Childhood memories: what you want back

Feeling nostalgic, we decided to ask the Something You Said team to recall the one thing from their childhood they would like back. Here are their childhood memories:

I want Degrassi Junior High back. Not the new sterile shit one with Drake in it. The one with Spike and the bleached mullets and hyper colour shirts. Jess Matthews

Scratch and sniff stickers. Sophie Metcalfe

My Workin’ Out Barbie was probably one of my most prized possessions when I was five. She was one of the coolest Barbies of 1996. I don’t know how I coerced my mother into buying her for me (tantrum, most likely)…but she did! Workin’ Out Barbie was rad-tastic because she had uber shiny hair, a fluro work-out get up, and she was crazy flexible. She could do the middle splits as well as the forward splits, and her arms were super bendy. This allowed her to be the best dancer at my Barbie dance-offs, to have kinky sex with Ken (I was a perverted child) and her ninja kicks and fighting skills were top quality. She also came with a cassette tape with her own Workin’ Out Barbie song which I would dance along to with my friends. Oh, and she had suction cap shoes so I could like, stick her to the ceiling and stuff. Liana Gow-Killingbeck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58QrL4Wlm38

I used to love Bubbly Bears. They were pink teddy bear-shaped squishy sweets that tasted of bubble gum. I have never seen them since. I’m hoping they weren’t a figment of my imagination. 25ThC

Having your presentations taken seriously because of your perfect bubble writing. Melissa Oey

Being the coolest kid in school when I came back from the States wearing those trainers that blinked in all kinds of colours and nobody else had them yet. Julia Boyle

Polly Pockets were kinda the best thing ever. Kaya Strehler

That feeling at the start of the school holidays, when you had six whole weeks of FREEDOM stretching out ahead of you. Everyday seemed endless and then, as the early evening shadows in the local park grew in length, it was time to go home for fish fingers and chips, cartoons on the telly and the knowledge you would would do the same thing again tomorrow and the next day and the next day. Bobby Townsend

I miss being excited to do the groceries. Chloe Coles

My A-Team Van Play Tent was in essence a glorified bin-bag. It didn’t have many poles and definitely no pegs, just a simple box frame and a thin piece of plastic with the A-Team and their van. There was no groundmat, just grass. It didn’t matter. I would still sit inside on summer days and the sun would beat down through the colourful shapes and I would enter an oxygen-starved reverie where I was riding along with my heroes. Looking back now, I pity the fool I was for ever leaving the confines of that tent. Tom Spooner

I want my VHS copy of The Neverending Story back. Because whose childhood wasn’t shaped by sneezing turtle mountains and busty voluptuous winged statues shooting lasers from their eyes? Ruth Hodge

Early morning Marvel cartoon time, crushes on babysitters, sitting on laps, riding dinked on pegs, “surfing” on harbour beaches when a big ship went past, bedtime stories, new sneaker rush, looking up to the big kids, the ability to fly kick through wooden boards. Oliver Heath 

I would want to have back the ability to wear skirts over jeans with cowgirl boots! Keely Thurecht

Fireworks. I can’t remember when exactly in their wisdom the government decided we couldn’t buy them and let them off ourselves but I remember the collective sadness of that time. Fireworks season was as bright and explosive as those little bombs were, and everyone would stock up for Fireworks Night and then backyards across the suburbs lit up with whizzing and banging and all kinds of light and fire. It was brilliant. Sure, we lost a few letterboxes, and going to the toilet at my school was sometimes dangerous – skilled technicians built bombs they would light and blow cisterns apart with, the only forewarning the tell tale odour of burning fuse…..damn I miss that smell. Of course in Canberra – bumfuck nowhere – you can buy porn, fireworks and smoke dope. I guess you gotta give people a reason to live down there. Damon Collum

I’d like the time, youthfulness and effortless creativity that I had as a child. Naivety about the world and also… my dog, she died the other day. Yes, I think I’d love to have my dog back. Sophie Metcalfe

Subbuteo and Domino Rally. Bobby Townsend

Being able to survive the mornings with just one bowl of cereal or a single serve of pop tarts for breakfast. Breakfast on a (working) weekday is way too hard now that I actually have an appetite and a concept of nutrition. Melissa Oey

I miss this giant blue fish cake that my mom and grandma baked for me once at my birthday for performing the lead role of the’ rainbow fish’ in my kindergarten play. It was bloody fantastic, covered in all kinds of glittering, yummy cake decorations.  Julia Boyle

Ignorance. I wouldn’t mind being ignorant again to all the things that piss me off now. Kaya Strehler 

Pez. Because well, Pez. Desmond Chan