in simpler times, i had a huge imagination

these days, its harder to have have fun without spending money.




i miss it when things were simpler and having fun meant going exploring the backyard using the trashcan as a shield and a twig+dental floss as a bow & arrow. or imagining my lego blocks to be giant robots and i'd build the most kickass space ships. or when climbing up a bunk bed was actually a challenge.

i used to think that if something at the store didnt have a price tag, it was free. and i was convinced that the left/right turn signal arrows on the dashboard were magic and they'd always tell you when to make a turn. i was a very matter-of-fact kid actually. some of my earliest memories were when my mom was driving me down landess avenue and i'd try to impress her with my (false) understanding of why trees were green or why noses bleed. even though most of it was nonsense, my mom always said "my son is so smart!"

i love my mom. i miss her.

i also remember when my sister used to overpower me all the time. the toddler stage is a vulnerable time for any younger brother because until you gain past 40 pounds, your older sister can beat you up. my sister used to pinch me whenever i looked at her copy of the scholastic book-order. those really thin and colorful catalogs where you check-off little squares for the books you want and you put a check in the mail. and then a few weeks later, the teachers pass out all the order in class like its Christmas in April. and then you look around to see what the other kids bought (heathcliff comics, the rainbow fish, goosebumps). and my sister would force me to play sailor moon with her (she had a huge collect of holographic sailor moon cards). i was always queen barrel. wtf! queen barel is a woman! atleast let me be tuxedo mask or moonlight night! but she'd overpower me. haha lillian. i love her.

i hated piano lessons as a kid. and i hated kumon. the homework was freakin relentless. if you fell behind even a day, itd be impossible to catch up. seriously. how do you expect little children to do 100 pages of long division every week? i was only in 2nd grade! so i'd stash my unfinished homework in the closet drawer. but one day, my mom found out. and i got owned.

i guess it'd be wrong for me to not mention my dad. he's the kind of dad that makes you laugh until you cry. back in the day when desktops were huge and monitors were giant boxes, we started playing around with microsoft paint and we just scribble all over the screen with different colors and laugh uncontrollably for no reason. i guess its a kid thing, but my dad always played along.

i remember when pokemon first came out. i was the first one in my elementary school to catch all 150 pokemon! i was once challenged to name all 150 pokemon in the correct order and i did. i was a freaking pokedex. my favorite pokemon was articuno. i remember when i first fought it, i was like "dang. this pokemon is strong. it froze my blastoise..." and then everyone figured out how to do the cinnabar island/rare candy trick plus the cloning trick with the link cable. then pokemon became lame cause you could just catch mewtwos and use infinite rare candies to level them up to level 199. if you know what im talking about, then we could've been good friends in the 4th grade.

i miss kiddy quirks. im gonna have like 10 kids some day and have myself a good vicarious thrill watching them do funny kid stuff.