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In reply to the discussion: What was something you were really , really into as a kid. Anything-toy, book. song, TV show,, pet.games [View all]wnylib
(25,183 posts)Rode the bike everywhere.
Had a grey tabby cat, Smokey. Poor kitty. I dressed him up in doll clothes and put him in a doll buggy to go for a walk. He leaped out and ran off in a doll dress. Fortunately, he did not hold a grudge against me for that. He used to follow me around outdoors, even down to the corner mom and pop store and back.
Books - read everything, from adventure stories to kids' detective books, kids' joke books, nature stories. Got a book for Christmas one year that was called 365 Bedtime Stories for Children. One short story per page. Our encyclopedia set had 10 separate books that came with it, on topics like poetry, history, myths and legends, etc.
Rocks and shells -- I grew up on Lake Erie and collected mussel shells (look like clam shells), colorful beach glass, and tiny spiral shells. The spiral shells were not native to the area. They were in sand that was hauled in as fill for beach erosion at the Lake's state park. Collected fossils in the creek bed at my grandfather's farm, along with the shale and slate rocks that they were embedded in.
Languages -- my grandmother's sister lived with our family. She came to the US as a child when her family immigrated from Germany. She was fluent in English, but spoke German with old friends when they visited. We had neighbors who were immigrants from Italy, so I heard them speaking Italian in their yard or on their porch in summer. Picked up some cuss words in German and Italian and thought it was fun to get away with using them around people who did not know what I was saying.
Picked up a few Yiddish words from my widower grandfather's significant other. Learned a few Polish words from an older cousin's wife, whose parents were from Poland.
Read the front section of our big dictionary where it told about languages and language families. I think I was the only kid in grade school who knew the branches of the Indo-European language family, and the language family groupings of Native American cultures. So of course as an adult I majored in a foreign language and minored in anthropology.
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