What objects or things remind you of your childhood?

Man, my childhood was awesome. The thing that I remember most fondly about my childhood was coming home from visting my cousins. It was dark and no one was around. The darkness was blissful to me.

• Coming home after school in the winter and smelling dinner cooking. It would be dark in the living room, the only light on would be in the kitchen. That feeling always says home to me.

• Being driven at night in the winter months thinking everything is alright in the world. Rather perversely the smell of ejaculate does as well. We once lived near a forrest of trees that smelled of it. I always liked that smell and told my mother so at age 6. She smiled sweetly and knowingly and said, "I thought you might."

• Aubusson tapestries... Ming vases... that sort of thing. It reminds me of a simpler, more innocent time.

  Anderson%20Cooper

• The smell of indoor garages. My grandparents had one in the building they lived in in White plains, NY, and my grandpa took me everywhere in his gold car (which I remember as silver for some reason) He was the best grandpa that ever lived.

• When I was a kid, I'd spend the whole day just looking at the different type of weeds and wild flowers in the empty lot next to our house. I used to collect wildflowers. When I see dried wildflowers, it reminds me of my childhood... So long ago, sigh....

• Case Study Houses Golf tees Clydesdale horses

• Crayola Crayons, artist's paper pads.

• Rain. I HAD to play outside during the summer. My mother didn't want me messing up her clean house or mopped floors. Even when it rained, I'd have to stay out. I'd find shelter (sometimes in my dog's house) but usually I enjoyed the rain so much I'd stand out in it and let it drench me. I was lucky I wasnt struck by lightening. When it rains now, especially in Summer, I feel really calm. I shut everything down, TV, music, computer, open the windows and just listen to it. Sometimes, I'll sit outside and get wet.

• A cracked mirror. Creaking floorboards. A doll without eyes.

• Fireflies The chlorine smell of swimming pools, and that chlorine smell that got stuck in your nose after spending all day in the pool Baseball games on tv Summer thunderstorms Abbott and Costelo movies

• I was a wee child in the '80s but what I do remember was it was a relatively conservative decade. DARE was a big part of my elementary years, thanks to Nancy Reagan. War on Drugs was so '80s. Michael Jackson and Madonna immediately bring back my childhood as those two were God and Goddess. You could not escape them. I also remember "Where's the Beef." 80s commercials were all about memorable lines.

• Freshly cut grass. It reminds me of the summer between preschool and kindergarten, when I'd watch my father mow the lawn. I'd sit on the porch next to his open can of Coors and pack of Salems.

• Cars from the 1950s and early '60s are what most makes me feel nostalgic. The smell that most reminds me of childhood is cigarette smoke. Seems like everybody smoked back then.

• R13, didn't cigarette smoke smell different then? I remember it smelling rather pleasant in the late 60's and early 70's, now it smells like shit, chemicals, and despair.

• Any song from the 1960s. Old Star Trek reruns.

• Big floppy straw hats We were so poor, I didn't have clothes for the first ten years of my life. Then Momma gave me an old floppy hat so's I could look out the window. She died of blindness the next year - drank so much magic water out of the tub she somersaulted down several flights of stairs. She never could stick the landings.

• Staging death scenes with my sister's barbies and my father's video camera.

• [quote]Big floppy straw hats We were so poor, I didn't have clothes for the first ten years of my life. Then Momma gave me an old floppy hat so's I could look out the window. Was she Bella Abzug?

  Ed%20Koch

• Fiddler on the Roof (my sweet mom used to sing music to me) The Bee Gees Star Wars Night Gallery David Bowie A map of Middle Earth that my brother used to have on his wall Salem's Lot View Master (I used to have slides of the TV show, Dark Shadows)

• Summer Shade and long winding roads reminds me of my childhood. I grew up on a farm and .. Every time I drive pass a large tree or set of trees with shade , I get very nostalgic

• Neighborhood kids riding bikes behind the fog machine trucks (anti-mosquito) in summer. Basically it was foggy insecticide. We thought it was great.

• The DDT truck, r21?

• Fresh asphalt The sound of Big Wheels on the pavement Hearing the loudspeaker from the high school football stadium and the distant roar of the crowd The sound of a locomotive whistle at night Distant sounds of laughter and music from a party in the beighborhood Streets under an arched tunnel caused by trees (Dutch elms when I was a kid, always some other trees now). Dogs barking The smell of leaves burning The noise of a basketball on a driveway School bells

• The smell of carbon paper

• The smell of bubble gum

• DDT?! Was that the active ingredient? It was a white-blue smoke and it left your hair greasy when you followed the truck for blocks on a bike, weaving in and out of the smoke. Big fun. We're all going to die prematurely, aren't we? Oh well.

• Spam.

• DDT R26? As kids we used to mix DDT up in barrels with our ARMS and then pour it into the hopper of the Crop Sprayer. We used to stand in the fields so the crop duster could see where to dust his next swath of DDT.... such fun and I can still smell it. Of course,the chemical companies knew we were being poisoned but just like today ... they didn't care really. Expendables Jeez... we ate mudpies as kids as well and we had fricken horses,chickens and cattle wandering through our prime mudpie assembly area. "Don't put that in your mouth...it's dirty", was the constant shout from my mom! I'm 62 and had a sick day back in 1978 I think. Even I'm surprised. So far so good... knock on wood. But many of my childhood friends from my generation and hometown died of weird cancers in their 50s and 60s and I attribute it to the "better life through chemistry" bullshit we were fed back in the '50s.

• 18th century Italian furniture.

  Countess%20Helen

• The crud-lined jar of Vaseline in the family medicine cabinet.

• The coconut smell of sun tan lotion....which is a very different smell than sunblock.

• I'm sure you all have your first vial of AIDS infest blood.

• Mimeograph smell.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph