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For me it was watching Bonanza on Sunday night. I looked forward to the show but it meant the weekend was over and school loomed on the morning horizon.
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Same exact memory. Disney and Bonanza then bed. Ugh.
Me too! Every week of the school year. To this day, that is one vivid memory living in the back of my mind. I really hated school!
I had pretty much the same experience with the Wonderful World of Disney
Labor Day weekend. In our state it meant back to school.
Right, the end of summer break sucked so much! Been out of school over 45 years and I still feel it around Labor Day.
Yup, same here. On the other hand, that last day of school before summer was the best feeling in the world. Nothing to do that day but sit in our desks and wiggle. The teacher was in a great mood, too. And all summer lay ahead.
I felt that again just once, the day before I retired. Eight years later it's still summer.
Completely agree. Congrats on retirement. 2 more years to go.
We'll keep the light on for you.
Yeah this. I’m right there with you on still feeling it and to make it worse many times the 1st day of school coincided with my birthday at the end of August. A double whammy
My brother too in early September. Some years his birthday was the first day of school. I always felt so bad for him.
The week leading up to up to Christmas. It was exciting, lots to do, people on good behaviour. My grandmother baked. School concerts. Sparky things in my hair. It seemed like a little snippet of “normal.”
By suppertime Christmas Day though all the abuse started up again and I’d just be a ball on anxiety wishing to die. But there were those few days.
My parents always tried to be nice at Christmas, but never succeeded. There was always a fight. Every single year.
I’m sorry. ❤️
Laying in the cool grass at night while the parents partied 1960-70’s. Catching tons of lightening bugs and making rings out of them. Holidays where the entire family got together. Family reunions. So many things that aren’t around anymore I could go on and on.
I’m younger than you but I remember childhood in the early 80’s when kids just tagged along to whatever the parents were doing. Was that your same experience? I feel like things have flipped and now parents plan their life around their kids schedule instead of the other way around. Not that either one is right or wrong, it just seems like things have flipped.
Absolutely! Kids went wherever the parents went except certain places, of course but yes. We weren’t in any activities and the ones we were in were in high school and I don’t remember my parents coming to any of my swim meets. They would drop me off and pick me up. There was no checking of a childs schedule you fit into their schedule or you didn’t go. At least that was my experience.
This is exactly how most families operated back then. None of these big birthday parties you see today either
Honestly my favorite birthday parties growing up were the simplest. Mom made a cake and I had friends over to hang out, the big event was a water balloon fight. Another year my dad made a makeshift slip and slide out of standard tarps from the hardware store. We seriously enjoyed that thing for hours!
Speaking of lighting bugs, we would spans many summer evenings catching them in a jar later to release. These days I hardly ever even see one let alone e enough for multiple kids to catch mason jars full of them
When I was in first grade, my father and I joined a father-daughter group. We had so much fun! We'd do arts and crafts, go camping, and once went to a kite festival. My father and I were very close.
My stepmother had her first child a month before I turned 7, and all of that stopped. We didn't go out as a family to anyplace nicer than a Denny's anymore because my parents didn't believe in taking crying infants out in public. I was old enough to behave but my infant brother certainly was not. All the fun father-daughter stuff stopped because my stepmother wanted Dad at home helping her with the baby. Two years later, another child came along and it was hopeless after that. Everything was oriented around the small children. I understood it intellectually. The kids needed more attention than I did. They weren't old enough to go to the places I was old enough to be taken to. Family outings were usually to a neighbor's house where they had kids my sibs' ages. I could hang out with the babies or I could hang out with the adults. There was never anyone my age and I was bored shitless. I finally got permission to opt out of that kiddie crap when I was 15.
That big age gap is one of the main reasons I'm not close to my family. I escaped to college at 18, and I had an apartment and was independent at 19. Never looked back. But damn, I sure missed those fun times with my dad and I still remember them fondly.
Your step mom was full of shit. Just because she had a baby didn’t mean you stopped existing. She could have managed with a 1 year old by herself for a week. Jesus. Poor you.
The last day of vacation at my grandmother's beach house. Summer wasn't over, but home wasn't the same as being near the ocean and the boardwalk.
