Finding my first pet, a day old kitten still with its eyes closed, I was under 8, fed her with an eye dropper and sadly had to have her put to sleep the week before I was married.

There are sooooooo very few. So many of the "good" memories are directly associated or related to a very bad memories.

Riding my Welsh pony, Fanny. (Who subsequently got out and was hit on the highway by a semi.)

Getting high on pot (yes, that's what we called it) with my best friend and riding our 10-speeds all over town. (Very small town)

Chili and cinnamon rolls every other Friday (bad memory with that -- a separate line for those of us getting the free lunch tickets)

Any [infrequent] weekend we got to go to my dad and step-mom's -- away from the nightmare.

Ugh.......back to being happy because it's Friday and the sun is shining!

Learning to cook with my maternal grandmother. She was the absolute best!

The day my buddy and I were the altar boys. After the service the priest left early and we got into the wine. Ok, it's not my best memory but it was fun.

Working with my grandfather. He was a landscape gardener and came from a family steeped in botany and silviculture. He taught me how to rig ropes and pulleys to stabilize tree parts for safe removal. Knot tying and tree climbing also were involved. Ways use a shovel without hurting your back and lots more about the work, science and taxonomy associated with his profession. One time we twisted sucker branches into loops in an apple tree. The branches grew together making a sculptured effect for the tree. I learned alot of life lessons hanging out with my grandpop.

My mother was very strong on education. School was very important to her, and her children did not miss school unless they were literally too sick to stand up. Well, my 2 brothers closest in age to me and I used to walk down a dirt road to catch the school bus. One day, we were goofing off and got to the bus stop just in time to see the bus drive away. We all looked at each other (knowing what was coming from our mother) and slowly walked back home to face the music. We stood there, and one of us got up the nerve to tell her we missed the bus. She frowned, looked at each of us for a minute that felt like an hour, and said...."Let's go to Disneyland." So we spent the entire day at Disneyland...it was great.

I hate to say it but despite coming from a good, loving, stable family, I don't have any particularly stand-out memories of childhood. I guess I was always looking forward to being an adult. Also as a fundamentalist my range / repertoire of allowed experiences was pretty narrow.

Closest I ever come to wistful memories of a carefree childhood were stomping out paths through the fields and woods behind our house, making "forts", exploring, and just doing ordinary boy things.

I grew up a block away from Lee Richardson zoo in Garden city KS. When I was a kid it wasn't even fenced in so you could just wander around any time you wanted. After I learned to ride a bike I road all over that place all the time. I was bitten be an ostrich, a bear cub, and a goose over the years. I need to take my kids there some time.

All of it apart from school

I grew up in a camp for displaced persons in Northern Germany. A couple of times a year, my mother would dress us in our "good" clothes , and we would take the bus to the city, usually for vaccinations. The bus took the long route through the peat bogs past the pig farms. When we reached the canal, everybody had to get out and walk across the provisional bridge one-by one. My brother Gerd, who was 18 months younger than I held on to my hands as we walked across the planks. The canal water was swirling below us. I tried not to think about that, so I kept talking. " see those holes over there. They were made by bombs." "No they weren't ," said Gerd," that's from shrapnel , from guns" " How do you know that," I said, annoyed. "Everybody knows that," said Gerd haughtily.
That's when I realized the big difference between buys and girls: he could not tie his shoes securely but recognized holes in concrete as made by guns. He also cried when he got his shots. Ha!

Too many! Here are some (I lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland):

Sometime before my third birthday — walking with my mother beside the railway line hoping (and yet slightly frightened) that a train (steam back then) would come rushing by, really close.

Holidays in a little cottage near the beach — water from the pump in the back garden; rockpools; making tranches and canals in the hard damp sand; the mournful foghorn sounding on foggy mornings; riding on a cushion fastened to the bar of my dad's bike; walking to the village for eggs, milk and other provisions; a crackly radio that ran off a very large battery; hurricane lamps and a Primus stove.

Another holiday (age 7) also near the sea, but with walks across fields of bracken and sheep to a shoreline with rocky beaches and secluded coves (smugglers?!); also a sandy beach slightly farther away from where you could watch passenger ferries coming to and from Scotland.

Age 8 — a trip to London! Overnight on the ferry to England then a long thrilling ride in a steam train to the capital with its underground railways ('the tube' ); parks where you could feed sparrows and pigeons; river cruises and a terrific fairground left over from the previous year's Festival of Britain.

My childhood wasn't completely carefree but I had some great times!

Mine is the discovery of the fossil beds on our farm's coulee hill and the years of exploration it gave me.

Blowing up a substitute teacher in Chemistry class? Naw, I think it was the day I purchased (with my own hard earned cash) a brand new Honda SL125 motorcycle right off the showroom floor. I didn't even have a license yet.

Nothing worth remembering.