Best Posts in Thread: Happier as a Kid

well i have wanted to make my own comments on this thread but it took a while to think this through. i have enjoyed everyones posts here and thanks for those. i guess pats opener of life changing at 18 fits me too. prior to that it was a life where there was always food on the table and a dry place to sleep. i remember trot lines and .22 rifles and a little white jeep to drive and my first girlfriend. from age 18 to age 71 it was school and work. six (count em folks) ex mothers in law (ewwww), four degrees, maybe 16 or so different jobs in six different states. nothing remarkable and really nothing particularly rewarding. but honestly, my life has never been better than the last six plus years largely due to my present partner who i met six weeks after arriving here. i am fighting the same rear guard action most of you are against father time but i will be leaving at daybreak on my bicycle for the market for fresh fish and maybe some choco wacko's for my babys breakfast. one day at a time folks. i will want to enjoy it as long as it lasts and will hope the best life possible for all of you as well!!

 

That is the hallmark of we expats... the World is full of people our age that grew up and grew old and eat out at at 5pm for the senior citizen special. Those of us who defied age struck out searching for a second youth.... hats off to my fellow expats who saw age as just a number .... Huzzah !!

 

Pandemics, communists, friends passing away, critics, I am taking my mind back to when I was a happy kid, albeit a poor one.
- my first crush, 6th grade
- learning baseball, basketball, football, soccer at the Boys Club
- paper route to earn money for a bicycle, levi’s, hot chocolate floats during the winters
- picking apples, peaches, cherries, strawberries from neighbourhood yards
- learning math and geography and history
- watching Annette mature
AND THEN TURNED 18 AND SUDDENLY WASN’T FUN ANY MORE

 

As a child I was fortunate to be the youngest of four and the only boy. While I grew up my sister one by one left home.
However as their clothes were dresses I never had to wear the hand-me downs!
Climbing trees, fishing in the ditches with a net and jam jar catching tiddlers, my childhood was a happy one.
My schooling was basic but I managed to survive the authoriterian teachers and during my teenage years I never knew what it was like not to have employment.
In my twenty's my first marriage gave me the responsibility I needed to settle down and life has always been a learning curve.
Growing up in the 50/60's was the best time in my life and the memories remain.

 

So you are saying, as I have read many times elsewhere, that it is the family who raise you that bears more value than those who created you?

If I am not in error of understanding you had a incredible adoptive family, I can compare that with being born into a family of 5 children and having a physically and mentally abusive father. Our ages (me and siblings) now total over 370 years but we still all suffer the scars, as did my mother from age 19 to her death at 73. Nothing beats a caring family, whoever the parents are.

 

As one who owned two paper routes, Milwaukee Sentinel morning, & Milwaukee Journal, evening, I know what you mean. I made $13/week each one but I gave up the morning one after a while because waiting for the delivery guy on the corner at 5:00AM before school was just too dang cold in the winter. So I kept the Journal route, worked for the janitor at the local church/school and earned about 50$ per month there (shoveling snow sometimes). We are talking about 1964. Always bought my own stuff except for Christmas time and birthday. Work and study were what you normally did but once in a while, went to soda fountain at the drug store, bought comic books 13 cents, drinking a nickle coke and a dime bag of potato chips. Heaven on Earth. We owned our paper routes, cost about $50 for the "business". When we got out of the business we tried to sell it at a profit which was possible if we were able to get a lot of more customers. That was how we learned about free enterprise as young kids growing up.