Remember When?

Remember when? We have all heard that saying a lot, remember when days were quiet, remember when we used to play outside all day long. Ah yes, the good old days. We all remember those days no matter how old we are. Everything just seemed to be better when we were young, why is that?

When we are young we don't have the responsibilities of grown ups. You can play with friends all day without any concerns about how the bills will get taken care of if you are playing instead of working. Don't get me wrong, this is a positive thing. Kids need to be able to kick back and enjoy life. Having fun and socializing with other kids will help turn them into kind, caring grown ups. However you aren't doing kids a favor by letting them have the easy life. Parents need to balance play and work. Having kids do chores will help them to realize that you don't get something for nothing. You have to work for what you get!

Remember when the lazy days of summer meant long games of Kick The Can, Hide & Seek and Mother May I. I am not sure if kids today even know what those games are! I fondly remember gathering together with the neighborhood kids early in the morning and we would explore and play in the neighborhood all day long. Well, until we heard our mother's calling us home from the front porch. Kids today don't play like we did. The world is a much stranger place now. It is sad really, we didn't get into trouble and we didn't worry about strangers. The most that we had to worry about is someone getting hurt and needing stitches!

Remember the family trips of your childhood? Throwing the whole family into the car and driving for hours to get to our destination. We didn't have portable DVD players, Game Boy's or iPods. We played the Alphabet and License Plate games. We didn't have a GPS either, but getting lost made for fun memories of the trip, even if Dad got angry because he didn't know where in the world we were at! Back in the day getting there was half the fun. We still remember the places we would stop on our road trips. Somehow taking an airplane takes some of the fun out of a vacation. Of course you get there fast, but you lose out on all the great family fun in the car. Well, maybe all that time spent in the car wasn't as fun for mom and dad as it was for us kids!

This article was written by Jamie Rona. Jamie enjoys spending her time researching her family history and using her 35mm slide converter as part of the process. She enjoys nature, reading and working on converting old slides to digital for family members.