-Megan G.’s favorite childhood memory.
Your contest entries made me too happy to leave them in comments. A few that stood out:
My dad used to make dandelion butter with me, which involved stirring dandelions in a tin cup until it turned to butter. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized a distraction and slight of hand were part of the magic. -Liz
My favourite childhood memory is of my father play-massaging my back after bath. He would spray a little fresh kiddie cologne and do light clapping and topping on my back, arms and legs. -Marta
I used to hide in my grandmothers drained pond from my brother and cousins so I could read. -Beks
My favorite memory is hand drawing and coloring paper doll clothes for my little sister. We would spend hours pouring through the JCPenney’s catalog so that she could choose outfits for me to recreate. -Tamra
Having a breakfast of brownies and decaf coffee from a Thermos on the beach with my parents and little sister. -Holly
My favourite memory was thinking Michael Jackson from his thriller video lived in my furnace room. I was always scared to turn off the lights at the bottom of the basement stairs. -Alison Kelly
I remember playing in a room with a brass bed and red curtains, and watching through the window as a train went by. -Amy Jo
The pure magic my dad would create for my sisters and me on the evenings my mom worked. Like blowing out an egg and filling it with Rice Krispies (in advance so we didn’t see) and then cracking it and BLOWING our little minds. -Katherine
My parents were redoing the walls so after the old paper had been stripped, they let us color all over the walls. We kept a bucket of crayons at the top of the stairs and we would draw big lines as we walked downstairs. -Miss K
My mom waking me and my sister in the middle of the night when we had gone to visit PEI and taking us outside, bundled in our coats and Dad’s mittens over our PJs to watch thousands of Canada geese fly across the full moon. -Ellen
My favorite childhood memory is the fishtank next to my crib. My parent used it as a psuedo-nightlight, the gurgling and warmth and buzzing pump and darting fish would lull me to sleep every night. -Daffodil Campbell
My grandmother had no rules: she threw away toothpaste caps and slept in her clothes. My mom was the type that kept the plastic on things. I loved being so free [at my grandmother’s house] because it always felt like I was getting away with something huge. -Martha
When my three sisters and I made a boat out of a kiddie pool and rowed it down the ditch with a broom for a paddle when the creek by our house flooded. -Tiff
I had this older brother type character in my life, a boy four years older than me who was my parents’ best friends’ son. We both went to this private school about 20 miles away and had a long bus ride together every day. When his 8th grade class read The Hobbit, he’d read it to me on the bus every morning and evening. -Robin
My grandmother transformed the empty lot beside our house into some wild forest/garden. Under one of the trees was what I thought to be a carpet of white flowers. Turns out they were all butterflies. -Michelle
My father used to hook up the hose to the top of the house, so that the water would fall into the pool like a waterfall. We would take turns jumping “through” it. -Natasha
My favorite childhood memory: completing a 2,000 piece puzzle with my Dad. We weren’t very close when I was growing up, he much preferred doing “boy” activities with my brother, but one day he brought this huge thing home and announced we would be working on it together. We cleared off the dining room table and the family ate in the kitchen for over two weeks while we worked on it after dinner every night. I remember exactly what it looked like still to this day. -Faetra
I remember being about 3 or 4 and taking a trip to Maine with my dad. One night he woke me up and brought me down to the lake where we laid on our backs in a row boat and watched shooting stars together. -Megan
My mom running from the car, where I was waiting, up through the dandelions in our yard to grab something else from the house. It’s the only memory I have of my mother walking; rheumatoid arthritis permanently bound her to a wheelchair when I was 4. -Guinevere
On warm summer evenings, my parents would sometimes fill the plastic baby pool in the yard with bubbles and my brothers and sister and I would take our baths outside. -Katie
Sitting on my grandfather’s lap, him asking how old i am, and me triumphantly holding up a single finger. -Jill
In the summertime, I would pitch a tent in the backyard and it would be my “room” for about a week. Since I was a scaredy-cat, I would beg my grandpa to sleep in it with me. My grandpa was a big guy, and this was a tiny kids tent. He slept in it with me every night and listened to my kid-talk and still got up in the morning at 5 to go to work. -Rachel
Hanging out in the garage with my dad, who is something like the ultimate handyman. We’d have to take “cat breaks” so I could sit on his lap in the rocking chair by the wood stove and pet kittens. -Lacey
Playing house inside a circle of mammoth sunflowers that my Mother would plant for us every summer. She’d plant them in a horseshoe shape and then tie the tops together. -KellyBrz
We moved cross-country when I was five, and I drove with my dad while my mom flew out w my baby brother… We ate a two-pound bag of Skittles on the trip. I made him eat all the yellow and green ones. -Kate F
During summer vacation, my best neighborhood friend, Marcie, and I would ride our bikes to the nearby feed store which was the best hangout in our rural Iowa neighborhood because they had a pop machine. we’d dig out some coins and buy two Like sodas, then play Family Feud. That is, I would be the host and try to remember the previous day’s categories and answers and she would play every family member on both teams. -Kate
When we were 9 and 8, my sister and I would steal into the den and dig fistfuls of coins out of the giant milk jug where my parents stashed spare change. This technique supplemented our meager allowances for weeks until my parents started to ask questions about all the new little stuffed monkeys and monkey wardrobes we were acquiring. -Margaret
Since My Grandfather passed today I will leave a memory of him. He used to let us chop wood with him as young as 8 or 9 we had our own little ax and everything. -Charlotte Lunsford
My grandparents came to visit us after a stop in Las Vegas. When they arrived my G-pa called me over (I was about 6) and said he had something for me. He said that while he was in Vegas “he took out a Special Quarter just for little Jilly” and played it in a special Slot Machine and whatever came out would be for me… and from behind his back he whipped around a HUGE paper bag full of quarters. And just as he handed the bag to me, the bottom fell out and they went crashing to the ground just like a slot machine spitting them out! After counting them, I had $67.00 even. -Jill
Catching fireflies with my big brother then putting them in jar and filling bottle caps with granola and water for them. -Mosiphine
I remember racing into the dance studio upon seeing it for the first time at age three and asking the instuctor if we were going to do thiiiiiiiiis? (spinning around and around and around on the shiny tile floor). “Of course” she said. -Anngeedee
Grandpa’s pipe smoke “to keep the mosquitos away.” -ErinTine
When I was little I LOVED riding the school bus to my grandparents house. My grandma was the kind that had a 5 gallon can of flour under the kitchen table; she was always baking something. One particular day it was rainy and stormy and when I got off the bus at the end of the driveway I could smell my Grandma’s homemade dinner rolls. I ran all the way up the driveway. My Grandma met me at the door with a towel, helped me dry off and then I parked myself next to the wood stove with an afghan and a nice hot buttery dinner roll to watch Scooby Doo. -Heidi C.
Pretending not to wake up when my mom masqueraded as the tooth fairy. -Mia
Riding my bike to the little corner grocery store to buy bagfuls of candy. I could shove five atomic fireballs in my mouth at once though. -Amanda
If you didn’t add your memories because you weren’t interested in the contest, go ahead and leave yours below. Yeah. Do it.
Mighty Girl 