I’ve got two, one, is we love katamari, which I’m currently playing the rerelease of on steam. The Japanese culture, the wonderfully wacky story and gameplay, the weird but enrapturing soundtrack all coalesced into something new and amazing for me that to this day 20 years later I’m still glued to the screen for.
The other one is back when I was little enough, I would lie on my back under the Christmas tree looking out the window at the blizzard outside. I would lie like this for hours just watching the flurry of snow hitting the pane glass, that icy chaos mere inches away from the calm, twinkling tranquility of the string lights on the trees.
Both of these memories make me incredibly happy and frustratingly sad in a bittersweet way, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget them. How about you guys, what childhood memories stuck with you to this day? What felt so special about that moment?
Am I the only one who can’t think of anything like this?
MULE on c64. Whenever I get a new computer I put an emulator on it first.
A foggy quiet morning. It reminds me of how my mom would walk me to kindergarten.
Ooh I loved the fog, especially when you’re on the way to school, or a thick snow, it makes it feel like you’re in a different world
$1,000 cash
Print comic books. As a child in the 1970s, they were the best hobby. No video games, so comics and riding bikes around the neighborhood was the most fun to be had. The bittersweet sound of cicadas in the summer towards sunset meant that it was time to go home. That will always be a microcosm of childhood happiness for me.
I was born in the 90s so obviously I don’t have the same experience, but when I was little my parents would, once or twice a month take me to borders and let me choose any comic book I wanted, I always got two spiderman comics and maybe an x-men or Archie comic and would read them obsessively until the next visit. But I loved the busy, yet quiet atmosphere and the smell of the coffee they made at the little shop within the store, I was super sad when borders closed for good
Right there with you on the comic books, though I was born in '80. Saving my money ($1.25) to go buy the new release at the corner store was always such a thrill. I still have most of them and have added to the collection over the decades.
Being up in the middle of the night in the summer of 2003 watching adult swim in my (parent’s) basement as a kid. I had horrible anxiety and trouble getting along with other people for various reasons, and my parents weren’t much help. When I was here watching this, in a room I never usually went in, it was like being in a different world. I felt calm for the first time in forever, and the weird adult swim stuff made it feel even more otherworldly and separated from my normal life. The adult swim bumps and content from that time are so cemented in my mind but looking at it now they’ve changed so much, so many times. I’ll still remember it the way it was.
Pokemon, some music that we used to listen to in those days, harry potter. Lord of the rings too ig.
I loved harry potter for that, up until I think the 5th movie where its not really set in the school anymore and didn’t have that wonder to it, it was more serious, I think the school did a lot for the whinsical aspect of the series
The Lion King and Shrooms. No, not together
Well there’s always room for new experiences
For me, it’s the simple memories of playing Quake 3 Arena on Friday nights after school. Crush soda in my cup. A fresh bagel in my hand. Freedom from the responsibilities of homework until Sunday night. I only had the one game so I’d spend the weekend exploring different mods, trying to teach myself how to make levels (maps), and of course just frag noobs online until my eyes hurt. I’d stay up super late and when I’d wake up I literally couldn’t be more excited to do it all over again. It was glorious.
Flying ant day.
Once a year, on a warm and still summer evening, just on sunset, the sky would fill with hundreds of thousands of winged ants. It was magical.
Then one year we waited for them, but summer turned to autumn and they never came. And like that, the magic had gone forever.
Saturday morning cartoons. This was a sacred ritual that we looked forward to every weekend.
Bible black, one of the first porn related stuff I watched.
Surfing
I have a weird one! The smell of one of the hand sanitizer brands (“Germ X”) always brings me back to Kindergarten when we’d all line up for some hand sanitizer before lunch and after recess, then right before going home for the day. Times were so much simpler back then.
I don’t have a lot of “visual” memories left of those times, but the smell of that specific hand sanitizer brand seems like a memory that will never fade for me.
Apparently though memory is primarily visual, odor is one of our strongest memory makers
