I was in my car listening to songs on Spotify when Foreplay/Long Time came on. It’s one of Boston’s hits from their first album. I remember listening to that album on my 2-XL when I was like 7 years old. I stole my older brother’s 8-track tape of the album. I fell in love with that album back then and have owned it on every audio format short of Reel to Reel, and I still love it today.
My other childhood love that is still way up there is ravioli. Just a nice cheese ravioli with tomato sauce. For decades it was the way I tested out Italian restaurants, if they could make nice ravioli, they were OK in my book. I don’t go for lobster ravioli or mushroom ravioli with a cream sauce, or Mr. Boyardee’s version, proper cheese ravs with a well made tomato sauce, thanks.
What things did you absolutely adore as a little little kid and never grew out of?
TV Shows: Taxi, WKRP, Barney Miller, Star Trek I still love, but not like when I was a kid.
Books: The Lord of the Rings, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Overall my love of books died in the last 3 years. I don’t know why. I was a voracious reader, now I’m not.
Music: So much, but Zep, Beatles, Pink Floyd, Yes, The Who, CSN&Y, The Allman Brothers top the list I guess.
Movies: Many, so many I won’t bother listing.
Sports: I don’t love any sport the way I did as a kid. Baseball is the only one I really care much about anymore though.
I love looking out the window in an airplane. Watching the landscape turn into toys, and then to a map. I love looking at the clouds from both sides, and I love looking out the window on props that fly low enough to see all the houses and cows. I didn’t fly in props as a kid, but I fly in jets a lot, and saw a lot of take-off and landing, and that low-flying part is the best.
I stopped reading for several years, and thought maybe I’d gotten too old, or too distracted, or… And then, during the pandemic, I started reading again. E-books that I borrowed from the local library system and read on my kindle. Now I’m reading some before going to bed most nights.
So… try again some time. You might find it was temporary.
Scary books, particularly those featuring ghosts or witches.
Plus, this doesn’t really fit here, but it came to mind. Last night, lying awake in the wee hours, I was remembering a pair of shoes I loved as a teenager. And it struck me: I bet they still make those. And I could buy them!
So I may just do that.
I stopped reading for a while - and when I started again , I found that it wasn’t so much that I lost my love of reading as much as that my tastes changed. Before , I read mostly novels and now I don’t think I read one novel a year. It’s almost all non-fiction.
I grew up in a sports-oriented household, and I still follow baseball and American football pretty closely. Watching baseball, either on TV or at the ballpark, has always been one of my favorite things.
I was into science fiction as a kid, and still love it. I watched an episode of Star Trek (the original series) yesterday. I appreciate differently than I did as a kid. When I was young, it was the photon torpedoes and crazy looking aliens. Now I can appreciate better the music, the camerawork, Uhura’s fantastic good looks, etc…
I parked my bike outside my neighborhood comic shop, and mentioned to the owner that “there are some things you never outgrow”.
"My favorite thing to do in grade school was to ride my bike to the drugstore, buy a couple of comics, roll them so they fit in my back jeans pocket, buy a soda and head down to the park to read…
“…Guess it’s still my favorite thing.”
(As I rolled a couple of comics up, I did see him wince.)
Another one is mulberries. We used to have a tree growing up, and I planted a tree for myself, just need to wait for it to mature a few more years. Close second is raspberries, black raspberries and blackberries, the ability to walk into the back yard, find a cane or two with ripe berries on it, it’s a joy. Just a tiny little taste of the freshest fruit imaginable, a berry or two right off the vine and into the mouth.
As an adult, it’s mostly a nuisance. But I loved snow as a child, both because I enjoyed playing in it and because it sometimes meant a day off from school. And fresh snow still makes me happy.