What was your favorite pastime as a child?

Being outside.  As a little kid, and by little I mean prior to 4th grade, so under 10-range, we lived on 5 acres, out in the boondocks, about 7 miles outside the 'town', if it could be called such.  Our house was a green double wide mobile home with white trim.  Our driveway was long and there were huge trees on both sides of the drive when you turned in.  We had lots of 'out-buildings'.   A small garage -- where the cars lived, but it was open to the side, so it looked more like a barn.  A shed -- it was metal and held bikes and tools and other assorted things.  A big garage -- it held dad's boat and the motor home and an empty bay that had timber in it and lots of fun but dangerous things that my brother and I climbed on.  There was the barn ... where the horses lived.  There was the pump house, where the well-controls were which was next to the garden.  The driveway was circular and it had giant bumps and ruts in it.  And it drove my a Russian Olive tree that my mom loved.  There was a swingset.  And a trampoline.  A back porch, but not a front.

It's this layout, forever burned into my brain where my favorite times were spent.  My favorite pastime as a kid was playing dress up with the kittens on the back porch.  It was playing in the haystack, the woodpile or on the basketball court.  It was playing on the trampoline, swinging or climbing on the swings, riding the horses, walking the fields and looking for asparagus, flowers or other assorted treasures.  My brother and I dug foxholes in the ditches, climbed fences, made forts, played hide and seek and spent hours and hours outside.  It was doing anything outside ... being anywhere outside.  THAT was my favorite pastime as a child.

January 2013

Florence Littauer said, "The beauty of the written word is that it can be held close to the heart and read over and over again."