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Flares

During the summer, when school was out, I would leave the house in the morning and not come back home until dark. No helicopter parents back then. No backyard playgrounds. Kids would roam around, miles away from home, make friends (and sometimes enemies) in other neighborhoods. Go to the park by ourselves. Break stuff. Get into trouble with adults who were going to "tell our parents" except they had no idea who we were. Time moved so slowly back then, it seemed like the summers lasted forever.

• Looking at "amazing" things like metallic structures, rusty car wrecks, or weird buildings, warehouses and factories (particularly some gleaming soda factory that looks kinda bare today, and a gigantic bridge I was afraid of) during car trips. I still do it nowadays (even though these things don't really look amazing anymore) and I can't really drive because of it.

• Ponies in a small field near my house, the field doesn't exist anymore and there are houses there instead now

• Walking through the forest with my family, including that walk to the Virgin Mary statue that seemed to take forever when it actually was like 20 minutes

• Winter nights outside being warm, beautiful and dreamlike instead of cold and boring

• Russian cartoons teachers showed us during elementary school

• Going shopping with my mother when there was thunder outside

• That guy who my father knew who had like dozens of motorcycles in an extremely long garage

• Stealing money to buy books and how it made my arms hurt afterwards

• Fake memories like living in Spain or being kidnapped

I don't really have childhood memories of videogames since I didn't really play them before being like 14.