’ owning these gadgets today lol!… cheers.
 
The Assassin: Part 2

…lucky girl… then my mum was walking towards us so I decided not to try again… my little sister had escaped a near death experience… so then I made a stealthy prowl to hunt my little brother down… I found him in the lounge room and I waited for the right moment to take him out… I lined up my shot from within the shadows and then took my shot like a cunning assassin!…

…I missed him completely and hit my dad sitting in a lounge chair behind him… my dad looked up immediately and caught me trying to hide my weapon of mass destruction… ( I only got him on his shoulder… no big deal… or so I thought)… he gave me one of his famous ‘death stares’ (which always scared the shit out of me… especially when he said nothing at the time)… he looked at me… motioned his hand in a ‘bring it here’ gesture and I knew that I was in deep kaka…

…all he said to me in a very low voice was “what would happen if that got him in his eye… who would have to take him to Hospital you idiot?”… he then asked me where I got it and when I explained he told me to hand it back… (if I remember right… I got grounded for a couple of days from memory)… so ended my days as an assassin… and I realised that I’m such a lousy shot… remind me one day to tell you about the ‘potato gun incident’ lol!… cheers.
 
Yes. My diet as a kid/teenager was terrible. The only vegetable I would eat was potatoes, sweetcorn and mushrooms, and they're not really vegetables, they're fungus.
By early twenties it changed, basically when I left home and started cooking for myself - which in essence could have turned worse. But I became a vegetarian.
As a kid I ate a lot of sweets, crisps, drank coke. Now I'll treat myself to a chocolate now and again, and don't touch soft drinks at all. Then wine is now my drink of choice!
And we survived! Yay!
 
I remember having porridge or wheatbix with a ton of sugar on the top for breakfast. On the weekends, the English breakfast with fired egg, bacon, fried bread and all the other heart attack shit we'd eat back then! Disgusting!
I don't do breakfast as such now - a cup of tea and a handful of mixed seeds and nuts.
 
As a kid, going for a walk to the milk bar to buy a literally long plastic tube of sugar to suck.

I couldn't even drink a regular bottle of soft drink now. Yet I used to regularly buy 600ml bottles of Coke at the train station after school.

While I like that I am generally healthy these days. I do miss the idea of just walking past a kiosk and buying a potato cake and dim sims for a snack.
 
I couldn't believe the difference in school canteens when I moved from Broken Hill to Adelaide in 1986.

In Broken Hill, we only ordered lunch about once a week. We (or our parents) had to write our order on a paper bag and hand it to a class monitor in the morning. And it would literally be a roll (or sometimes a pie) and a small carton of orange juice or flavoured milk. No soft drinks. Occasionally one of the tiny packets of Twisties for 25 cents.

When I moved to Adelaide, you could go to the canteen at playlunch, never mind lunch, and buy for yourself anything from a hot dog to hot chips to a can of Coke to a Mars Bar.

I think it got a lot worse before it got better, but they seem to have some concept of nutrition now.
 
…in England in the 1960’s that as a kid my mum at the time used to ‘spoil‘ us by letting us have a ‘dippy slice of bread’ after she had cooked something in the frypan like eggs or bacon etc… when she finished cooking she’d hand the three of us a slice of bread each and let us swipe it in the pan to soak up the dripping or lard or whatever… we also had purely fried bread as a ‘treat’ too lol!… (there was no such thing as bad cholesterol or anything back then… nor was there stopping pregnant women from smoking or drinking while pregnant back then either)… wow!… how things sure have changed… cheers.
 
Mr Stickyfingers said:
…in England in the 1960’s that as a kid my mum at the time used to ‘spoil‘ us by letting us have a ‘dippy slice of bread’ after she had cooked something in the frypan like eggs or bacon etc… when she finished cooking she’d hand the three of us a slice of bread each and let us swipe it in the pan to soak up the dripping or lard or whatever… we also had purely fried bread as a ‘treat’ too lol!… (there was no such thing as bad cholesterol or anything back then… nor was there stopping pregnant women from smoking or drinking while pregnant back then either)… wow!… how things sure have changed… cheers.
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Crazy, isn't it! And we all grew up alright too!
 
…I remember that at the age of 13 going on 14 that when my mum and dad dragged my brother and sister and I kicking and screaming away from the East end of London to Australia for ‘a better life’ that I never knew at the time on just how lucky we were that they decided to emigrate to Australia…

…after landing in Adelaide late at night we were taken to the Smithfield Immigration Hostel in Elizebeth in the Adelaide Hills… when I woke the next morning and went outside to see what Australia looked like in daylight for the first time… I was absolutely stunned and mesmerised by what I heard and saw… I heard three different birds doing three different melodic warbles (singing)… they were the most beautiful (almost hypnotic) sounds that I had ever heard… in London all we ever heard were pigeons ‘cooing’ or sparrows ‘twittering’… that was it… just sparrows and pigeons… then I saw different coloured trees with with amazing flowers and blossoms on them… (and a few days later when I heard a Kookaburra laughing it blew my mind lol!)…I realised that on my first day of being in Australia that I had entered paradise!…

…I then realised why my mum and dad had given up everything to give us a better life… and had sacrificed leaving family and friends behind just for us… for them… I forever will be in their debt… Australia truly is paradise… I have a sweet beautiful darling wife… a great family… we have beautiful flora and fauna… great countryside… great weather… it’s a no warzone area… a great way of life and most Australians are bloody decent people… indeed Australia is paradise… I’m a very lucky man indeed… thanks mum and dad… cheers.
 
When I arrived here I went to the Endeavour Migrant Hostel in Sydney.
I had no idea where I was.
The first birds I encountered were the Minor Birds - I thought they were crazy. I'd never heard anything like it before.
 
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