Football season. Not because I liked it, but because it distracted my dad and I could disappear from the house for most of Sunday.
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and The Wonderful World of Disney - when it was over it meant my Dad had to return us to our insane mother every other Sunday night. We spent the weekends at my Grandmom's house with him, and they had color tv, and Aunts and Uncles and a cousin or two. Home had screaming, scarce food and shoes that were too tight.
I lived with my Mom and her parents as my Dad had cut out right after I was born. When I was 8 my Mom announced she was getting married again - I had never met my new stepfather but figured Oh boy!, finally a Dad! Didn't work out that way though. He didn't want kids but she did the old "I-know-better-I-can-change-him" dance and got pregnant not once but twice. I don't know if that's what turned him bitter but bitter he turned. Now, I love my brothers dearly but man I sure was relegated quickly by my Mom to red-headed stepchild status, a status I maintain to this day. A turning point in life you think is turning one way actually turns the opposite.
I never could understand mothers or fathers that did this or allowed the new spouse to. That had to be tough
Wasn't it on sunday nights right before HEE HAW? I used to sit on the floor by my Dads feet while we both watched the lineup, I think before that was Star Trek. It's so funny because I was just watching an old episode of Little House on the Prairie and it starred Dirk Blocker in his first tv role. I still remember the day it came on the tv that Dan Blocker (Hoss) died, I believe he was only 40. Dad is long gone now...
That’s how I felt watching Ed Sullivan on Sunday nights, laying on the couch, with the last of the weekend potato chips and cream cheese.
Not Bonanza but Hee Haw. It came on Sundays at 630 or 7p and that meant school tomorrow.
Just one of my bittersweet memories was, watching the finale of MASH. Can’t remember exactly how old I was(maybe 9 or 10)but I remember telling my mom after that episode, it felt like the last day of school and I wouldn’t see some of my friends til the next school year or ever again, lived in a smallish town where people didn’t stick around long.
For us, school started back up the second week of September. You’d still have over a week of summer vacation to go and you tried to kid yourself, thinking it’s still warm and sunny but it was no use, the chill had crept into the air over night
Sitting at the “kids” table in the kitchen with cousins mostly unsupervised, while parents, aunts and uncles and grandparents enjoyed the dining room.
The Virginian was Friday night which was a nice start to the weekend. Sunday Night at the London Paladium was the must-watch show on Sunday night, but it was long and I had to go to bed half way through because "school in the morning!"
For me it was: 1). that dreaded end of Summer shopping trip to Robert Halls for new school clothes. I even hated the store’s jingle ‘When school bells ring, the children sing it’s back to Robert Halls again.” 2). that first day of school when I discovered that the really cool ‘one of a kind’ dress shirt I picked out was being worn by five other boys. 3). discovering that during the Summer the school replaced the old wooden desks and chairs filled with initials and limericks with rigid one piece Formica topped desks with attached fiberglass seats. Yuk.
I never had weekend or much of a social life as a kid because my dad owned a yacht and dragged me and my mother onto it to cook and clean for him. Once CPS got involved, though, I got my weekends back at age 15. I really hate boats and boating to this day.
Oddly enough, also Sunday night -- Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I loved every one of those shows. I even used one of them to illustrate a point in my college math classes.
In high school, playing in the school band at commencement for the classes before us each year, being happy and excited for my senior friends who were graduating that evening to new lives as adults, but sad because they wouldn't be back the next year and likely we wouldn't see many of them again. Then it was my turn, and I was happy, but it stung because I would miss my junior and sophomore friends. I feel it now just remembering it.
Same situation as OP, but Simpsons & King of the Hill on FOX on Sunday evening.
Omnibus with my Dad on Sundays
Every memory from back in the day is either bittersweet or straight up sad.
so many; sweet because they were, bitter because i'll never go back
so i indulge in what is a sweeter way to remember (but i'm retired and crochet and paint ....) i dive into those memories as i paint or craft and visit them in detail. as long as i remember what year it really is, i feel like i've met the people and memories in a dream - that always does my Soul good. so -visiting the memories with intention and consciousness- well, it makes them sweetsweet reveries