Do you ever feel like Scrooge accompanying the Ghost of Christmas Past when you visit

[raccoon]

places from your past, your hometown, your college, etc.?

Because that's just how I feel.

[Walk away]

1. In what way?...nt

[raccoon]

2. Well, sort of like I'm walking around looking at these places where this or that occurred, and

I feel sort of like...a ghost. As if I can see and observe everything, but nobody can see me.

[KurtNYC]

4. I was looking at the empty play ground of my grade school

and it was all quiet. I was kind of lost in memories and this jogger is suddenly going right past me and he says: "This is where it all happened..."

It was my orthodontist out for a jog.

He was like the Daniel Stern (voice over) to my own personal 'Wonder Years'

[Art_from_Ark]

6. Nearly all of the places that were important in my childhood

have either closed for good, or have been torn down, or have been severely altered to make them almost unrecognizable.

[frogmarch]

3. Yes. Whenever I visit the town I grew up in

memories come to life:

I’m six and this was my first day of school in the States. I’m standing on the corner of Box Butte Avenue and Tenth Street, lost and crying because my older sister had Brownies after school and I can’t find my way home by myself. A boy of about 10 stops on his bicycle and asks me why I’m crying. He puts me on his handlebars and takes me up and down every street west of Box Butte, until I recognize my house. I hug him and thank him over and over and run into my house. I never see the boy again, even though Alliance, Nebraska isn’t a large town and I always look for him wherever I go.

Memories await me on every street in town. When my older sister was still living, I always phoned her after visiting Alliance. I'd start out by saying, "I saw us again today..." and I'd tell her what I'd seen us doing.

[llmart]

5. What a beautiful memory.

At 19 I moved away from the small, rural town I grew up in. It was too stifling for me, though many of my classmates still live there. I ended up moving to two other states and never attended any class reunions. Then in the year 2000 my siblings convinced me to go to the all-class reunion and I did for their sakes. What an amazing trip down memory lane that was for me. Seeing the elementary school I went to I could just envision me in the first grade. I have a similar memory to yours. I had one brother who was only a year older than me and he was in the second grade when I entered the first grade. I had this idea that my "older" brother would look out for me on that first day of school. I was a rather shy little girl and he was bold. At recess time he got his little boy friends to pelt me with acorns they found on the playground. So much for watching out for me and protecting me

As it turned out, many years of our adulthood later, he and I were never close and none of my brothers ever watched out for me. So much for all those parental lessons of the '50's we were taught about brothers being solicitous of their sisters.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

7. On my very first day of school,

in kindergarten, I was made to go stand in the hallway for throwing sand in another kid's eyes (should have been warning bells for the rest of my life ). Then years later, when I'm about 19 I'm hanging out, smoking dope, drinking beer, on acid and one of my best friends for the past few years says, "I remember my first day of kindergarten, some kid threw sand in my eyes". Oh man, it was me.

[llmart]

8. Oh, that's a good one....

made me chuckle because, you see, you were probably just like my brother! When we got in high school together he was always in trouble and smoking dope/cigarettes (usually shoplifted from a store), getting suspended for one thing or another. Guess the personality is there very early on.