Modigli's Meme

The always lovely Modigli tagged me ... OUCH!!

The ChildHood Meme: What 5 Things Do You Miss About Your Childhood?

But first the somewhat complicated rules to this meme:
Remove the blog at #1 from the following list and bump every one up one place. Add your blog's name in the #5 spot. Link to each of the other blogs for the desired cross pollination effect.

1. This is Ali
2. It's the End Of The World As We Know It
3. More Than My Luggage
4. Modigli
5. Cincysundevil

Next: select new friends to add to the pollen count. Of course, no one is obligated to participate, but what's the fun if you don't play along? On that note, feel free to tag yourself if I didn't list you here, but you'd like to do it.

1. Trixie
2. JHD
3. PirateBride
4. Lindsay
5. Andi

Let me start rubbing my chinny chin chin and start to reminisce ...

1. My sense of fascination with the world. I remember being completely fascinated with little creekbeds and small wooded areas. It was like my own small sanctuary away from the dog eat dog world of parents and little sisters. I could collect rocks for hours on end; turning over huge ones to see the bugs that lived underneath. Staring at the sky and night and wondering what in the world was out there (I still do that to this day and after Astronomy 101, I wonder even more). I could spend days looking for non-existent arrowheads at the family ranches.

2. My mom's cooking. Is there any greater feeling that coming in from playing outside in the cold and mom has a great dinner cooked? My mom is an amazing cook. She has a gift with food that I wish I did. I hope that someday I might cook half as well as she does; if I do, I'll be doing well.

3. My imagination. As a kid, you could create you own little world with the toys you were playing with. Every summer I'd spend with my cousins in Texas and we'd play with our Matchbox cars. We'd build elaborate roads by cupping our hands to smooth out the dirt, make homes out of small boxes, and so on. We'd play hide & seek in the middle of the night. We thought we were so cool because we had like 5 or 6 albums that my older cousins let us borrow and we'd play them ad nauseam.

4. Toys, toys, ... oh yeah, and toys. I guess it's true that boys never grow up; it's only the price of their toys that goes up. I have to be honest, I love X-Mas because every year we go overboard with toys for my nephews. We buy them the coolest and latest toys. Inevitably, my brother-in-law, my brother, and myself end up playing with them. And heaven forbid we break out the PS2.

5. Time off from the real world. Every once in a great while in that shit hole town I grew up in, we'd have a snow day in the winter. The area gets the tail end of Noreasters ( I think that's how it's spelled), those really shitty ice cold blasts that swoop down from like Nebraska and Kansas. We'd get a foot of snow and school would be cancelled. Apart from that, summers were freaking awesome. We'd play all day on bikes and just find stupid shit to get into in general.