Reading and — I’m sure prior to my ability to do that — being read to.
[Note: I would define the “kid” years as those between infancy and teenage years. So, my obsession with reading was bookended by an obsession with boobies.]
BATMAN!
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Wild Thing: Embracing Childhood Traits in Adulthood for a Happier, More Carefree Life by Mike FaircloughI think that would have been “race car driver,” between my “cowboy” and “independently-wealthy-masked-vigilante” phases. (I did NOT know how jobs worked.)
Share one of the best gifts you’ve ever received.
As a kid, my first non-hand me down bike, a bright yellow and blue trimmed BMX bike.
Now the really interesting question is whether there was anything special about this gift, or – rather – it came at the height of the appeal of gifts for me, an appeal that faded into adulthood and is virtually nonexistent in the present day. (no pun intended)
Eight thousand miles
from my childhood home,
I'm pulled into a nostalgic
reverie
by the scent of straw
and cow shit.
This place,
on the other side of the world,
looks nothing like where I
grew up,
but that smell...
Which food, when you eat it, instantly transports you to childhood?
Probably Fair food would (as in County Fair.) Provided they haven’t all changed since I was a kid. (Having not been to a Fair since childhood, I wouldn’t know. Hence, its validity as an answer.) So, anything inappropriately breaded and deep-fried.
I’ve never run across home-cooking or home style cooking that was close enough to my mother’s to trigger nostalgia. (Though I guess tuna-mac recalls undergrad years lean on time and money, but with a youthful propensity to not worry over the waistline.)
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Through all the pleasant meadow-side
The grass grew shoulder-high,
Till the shining scythes went far and wide
And cut it down to dry.
These green and sweetly smelling crops
They led in wagons home;
And they piled them here in mountain tops
For mountaineers to roam.
Here is Mount Clear, Mount Rusty-Nail,
Mount Eagle and Mount High --
The mice that in these mountains dwell,
No happier are than I!
O what a joy to clamber there,
O what a place for play,
With the sweet, the dim, the dusty air,
The happy hills of hay!
Tiger Riding for Beginners 