When I was 5 and the Dairy Queen hot air balloon crashed and burned next to my brother's school. I remember before that I really wanted to ride in a hot air balloon but 3 decades later I still won't go near one.
When I was in sixth grade, our regular substitute teacher had an actual mental breakdown that involved her acting out the training scene from 'Mulan' -- making all of us boys do push ups and such. She got mad when I refused to kiss her shoes. Ultimately, everyone ran away to the library when she started crying and throwing chairs. We never saw her again.
When I was 5 and the Dairy Queen hot air balloon crashed and burned next to my brother's school. I remember before that I really wanted to ride in a hot air balloon but 3 decades later I still won't go near one.
I was in grade 5 when the ATCO facility at 50th Avenue and Crowchild Trail blew up. We could see flames from my front yard in North Glenmore Park and as we walked across the pedestrian bridge crossing Glenmore it looked like half of SW Calgary was on fire.
i was in preschool - so 4 years old. the fire department came by one day to show all us kids a fire truck. i thought nothing could be cooler... then they got a call and had to leave with lights and sirens blaring. i believe that is the day i went home and told my mom that when i grew up i wanted to be a fire truck... yea... a truck!
cool aside... my preschool teacher was robert munsch. best story times EVER!!
another memory from when i was 4 was seeing the original star wars not only in the theater but also in a drive-in!
another memory i'll never forget was going tobogganing one time. it was me, my dad, older brother and younger sister. we were having a blast one afternoon on kortright hill (i'm not sure what the name of the actual hill was, but it was on kortright road, so that's what we called it). some kid went flying down the hill and lost control and completely ate it into a tree (this was the mid 1970s, so helmets were not even on the radar back then). i remember my dad grabbing the old blue metal toboggan and ripping down the hill to see if the kid was ok... he was not. other parents also went to help but the parents of the injured kid were nowhere to be found. the adults put the kid onto our tobaggan and my dad and some others loaded the kid into the back of our van. my dad told us to keep going down the hill on our crazy carpets/plastic toboggans and he'd be back soon (again... the 70s when it was not uncommon to leave your kids unattended). they headed off to the hospital to get the kid some help. i remember when he got back there was still blood on the tobaggan - probably the first time i ever saw a substantial amount of blood. i still have no idea who the injured kid was or the extent of his injuries.
and one final memory from childhood... we had "big days" with dad. my childhood was in guelph ontario (about 90 minutes west of toronto). my dad owned his own business and it was the late 70s/early 80s... so a really tough economic time. my dad worked - a lot (he had too, couldn't afford a lot of staff). with the exception of sunday (becuz businesses were closed sundays) he would be out of the house before us kids were up and didn't get home until well after we were in bed. one thing he did every year was put a card in the christmas tree for each kid asking us for a 'big day'... a saturday where each of us got to spend the entire day with just dad. it usually meant going into his store early so he could get things done/ready for his staff, and then by 10am he was all mine! my big day would usually include an early afternoon jays game where we'd get footlong hot dogs and a pop and maybe a bag of peanuts or some cotton candy and then go out for dinner too. as i got older and was able to stay up later i remember that one year we went to a leafs game at the maple leaf gardens. don't recall who they played, but they lost - ha! ha! some things never change! he continued to do big days after we moved to bc and in '89 my big day was stretched into 2 days as he somehow got us tickets to game 2 of the stanley cup final. the habs won that game, but it was still unreal to be in the dome for game 2 of the final... my very first flames game at the dome!
__________________ "...and there goes Finger up the middle on Luongo!" - Jim Hughson, Av's vs. 'Nucks
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Loved flipping through the Consumers catalogue. I remember one year, we got to pick out one toy each from our grandpa. Me and my 4 cousins had this plan to get all 5 lions of Voltron. 3 of them decided to get something else, so I got Hunk and the Yellow Lion, and my older cousin got the black lion (which was way cooler).
As a 6 year old kid attending grade 1 at Muriel Baxter school in Cranbrook I got jumped by a three grade 4 kids because I was put in front of the school to do some reading at a Thanksgiving Assembly. Supposedly my reading ability struck a nerve.
To me Cranbrook will always be a city of stupid people and I was happy when I found out that shat hole school was shut down.
Even as I was older I still remember how lonely it was being 1 of 4 kids in the upper reading group in the newest school in the city.
FU Cranbrook you stupid little illiterate mill town! If not for Scott Niedermayer that place would be worth wiping off the map.
It was also Pierce Trudeau's fault. Thanks to his NEP we were forced to flea Medicine Hat and live in a poor neighbourhood until my parents could offload our house in Medicine Hat. So the Trudeau family are a bunch of Ryan Kesler's
__________________ "Some guys like old balls"
Patriots QB Tom Brady
As a 6 year old kid attending grade 1 at Muriel Baxter school in Cranbrook I got jumped by a three grade 4 kids because I was put in front of the school to do some reading at a Thanksgiving Assembly. Supposedly my reading ability struck a nerve.
To me Cranbrook will always be a city of stupid people and I was happy when I found out that shat hole school was shut down.
Even as I was older I still remember how lonely it was being 1 of 4 kids in the upper reading group in the newest school in the city.
FU Cranbrook you stupid little illiterate mill town! If not for Scott Niedermayer that place would be worth wiping off the map.
It was also Pierce Trudeau's fault. Thanks to his NEP we were forced to flea Medicine Hat and live in a poor neighbourhood until my parents could offload our house in Medicine Hat. So the Trudeau family are a bunch of Ryan Kesler's
You're forgetting Cranbrook's main attraction:
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Not a "moment", but I remember over a dozen childhood friends' phone numbers. I'm not even 40 yet and consider my memory pretty bad for my age but have a bunch of 25 year old phone numbers permanently stuck in my head.
Drives me nuts
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Mom taking me and my sister every Tuesday after school to Consumers distributors, then going to Woodward's for $1.49 Day right after.
I was anxious to get to Woodward's because she'd buy me some cheap toy there on sale, but the Consumers wait was a crapshoot. It was either two minutes or two hours.
I remember my old man bought me my first high powered pellet gun that used compressed gas and could fire BB's or pellets or single shot darts at consumers.
Then he took it away for a month when I played war with my best friend and shot him in the sack by mistake.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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Just like the OP I have a very clear memory of getting my first Nintendo.
As clear as day I can still see my Dad walk down the stairs with it and I could barely contain myself. Man, did that thing ever get some playing time. The best part of that memory is getting to relive what my old house looked like. The old couch, the configuration of the room, and my dad. Good times!
