Childhood. Ahhh, what a simple time in our lives when we don’t have a care in the world and everything can be turned into a game.
These AskReddit users took a walk down memory lane and shared some of their favorite pastimes where they played with objects that weren’t actually meant to be toys, but were totally fun anyway.
Think you played with some weird things? Keep reading to see if you can find your kindred spirits!
#1. Farm Life
“We used to live next to a farm and me and my brother would always be playing with farm machinery and tools. This one time my mum found my brother swinging an axe around his head laughing while I ducked underneath it. Another time the farmer found me and my brother throwing rocks at his combine harvester. He asked “what you doing?” We told him we wanted to know if it was powerful enough to mash up rocks. He laughed and said it’s also powerful enough to mash up little boys.”
#2. Monkey Nuts
“At my primary school there were palm trees on the grounds, and they dropped tiny little oval coconuts about half the size of a golf ball that we called Monkey nuts. Sometimes they were used as a form of currency among us, but most of the time we’d just throw them at each other really hard, often needing to go to the nurse afterwards because of the sharp spike that was on one end. All our pockets were crammed full with the damn things, the teachers banned us from picking them up, but all that did was drive the Monkey nut trade deeper into secrecy.”
#3. The Superstick
“When I was around 7 years old, I found the mother of all sticks in the woods. It was a good size stick, perfect for fencing – but totally unbreakable. No matter how hard I tried to smash it against a tree, it never snapped. My brother and I dubbed it “The Superstick”. We would fight about who got to wield it. It was our most prized possession – for about a week, when something else probably came along and grabbed our attention.”
#4. Future Journalist
“A tape recorder. I would always pester my mother to buy me blank cassettes when I was around 9 or 10, and I’d fill them up with incomprehensible screeching and personal memes that would never cease to crack me the hell up every time I played them back. Then I’d go terrorize other family members by chasing them around recording them. I still have two tapes that exist to this day. I’m 45. They are my most prized possessions.”
#5. A Child’s Mind Is A Mystery Indeed
“When I was really small, film canisters. Not the camera, or the film…just the canisters. No idea why I found them so riveting.”
#6. Box Children
“Any time someone in the neighborhood got a new fridge or large appliance I would get the box and put it in my room. I would then fill it with blankets and pillows and spend all day in my hideout.”
#7. Whatever Makes You Happy
“I don’t know what they’re called, but they have hooks on the end and the middle part is a kind of bungee rope. They’re maybe a foot or two long. I asked for them for my birthday one year, and my parents were like wtf, but they still got me a couple. I can’t remember what I used them for or why I wanted them, but I remember they made me happy.”
#8. Practicing For Jail Or Something?
“Cinder blocks. I used to use them as giant legos and make “houses” out of them for hot wheels and action figures. I would also smash them with golf clubs.”
#9. Spoiler Alert: It Wasn’t A Whistle
“When I was a kid (around 6 or 7), I went through my dads cabinet and found this weird looking whistle thing. It looked like something fun to play with, so naturally I grabbed it asked dad what it was. He said it was a broken dog whistle and that I was not to play with it. I had to put it back in it’s drawer “immediately”. Fast forward a couple of days later, my parents go out for an hour or so and I’m home alone. All I could think about was getting dads dog whistle to work. I wanted to be the pied piper of dogs or something. So I sneak into his room and find the dog whistle, however we had a problem. We didn’t have a dog. Our next door neighbors had a huge Dalmatian though.
So I put the whistle in my pocket, jump the fence and spend like 20 minutes chasing this dog around my neighbors back yard. Turns out dad was telling the truth and the dog whistle was broken, so I went home disappointed and returned the dog whistle to it’s drawer. 12 years later we moved interstate and I’m helping dad unbox stuff after the move. Needless to say we get to his belongings and I find the infamous broken dog whistle. It so turns out that it wasn’t a dog whistle at all. He tells me that it was his brothers hash pipe which he kept after his death (as a memory).
I told him the story of chasing the neighbors dog with it for 20 minutes. We both couldn’t stop laughing over the thought of my neighbors watching some 6 year old kid running through their back yard, chasing their dog with a hash pipe hanging out of his mouth. Good times.”
#10. Natural Selection
“Insects. I used to build Lego mazes for woodlice, paint them in racing colors, then release them to see who won. Often, losers would be fed to spiders. I promise I’m not a serial killer…”
#11. Imagination Station
“My mom had a colander/steamer basket that I’d play with all the time. Sometimes it was a robot, sometimes it was an alien spaceship.”
#12. Who Said Your Toys Had To Be Meant For Humans?
“Well, technically they were toys, just not for…humans. Cat toys. I collected cat toys. I especially liked the ones where you’d pull the tail, and they’d scoot/vibrate across the floor. Not in a weird way, though. I thought they were cute lol.”
#13. Ah, The Simple Life
“I could amuse myself for hours poking a dead mole with a bamboo cane. Simpler times.”
#14. Live Your Life
“That clear adhesive putty you find on the back of gift cards that are attached to a cardboard backing.”
#15. Gas Station
“My great grandma used to live in this old farmhouse and there was a water pump near her porch. She used to babysit my cousins, brothers, and me and we would play “Gas Station”. We did this ALL the time and for whatever reason it was one of the things I would look forward to. I was talking to my grandpa about that water pump a few years ago after she passed away and he asked me if I wanted to see it again. I looked at him weirdly and then he said he stole it and it was out in his garage!”
#16. Young Professional
“I would take the covers out of DVD cases and use a sharpie to make them look as similar to a laptop as possible. I would bring it everywhere with me and act as though I was actually doing something important. I was 8 when I first started doing that.”
#17. Organizing Can Be Fun!
“My great grandmother had a spring-loaded contact list. You would move a little marker to a letter of the alphabet, press a big button, and the device would open to the correct page of contacts. I used to play with that thing for a surprisingly long time each visit. First, I loved to try to figure out how it worked. Second, the spring was powerful enough that it would throw itself around if you triggered it right.”
#18. Booger Breath
“When I was younger, around 10 or so. My niece was born and she would get dropped off at my house so my mom would baby sit. Near the bag of toys was a bag that carried the diapers and stuff. Inside, I found a suction kind of ‘toy’. Me being the kid that would mess around with things that were not mine, I began playing with it, using it as a water squirter. I eventually began using it to suck up water and then squirt it in my mouth. One day, my twin brother sees me squirting water into my mouth using that suction ‘toy’ and tells me, “You DO know thats for the baby’s boogers right?””
#19. Who Didn’t?!
“Bubble wrap. Specifically, popping the individual bubbles.”
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