The resources to make stuff. I’ve always liked making things. I used to look at books with instructions on making interesting things when I was a kid but they always blythely said things like:
"You will need:
6 pipecleaners
a two foot length of bamboo one inch in diameter
a one gallon glass bottle"
and there was always something we didn’t have and I couldn’t get and I couldn’t work around.
Now I can have whatever shit I can find on the entire internets, plus I happen to live near the most fantastic recycled materials/random crap warehouse you can imagine. And I have money.
I couldn’t think of anything til I saw this. It’s true for me, too. I wanted to see the world more than anything when I was a kid, but we weren’t wealthy.
I’m still not wealthy (I’m a grad student), but I’ve been to seventeen countries on four continents now and am nowhere near done. Sure, I don’t have a house or a kid or…virtually any possessions, but I travel. It makes me happy.
When I was a teenager, my mom had a very unfriendly cat. It hated me, hissed at me if I tried to pet it, and generally avoided me.
Now I have two friendly cats who purr when I pet them. One of them usually sleeps in my bed, and the other does sometimes.
I always wanted to travel without the long boring car trips my parents always took. Now, I fly if I’m going anywhere that would take more than about 3.5-4 hours to drive to. I take long boring plane trips, but let’s face it- I’d rather sit in one place for 14 hours and end up in Australia than in Wisconsin. It helps that I don’t get airsick nearly as easily as I get carsick, too, so I can read on a plane.
I also go on trips to places where there are no relatives or family friends to visit, unlike most of the trips my parents took me on. I go places just to go to them, not to see somebody there.
I didn’t get to travel out of the country till I was 21. Now most of my vacations are to places outside the US.
Same here. If all that is available is stuff I don’t like, I can eat a few bites or a few side dishes to be polite and later on go out and buy something I do like with my own money. If there is no food in the house that I like, I can go to the grocery store or a restaurant or order takeout.
A few of my favorite childhood books. I spent my childhood “with my head stuck in a book”, and they were from the library, of course. Now, every so often, I search for a childhood favorite, like “King of the Wind” by Margurite Henry, online, and if I find that particular OLD edition, I’ll buy it for myself. If I live long enough to have a granddaughter, I’ll have a nice little library to foist upon her. Oh, and I seriously would like to find a couple of Millie the Model comic books (readers could draw an item of clothing, send it in, and they might draw your creation on Millie with a notation that it was from you!)…Or, God help me, a Katy Keene fashion comic book! They are available if I search hard enough, but terribly expensive, and I just can’t justify spending that kind of dough now.
A big honking modular synthesizer. I was smitten by the sound after hearing “Switched On Bach” and seeing a modular synthesizer in the last scene of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” I even made a ‘pretend’ synthesizer by driving a bunch of roofing nails into an old piece of wood and pretending those were the knobs.
Years later I have an ever-growing modular synth that is an unending source of weird sounds and enjoyment. If the aliens ever come, I’ll be prepared to speak with them.
My own room! A space that was my own. Now that I’m old and married it’s my den, but I remember the first time I had a bedroom to myself! I was practically giddy.
Granted when I was a kid it was on tv, but now I get the episodes as they’re released on dvd. I think I’m up to season 6.
New Kids on the Block-I’ve been to see them twice now since they made their comeback. They’re still as yummy as they were when I was 10.
It amazes me how many adults bought the big box of crayons…in my defense, it was only like 50 cents more to upgrade from the 48 count…AND I got a crayon sharpener.
I have a BB/pellet gun. Technically I had one when I was younger: it must have belonged to an older brother because I found it in a closet.
It had this really unusual sight. You flip up a half-moon that had like a pinhole in the middle of it, then line it up with the sight at the business end of the barrel. I could hit a quarter at about ten feet…cool!
When I oiled it, it stopped working. My mom never liked those things and wouldn’t let me get a new one.
So I got one a couple years ago, and it’s out in the garage. She has a scope, you know, and pumped ten times, could do some real damage. When I go home I sometimes take it with me. Illinois, out in the country, there are good places for plinking. As I leave mom’s house I say, “I’m going to go shoot my eye out. I’ll be back in a little while.”
Two things I saw at the Museum of Science and Industry in the 60s that I absolutely coveted: an oscilloscope and a speakerphone. In my 20s bought a used oscilloscope for a ridiculously cheap price. My current phone is a speakerphone.
I also wanted a laser. In the 60s Edmund was selling them for about $100. Now I have a laser pointer that cost much less.
I wanted some means of recording TV shows and in a few cases I made tape recordings of the audio. Practical home VCRs weren’t available until I was in my 30s. I’ve been through a couple of VCRs, and now they’re obsolete.
Along the same lines, I just wanted to be able to play guitar…at the time I didn’t have a specific make I wanted (or rather it changed daily) but I wanted to be a decent player…
You are a prospective customer for American Science & Surplus, if you’re not an actual customer. They have all sorts of odd bits of equipment, at amazing prices. How can you not love a store that has “Robot Partz” as a category? They’ll buy and sell anything, if they think there’s a market for it. I recommend bookmarking it and then browsing when you have spare time…and spare cash.
Any time I eat dessert out of the pan - cake or pie, or cheesecake yumm - I have a brief moment of appreciation of being an adult and having the luxury of eating the whole thing if I wanted to. (I don’t usually eat the whole thing , not at one sitting anyway). And I can have it for breakfast if I want.
Arcade games. Wanted some when I wasn’t even tall enough to play them without being held up by my mom. Bought three when I was 18, and still have them. (Satan’s Hollow, Karate Champ, and 1943).
All the old computers and video game consoles which fascnated me when I was a kid (mid 1970s to early 1990s). Plus lots of games for them.
A library. I have a small room lined with tall bookcases, filled with books, as well as an island in the middle made of shorter shelves holding more books and periodicals. Now all I need to do is get a dictionary stand for the island, and a globe. Every library needs a globe.
As many scissors as I want, all sharp. I have a sharpener, and if they won’t sharpen, I don’t keep them. I have at least one pair in every room. I even own multiple pairs of fabric scissors and sometimes use them to cut paper. I don’t know how many times I got scolded as a kid for using the family black-handled scissors and forgetting to put them back, or got *really *in trouble for misusing Mom’s fabric shears.
I still fantasize about this, but haven’t yet found a candy bowl I like (that I trust the cats to not kill). My great-grandma had an open-bowl policy, but her daughter, my grandma, kept a bowl that kids were not allowed to touch. With a big heavy lid that went “CLANGGG!!” if you didn’t take it off just right, and stale candy. Not that I would know, of course. It looked like this, but in bright olive green with blue spatters. I want something… not that ugly.
My dad is a (now retired) librarian. He harrumphs at the whole idea of private ownership of books, but because I am now a grownup with my own house, I can buy as many books as I want, and keep them as long as I want, and find something to read at any time of day or night, so there.
I did get Sea Monkeys in college, though I kept them in a plain glass container of salt water. Then later, when I worked in a cubicle, I got an Ecosphere. TOTALLY worth it.
Ahh. This! This is the absolute best! Anything I want for any project I want! and because of eBay, I can usually afford it, too. When I was a kid, I memorized the aisles of our local hardware and dime stores… I’m sure the clerks thought I was planning to steal something, but I was just looking for interesting project-parts.
I have a map of the world, put out by the National Geographic in the late 40s or early 50s. It was my grandfather’s, he got it as a bonus for being some sort of contributing member. I believe it’s 4’ x 6’. It takes up wall space, but not floor space. It’s big enough to be useful, as long as you only need political information of that time frame. I keep it around because I think it looks great, and it was my grandfather’s. Too many people declutter their heirlooms.
